Robert: Well, hello everybody, this is Robert one of the tech doctors and finally the tech doctors are back And I am so delighted to be here again with my colleagues Allison it's so great to be podcasting with you again. How are you?
Allison: I'm great Robert It's great to be podcasting with you and David as well. I'm just I'm so excited for this episode in particular,
Robert: and Dr. Woodbridge, what's going on in Australia?
David: Well, I'm trying to find places for my son's Lego, which has got nothing to do with technology, but my little occasional podcasting desk in the other room has now been taken over by Lego. So that will be my job for the future, trying to find... spots for Lego.
R: Good luck with that.
D: Thank you.
R: I hope it works for you.
D: So, so, or I can just let my, my grandson, unfortunately play with the Lego structures and go, Owen,, geez, I'm really sorry. um, Franklin knocked them off the table. Oh, yeah, what a shame. A: There you go.
R: We are happy to be back as promised. We have decided we wanted to do an end of the year summary podcast regarding all that Apple has done during 2023. Actually, we're not going to cover everything, but we're going to cover the things that are of interest to us, and I must publicly thank David, for providing us with a wonderful summary, a wonderful outline that we are going to use in this podcast. Thank you for that, David. I'm sure you worked many, many hours on this and we do appreciate it.
D: Oh, look, it took me a whopping hour, so no, I'll send you the bill in the mail.
R. Oh, I was afraid of that. I thought there would be a catch here.
D: Nothing's free mate.
R: So that's what we are particularly especially David is particularly excited about in twenty twenty three and I agree this is a great summary. Let's start out by talking about the new second edition of the HomePods which came out last January and I'm curious to see what you guys think about these new HomePods. Allison, what do you think?
A: I am absolutely in love with them. I have three stereo pairs, one in my office, one in our living room, and one in our screened in entertainment room area and each of those are hooked to an Apple TV except for the ones in my office and I just cannot believe I mean the first generation home pods were were excellent but the second generation ones just kind of blow them out of the water in terms of in terms of base in terms of the Dolby Atmos experience. I've been watching a lot of TV and a lot of Netflix on these and it's just it's it's as good as any surround sound home theater experience. I really believe that because you know for a while I had the Sonos set up but you know for different reasons we got back into into the HomePods and I and I'm so glad. we made the move. I would say we've only had these not even two months, but again, I just kept buying more and more once I got my first pair. So I mean, they are just amazing little speakers.
R: You know, Allison, talking to you is like doing therapy for me because we We have 10 HomePods in the house here and three stereo pairs, but we only have, some of them are HomePod minis, I have to confess, but we did the same thing that you did. We got rid of the Sonos and switched to... the new second gen HomePods for our living room system with the Apple TV and they just really sound great. You know, in my opinion, honestly, the HomePods are one of the best things that Apple has ever done for audio and they're always doing things. that are for the fancy displays and the screens and all that jazz, but I was thrilled to see how much they have advanced with their audio stuff. It did an old blind guy's heart good for the for the second gen HomePods to come out.
A: Well, I'm glad it's therapeutic for you and don't worry. You're just, you're just as sane as I am for switching from Sonos.
R: Well, I'm going to the Apple store next Monday. We're going to look at getting new Apple watches, and I, I fear that a couple of HomePods are going to crawl into my bag before I leave that store, because I want to replace the HomePod minis in our bedroom. with the full-size second gen HomePods.
A: Wouldn't that be nice? Now I learned a trick that you can do if you have, you know, when you have an Apple TV and you have it hooked into another TV that has the HDMI ARC port, if you plug the Apple TV into the ARC port and make sure that ARC audio return is turned on on the Apple TV settings itself and you have also the setting turned on for using the speakers specifically, the HomePods specifically as the speakers for the Apple TV, then your HomePods become the speakers for anything that you connect into the TV via HDMI because we actually have an Apple TV hooked into an Amazon Fire TV, and so it doesn't matter now whether we watch something on the Apple TV side of things, which we use more often or the Amazon Fire TV side, or if I have a game going on the Xbox, it all comes through the big, beautiful second gen apple HomePods.
R: Well, that's a great tip. Thank you for that. That's something people can benefit from knowing about. David, what's your relationship with second-gen HomePods?
D: Absolutely zero. So look, I do have three original home pods and I do have, like you Robert, I do have ten original home pods. pod minis, which haven't been upgraded. The problem with me is that I live in a family who do not like noise. So my wife is on her computer, because she's always listening to and chatting to people on social media, she's always wearing her AirPods. My son is always using his noise cancelling headphones AirPods Max, and then when my daughter and I are in the room where I am now, in our sort of media/toy room/podcasting room, when we watch a movie together, we actually share our audio between both of our AirPods Max, which actually works out really nicely. So I'd love to sort of like, you know, play very loud music around the house. so, you know, my TV is all set up with the two original HomePods, but unfortunately, unless everybody's out and about, which is very rare, I can't enjoy the full sound of HomePod. So that's one of the reasons what stopped me buying the second HomePod 2, because I just thought I'm not going to get enough benefit out of them. Because it's really weird when you look walk into our house at night time. There's my son on the lounge playing his PlayStation or looking at the TV There's my wife in the craft room with her headphones on and there's me and my daughter in this room with our headphones on So it's we're all busy, but the house itself is just dead quiet.
R: Well I get it because we wear headphones a lot around here and yeah I have to confess that you know the the AirPods Max are and in my book just wonderful headphones for music audio and whatever you want to put through them and so I certainly can understand that but I think you are getting a good testimonial from from Allison and me that the second gen HomePods are fantastic.
D: I just had the soundtrack for Tron, which is the latest movie Tron, which has got audio description in it, and I just heard the soundtrack for it and I thought, oh my God, that would sound so beautiful through the HomePods. So, you know, just, you know. don't scratch out this space for the moment. I might think, oh, look, you know, maybe when my son goes out on the weekend, maybe I could sort of scribble in maybe a new HomePod or too. So let's just see what happens in the new year now.
A: Sounds good.
R: Well, let's move on and see what you guys think about the announcement that was at WWDC. Which was announcing the Vision Pro and what what about Vision Pro? You guys interested in it or think it's really not going to be for you or what do you think of it? Go ahead, Allison.
A: I'm definitely interested. I do not think I will be able. able to get the first generation one when it comes out because of the price tag, and I'm not complaining about the price tag. I realize why it has to be a couple of thousand dollars. I just don't think that at that time we're working on going on a cruise and things. So I have been told that I'm not getting a Vision Pro. We'll see what actually happens, but. But yeah, I am so, so excited because for the longest time, I have always wondered what is, you know, this whole thing about, you know, AR and is it, can it somehow be accessible to us and, and, you know, what, what is this, what is all the fuss about, basically? Essentially, having a headset with your whole Apple world literally at your fingertips to where you can just gesture in the air and do the things that you would normally do with something like a phone or an iPad, I can't wait to check it out. I did preemptively get the USB-C AirPods Pro because those are the ones that the Vision Pro are going to work with if you want privacy with headphones while you're using it. So, I am, you know, I can't even begin to really say, you know, of course it's going to be a game changer because it's, when Apple innovates in a space, then some things that's fringe becomes mainstream. I mean, look what they did with the touchscreen. You know, now everything has a touchscreen. So, you know, but I can't, I have some ideas of how it will benefit me in my life when I finally get one. Like I can imagine being able to use Aira a lot more easily, and just, I mean. I've heard of things like working on documents kind of like in mid-air, I just can't even begin to really fathom all the different ways that it will work for me because I haven't seen it, but I'm very excited. I want one.
R: Yeah, it seems like it's going to be a very innovative product. David, what are your thoughts of Vision Pro?
D: Well look I think Apple's already conditioning people to start using mid-air gestures as it were so when you think about things like the FaceTime gestures now that you can do so if you do a heart it'll send a heart emoji with your hands if you do a thumbs up I think it sends birthday you know, stuff in the air and that sort of stuff. So that's already happening with gestures with your hands on FaceTime, and the other thing that they're doing with of course the Series 9 watch and the Ultra 2 is doing what they call double tap. We would probably really call real life double pinch, and of course that's taken off the voiceover gestures, which I use all the time for the hand gestures for the Apple Watch for you know, moving voiceover backwards and forwards, going into an app, coming out of an app and so on. So I think Apple's already positioning people from FaceTime and the hand gestures on the watch already to do the Vision Pro stuff, and then when you think about things like what we've currently got in the magnification app on iOS, point and speak, we've got door detection, we've got people detection, and other other stuff as well, then they're things that already could fit in to be used with the Vision Pro, and then all the apps that you think about that are AI based, AR based, that could then interact between your Vision Pro, your iPhone, and your Apple Watch, then that really gives you an extra level of connectivity between the watch via the phone probably to the Vision Pro, the iPhone to the Vision Pro, and then of course there's nothing to stop you then If I'm currently using my Vision Pro to look at stuff on the screen, why can't I then link it up with the Mac or an Apple TV or any other Apple product, including the iPad? So I think it's one of those products here at the end that it'll be one of those things where we say, how did we get along without this device before? course one of those products is the Apple Watch , and I really think the Vision Pro is going to be one of those as well.
R: Good points, and both of you, I hear some excitement in your voice. It really does feel like Apple is moving the ball forward, that they're innovating with this product, and it's really fun to see that. We've seen it so many times, right? with the Macs and the exciting things that are just happening with them and with Apple Silicon, with what all has been happening with the phones and the watches, and to see a new product category like this come along, I'm excited about it also, and it's going to be interesting to see how it unfolds. So, very cool.
D: Yeah. But the main thing that I say to people is, look, Apple's transitioning from a starting position and they're transitioning to whatever's going to develop in the future. Because if you remember, the good old computers back in the 1950s were basically the size of a house, and now we've got them in their pocket. So every time somebody whinges at me about, I just bought a phone. and then Apple's brought out this new feature and another year they brought out a new feature. Well, that's the way that technology goes. You start from a spot and then you build on it and you keep adding new features, new hardware and new software, and you keep moving forward. So I just say to people, look, unfortunately, it's a transition period into the future, and nothing says to you that you've got to keep riding the wave all the time, but you can certainly hop off, have a bit of a monetary break and then hop back on again and then keep going, and that's what I tend to view about what Apple has been, doing, and will keep doing.
R: I didn't get that memo that says you shouldn't ride the wave all the time. So I just keep on riding it.
D: In your case, Robert, you're just going to get off the horse, mate.
R: Okay, got it. Yeah, it's going to be fun to see what happens with Vision Pro, and I think there's going to be a lot there, honestly, with regard to accessibility. So that's going to be it, because we're seeing things kind of coming along that you can do with the phone. you're going to be able to do them better with a device that's as sophisticated with the kind of cameras that the Vision Pro has. So yeah, going to be pretty exciting. Well, a couple of small things, but one that's really great for those of us who rely on our ears to tell what's going on with our technology, the latest AirPod, AirPods Pro. now have a charging case that beeps when you connect it to charging so you can tell that it's actually charging and you don't wake up the next morning and discover that your AirPods didn't charge after all. So that's that's a little thing in a way but it's a very nice feature that I'm very glad that we have.
A: A game-changer. I honestly don't know what I did before that little feature came to the AirPods.
R: Yeah, why wasn't it there before?
D: Well, it's the same with the iPhone 14 and 15 with the beep on it to tell you that it's charging. Remember when Apple took out the shutdown, also the startup and the setup sound for the Mac? everybody was absolutely horrified because you can't tell whether your Mac's on or not, and then they made it an option where you can have it on or off. But yeah, so again, it's that little trickle thing happening that, you know, we had the sound on the Mac and then we had the sound on the iPhone 14, and then now we've got the sound on the AirPods themselves. I would like a sound for the Siri touch remote, but you know, as maybe in the future. Yeah, I think it's really great. Again, it's those little, little added changes. Because I did a firmware update or something happened to my AirPods, and I thought they'd broken because they weren't beeping anymore, and then I realized that in the properties of the AirPods in your Bluetooth you there's an option where you can turn that sounds off and I'm assuming by default it must be off so I turned it back on again I put my case on charging and it went bling and I went ah yes yes once again I have accessibility what a relief right yeah I'm really was really glad to see that.
R: you know I I didn't uh think to much about some of the things until we actually got the shutdown and power on sound on the iPhone, and I thought, "Man, this makes it so much easier to tell what this phone is doing at a time when you don't have speech on it." And I even know people who switched phones just to get... that on/off sound. So it is a big deal for people who need it.
D: Absolutely.
A: One of the main reasons I switched when it first came out.
R: Yeah. Yeah. So I don't want to trigger anybody's device, but now with the S-Lady, you no longer have to say, "Hey," before you say her name. You guys care about that? Is that important?
A: I like it. You know, I like it because it's similar to talking to the A lady who's also all over my house. It just, it feels just a little bit more natural. It feels, dare I say, and I know that a voice assistant isn't a person, blah, blah, blah, but it feels a little bit more natural as if you were talking to a human assistant.
D: I find I've been I could be a lot more forceful now. So because I always used to think that the HEY Siri was being oops, never mind, was being very polite, where now I can go, Hey, you as in S-I-R-I, for God's sake, do what you're told. I don't care if the Bluetooth device is not responding. I've told you to turn the bathroom fan on, just do it. So yeah, so I I like S-I-R-I now about self, because I'm going to be a lot more forceful and commanding now.
R: Yeah. Yeah, you can really come with the one-two punch if you don't have to put the hey in front of it, right?
D: That's it. Exactly.
A: Great. Absolutely. All right. Very good. No more Mr. Politeness now.
R: Well, how about these changes that have been made in the... magnification app on the iPhone with the text detection and point-and-speak. Are those items significant as far as development in 2023? What do you all think?
A: I think that any app in which you can have more of these features features is a good thing. I haven't admittedly played with it too much in the magnifier. I did a little bit when I was beta testing because I tend to use seeing AI, I tend to use now Be My Eyes with Be My AI, but it's nice to know that it's there. I used it for figuring out something on my microwave the one time, because I had to push something to get something to work again. I can't remember what it was. But the point is, it read everything, even over the braille overlay. I have one of those Amazon microwaves that has the braille overlay, so all the different keys don't always make sense. if you don't use it very often, besides the numbers, which is what I normally use, but I was able to see, okay, that's what this one means, and I was able to push the button. So it was, I mean, it worked when I needed it and that's the best I can ask. So I think, I don't know, I don't think you can have too many of these kinds of tools in your toolbox ever.
R: Agreed. What do you think about it, David?
D: I like the fact that you've got all these different options at your fingertips. So the other day, my blind at the back, which comes down in a bit of a wind, it's got sort of two slots that the blind comes down in my entertainment room one of the sides came off because we had very high wind the other week, and so I thought, oh, so I've got my iPhone, I decided to bring up magnification and by default I have everything turned off in the magnifier so as soon as I go in to the options for choosing you know door detection point and speak text detection people detection and so on they're all turned off so I can just then decide to quickly activate the one I want so I activated the the text OCR, walked around to the blind, on the blind there was a label that gave me the name and the phone number for the actual distributor of the actual blinds and then I rang them and they're coming out to fix it. So you know, and then again, if I'm at a shops and I'm still very much careful about, you know, hearing anybody around who's got a cough or, and that sort of stuff. stuff, colds or COVID or whatever else it might be. So I tend to wear my phone on a chest harness when I'm out and about sometimes. So I, again, with AirPods on normally, I activate the people detection mode. So I know that I'm, you know, still at least 1.5 metres away from somebody, and the point and speak, sometimes just for the fun of it. but I used my touch coffee machine that I bought about eight years ago just to use that and that works quite well. So that's probably my main one. I mean I know the Be My Eyes AI one's actually pretty fantastic but unless I really want to find out what is really around me or have an image done some interpretation of it, the things that are in the magnification app for me are actually quite good, and I'm looking to the stage where Apple keeps adding more. So for me, the next one would be wouldn't it be nice if it had some sort of obstacle detection mode, not obstacle identification, because I still don't trust identification apps. It still reckons sometimes my guide dog is an elephant for some odd reason, or my wife's wheelchair is a car because it has four wheels. So I'd be looking for obstacle distance wise, it doesn't matter what it is, I just want my phone to say that I'm coming close to something, whether it's a tree, a pole, a wall, a person, it is it says you know detected object 1.5 or 2.0 meters away or six feet away whatever else it might be so that's what I'll be looking forward to next year hopefully.
A: That'd be cool.
D: Yeah
R: and you know just in general the image processing that's going on on board these phones today is fantastic. I got a letter, an attachment, an email attachment letter from my dentist's office and when I looked at the attachment, it was a PDF, but it was one of those PDFs that was just an image, and so I just flicked down on the actions. rotor and there was an item there that said explore image. I double tapped on that and the phone was able to read that, the text in that image just perfectly, and we used to have to pay thousands of dollars for washing machine size machines that could do that.
D: Uh huh. Remember that one well.
R: What about getting USB-C on the phones? I think it's cool because you can now plug in hard drives and other items straight into your phone. I plugged a microphone into my phone and was able to use a ham radio app straight from my phone. happy about this USB-C now on the on the iPhone 15s?
A: Oh yeah I just want everything to get it like I want the AirPods Max to have USB-C and I still have a work iPhone that's a 13 but I mean it's just great because for one thing it allows for faster charging. For another, it allows for universality. I can just get a USB-C cable and a block from anywhere, provided that it's the proper wattage, and just use anything. I got just an Anker dual-port block and a couple of... USB-C cables for less than I would pay for one for a single port block and a single three-foot cable from Apple and was able to kind of outfit my whole work kit for what I needed. So it's pretty neat. I just I love USB-C and yeah like you I I like that I can just plug things into my phone. I wanna actually get a mixer that I can just plug straight into my phone and use my Heil and just be able to have just a mobile, semi-mobile 'cause I still have to lug around a mic stand, with my podcasting rig.
R: that's cool. - Yeah, but it's kind of a podcaster's dream, right?
A: Yes, it really is.
R: David, USB-C, you for it or against it, or how you feel about it?
D: No, I'm definitely for it. I mean, what irritates me, because I haven't upgraded to the 15, I'm going to hang out for the iPhone 16 next year, but I mean, I've got an iPad, a recent one that's got a USB-C port in it, all my Macs are USB-C. I'm at a stage now where I'm looking forward very shortly, hopefully next year to everything will be USB-C, because that way I won't have to start doing, you know, USB-C to lightning and then getting grumpy when I can't plug my other stuff in like my lightning iPhone 14 into my Mac directly, and just those little irritating things, and because the amount of that I've got that are either USB-C to USB-C, USB-C-A to USB-C, or anything else that you could possibly think of, I just think wouldn't it be nice that I could just have one day that I just have a couple of the same cables as a bit of a backup, and they all do exactly the same thing, and they all connect to all my devices. So that'll be my holygrail. hopefully even next year or 2025.
R: You've got something to look forward to. So I guess you have not had a chance to play with the, or maybe you have had a chance to play with it, you don't have one, but to play with the shortcut button on the iPhone 15, the replacement for the mute switch, the silence ringer switch. Have you had a chance to play?
D: I have and I've also had a chat to talk with Apple about it and I listened to a podcast on the shortcuts button. It's actually really good. I mean, like everything, I think it personally should do a lot more than what it does. I mean, now you can assign shortcuts to it. I know you can assign voice memos and you can have it act like the triple click on the side of the phone. because it's much easier to press a button than it is that long bar on the on the power button, but I just think it's a button. So I know there's a thing called I think it's multi-button that gives you two actions on the shortcut, but then I thought well wait a minute if you can do a long press and you can do a short press, who says software-wise in an internet of things? the hardware why you can't do a single press so a long one or a short one a double press or three times pressing what you can do with the um the power button so and i wouldn't be surprised if that comes in in the future because it's a button you can do anything with it the only problem is robert i i i'm i'm living for the day when my iPhone will just be a beautiful piece of glass with no buttons. So there'll be your haptic, you'll run your finger over the side or the bottom or the top whatever is of the iPhone and you'll get the haptic feedback for whatever button you might be on so you'll know that the power button's on the right hand side. So all the buttons will probably be in the same place. but haptic buttons, you know, maybe with, I don't know, maybe a bit of a, what's a word for it? Engraving, so you know the buttons here, whatever else it might be. I just want a buttonless iPhone, because I reckon that'd be really cool.
A: That would be fancy looking.
R: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if you don't get your wish one of these days. I think Apple would like to move in that direction also.
D: It'll be the cube of knowledge. I suppose it's not really a cube pyramid, no, something.
R: There's more to life than pushing buttons.
D: Exactly.
A: I agree, but I do like this button, I have to say. I like wish that you could do more with it but you know for a first iteration of what you can do with it it's pretty cool I just like that I can quickly press and hold it to turn on or off ring mode real quick like I could be in a meeting and just dealing with it real quick not trying to not that it was hard to do the up-and-down switch but it just it wasn't as seamless as just pushing a button real fast. I really like it and I'm sure that eventually we'll be able to do more with it, maybe even on the current devices, although I never keep mine long enough to find out what they change on the current devices, since I upgrade every year.
D: You know what would be really cool, dare I say, of taking a a taking a leaf out of Samsung's book, sorry, Android's book, and that's being able to assign a shortcut to the shortcut button on the side for perhaps hanging, answering a phone call, pressing one button, and then hanging up the phone call with the same button. Now that to me would be perfect I don't know what it is about the two finger double tap but it always irritates me particularly when you're going tap tap tap tap will you answer the phone
A: yeah it doesn't always work
D: yeah no um so sometimes i i have to have my blue key bluetooth keyboard on standby just so i can use that function and now you can use our beloved s-i-r-i to now hang up a call
A: yeah
D: I just think surely by now Apple, giving us some way other than the two finger magic tap to answer and hangup a phone call would be absolutely lovely.
A: I agree.
R: You can hang it up on your AirPods, just wear them.
D: Wait, hang on. When I tried that on my AirPods Pro, it puts it in mute mode.
R: click it twice, that will hang up.
A: Yeah,
D: does it? Because I've been trying it the other way. I'm only doing it once.
A: Yeah, that's how it used to be. Yeah, but now they've changed it. Yeah, once it mutes it, now twice answers or hangs it up.
D: You mean I have to develop a new muscle memory now.
A: Yeah. - Yeah. - Sorry. - Yeah. It's a hard life. I know. Now on the Airpods Max it's the same. You just push it once to answer or hang up.
D: Oh, there you go.
R: You're not too old to learn to click it twice, David. I think you can... Certainly handle it.
D: No, us great master karate people are certainly up for a challenge, so that's fine. Thank you.
R: The geek in me got all excited about this multi-action shortcut that Federico Vaticci came up with for this action button. So I set that up. It takes a little setting up to make it work, but I've got mine set up now where you press the button and it opens one app and you press it again within seven seconds and it opens a second app. So that's kind of fun. I've enjoyed that and I put in two apps that I always take a look at first thing in the morning when I'm still half asleep and that makes it a lot easier to open them and and see what's going on. So I think there'll be more coming. for that button, but it's pretty cool to have it even the way it is now. I'm enjoying it.
D: Indeed. Yep. Yep.
R: So what about this ultra wideband chip in the iPhone 15 that makes it possible to locate people nearby with Find My?
A: I haven't actually really played with this.
R: Me neither. Maybe you have, David. if you have, , what do you think about it?
A: Yeah,
D: look, I read an article, I think it was done by Shelly Brisbain on Six Colors, and it was pointing out some of the accessibility functions in the, you know, I'm not 100% sure if it's a 15 or 15 Pro, but she was pointing out some of the accessibility features, and I just thought, oh god, here we go, justifying the iPhone. 15 or the 15 pro but no it wasn't that she was pointing out the fact that again these little changes make huge impacts for us particularly for blind people so she talked about in an article that where if you're trying to find somebody with the normal find my yes you know they're nearby somewhere whereas with the ultra wideband chip, you can zero in on that person's location. So like you can find your airpods by going to the find function that tells you to go forward or turn around or go left or go right. I'm assuming I haven't tried it, but I'm assuming that would be the same thing. So you know, that, , Bob's nearby with the normal find my function, then you would go to the actual find function, and then you could just then walk towards that person. You'll be told whether they're two meters in front of you, two meters behind you, that sort of stuff. So I'm assuming that's how it works. But to me, that would be absolutely amazing because then if I was in maybe within one meter, I'd then probably be able to say, "Hi, Bob, are you here or are you around here?" or "Hi, Bob, how's it going?" or "I hate Bob." "Oh, sorry, Bob, I didn't realize you were so nearby," whatever else it might be.
R: I think that feature is a good one to help you Avoid saying that by accident when Bob's nearby.
D: That's it, exactly. So look, I... I think it's a great thing. So, because there's nothing worse you think, God, I know I'm in the same area as this person, but I don't want to yell out or do anything else. So, I tell you what would be nice though, if you could have some sort of, sort of like a bit of a gaming type feature to it, where you could have this sort of beeping target. that when it went beep, beep, beep, then it would go beep, and you go, ah, right on target. Then you could just basically stand in front of the person as it were. But then again, I guess if they've got their iPhone in their car, you might be ending up talking to the car of the person, but who knows? I think it's, I really do think it's a really fantastic feature.
R: Yeah, I think it's something that people have wanted. for years especially at a convention where there are lots of blind people trying to locate each other and they can't find each other. I think it's going to be great and I look forward to trying it out. I just haven't had a chance really to look at it.
A: It reminds me of a funny story. I was at CSUN and Ricky Enger and I were trying to find each other. We knew we were both in this big party suite that this one company had put together, but it was like standing room only. There were people and dogs and just everyone everywhere, and as it turned out, we were texting and we were right across the room from each other and we found each other eventually, but it took significantly longer. (laughing) than we should have needed to for us to be able to find each other, you know, oh, it was crazy, but this feature would have just completely eliminated the need to be like, "I'm here, are you here?" Yeah, it would have made it much easier.
R: I'm certain that I have been right near people that I wanted to talk to and just didn't know it. So I'm glad to see this come along and I hope it gets developed even further. Another feature that came out this year was FaceTime on the Apple TV 4k. I've never tried FaceTime with the Apple TV.
A: Me neither to be honest.
R:I could see doing a family, you know, a family call. and putting it up on the TV during the holidays, it seems like a nice thing to do. -
A: Yeah. - Yeah,
D: that's what we do. So with my grandson, it'll be two years in December, that's what we do with him. So he can show us his different toys. So we're sitting on the lounge, the iPhone's doing all the camera and audio bit of course, 60-inch screen, there's my grandson and his mum and dad on the screen, plus his sister. It just brings it to life. It's almost like you really feel like, rather than being on a video call, you almost feel like you're also in their lounge room as well. It really brings it to life. You can see details much better, according to my wife. you know, when he shows, you know, the lovely, you know, the crayon drawing or the snail that he's decided to have a pet or whatever else it might be, then it's really cool, and because the TV is going through, you know, our sound system on the system, you've got good sound as well. Or we can just, you know, if there's two of us, we can share our... headphones and that sort of stuff. But no, it really does bring it to life, and the fact that you can just get up and wander off and come back and keep talking as such, because it doesn't, it feels a lot different than having a FaceTime call on the iPhone or the iPad or the Mac, because you're literally sitting in your lounge room, looking at a big TV screen. talking to somebody. So the fact that the phone's there in front of the TV if you like, doing all the hard work for you, it just feels a lot more personal. You don't feel like you're hunched over this little tiny screen or you're having to crowd each other to talk. You're just sitting back as a family on the lounge having a yak to somebody through your big screen TV. It's absolutely lovely.
A: Does it use the microphone from your TV?
D: It does.
A: Okay.
D: No, no. It uses the microphone from the iPhone. From the phone.
A: Okay. Yeah.
D: But the iPhone's mic's really good.
A: Oh, yeah.
D: In reality, we're only sitting maybe six feet away from the microphone, so there'll be a bit of echo, but it's still pretty good.
A: Right. Yeah, it's like a microphone.
R: a more enjoyable, relaxing experience, especially if you're going to do family gatherings like we'll be doing because we'll be staying here and part of our family will be in New York and part of our family will be in North Carolina.
A: So very cool.
R: Recently, Apple had an event where they introduced new MacBook Pros with the M3 chip and while we didn't podcast about the event because it was it was a quick one we said we would mention it this time and since that event I've heard nothing but good things about the the M3 chips and their performance and and people seem to be loving them. and the power of those chips and I'm not sad to report but I'm gonna have to report I must confess I today was pricing out a MacBook Pro Pro Pro Pro a MacBook Pro with a Pro M3 chip so I have a feeling there's gonna be one in my near future. You guys have comments about the M3?
A: Well, I'm definitely excited to see Apple continuing to iterate and that their chips have been such a success because, look, I mean they're already going into newer iPads, not the M3, but, you know, they're starting to put They're the M chips into iPad Pros. I just think it's great. I use a computer for so little that I'm definitely not going to be moving to the M3, because depending on what I'm doing, if I'm doing word processing or something, I still find myself reaching for that PC, because it's what I know. ninety percent of what I do, especially now with USB-C on the phone, I use the phone. But it's just very exciting to see how Apple has disrupted the chip market, and I know that their innovation and iterations are going to come further to the phones as well. They're just gonna keep using what they're learning from developing these tips to make the phones better and vice versa.
R: Yeah, for sure. - So, very cool. - It's nice to see the forward progress, and I should also mention that during that event, the iMac, 24-inch iMac, got updated from the M1. to the m3 chip so I'll let you guys know next time if I do pull the trigger on this MacBook Pro Pro how I like it but I'm I I didn't think I was gonna get one but I don't know as as I sit with it more and I'm doing different things with audio transcription and so forth, I think, "Wow, it'd be nice to have the power of that chip."
A: That's a legit use case,
D: yeah. Yeah, that's right. It's interesting that you mentioned the iMac going to the M3 chip, because I have a funny feeling we're going to start seeing... I reckon the iMac M3, because they're no longer doing... the 27-inch iMac, I wouldn't be surprised if this is going to be the last iMac because I think most people these days when you do computing at home, particularly if you've got children or at school or at university or even for work purposes, you've normally got your tablet, your phone or your laptop within reach, and I know most of the time my wife's ever using her laptop or an iPad or an iPhone. The same with my children and the same with me. So our iMac is literally just sitting in my wife's craft room. Occasionally, it might get used for a bit of web browsing or YouTube watching and that sort of stuff. But it's really not being used for anything else. and I was having a think this morning, I thought if that thing, when that thing dies eventually, which is probably gonna be a long time 'cause it's an iMac and it's a novel product, I'm just gonna replace it with my currently sitting here, my M1 Mac mini, just get a nice LED 24 inch screen for it and just whack on the magic keyboard and the trackpad and off we go. But I think it's again, I said before, is that Apple's moving through a transition period, and for me, because I've already got an M1 Mac and I don't do high-intensity work on a computer, then at the moment I have no need for an M3. One of my MacBook Pros is already an M2 already, which is the one I'm currently talking on. So what will probably happen is my... My M1 Mac Mini will go to my wife, I'll keep the M2, and my other M1 which is the Mac Air, that'll probably get used for something else. At the moment my M1 Mac Air is very nicely laying down having a bit of a sleep under my M2 MacBook Pro. So I think if my children ever need another Mac. because my son's got a very high-end MacBook Pro already. My daughter's married to her iPad, so she doesn't want a laptop. She hates laptops, but it's nice that I've got one there. But, you know, who knows? I mean, maybe next year, the year after, I'll get an M4 or an M5, whatever it might be called. But I'm also looking forward when that type of technology, like... Alison mentioned, will be in the iPad. I mean, we've actually got the M chips in the iPhone anyway, and, you know, with the Vision Pro coming on board, everything would just be running with Apple Silicon, which I think is a really great thing.
R: Yeah, exactly. You know, I think that I will probably trade in this little M1 MacBook Air if I do go to the MacBook Pro Pro but the little M1 MacBook Air is really a cool machine I'll be a little sad about letting it go but you know they're offering me pretty good trade-in value for it. Let's move on we got still got quite a bit to cover and we've been going for a while here. So this ability now to turn Safari webpages into individual screens on the Mac or really into individual apps where you can command tab to a web page just like you would command tab to an actual app on the Mac, I think it's pretty cool. I would love to try it on a few pages and if you're working on multiple things at the same time, it's a kind of cool way to have things set up to flip back and forth between stuff. Have you guys played with this feature at all and you have thoughts about it?
A: I have to admit I completely forgot about the ability to do that until I saw David's summary. I was like, "Oh yeah, that was the thing that I forgot about."
R: Yeah, you have to kind of think about it a minute to set it up, but it works well, at least in my playing with it, and it's useful. How about you, David?
D: Yeah, look, I probably on a normal day, I would probably access maybe between, I don't know, five to 10 webpages, and I know I can bring up Safari and I know I can jump between windows and all that sort of stuff. But because I'm switching between like Miner on the Mac, X or Twitter on the Mac, my Notes app, my text application, my podcasting application, my Zoom, my whatever else that might be open. For some odd reason, my brain likes the fact that I can command tab to something, rather than every time I think about changing windows or changing webpages in Safari, I don't know what it is, but I just find it really irritating that I was sort of having to, I don't know, muck about too much or too many keystrokes or whatever else it might be. Because I've sort of grown up with, you know, in a way, you know, Windows eventually with, you know, originally with alt tabbing, alt tabbing in my brain just means I'm going to a new task automatically, and I'm getting ready to go into that new thing, whereas I'm in the same application, it doesn't have the same feel to it. So on my MacBook Pro 2 here at the moment. I've actually got eight webpages that are actually as applications. So things like, so you know, things like applevis and amazon.com.au from Australia, audible.com.au because I'm always searching for new books to read, Netflix, all that sort of stuff that I would just normally just use Safari for, I can just alt-tab around to them and start going. So it really is one of my go-to features on the Mac and I'm absolutely enjoying it.
R: It's especially great for a voiceover user who's only interested in looking at one window at a time anyway, isn't it? I mean, it's a quick way to move around. It is pretty cool.
D: Yeah, my, my, my. wife often says to me, "Why do you have so many windows open? I can't tell where I am." Yeah. I said, "Oh, well, that's your problem."
R: Not a problem for you, is it?
D: No, no.
R: Well, I'm going to kind of move us on here so we can just highlight some things. Widgets came to the desktop and that's... something that people can play with and see if you like having them. Of course all of the software was updated this year as it is every year with iOS 17, iPadOS 17, tvOS 17, watch 10 and of course we got Sonoma on the Mac. So, I mean, a lot there that we could potentially unpack, but just anything briefly anybody wanna say about the software updates for the year?
A: I just wanna give a shout out to the, whoever designed the new voiceover. notification settings where you can have it just quietly make a little sound when you have a notification but not have it read or not have it wake up your screen and yell. thank you thank you to whoever did that my iPhone is pretty much perfect now
R: you are talking about the new options in the verbosity settings
A: yes what it does with the notification. Yeah, because I have it set to just play the sound and not say anything to me so that I can decide later if I want to mess with that notification. I usually end up going back to check it, but I'm not a person who likes to turn on do not disturb a lot because for one thing I'm in a job now where I have to be reachable, you know, I feel even when I'm even when I'm not technically on the clock, and also, I just I would forget to turn do not disturb on if I turned it off if I turned it on. So I like that I can still know that I have notifications coming in, but they're not interrupting me.
R: Yeah, it's nice to have that flexibility.
D: Yes, for me, it's all about this, and again, I know I sound like a broken record, but it's again, this continuation thing. So when I look, look at all the new accessibility improvements across the whole product line, when I look at the hardware updates across the whole product line, and the software updates across the whole product line, it's just getting better and better and better. Because, you know, you can't do this in the Windows/Android Android world. You can't really go from your wearable Apple Watch to your PC to your tablet to your phone and then have you know I think there's must be at least about 15 applications that share data amongst everything. So that to me is absolutely amazing. The one thing that stood out for me this year in particular fact that my AirPods now transition a lot nicer between my Mac, iPhone, my iPad, and my and my my iPhone or my Apple Watch because before I used to have to, you know, sort of almost like go and force it if it wasn't connecting. But now when I sit down at my desk in the mornings and I've usually been using my iPhone with my AirPods, as soon as I start using the Mac, it switches over, and then when I close my lid and I pick up my iPhone and start using my iPhone, it switches back to the AirPods again straight away. So for me, that little thing for productivity and workflow is just absolutely amazing.
R: Yeah, they really got that right now. They struggled with it for a while, but I agree. it works much better than it used to.
D: Absolutely. Yeah.
R: But you know, Apple is only one company and they could not do everything that everyone perhaps wanted them to do as far as updates in 2023. So in 2024, there are some things to look forward to. We didn't see new iPads in 2023 so we'll see them next year and we have almost certainly at least I have the hope that we're going to see a USB-C and even more improved version of the AirPods Max next year. I'm excited about that because to me those are some of the best headphones that I have ever seen. I'm guessing it they'll move it to USB-C as well. We need to see updates to the Mac Mini and get it up to up to the M3 chipset and I'm guessing we're probably going to see an update to the MacBook Air to the M3 chipset. Vision Pro should be released sometime next year, and that's something to look forward to. We need to see updates to the Magic Keyboard, the Magic Trackpad, the Magic Mouse, and those all need to come up to USB-C. So we can't let you just take next year off, Apple, you're gonna have you got more work to do.
D: Can I just put my neck out and say I wouldn't be surprised if we get an iPad before the end of the year. Wow. Because Apple has not updated the iPad at all this year at all, which is extremely unusual. We've still got, you know, a good what is it four to five weeks of this year to go, so I might be regretting my words when we come back in January or whenever else it might be and go, "Well, you were wrong." But if I was going to speculate, I wouldn't be surprised if we got a new iPad, perhaps an iPad Air or a new iPad mini update before the end of the year. So there you go. I've put it on record now.
R: Excellent. I'm glad you're willing to put it out there. If you're gonna go, go big. That's what I'll say.
D: That's it.
A: I agree, and then if it doesn't happen, we know who to blame.
D: Yeah, that's it.
R: So for us, it's a win-win, no matter which way you go.
D: That's it, exactly. You heard it first on the Tech Doctor blog and podcast. Yes, heard it right here.
R: Dr. Woodbridge has made a prediction, so we'll see what happens, because they did surprise us with the new MacBook Pro line this close to the end of the year. So the iPad possibility could happen.
D: Anything's possible.
R: Yep. So this has been a... a rather lengthy summary, but it does kind of attest to the fact that Apple did a lot last year because we had a lot to talk about. Let's just check and see if either you, Allison, or you, David, have any final thoughts or comments about this Apple 2023 year before we bring this to a close. Allison, any thoughts from you?
A: Yeah. just been sitting here the last couple of minutes thinking my goodness it has been one heck of a year for Apple. You know you go on and you go through your year and life happens and you you don't always take the time to think you know just how far things can come with technology in in the period of a year, and you know... There have been years where I've wondered, "Oh, well, what has Apple done?" And it's listening and participating in shows like these that really show me that, my gosh, I mean, they are just innovating on every front all the time in different ways. It's just pretty incredible. It's really an incredible time to be an Apple fan.
R: It is, and David, I really liked your comment about how it's getting even more and more exciting the way all the Apple products talk to each other and work together. I mean, you can't accomplish this kind of processing in any other computer space that I'm aware of. So if you have iPhones and iPads and Apple Watches and Macs, wow, you got a whole family of products working together to make you much more productive in my opinion.
D: That's right and look you know sometimes Apple gets it a bit wrong as we know with the Newton and certain other things along the way, and I'd like to congratulate Apple in withdrawing the touch bar on the MacBook Pros because I can remember when Phil Schiller introduced it, God knows when it was, but he said quite proudly the only people that use their function keys are these people using IBM 32-bit mainframes, and nobody uses function keys anymore, and I thought, you just insulted the blindness community, mate, because we use function keys all the time. Not to mention, VoiceOver also uses function keys. So I thought, the marketing department hadn't talked to the accessibility department. So for me, that's a huge, it's not a win, but I'd the fact that Apple said you know what nobody's developing for it it's really stayed the same thing on a MacBook Pro some people get it some people don't and I just think you know what we've we're throwing the mud against the brick wall it didn't stick we're now moving on we're gonna look at you know touch ID and back to your normal keyboard and we're gonna make the Mac small and powerful blah blah blah. So to me, even though it was irritating, I've still got Two Macs here with touch bars and I do, I actually do like it a little bit. I'm really glad to see that gone. So I like the fact that Apple can admit to itself that it may have got something a bit wrong along the way. That's not to say I probably wouldn't like a touchscreen MacBook Pro in the future. future or maybe a combination of an iPad and a Macbook, but who knows, but, you know, God bless the touchbar and you did a good job when you were around. Yeah, yeah, and I think it is great to see Apple.
R: I think Apple has matured in a lot of ways and is much more, honestly, customer oriented than they used to be. We see that even in the way they handle their betas now, where they elicit much more feedback from beta participants and they respond to beta testers and ask questions. It's a pretty cool apple in my opinion these days, especially in compared to how it connects with its customer base.
D: Absolutely. Yep,
A: I agree.
R: All right, you all, let's bring this to a close. We don't want to make this too much longer for people to have to listen to, but we hope that you have enjoyed listening to this if you made it all the way through to the end, and we'll be back probably after the first of the year talking about whatever we're playing with next from Apple. So in the meantime, enjoy your new Apple products and play with them to the best of your ability until January. This is Robert, one of the Tech Doctors. I will say so long for now,
A: and this is Allison, one of the Tech Doctors, saying bye everyone!
D: This is David Woodbridge, who may not be a tech doctor next year if I get my prediction about the iPad wrong, so chat to you next year, hopefully!