Let's get some tech updates and find out what's going on in the world of technology, and our very good friend Trevor Long's on the phone, technical guru from EFTM dot com. Mate, I've got to tell you, I'm not happy what's happened. Well, since Apple updated the phone the other day. I mean, I don't know whether or not this is in conjunction with them bringing in a new phone. And whenever they do this, they try to make everybody's
phones they've already got obsolete. So what they've done is they've taken the function out of my phone where when I give the weather and it's say seven degrees it used to say, but feels like and I've been able to give people really accurate weather forecasts every morning to the innth degree, and I could say, well, you know, it's seven degrees right now in Sydney, but it feels like they've taken that function out of the phone.
Really, here's the thing. I don't use the Apple Weather app. I just used the Bureaus app. Yeah, but you're right. As I look at my location, I don't see any fills.
Like see and you know what, though, here's the thing. It's working in Canberra.
Oh yeah, oh really, yes, maybe they just can't estimate how it feels like in Brisbane and Sydney because we're so volatile in our temperature. But I have certainly it's nothing to do with a new update or anything that was our past. No, none of that is yet available right to the average punter, or clearly something to do with the data that they're getting. You see, I mean
Apple doesn't do weather. They just buy the data from some other company, and so I would suggest that that data has changed something, something's aw.
They're in a little bit of a you know, let's get him to get the app thing, you know, a little bit of a sort of wouldn't want.
You to have. They would love you to use the weather app and not rely on another app.
So what you're friends with them?
I wouldn't go that far, but you know, getting nailing them down on a particular tiny feature like that near on impossible.
I know there's a lot of things that you want to talk about, but let's just quickly go back to how you were blindfolded and led through you know, this sort of inner sanctum of Apple when they released all the information. How secretive was it? Did they take your phone away from you, so you couldn't take any photos of their new technology. Were you under like, you know, sworn to secrecy or anything like that.
No, they don't take your phone away from you, but they're very clear about what you kenna can't do. So there's I've been to Apple Park, they're headquarters many many times over the last kind of ten years, and you know, it's not changed much, but there's a brand new building little not a building, it's actually underground and it's come peeks out of a hill and it's this beautiful, beautiful
building or area they call the Observatory. And I've been there a couple of times, but this time they were like, you can take photos here right here. They put a sculpture in this one location, but I couldn't take photos anywhere else. They're very kind of protective of some of those things. But the real I guess protective nature of Apple is unlike other companies, they don't tell us in events, right,
so a little kind of inside baseball. But when I go to let's say, a Samsung event, So there'll be a Samsung event in July, I'll normally have had a bit of a briefing about what's coming up. I might even gotten to see, touch, feel and use the product and take photos and make videos about it before it's even announced under strict non disclosure agreement based on a
certain data and time. But with Apple, it is one hundred percent blindfolders in terms of you know, the information that we have, we turn up and we wait, we watch. If you're online watching an Apple event, you're learning at the same time I'm learning what's going on.
Well, that's what I want to hear, because I want to believe that they've got their building underground, dug out the side of a mountain, inner bunker, and we all want to believe that that's the case because of the secrecy of everything that.
Can most and Dale will love this, but the most remarked, I mean, Apple Park is so big. So it's a it's a ring. Actually actual building is called the ring because it looks like a big spaceship, right, So it's a big ring. Park lands on the outside, parklands on the inside the inside of this ring. So just to give you scale and perspective of the size of this building,
on the inside of this ring, you could place the mcg. Wow, it's an enormous building, right, So just imagine a four story large building built around the mcg as a ring, and then there's just acres and acres of parkland. The Steve Jobs Theater, obviously named after the founder, is built underground, and there's just a small beautiful glass building that peaks
kind of above the ground that you enter through. But this, I mean, this is this is the place where they have their events, whether we are seated to hear keynotes, speeches and things. And I had to leave San Francisco on Tuesday nights to fly home. I missed the opportunity to see the screening of the Formula one movie which Pail in the Steve Jobs Theater. It would have probably been the highlight of my life. But as a Formula one fan and someone who has the rare access to
that facility, I was pretty disappointed. But the Steve Jobs Theater is probably the ultimate movie theater in the world, and underground fifteen hundred or two thousand seat theater built by Apple.
Fact, that is exactly what we want to believe the Apple headquarters would look like. So you know, we've vicariously enjoyed the whole Gotham City experience through you, so Thank you so much for that. All right, let's talk about family and friends tracking app Life three sixty and how it integrates with things you know, like this is me trying to explain things like a labrador trying to explain, you know, a brief history of time. So you take it over from here.
This is the This is the idea of two tracking apps coming together. So for many years, we've had a thing called Tile, which is a little tracking device you can put on your car keys, you might put one in your backpack so you never lose these items and basically works via blue tooth so the things around you can find it. There's another app completely separate called Life three sixty, and it works on your smartphone. Now. For example, my kids have had this on their smartphones for five
to seven years, ever since they've had smartphones. And it basically means that if I'm seeing it home, I can look at the app and go, well, the kids are at school, sport, or they're walking home, or I can see where they are. And it gives parents in this modern age, peace of mind. There's a lot of people listening to be going why do you need to track your kids? But actually, in the modern age. It's a fantastic piece of mind to know that your kids are moving from A to B or they have gotten to
their destination. They said, so well, Life three sixty acquired Tile and so now they're one one company and one app. So you've now have one app that not only you can see where your families, but you can see where your things are. So it's basically one app that rules them all and it's finally fully integrated. It works really
really well. So if you're someone who has grandkids or kids and you're using Life three sixty, you should now know that you can also include your backpack, your keys and things like that in the same app, so that you've got one app to find all your things.
Brilliant. Now that's really good and really good for the family to just quickly. You know the Apple air.
Tag, Yeah, give a concept, Yes, how.
Do you change the bloody battery in that thing?
So it's two sided, it's white and silver. Yeah, silver side. You push in, so holding it maybe in the palm of your hand with the white side down, you push in on the silver side and then then twist it andy clockwise. The silver will pop off and there's a cr two three two little button battery in there that you simply replace and then when you put it back in put the silver on, it'll beep and you twist it and it's ready to go again for another year or so.
You don't know how many people you've helped out with that, because all of the people like me that have got been given it will be having that thing going beat beat people all the time. It doesn't beat it.
Look, it's made to be. It's made to be hard to open, not ye right, other kids, So the kids can't open it with ease and get the button battery out and eat them because that's a challenge. We don't want young kids consuming button batteries. It has cost them lives and injuries. So yeah, it's very strict regulations around button batteries. But so that's why it is somewhat difficult. But I think pretty easy to open.
Well, if you know how, I've had this thing and it just keeps going back like that and I just kept looking at going surely there must be a way to get into it. Now I know thanks to you. Let's talk about Apple's AI strategy getting a bit of the criticism.
Why is that, Well, look, they cop the off that because a year ago they announced that theory their voice assistant would be ever so smarter, she or he would be able to understand more about you through a level of intelligence based on what you do on your phone. So it could know that you know your mother is this person based on your contact, that you've got a flight for your mother in your diary, and that if you asked at what times my mum landing, it would
simply know these things. So a real level of intelligence to the next level that never launched. And so they got a lot of criss criticism over the last few months kind of what's going on here, how have they've fallen behind? And they actually kind of hit this front on at the event. They've kind of made it very
clear that it didn't meet their expectations. I was given the opportunity to sit down with one of their senior executives, Greg Joswiak, who is a lovely bloke, but you know, essentially he said this, we thought we'd chip it, and we made a tough call. It didn't meet our expectations. It was kind of fascinating to hear them talk about this in such a way that they have a threshold they have a bar for which products and services much
must meet. And what I think people are misunderstanding is they think of AI as being you know, Chat GPT versus kind of Google, whereas Apple's not in that race. Apple's not trying to create a chat GBT competitor. In fact, they partnered with chat GBT. So what they're doing is building AI across the device in ways that are useful to you and little kind of things across the phone.
So it is it's a fascinating thing that they kind of mea coulpra and took the flat for not launching something they said they would, but they also kind of drew a line in the sand and said, look, this is this is how we see AI. We want AI to be useful to people, and they think they've delivered a lot of those features already.
But listen, I want to get you to hang on because there's something else really important that we've got to talk about as well. Can you hang on for a sec? Absolutely, all right, something very important to do with it Telstra Satellite SMS after this, just getting back to Trevor. Now we know Trevor, let's quickly talk about this because I've got the news coming out Telstra's satellite SMS service now working in the Bush more than a million texts of Incent hallelujah.
Yeah, they don't muck around either. It launched on Sansung Galaxy S twenty five. A couple of weeks. Sgo's now available on Apple iPhone. So if you've got an iPhone thirteen or later and you're a Telstra customer on an account, not on a prepaid when you're in the middle of nowhere, your phone will be able to send and receive SMS messages. In just I think less than ten days, they had a million SMS messages sent via their network. So who's
the game changer for the bush. It means that you have some level of communication, whether it's an emergency or just to contact your mates and family. And yeah, now on iPhone and Samsung phone. So that's that's a huge advance from Telstra.
Does that mean also that the phone quality is going to be better, that they're going to have better covering or right.
Nothing to do with phones? Yeah, okay, yeah, great leap forward in SMS ing, but nothing to do with phone calls unfortunately at this point.
Well it's a start, right.
That's exactly right. Let's just take the little wins when we can.
I think, thank you for sharing that information that you weren't supposed to share with us about the Apple headquarters.
It's fine, they're not listening so well.
We're never going to be allowed back in there again. But no, I really appreciate that. If people want to find out everything they need to know about technology, you're the man. But what's the website?
E FtM dot com.
Mate, good to tell it to you, Trevor. Thank you so much. Have a terrific day that you, Trevor. Long there our technology gurup