New M4 Macs and Apple Intelligence

Intro

Tom Anderson (0s)

It's a good show.

Jeff Battersby (0s)

I can speak really well.

Jeff Battersby (0s)

You have no voice and I can't talk.

Jeff Battersby (2s)

Yeah, right.

Jeff Battersby (4s)

One of my favorite podcasts.

Tom Anderson (13s)

Shrinking amygdalas and giving you the best politics, free zone, and podcasting all while sipping off brand Robitussin and sucking on cough drops.

Jeff Battersby (19s)

Dude.

Tom Anderson (22s)

This is Basic AF, and this is as good as I'm going to sound today.

Tom Anderson (26s)

Hello, everybody.

Jeff Battersby (26s)

Don't lie, Tom.

Jeff Battersby (28s)

You've been smoking six packs a day since the end of the election.

Tom Anderson (28s)

Tom Anderson here.

Tom Anderson (30s)

Oh, man.

Tom Anderson (32s)

Well, it's been kind of a wild week with The Voice.

Tom Anderson (38s)

I feel great.

Tom Anderson (39s)

I don't feel bad.

Tom Anderson (40s)

But I had a cold.

Tom Anderson (41s)

I still do.

Tom Anderson (43s)

So it's a little rough, but I don't know about that.

Jeff Battersby (44s)

It's the Sexy Tom Show!

Tom Anderson (48s)

But anyway, Tom Anderson here.

Tom Anderson (50s)

My buddy, Jeff Battersby.

Tom Anderson (52s)

As always, a pleasure to hang out with you for a little while, Jeff.

Jeff Battersby (55s)

Yeah, fun. This is fun. You sound like you're going through puberty.

Tom Anderson (56s)

So get ready to talk a lot.

Tom Anderson (58s)

Yeah, that's what it sounds like.

Tom Anderson (1m 1s)

Oh, goodness gracious.

Tom Anderson (1m 3s)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (1m 4s)

So this is episode 48.

Tom Anderson (1m 6s)

You can find show notes for this episode at basicafshow.com/48.

Jeff Battersby (1m 12s)

For eight hard to believe two away from 50 dang

Tom Anderson (1m 13s)

Four, eight.

Tom Anderson (1m 17s)

That is hard to believe.

Jeff Battersby (1m 18s)

Yeah, it's almost as old as we are now in episodes anyway

Tom Anderson (1m 21s)

[LAUGH] Yeah, right.

Tom Anderson (1m 25s)

It won't take long, it'll be passed and then we'll feel a little better.

Jeff Battersby (1m 27s)

Yeah

Tom Anderson (1m 29s)

Yes, okay, so topics today we're going to talk about the new Macs that Apple released recently, we kind of fell.

Tom Anderson (1m 37s)

I think that week that they did those announcements was the week that we,

Tom Anderson (1m 40s)

day. They started the day we released the last episode.

Tom Anderson (1m 43s)

I got a lot of positive feedback on that one. So again, we always thank Joe for coming on with us. Yeah, it was a great show. So we're going to talk about those new Macs that came out. Of course, Apple Intelligence is out now as well. At least the initial features.

Jeff Battersby (1m 44s)

-Mm-hmm. Such a great episode. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (1m 51s)

Yeah. Really good. Thank you.

Jeff Battersby (2m)

Is it? It is, right?

Tom Anderson (2m 1s)

That's going to be a slow roll. Yep. Yeah. And so we'll dig into that a little bit at the end as well. Before we do, saw in the news this week.

RIP Elwood “You’ve Got Mail!” Edwards

Tom Anderson (2m 13s)

Elwood Edwards passed away at the age of 74. You may be asking yourself, who is Elwood Edwards? I think this will answer the question, Jeff. Yeah. So the guy or the voice of AOL America online way back, he recorded that 1989 apparently got paid 200 bucks. Even back Back then he was making more than we are with this thing.

Jeff Battersby (2m 21s)

Who is Elwood Edwards, Tom?

Track 6 — baf048 sounds (2m 25s)

Welcome. You've got mail.

Jeff Battersby (2m 28s)

Oh! I do!

Tom Anderson (2m 43s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (2m 44s)

Right.

Jeff Battersby (2m 44s)

Yeah, so far.

Tom Anderson (2m 45s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (2m 46s)

Oh my gosh.

Tom Anderson (2m 47s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (2m 47s)

Yeah, and no residuals.

Tom Anderson (2m 48s)

And apparently his wife worked there.

Tom Anderson (2m 49s)

So he did that in 1989 and it was quantum computer services.

Jeff Battersby (2m 49s)

So the dude didn't get any residuals, how bad is that?

Tom Anderson (2m 50s)

So that, you know, the reason we mentioned this even, uh, really is, um, that's where I got my start in kind of quantum computing.

Tom Anderson (2m 52s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (2m 53s)

And apparently his wife worked there.

Jeff Battersby (2m 53s)

Can you imagine if he got a residual for every time that popped up?

Tom Anderson (2m 54s)

So he did that in 1989 and it was quantum computer services.

Tom Anderson (2m 55s)

So that, you know, the reason we mentioned this even, uh, really is, um, that's where I got my start in kind of quantum computing.

Tom Anderson (2m 57s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (2m 57s)

Dude, he would have been, even if it was a penny,

Tom Anderson (2m 58s)

And apparently his wife worked there.

Tom Anderson (2m 59s)

So he did that in 1989 and it was quantum computer services.

Tom Anderson (3m)

So that, you know, the reason we mentioned this even, uh, really is, um, that's where I got my start in kind of quantum computing.

Tom Anderson (3m 2s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (3m 3s)

And apparently his wife worked there.

Tom Anderson (3m 4s)

So he did that in 1989 and it was quantum computer services.

Tom Anderson (3m 5s)

And apparently his wife worked there.

Tom Anderson (3m 6s)

So he did that in 1989 and it was quantum computer services.

Tom Anderson (3m 7s)

And apparently his wife worked there.

Tom Anderson (3m 8s)

So he did that in 1989 and it was quantum computer services.

Tom Anderson (3m 9s)

And apparently his wife worked there.

Tom Anderson (3m 10s)

So he did that in 1989 and it was quantum computer services.

Tom Anderson (3m 11s)

And apparently his wife worked there.

Tom Anderson (3m 14s)

you will, um, and you ended up getting my first Macintosh as part of my gig there and everything.

Tom Anderson (3m 19s)

Um, but anyway, he recorded that.

Tom Anderson (3m 21s)

His wife apparently worked there back then and so they just wanted some type of a little sound.

Tom Anderson (3m 26s)

Um, and so he agreed to do it.

Tom Anderson (3m 27s)

He was a radio guy for years, uh, may have done some TV stuff too, but, um, so he did that.

Tom Anderson (3m 34s)

But yeah, just think though, if he had gotten residuals from that, I mean, every time you signed in, that would play.

Jeff Battersby (3m 36s)

Yeah, he would have made a billion zillion dollars, like I said, even if it was a penny.

Tom Anderson (3m 44s)  

Mm-hm, and what's funny is, let's see I started AOL in 1993, and I left in 2007, and for years and years, the company ran on AOL Mail.

Tom Anderson (3m 59s)

Which is hilarious when you look back on it, because Gmail wasn't around then.

Jeff Battersby (4m 1s)

Mmm Nope.

Tom Anderson (4m 4s)

And Exchange was just really getting started.

Tom Anderson (4m 7s)

And so, yeah, a lot of it was just AOL Mail.

Tom Anderson (4m 9s)

then towards middle of the 2000s, I think.

Tom Anderson (4m 13s)

We migrated that to exchange, I think it was.

Tom Anderson (4m 16s)

Cuz by that point, BlackBerry was getting big, right?

Tom Anderson (4m 18s)

So you had the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and all that stuff.

Tom Anderson (4m 22s)

But anyhow.

Jeff Battersby (4m 22s)

Yeah and you would be surprised how many of my clients still use AOL for email.

Tom Anderson (4m 31s)

And still around.

Jeff Battersby (4m 31s)

It's, it's a pain in the ass, but it, dang Tom, how's your stock options?

Tom Anderson (4m 36s)

I was employee number 245.

Tom Anderson (4m 39s)

Yeah, I'm old.

Tom Anderson (4m 42s)

Oh, they're long gone.

Tom Anderson (4m 44s)

Yeah, true story.

Tom Anderson (4m 45s)

I got laid-- so I got laid off in between in there.

Tom Anderson (4m 48s)

So I've worked-- had kind of two stints, so '93 to '99,

Tom Anderson (4m 51s)

and then 2000 to 2007.

Tom Anderson (4m 54s)

And it used to be when you got laid off,

Tom Anderson (4m 57s)

they would vest your options, and you'd go on your merry way.

Tom Anderson (5m 1s)

A group of people laid off after they decided, well,

Tom Anderson (5m 5s)

we're not vesting your options anymore.

Tom Anderson (5m 7s)

We're just going to give you a little severance package.

Jeff Battersby (5m 9s)

Oh geez. Too bad for you. We wouldn't be doing this podcast though if you hadn't...

Tom Anderson (5m 9s)

So I was like, son of a bitch.

Tom Anderson (5m 13s)

Yeah, yeah, so anyhow.

Tom Anderson (5m 17s)

That's true.

Tom Anderson (5m 18s)

Look where we are today, Jeff.

Jeff Battersby (5m 20s)

Yeah, right? It's you and me now. Making less than Mr. Edwards did, but having a good time.

Tom Anderson (5m 22s)

That's it.

Tom Anderson (5m 23s)

That is it.

Tom Anderson (5m 29s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (5m 30s)

I mean, come on. That's right. That's the big deal. So, yes.

Tom Anderson (5m 32s)

Yeah, and I think he had a good time with that, too.

Tom Anderson (5m 35s)

I don't think any--

Tom Anderson (5m 36s)

and realistically, I don't think anyone expected that that would become such a thing.

Jeff Battersby (5m 44s)

No, it's iconic voice of an era.

Tom Anderson (5m 44s)

Because, yeah, yeah, and at the time, it was, jeez, 1989.

Tom Anderson (5m 50s)

They probably-- it was probably like the Q-Link service.

Tom Anderson (5m 53s)

So they had Q-Link, PC-Link.

Tom Anderson (5m 55s)

God, that was-- and PC-Link was like the DOS version.

Tom Anderson (5m 58s)

and then the first version with.

Tom Anderson (6m 1s)

Graphical user interface was the America online client, but and that's the one I knew it from I didn't I didn't know from the other ones I don't even know if it played in the other ones, but

Tom Anderson (6m 10s)

Anywho, so anyway a legend

Jeff Battersby (6m 14s)

Yes, so those are the days, you know, is don't pick up the phone, you know,

Tom Anderson (6m 14s)

and part of the history of internet and

Jeff Battersby (6m 22s)

and inevitably somebody would, you know, pick up the phone and suddenly,

Jeff Battersby (6m 27s)

you know, you're no longer connected to the internet. So those were the days.

Tom Anderson (6m 30s)

Yeah, one of the funniest things is when I was doing tech support and people would call in and they couldn't get connected and, you know, be like, "Okay, so let's change the modem string," which for you kids, the modem string was a set of commands that would configure the parameters that the modem operated under.

Tom Anderson (6m 46s)

And so certain modems to connect, you'd have to set up a certain string of commands.

Tom Anderson (6m 51s)

So it'd be like AT ampersand F and whatever.

Tom Anderson (6m 55s)

without fail when it was time to test it to say okay missus

Tom Anderson (7m)

you have a second line there so like if you try to connect it's not going to hang up on us right oh yeah i've got a second line okay well let's go ahead and connect and they would do it and it

Tom Anderson (7m 11s)

because she had two phones but she only had one line or her or him anyone it was everybody

Jeff Battersby (7m 13s)

Not two lines.

Tom Anderson (7m 18s)

but that was fun place to work

Jeff Battersby (7m 20s)

Yeah, I'm sure it was, it was interesting times.

Jeff Battersby (7m 22s)

Probably wild parties.

Tom Anderson (7m 24s)

there's a few of those yeah beer bashes every other friday in the uh THE BREAK... ON THE SECOND FLOOR.

Tom Anderson (7m 30s)

THE WEEK OF HALLOWEEN SEEMS TO BE THE NEW TIME THAT APPLE LIKES TO DEBUT MAX FOR US.

Jeff Battersby (7m 32s)

Wow.

New Macs

Jeff Battersby (7m 36s)

Indeed, with that last, we salute you, Mr. Edwards.

Jeff Battersby (7m 41s)

Thank you.

Tom Anderson (7m 50s)

THEY HAD THAT EVENT LAST YEAR.

Jeff Battersby (7m 50s)

Mm-hmm

Tom Anderson (7m 56s)

And so they did it a little bit differently this year, where they did kind of--

Tom Anderson (8m)

And so what we will do is we will just run through those kind of chronologically, starting with Monday's announcements.

Tom Anderson (8m 9s)

So, Jeff, what did we get on that Monday?

iMac with M4

Jeff Battersby (8m 10s)

On Monday, we got some new Macs. Apple announced its new iMac with M4 chips, which I'm glad my mom waited. She's probably going to be getting one of these. Baseline of 16 gigs of RAM. Yeah, finally, right? Usually, Apple always gets a finally, but this really is finally. 24-inch, 4.5K retina display, including a new Nano...

Jeff Battersby (8m 40s)

texture glass option. That's all. Whoops. You got to leave that in. Apple also concatenated those two words, didn't I? "Revamped the available colors." Knew it'd make you laugh. They really look great. I like the new colors that they've gotten. So M4 chips, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU,

Jeff Battersby (9m 8s)

10-core CPU and 10-core GPU.

Jeff Battersby (9m 10s)

16GB base RAM, upgradable to 32GB.

Jeff Battersby (9m 17s)

Storage starts, I still think this is a little low, at 256GB, up to 2TB.

Jeff Battersby (9m 21s)

Up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports.

Jeff Battersby (9m 25s)

Color options in blue, purple, pink, orange, yellow, green, and silver, and it starts at $1,299.

Jeff Battersby (9m 31s)

By the way, just as a side note, I just ordered one of these for a client.

Jeff Battersby (9m 35s)

If you want Ethernet, it's not on the Mac itself.

Jeff Battersby (9m 38s)

It's in the power.

Tom Anderson (9m 39s)

That's right. Brick. Block. Whatever you want to call it.

Jeff Battersby (9m 40s)

Power, um, brick, right?

Jeff Battersby (9m 42s)

So just something to keep in mind.

Jeff Battersby (9m 44s)

Um, I still always think if it's possible and connect via ethernet can do that.

Jeff Battersby (9m 49s)

Uh, you could pre-order this.

Jeff Battersby (9m 51s)

We are recording this on the 9th.

Jeff Battersby (9m 53s)

You could pre-order these IMAX as of, as of yesterday.

Tom Anderson (9m 54s)

Yeah, so they should be out now. Yeah, so they are in store

Jeff Battersby (9m 57s)

So, um, and Tom being as usual, whiny self says love a big screen.

Jeff Battersby (10m 3s)

Sad to say, there's still no option for larger displays.

Tom Anderson (10m 8s)

Correct. Do you care about that much? Like I know you're not, you don't, well you've got an iMac or you used to, do you still?

Jeff Battersby (10m 8s)

Um, they are smaller.

Jeff Battersby (10m 11s)

No, I don't know.

Jeff Battersby (10m 12s)

I haven't had an eye for a while.

Jeff Battersby (10m 13s)

I do have an old one sitting down here.

Jeff Battersby (10m 15s)

Um, but I've got the studio display upstairs.

Tom Anderson (10m 15s)

Okay.

Jeff Battersby (10m 20s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (10m 20s)

That's right. Yeah, you replaced it for that, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (10m 20s)

So that's, that's what I'm using.

Jeff Battersby (10m 22s)

And down here, I've got a, uh, actually a nice, I can't remember.

Jeff Battersby (10m 26s)

I think this might be a Dell display.

Jeff Battersby (10m 28s)

Um, that's really nice quality.

Jeff Battersby (10m 29s)

So that's what I've got connected to this, uh, to this Mac mini.

Jeff Battersby (10m 35s)

So, but that's a, that's a pretty nice, pretty nice deal.

Tom Anderson (10m 37s)

Yeah, they do look really great, that picture of the Verge had, the colors are very nice.

Jeff Battersby (10m 38s)

That's a pretty nice deal.

Jeff Battersby (10m 48s)

Yeah. Next up on that day, we got the Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad,

USB-C “Magic” Accessories

Jeff Battersby (10m 55s)

now with USB-C. Still plug those babies in underneath, or at least the mice.

Tom Anderson (11m 2s)  

• Yeah, of course that got the socials all fired up.

Jeff Battersby (11m 5s)

Of course it did. You know what? I kind of get that because I'd like to be able to use a mouse while I'm charging it. It's not like a mouse dies when you're not using it. It's usually like, "Hey,

Jeff Battersby (11m 18s)

you need to charge the battery." And so I don't know what kind of engineering genius went into it, but it's not that big a deal. It's not a total pain in the neck. But now pretty much,

Tom Anderson (11m 22s)

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I understand it too, but.

Jeff Battersby (11m 30s)

is there anything left with a standard USB connection and lightning? Yeah.

Tom Anderson (11m 36s)

and lightning. I think there is.

Jeff Battersby (11m 41s)

There's still an iPad that has that. No? Isn't the ninth...

Tom Anderson (11m 44s)

No.

Tom Anderson (11m 48s)

Do they still sell that? Oh, they do still sell that, right. Yeah, that still has it.

Jeff Battersby (11m 48s)

Lightning still? They do still sell it. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's the last line of defense right there. No. Yeah. We'll see what the next iteration of all these things brings.

Tom Anderson (11m 58s)

So yeah, there's not many. So that's, it's been a slow transition, but glad to see that.

Tom Anderson (12m 14s)

Right. Oh, baby, Tuesday, we've got the new Mac mini. I know you and I are both fans of the Mac mini. Yep. And so there've been rumors that there is going to be a new smaller Mac mini,

Jeff Battersby (12m 14s)

Then on Tuesday, Tom, what happened then?

The New Mac mini!

Jeff Battersby (12m 23s)

Love it You Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (12m 28s)

and we actually got that. So on Tuesday, dramatically smaller only five by five inch design. It's not as it's a little taller than the old outgoing Mac mini, but it's dramatically smaller.

Jeff Battersby (12m 28s)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (12m 29s)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (12m 29s)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (12m 44s)

I think it looks really great. I would love to have one, but I don't need to upgrade, so I'm not getting one yet. I know, I've said that before.

Jeff Battersby (12m 47s)

I've got no justification for getting one myself,

Jeff Battersby (12m 54s)

but man, I feel exactly the same way.

Tom Anderson (12m 54s)

No. Yeah, but it just, it's really cool looking. What configuration options do we have in this thing?

Jeff Battersby (13m 2s)

These again are M4 chips, by the way,

Jeff Battersby (13m 5s)

Apple Intelligence, all a part of these chips.

Jeff Battersby (13m 10s)

That's a feature, 10-core CPU-GPU,

Jeff Battersby (13m 13s)

and then there's a an m4 with up to 14

Jeff Battersby (13m 17s)

core cpu and a 20 core gpu ram starts at 16 which is the standard for I think all these things and then we can get up to 32 or 64 gigs of ram which you know these these mac minis for my money have been some of the best max going for quite some time and uh they have you know when I was doing and Apple service work.

Jeff Battersby (13m 47s)

By far my favorites, I thought they were the most thoughtfully engineered when Apple started going to the current form factor.

Jeff Battersby (13m 54s)

The original was kind of a pain in the neck to work on.

Jeff Battersby (13m 57s)

But the form factor that they've kind of been on for the last,

Jeff Battersby (14m 2s)

what is it, 15 years maybe?

Jeff Battersby (14m 4s)

Got to be about 15 years of that, you know, older form factor before this new one.

Jeff Battersby (14m 11s)

Really super well-designed devices.

Jeff Battersby (14m 15s)

And, uh, so.

Jeff Battersby (14m 17s)

We're talking, you know, if you have a 64 gigs on a, on an M4 pro, you're talking to workhorse, this is not, this is not a slouchy Mac mini, this is legit power computer that you could do a lot of stuff with and very portable if you need it to be, you can throw it in your backpack, uh, you know, especially in that five by five, uh, five by five form factor, um, again,

Jeff Battersby (14m 42s)

storage starts at 256 gigs, why I don't know, that's.

Jeff Battersby (14m 47s)

It's still too tiny for most people, although with iCloud storage, maybe

Jeff Battersby (14m 51s)

for the average bear, not too bad up to two terabytes for the M four and

Jeff Battersby (14m 56s)

eight for the M four pro.

Jeff Battersby (14m 58s)

So, uh, again, Apple's not placing this in a, uh, other than the starting,

Jeff Battersby (15m 4s)

uh, hard drives, not placing this in, in slouchy territory.

Jeff Battersby (15m 9s)

This is professional use, you know, a smaller, smaller Mac for, for professional for professional users.

Jeff Battersby (15m 18s)

You have no voice and I can't talk.

Tom Anderson (15m 20s)

It's a good show.

Jeff Battersby (15m 20s)

Um, yeah, right.

Jeff Battersby (15m 22s)

One of my favorite podcasts.

Jeff Battersby (15m 24s)

Um, we have a Thunderbolt bolt four and five USB-C Ethernet, and then HDMI support for up to six, three 6k displays, which is, yeah, you're not kidding.

Jeff Battersby (15m 38s)

Um, and, uh, the M4 starts at 599, which is about the same price they've been for quite some time.

Tom Anderson (15m 44s)

Yeah. Yeah. And if you can get an education, you get even better price. So yeah, those are fantastic. I mean, the best I think, and you know, the best bang for the buck. I mean, just

Jeff Battersby (15m 45s)

Really good price.

Jeff Battersby (15m 46s)

and then M4.

Jeff Battersby (15m 47s)

Pro from $1399. So yeah, not bad. And that again...

Tom Anderson (16m 2s)

even before now, like when it was the m one model and, and all of that. And, and it's so funny to contrast where it is now against where it was in like the mid 2010s, where they didn't upgrade it or update it for.

Tom Anderson (16m 15s)

everyone was wondering like if it's even going to stay a product and it's,

Tom Anderson (16m 20s)

and you know, that, that period of time though, the whole Mac thing, right,

Tom Anderson (16m 23s)

because the Mac books weren't very good with the keyboards and everything,

Tom Anderson (16m 26s)

but they've kind of 180 to all of that. Yeah, these are excellent. And, um,

Tom Anderson (16m 32s)

yeah, just fantastic. And I think for us, we've got at the office,

Tom Anderson (16m 36s)

probably, I don't know, 160 of these things deployed now,

Tom Anderson (16m 42s)

just throughout classrooms and his digital.

Tom Anderson (16m 44s)

So we'll just keep on buying those.

Jeff Battersby (16m 50s)

Yeah, they're they're great and especially if you have first of all if you're moving from a PC to a Mac This is a way to start probably already have a display

Jeff Battersby (16m 58s)

You know you have a mouse you have a keyboard

Jeff Battersby (17m 3s)

You can plug this right in in most cases as long as the the displays that you have have HDMI

Jeff Battersby (17m 10s)

Capabilities I

Jeff Battersby (17m 13s)

Have an m2 sitting right here. That's what I'm recording on right now in

Jeff Battersby (17m 17s)

Truly, I love my Macbook

Jeff Battersby (17m 20s)

Pro. You know, for its portability and my ability to kind of, you know, do what I need to do wherever I need to do it. But these Mac minis are and have been my favorites for quite some time. So good stuff. And again, you can, you can order those now. So you can, I should say you can get them now. There were a lot of unboxings that I saw yesterday from people who were who were getting those guys. So good stuff.

Tom Anderson (17m 45s)

Right. Speaking of things on the bottom, the power button is on the bottom. I don't care about that. I couldn't tell you last time I hit the power button. I mean, other than when we had severe storms, I would shut it down, you know, and then have to hit the button to turn it back on. But usually it just runs.

Jeff Battersby (17m 48s)

Thank you.

Jeff Battersby (17m 51s)

Yeah, you know what, and there's been a lot of hoo-ha about that.

Jeff Battersby (17m 54s)

I don't care either.

Jeff Battersby (17m 57s)

I mean, I do.

Jeff Battersby (18m)

It's rare.

Jeff Battersby (18m 5s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (18m 7s)

Yeah, and my feeling is,

Jeff Battersby (18m 10s)

I will guess that Apple has, unless you're super fat-fingered,

Jeff Battersby (18m 15s)

you probably can reach under that pretty easily and hit that button.

Tom Anderson (18m 19s)

Yeah, I think I saw people saying they did have to lift it a little bit, but who cares?

Jeff Battersby (18m 20s)

So...

Tom Anderson (18m 22s)

I mean, look how small it is. It's not like you're lifting much. So.

Jeff Battersby (18m 26s)

No, it's, you know, people are going to whine.

Tom Anderson (18m 30s)

Right. But I mean, I get it, too. It's like it's a talking point,

Tom Anderson (18m 34s)

but I don't think it's a big deal. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (18m 35s)

No, I agree, and it probably could have stayed on the back like it was, but whatever.

Tom Anderson (18m 41s)

Right. And I will say, though, on the back, a lot of times you have to be careful with it because the power plug on the current or the previous form factor was right.

Tom Anderson (18m 49s)

be trying to take that out and I would hit the power button and, you know, just so that that probably says more about me than the power button, but yeah.

Jeff Battersby (18m 51s)

Yeah, probably.

Tom Anderson (18m 57s)

All right, so you can get those now.

Tom Anderson (19m)

They are fantastic or should be anyway.

Tom Anderson (19m 2s)

I don't have one, but they should be.

Tom Anderson (19m 4s)

All indications are that they will be.

Tom Anderson (19m 7s)

So little baby Mac studios, that's one thing to remind me of.

Jeff Battersby (19m 9s)

Yeah, I really and that that's one of the things kind of cool about the form factors. It is like a Mac Studio. You know,

Jeff Battersby (19m 14s)

it's got that. And I saw kind of love this. Somebody has now created a housing for it that makes it look like one of the

Jeff Battersby (19m 25s)

I don't even know what they're called anymore. The big ones,

Jeff Battersby (19m 27s)

the macros the yeah, it's got little rollers on it and everything and it has the little it looks pretty cool. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (19m 28s)

Oh yeah, sticking inside of that.

Tom Anderson (19m 35s)

That's good, I like it.

Tom Anderson (19m 37s)

Alright, so, up to Wednesday.

Jeff Battersby (19m 37s)

Peace out.

Tom Anderson (19m 39s)

All right.

Jeff Battersby (19m 39s)

Wednesday, so this is the end of the announcements Apple updated MacBook Pro 14 and 16 inch

Updated MacBook Pro 14” and 16”

Jeff Battersby (19m 47s)

again M4 Pro and M4 Pro Max chips with an

Jeff Battersby (19m 53s)

entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro with just an with an M4

Jeff Battersby (19m 58s)

so Config options again. This is going to be same song second verse third verse in this case

Jeff Battersby (20m 6s)

10 core CPU GPU

Jeff Battersby (20m 9s)

M4 M4 Pro up to 14 core CPU 20 core GPU and then the m4 max up to 16 core

Jeff Battersby (20m 17s)

CPU 40 core GPU so

Jeff Battersby (20m 21s)

Smoking way out of my league for anything. I'm doing I can't type fast enough to justify any one

Jeff Battersby (20m 28s)

Ram starts at 16 gigs again up to 128 gigs for the m4 max

Jeff Battersby (20m 36s)

Storage, hey, look at this, 512 gig.

Jeff Battersby (20m 39s)

Could have done that all the way around, Apple.

Jeff Battersby (20m 41s)

There's no reason you couldn't have started there for everything.

Jeff Battersby (20m 44s)

But you can get up to 8 terabytes depending on the chip that you've got in your Mac.

Jeff Battersby (20m 52s)

Three Thunderbolt 5 via USB-C ports, HDMI, SDXC, and MagSafe 3.

Jeff Battersby (21m 1s)

These start at $1,599 and go, yeah, way into the stratosphere.

Tom Anderson (21m 6s)

Way up.

Jeff Battersby (21m 9s)

Have fun with whatever you want, and depending on what your RAM and storage choices tend to be.

Jeff Battersby (21m 17s)

And those are also available now.

Jeff Battersby (21m 19s)

So really, really nice selection.

Jeff Battersby (21m 22s)

Not a lot of fanfare, other than, hey, here we are.

Jeff Battersby (21m 26s)

No party, no meeting at Apple, which I haven't even watched.

Tom Anderson (21m 30s)

Right and it did the videos for each one of those

Tom Anderson (21m 32s)

Like the little promo videos. Yeah, I haven't watched any of those either, but I think the MacBook and

Jeff Battersby (21m 34s)

Yeah, I probably should.

Jeff Battersby (21m 35s)

So...

Tom Anderson (21m 39s)

The iMac both have the nano textured options

Jeff Battersby (21m 39s)

Yeah, and actually I saw one of the Macbooks with the nanotexture.

Jeff Battersby (21m 46s)

I gotta say, so I have nanotexture on my studio display, and I love it, and I hate it, it's a pain in the ass to clean.

Tom Anderson (21m 49s)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (21m 52s)

It just is, [LAUGH] and I guess I'm a spitty talker.

Jeff Battersby (22m)

So cleaning is definitely a thing.

Jeff Battersby (22m 4s)

But I have a window at my back where I have that, and

Jeff Battersby (22m 9s)

it used to wear me out, actually, when I did not have the nanotexture display.

Jeff Battersby (22m 15s)

And that's one thing that I definitely don't have a problem with.

Jeff Battersby (22m 18s)

And another thing about the nanotexture is you only notice where you spin on the screen when it's off, so it looks pretty good otherwise.

Tom Anderson (22m 23s)

Hmm, good. [laughs]

Jeff Battersby (22m 27s)

[LAUGH] So yeah, so that's it, some nice features.

Jeff Battersby (22m 34s)

And Apple's done well with that.

Jeff Battersby (22m 39s)

And I'm gonna say Apple's hardware offerings in the Mac realm are quite good as far as I'm concerned, I'm on a MacBook Pro.

Jeff Battersby (22m 54s)

I probably, I won't need to get anything new for quite a few years now.

Tom Anderson (22m 59s)

Mm-hmm, then - I'm - I'm - yeah, I'm - pro, right

Jeff Battersby (22m 59s)

But yeah, it's an M2, right?

Jeff Battersby (23m 3s)

Thank you, Stolders.

Tom Anderson (23m 6s)

You know, well they shut down that restaurant so you won't have to worry about anyone else getting their stuff taken, right

Jeff Battersby (23m 10s)

Right, right, right, in and out on Hagenberger Road in Oakland is closed.

Tom Anderson (23m 13s)

Closed yeah

Jeff Battersby (23m 14s)

[LAUGH] For that very reason.

Tom Anderson (23m 17s)

Your fault Jeff

Jeff Battersby (23m 17s)

Mine and about 4 zillion other people.

Tom Anderson (23m 22s)

Mm-hmm. No, I agree. I think hardware there. They're nailing it and the other thing they did real quick, too days had that.

Tom Anderson (23m 29s)

The MacBook Air M2 and M3 models are also getting that bump up to the 16GB base RAM.

Tom Anderson (23m 36s)

Yeah, so that's good and there was no price increase with that either, so that was a nice announcement because at work, that's the laptop that we get to deploy to students, which is the 16GB model.

Jeff Battersby (23m 36s)

Oh, okay. That's good. I missed

Tom Anderson (23m 48s)

And so we're going to be looking at what we want to do with the cost difference.

Tom Anderson (23m 53s)

Do we want to bump up the RAM, or not the RAM, but bump up the storage or leave it where

Jeff Battersby (23m 58s)

Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, good.

Tom Anderson (23m 59s)

We'll talk about that this week, but yeah, that's good, and I'd say I still love that MacBook Air.

Tom Anderson (24m 5s)

That's such a great computer.

Jeff Battersby (24m 7s)

It really is, I, you know, if that had been available when I, uh, got my M1 stolen, um,

Jeff Battersby (24m 13s)

I would have, I probably would have gotten a MacBook Air.

Jeff Battersby (24m 16s)

My daughter, uh, has, has one of those and absolutely loves it.

Jeff Battersby (24m 21s)

Um, and, uh, it just as a reminder in Apple card, even though you share Apple card, uh,

Jeff Battersby (24m 30s)

ads on a million, a million podcasts these days, nobody's advertising here, um, Apple

Jeff Battersby (24m 37s)

runs a great deal where, you know, no interest, uh, and even payments for a year.

Jeff Battersby (24m 45s)

Um, and highly, highly recommend that.

Jeff Battersby (24m 48s)

So it's basically, they're giving you free money to pay it off on, on terms.

Jeff Battersby (24m 52s)

Um, so if you need one, I'm looking to getting an Apple card in your wallet.

Jeff Battersby (24m 57s)

Sure Apple, you can advertise with us on Apple card.

Jeff Battersby (25m 2s)

All right.

Jeff Battersby (25m 3s)

So next up, uh, Apple, uh.

Apple Intelligence

Jeff Battersby (25m 7s)

Intelligence is now available for iPhone.

Jeff Battersby (25m 10s)

iPad and Mac iOS as part of iOS 18.1 iPad,

Jeff Battersby (25m 14s)

OS 18.1 and Mac OS Sequoia 15 one.

Jeff Battersby (25m 19s)

Um, there are many features and by the way, I'm on betas now, 18 to some,

Jeff Battersby (25m 24s)

a little, I haven't been on 18 one for a little minute.

Tom Anderson (25m 28s)

Okay, good because I want to have you talk a little bit about what's in 18 - once we go through what's publicly available now I'm not in beta, but well, we should let me correct that because

Jeff Battersby (25m 32s)

Yeah. Yeah. We can do that. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (25m 38s)

the OS releases that

Tom Anderson (25m 41s)

provide Apple intelligence The first features that he just mentioned there 18.1 for iOS and iPad OS and Sequoia

Tom Anderson (25m 49s)

15.1 those operating systems are not in beta, but Apple still calling Apple intelligence the beta. Yeah

Jeff Battersby (25m 56s)

a beta, right? And for good reason. I'll share my moment today when I used Siri and it gave me a very interesting result for what it is that I had typed. Anyway, so all those available in the latest version obviously should be updating to whatever the current version of your OS is no matter what.

Tom Anderson (25m 58s)

Yes. [BLANK_AUDIO]

Jeff Battersby (26m 22s)

There are some writing tools, including proofreading.

Jeff Battersby (26m 26s)

In fact, there are ads, I don't know if you've seen the ads or not, where, you know, there's actually, I thought, a pretty clever one where some guy who basically is daydreaming in a meeting gets told to, "Hey, can you tell us what the prospectus is?"

Jeff Battersby (26m 41s)

And he kind of gets this look on his face, and he backs out of the room on his rolling chair and selects the text for, you know, whatever the memo is, and has a DAPL intelligence drop.

Jeff Battersby (26m 56s)

You can drop it into three or four very smart bullet points, which is pretty clever, but you've got those kind of capabilities.

Tom Anderson (27m 3s)

Right, have you played around with those much?

Jeff Battersby (27m 3s)

Not that stuff, you know, I probably could use proofreading, you know, that's, I mean, that's not really any different than spellcheck.

Tom Anderson (27m 6s)

Okay.

Jeff Battersby (27m 17s)

My writing tool of choice, which is Highland Pro, I do not think supports Apple intelligence yet.

Jeff Battersby (27m 24s)

but there's, they just had.

Jeff Battersby (27m 26s)

It's a big shindig where they're announcing a new version.

Jeff Battersby (27m 28s)

I don't know what that new version is,

Jeff Battersby (27m 29s)

but I presume that that's going to be part of what it's,

Jeff Battersby (27m 32s)

it's got going on.

Tom Anderson (27m 34s)

So I've been looking at the writing tools because I use Grammarly not every day, but so like when I do the newsletter that I send out or if it's an important email at work that's going out and I type it out really quickly and then sometimes I'll use that to clean it up, but not always.

Tom Anderson (27m 53s)

And I've got the pro version of that and I like it, I think it does a nice job, I don't take every recommendation that it makes, but I'm kind of looking at the writing tools to

Tom Anderson (28m 4s)

see how they compare with Grammarly and are they sufficient enough that I can maybe drop the Grammarly Pro subscription and so far the answer is not yet, which isn't really a surprise because it's just the first version of it, because one particular thing that I've noticed is some of the, like when you, so you can select your block of text and then you get the little icon or you, in some of the apps now they've got the icon for Apple Intelligence and you just click it and it brings up the writing tools.

Tom Anderson (28m 34s)

You know, give you the menu or the little pop-up that you can choose what you wanted to do, so proofread, make it more concise, make it friendly, those types of things.

Tom Anderson (28m 42s)

What throws me off a little bit, the proofreading doesn't do it so much because it shows you in line, but if you have it rewrite it, it kind of just replaces what you've written and you can't go back and compare the two to say, well I like this little section but not this section where, and that just might be because I've gotten used to the way that Grammarly does it and I don't like to use the Grammarly plug-in because I'm not really

Tom Anderson (29m 4s)

super comfortable with them capturing every keystroke I type in, so I copy my stuff into the web app and then let it run and then go through the recommendations that they make,

Tom Anderson (29m 14s)

but you get to go through them kind of down the page as you go and that could just be I'm used to that, but so, so far it's not there, but I think it's going to get close because I think I saw in the beta versions, which you can check out or maybe you've seen

Tom Anderson (29m 34s)

Building a little more into it where they're adding some more features to the writing tools cuz it's obvious. This is still

Jeff Battersby (29m 38s)

Hmm, work in progress, yeah.

Tom Anderson (29m 40s)

Very much in progress. Yeah

Jeff Battersby (29m 43s)

Yeah, and you probably,

Jeff Battersby (29m 44s)

if you're gonna use those writing tools the way that you're using Grammarly,

Jeff Battersby (29m 48s)

you know, popping it into the web app and handling it there,

Jeff Battersby (29m 52s)

you probably, you know, using,

Jeff Battersby (29m 56s)

actually, just open up another document or duplicate the document that you're working on and make those changes or use Apple Intelligence in the second document and then put in what you like in the original.

Tom Anderson (30m 7s)

Yeah, right because when you post or put something into Grammarly to have it check it, you get kind of it's similar like you get to choose like what the domain is like if it's a personal business, is it formal, informal, you know, I mean, then based off of what you choose there kind of helps with how they direct the tone like, you know, okay, so more general Slang is allowed if it's informal or casual.

Jeff Battersby (30m 9s)

If it were all in one, that would be much, much better.

Tom Anderson (30m 37s)

And those types of things, which are, you know, kind of similar to what you get in the pop-up there for the writing tools, right, because you get concise, friendly, those sorts of things.

Jeff Battersby (30m 43s)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, so we'll see, you know, again, it's all these things are

Tom Anderson (30m 47s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (30m 51s)

But I do like it's on device. That's a big thing.

Jeff Battersby (30m 54s)

It really is which means your your information is private, you know, it's it's yours

Tom Anderson (30m 55s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (30m 58s)

Right. And even if they send it off, it goes off to that private cloud compute, right? So, yep.

Jeff Battersby (31m 2s)

Anonymously, yeah, I like that

Jeff Battersby (31m 6s)

So sir a couple of Siri enhancements including context awareness between requests. I haven't tried this yet But I did try to--

Jeff Battersby (31m 13s)

try it before I was on 18-1.

Jeff Battersby (31m 17s)

Was it 18-1? I can't remember.

Jeff Battersby (31m 18s)

Anyway, I did it.

Tom Anderson (31m 20s)

That worked okay for me.

Tom Anderson (31m 21s)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (31m 21s)

I think I tried it before it was legit,

Jeff Battersby (31m 25s)

before 18-1 was really out,

Jeff Battersby (31m 27s)

and it was not working too well for me.

Jeff Battersby (31m 29s)

And I have had a little moment today where I was responding to a text that somebody said to me,

Jeff Battersby (31m 36s)

and I said, you know, told Suri via messages,

Jeff Battersby (31m 41s)

I'm a long gone

Jeff Battersby (31m 43s)

L-o-n-g gone and Siri for some you know, and this would be contextual it should know what it is that you're saying

Jeff Battersby (31m 52s)

Sent the message a message that said I'm long gone. So yeah, that's great. So either

Tom Anderson (31m 56s)

Good. Yeah. Was that in the car that you set that from or was it? Okay.

Jeff Battersby (32m)

It was in the car was in car play. Yeah, I'm one gone

Jeff Battersby (32m 4s)

You know, so either I'm making fun of people with speech impediments or I'm racist. It's one of those two things Thanks.

Tom Anderson (32m 9s)

You're not just a nice guy overall, are you?

Jeff Battersby (32m 13s)

Yeah, I'm great, right?

Tom Anderson (32m 16s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (32m 17s)

Um, yeah.

Tom Anderson (32m 18s)

And I think what's confusing people is, you know, so, you know, Apple and their marketing stuff has talked about it and a brand new Siri, that's way smarter, but that's not here yet.

Jeff Battersby (32m 30s)

Yet, Dumb Siri's still with us.

Tom Anderson (32m 30s)

That's yeah.

Tom Anderson (32m 31s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (32m 32s)

Old Siri you've known and loved through all the years is still here and it's a little bit better, but the big stuff is still to come.

Jeff Battersby (32m 39s)

Right to be continued. Yeah, no, it's not

Tom Anderson (32m 40s)

And who knows how well that will work because it's not here yet.

Jeff Battersby (32m 44s)

Reduced interruptions focused mode, which I have been using and I like quite a lot I have a several focus modes some of which you know block everybody Tom including you

Jeff Battersby (32m 56s)

I Have a recording focus mode that I use right now that will only accept text messages from you So when you tell me I'm a dumbass I can respond accordingly

Jeff Battersby (33m 7s)

without you having to say it.

Jeff Battersby (33m 9s)

So it's a it's a nice, uh, I really like it. It's, I haven't quite figured out how different that is from do not disturb, you know, do not disturb. I don't think lets anything through this tries to be more intelligent about who it is and isn't letting through.

Tom Anderson (33m 12s)

Let's keep our spats private.

Jeff Battersby (33m 39s)

I haven't felt, uh, I haven't, I haven't explored that difference quite yet because usually when I'm turning on a focus mode, trying to focus on something and not study what the focus mode is doing, but I do, I do like, uh, I do like that, uh, reduced interruptions feature.

Jeff Battersby (33m 57s)

I've not tried this. I don't know if you have memory maker in the photos app and yet worked. What's that mean? Okay.

Tom Anderson (34m)

I did. Yeah, it worked. It worked. So I went in and said, what did I do? I think I did,

Tom Anderson (34m 9s)

I don't know, show me pictures of the dogs at home or whatever it was. And it did what I asked. So I said, okay, it works. Good. Don't think there are any chickens. Well,

Jeff Battersby (34m 12s)

Really? Mostly dogs? No chickens?

Jeff Battersby (34m 17s)

Okay, okay.

Tom Anderson (34m 19s)

I take that back. There might've been somewhere the dogs were outside and the chickens were out with the dogs. Yeah. Yeah. Life on the farm here.

Jeff Battersby (34m 22s)

But it wasn't intentionally stupid about dogs.

Jeff Battersby (34m 27s)

That's good.

Jeff Battersby (34m 29s)

Clean up in photos to remove unwanted objects in your pictures.

Jeff Battersby (34m 32s)

I actually sent you a picture that I took where I kind of wiped out the overhang on a building

Jeff Battersby (34m 42s)

and you rightly pointed out that there were some vestigial lines that you could see the break between what was cleaned up and what wasn't.

Jeff Battersby (34m 52s)

I haven't looked at it since then, but it does work really well.

Tom Anderson (34m 56s)

Yep, play with that a little bit with a few shots. Yeah, it's a nice job. My son tried it with

Tom Anderson (35m 2s)

Some pictures he took the other day and it turned out pretty nice, too So I think it's good if you don't continue to improve with some of the refinements and things, but yeah, I think it's good start

Jeff Battersby (35m 5s)

Yeah. Yes, you can remove your x from all your photos. That's good. Not your x. I'm not speaking to you specifically,

Tom Anderson (35m 16s)

Well, that's good, yeah, yeah good

Jeff Battersby (35m 17s)

Tom. I'm just saying. Don't don't want to get any messages.

Jeff Battersby (35m 22s)

This side. What do you mean is x?

Tom Anderson (35m 23s)

Right, Jesus

Tom Anderson (35m 26s)

And Craig

Jeff Battersby (35m 27s)

la la la la. Summaries in mail Safari notifications. I like that feature. It's it's

Jeff Battersby (35m 35s)

working pretty well and actually what's really nice is in the car if you know there are three messages that I'm getting from somebody, Siri and CarPlay will read me the summary first and tell me what it's about and if I want to it then let's you know reads all the all the associated messages. Finding that yeah that works really well. Yeah it's it's a it's a great feature. So kind of you know summarize some things. It does do some funny things I'd have to--

Tom Anderson (35m 54s)

Oh, that's nice.

Jeff Battersby (36m 5s)

look it up. I did-- I sent something to somebody that was--

Jeff Battersby (36m 9s)

they responded to me and when they responded to me the summary was--

Jeff Battersby (36m 17s)

it was, let's just say, way, way different than what it was that that person was really saying. Well, I won't go into any detail other than to say, it made it.

Jeff Battersby (36m 35s)

It made it sound more salacious than it actually was.

Jeff Battersby (36m 40s)

So, you know, that was kind of interesting to me.

Jeff Battersby (36m 45s)

I took a screenshot of it and sent it to them just because they needed to see it.

Jeff Battersby (36m 52s)

But it, yeah, it made it sound worse than it was.

Tom Anderson (36m 56s)

So, you use mail app, right? Your mail app. Yeah. So, what are you thinking about the priority, the message?

Jeff Battersby (36m 59s)

I do, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (37m 5s)

I like it a lot.

Jeff Battersby (37m 6s)

And actually, what's really nice about it is the priority thing.

Jeff Battersby (37m 11s)

Is that only in the beta or is that in 18.1 now?

Tom Anderson (37m 13s)

It's an 18 one. Yeah. No in the beta. They've got that new thing

Tom Anderson (37m 18s)

That you should send me the screenshot of their day before yesterday or yesterday

Jeff Battersby (37m 22s)

Oh, yeah, okay, so the priority stuff. I like it a lot this stuff that kind of raises says hey this might be important Yeah, the other feature the one that they've just added to the 18 to beta. I really really like

Tom Anderson (37m 22s)

Where it does the categories and stuff, right? Yeah, just floats the messages up to the top, right?

Jeff Battersby (37m 34s)

But yeah that priority. I like a lot. I it was it was putting those things at the top it does that by the way with

Jeff Battersby (37m 41s)

With Siri, sorry with messages especially on the lock screen

Jeff Battersby (37m 46s)

I was getting it was at work the other night and

Jeff Battersby (37m 52s)

You know there was some big conversation going on about something coming up And I was able to look over and it says this might be important in you know it had a little highlight about

Jeff Battersby (38m 1s)

Questions about some event that you know we were all supposed to be going to and it raised that to the top

Jeff Battersby (38m 8s)

Even though I was in a work mode where you know I don't usually get text messages from anyone when I'm when I'm working

Jeff Battersby (38m 13s)

at this particular place so

Jeff Battersby (38m 16s)

those features I think are are

Jeff Battersby (38m 19s)

nominal and I suspect that they'll only get better at

Jeff Battersby (38m 22s)

this time goes on. Yep. Mm hmm.

Tom Anderson (38m 23s)

Yeah, I've been liking those.

Tom Anderson (38m 24s)

Yeah, off to a good start.

Tom Anderson (38m 26s)

You know, it's still hit or miss with accuracy on some of the summaries and some of the priority messages,

Tom Anderson (38m 31s)

but I think over time, as you mentioned,

Tom Anderson (38m 33s)

that will continue to improve and we'll end up with really nice, nice stuff.

Jeff Battersby (38m 39s)

Yeah. Here, I'll say what that thing was. I know someone who's having some issues related to reproductive health, we'll call it that. And the message essentially said the birth control didn't work. That was the summary.

Jeff Battersby (39m 9s)

Okay. So, you know, which was really, was true in the context of the message, but it was more about, you know, what was happening. And this person listens to the podcast, so don't shoot me that I said this, but it was, the summary was way different than the actual context of what the thing was. So, yes, the birth control.

Tom Anderson (39m 12s)

Oh no! laughs

Tom Anderson (39m 39s)

Mm, hate when that happens

Jeff Battersby (39m 40s)

it was, you know, basically making them sick, you know, that was what the deal was, you know, because they were taking it for a very specific medical purpose. Anyway, so yeah,

Jeff Battersby (39m 55s)

summaries can be a little off, you know, and if heard in public, it might, right, you read it in a car with, you know, the car full, and everybody goes, "What? What is that supposed to mean. (laughs)

Tom Anderson (39m 58s)

A little nerve-wracking.

Tom Anderson (40m 6s)

Yeah, so the other couple of things we've gotten so far, audio transcription in Notes and other apps, so if you drop an audio file into the note, it will actually transcribe that so you don't have to necessarily record it in the note, but I've not used that too much.

Jeff Battersby (40m 9s)

Yeah, exactly.

Jeff Battersby (40m 10s)

Nothing.

Jeff Battersby (40m 12s)

So, anyway.

Jeff Battersby (40m 23s)

Yeah no I haven't. I haven't. I think I tried it you know briefly and I got to think that this is coming from the the you know they transcribe all your voicemail messages. So I think that's going to be someone. Yeah me too. And then smart replies to messages. So and

Tom Anderson (40m 31s)

with that at all yet?

Tom Anderson (40m 33s)

Okay.

Tom Anderson (40m 43s)

Hopefully it's better than that.

Jeff Battersby (40m 53s)

it just as a reminder if you you know if you expect or hope to begin using Apple intelligence

Jeff Battersby (41m 2s)

devices that support it are iPhone 16, iPhone 16 plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max,

Jeff Battersby (41m 11s)

iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, any iPad with an A17 Pro or M1 and later processor and Max with M1s or later. So the guys that stole...

Jeff Battersby (41m 23s)

my Mac, you can use Apple Intelligent.

Tom Anderson (41m 26s)

They need some intelligence.

Jeff Battersby (41m 27s)

Yeah, well, you know, or some, you know, some hooks.

Tom Anderson (41m 29s)

Yeah, yep.

Jeff Battersby (41m 32s)

Need iOS 18.1. I had OS 18.1 or macOS Sequoia 15.1.

Jeff Battersby (41m 38s)

And there are only currently a couple of supported languages.

Jeff Battersby (41m 41s)

So just be aware of that.

Jeff Battersby (41m 43s)

You know, in fact, I don't think Siri is currently supported in Canada.

Jeff Battersby (41m 47s)

Figure that out. But minimum of.

Tom Anderson (41m 51s)

And then it will download those components as you start to activate some of those, it'll, yeah, yep.

Jeff Battersby (41m 54s)

Correct. Right.

Tom Anderson (41m 57s)

So the next batch of features isn't too far off, Jeff, and you've been running the betas.

Tom Anderson (42m 3s)

We've got Image Playground on the way, Genmoji, and series integration with ChatGPT,

Tom Anderson (42m 9s)

all coming as part of iOS 18.2, iPad iOS 18.2, and Sequoia 15.2. It's coming up in December.

Tom Anderson (42m 16s)

How are those with betas, or at least the ones you've had a chance to check out?

Jeff Battersby (42m 18s)

Yes. So far, so good. The Genmoji thing, you know, that little playground feature is in beta and I had to apply early to get into that. I have not been accepted into the program.

Jeff Battersby (42m 36s)

Not yet. I presume within the next few days that'll come up. But you had to actually request access to it in order to be able to do something with it.

Tom Anderson (42m 39s)

Right

Tom Anderson (42m 44s)

All right, so definitely not as quick as like the Apple intelligence

Tom Anderson (42m 48s)

Beta right remember that one like the OS was were in the beta And it was like apply and a couple minutes later. You're in yeah, it's a little different for that

Jeff Battersby (42m 49s)

No. Yeah. And boom, you have it. Right. Yeah. It was. Yeah. For whatever reason, you think this would be almost instantaneous as well, but it's not. The Siri stuff I want to play with a little more. As I told you, that Siri is what gave me Wong instead of Long. So yeah,

Tom Anderson (43m 12s)

right and I think you can tie your chat gpt pro I think is what they call it your pro your paid account so if you've got a paid account you can you can tie that yeah I have one of those so i'm going to tie it in i'll let you know how it goes

Jeff Battersby (43m 18s)

if you have one, but guess who doesn't have one of those, Tom? Yeah. Yeah. You can you can give me a give me some information. I really do like the auto organization in the mail app, although I'm surprised to find that it's not in the mail app in Mac OS. It is in iPad OS and it is in iOS, but I don't have that feature available to me.

Tom Anderson (43m 48s)

Maybe they've not done that yet.

Jeff Battersby (43m 50s)

Yeah, unless maybe I didn't update. Maybe I turned off betas on my Mac. I don't know.

Tom Anderson (43m 56s)

Yeah, but I'm looking forward to that.

Jeff Battersby (43m 56s)

Maybe I'm just that stupid. It's possible. These things are not out of the realm of possibility.

Tom Anderson (44m 6s)

I think that'll, that'll be nice.

Tom Anderson (44m 7s)

Of course, I joked with you the other day, Google's done that for ages, but it's going to be nice to have.

Tom Anderson (44m 12s)

I mean, it's, you know.

Jeff Battersby (44m 14s)

And one of the things I really like about it on my phone is it does really find the legit messages, the ones that are, you know, important, family related, and it organizes it by, you know, some things are receipts, you know, people are in my Verizon for home bill just got paid and it throws it over in that transactions area, which is really makes it really easy to find, you know.

Jeff Battersby (44m 44s)

The thing that you purchased at Lowe's three weeks ago is all in one area.

Jeff Battersby (44m 50s)

So I do like it and I love the spin on this.

Jeff Battersby (44m 56s)

Promotions is one of them and promotions are just the BS messages that you get.

Jeff Battersby (45m)

You could get five cars for $25 or something like that.

Jeff Battersby (45m 6s)

So it's really well organized.

Jeff Battersby (45m 9s)

And so far, one of my favorite features in that new.

Jeff Battersby (45m 14s)

I just installed it yesterday, so it's it's a little a little yeah, yeah, I haven't had a chance to really fool around with it too much, but so far I like it and you can tell me when the chat GPT link is good because you know me, I won't be using it.

Tom Anderson (45m 16s)

Okay, so it's new, new, new to you, yeah, okay.

Tom Anderson (45m 24s)

All right, good.

Tom Anderson (45m 29s)

Yeah, I'll do that.

Tom Anderson (45m 30s)

I might, after I get the show edited today,

Tom Anderson (45m 32s)

maybe I'll put it on my iPad after that and check it out.

Jeff Battersby (45m 35s)

OK. Cool. Yeah. Early.

Tom Anderson (45m 37s)

So those are scheduled to be released in December.

Tom Anderson (45m 41s)

I would imagine before the holidays,

Tom Anderson (45m 44s)

but you know, just get that done.

Tom Anderson (45m 46s)

Siri piece, we talked a little bit about there a while ago,

Tom Anderson (45m 48s)

the big personal context Siri,

Tom Anderson (45m 52s)

where Siri knows your information on your phone and all that kind of stuff is a springtime thing,

Tom Anderson (45m 57s)

it sounds like, so March, probably.

Tom Anderson (46m)

But that will be maybe a fun one to get on the beta for.

Tom Anderson (46m 5s)

Yeah, 'cause that's the one that's supposed to,

Tom Anderson (46m 7s)

I think everybody's kind of waiting to see,

Tom Anderson (46m 9s)

and I think if that's the one they screw up,

Tom Anderson (46m 11s)

they're really gonna hear about it.

Jeff Battersby (46m 13s)

Yeah, of course they will.

Tom Anderson (46m 14s)

Right, I mean, they'll hear about it either way,

Jeff Battersby (46m 16s)

All right, everybody's likes.

Tom Anderson (46m 17s)

but yep, and only somewhat related,

Tom Anderson (46m 21s)

the latest beta of Vision OS brings support finally for the wide and ultra wide Mac displays that they showed at WWDC.

Tom Anderson (46m 29s)

I have not put the beta on the Vision Pro,

Tom Anderson (46m 32s)

so I've not tried it, but I've seen some screenshots.

Tom Anderson (46m 34s)

It looks pretty nice.

Jeff Battersby (46m 36s)

Okay, yeah, it's awesome, too

Tom Anderson (46m 36s)

I mean, they're working with these massive ultra wide Mac displays.

Tom Anderson (46m 41s)

So yeah, I'll try that once it comes out.

Tom Anderson (46m 43s)

I don't think I'm gonna do the beta, but.

Jeff Battersby (46m 45s)

Why not? You're not using your...

Tom Anderson (46m 47s)

Exactly, [LAUGH] it's like, last thing I wanna do is have to resurrect it from being bricked from a beta.

Jeff Battersby (46m 48s)

Yeah, so throw it on there and see.

Tom Anderson (46m 54s)

I probably wouldn't, and I'd never use it again.

Jeff Battersby (46m 57s)

Oh, my gosh.

Tom Anderson (46m 58s)

Yeah, so I imagine that will come out in December as well.

Jeff Battersby (47m 2s)

Okay.

Jeff Battersby (47m 3s)

Tom!

Tom Anderson (47m 4s)

Sir, we did, and thank you guys for putting up with my voice.

Jeff Battersby (47m 5s)

We've burned 45 minutes of everybody's time and...

Close

Tom Anderson (47m 11s)

It's been rough.

Tom Anderson (47m 12s)

It felt like four hours.

Jeff Battersby (47m 12s)

You sound so sexy, Tom.

Tom Anderson (47m 14s)

That's creepy.

Tom Anderson (47m 17s)

And there's the show open right there.

Tom Anderson (47m 18s)

[LAUGH] But close this out, Jeff, will you?

Jeff Battersby (47m 18s)

Right.

Jeff Battersby (47m 23s)

So, as a reminder, show music, Psychokinetics, Celsius 7.

Jeff Battersby (47m 28s)

That is both our opening and end music.

Jeff Battersby (47m 32s)

That is who that is.

Jeff Battersby (47m 34s)

Highly recommend that you check them out.

Jeff Battersby (47m 38s)

Our show artwork, Randall Martin Design,

Jeff Battersby (47m 42s)

who he's done a lot of work.

Jeff Battersby (47m 45s)

For a lot of people, I know it does brilliant work.

Jeff Battersby (47m 46s)

So I highly recommend that you check Randall out if you have any needs of artwork done.

Jeff Battersby (47m 55s)

You can reach us at feedback@basicafshow.com.

Jeff Battersby (48m)

You can also reach us right inside the show notes.

Jeff Battersby (48m 3s)

There's a link where you can leave us messages and we'd be happy to hear from you.

Jeff Battersby (48m 9s)

We are always happy to hear from you.

Jeff Battersby (48m 12s)

And very importantly,

Jeff Battersby (48m 13s)

We should probably save this at the top of the show.

Jeff Battersby (48m 16s)

You know, leave us a review on your favorite podcast app,

Jeff Battersby (48m 19s)

whether it's in iTunes or it's not really an iTunes in podcasts.

Tom Anderson (48m 24s)

I think there's still iTunes for Windows, maybe, I don't know.

Jeff Battersby (48m 24s)

Good God. How old am I? Um, yeah,

Jeff Battersby (48m 29s)

there might be. Um, or it's in, uh, you know,

Jeff Battersby (48m 33s)

whoever it is that you used to listen to. Yeah. Right.

Jeff Battersby (48m 35s)

Just do that for us because it does push us up in the algorithm and like I've

Jeff Battersby (48m 42s)

said, we're continuing to get more.

Jeff Battersby (48m 45s)

Thank you.

Tom Anderson (48m 48s)

We do, yeah. As we've said multiple times, lots of places you could go for this type of content, and we are honored that you would spend a few minutes with us. So thank you for that. I'm going to run out of here and hit a shot of Robitussin.

Tom Anderson (49m 1s)

Yeah, you know, that's life today. But anyway, thanks again, everybody, for being here, Jeff.

Tom Anderson (49m 6s)

Always good to talk to you, sir. All right. Until the next time,

Jeff Battersby (49m 8s)

Good. Yeah. Pleasure.

Tom Anderson (49m 10s)

have a great rest of your day, rest of your night. We'll talk to you then.

Outro Music (49m 15s)

♪ I don't wanna know about your imperfections, dude ♪ ♪ Prefer to leave you on a pedestal so I'll improve ♪ ♪ 'Cause if I'm finding out you know that I'm just like you ♪ ♪ That gonna smash my whole world, lost in the loop ♪