iPhone 16e, New Betas, and a Love of Forever*Notes

Intro

Jeff Battersby (0s)

A 16.1 inch super retina.

Tom Anderson (0s)

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're normal, then I'm just like you, that gon'

Tom Anderson (2s)

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Hold on.

Jeff Battersby (4s)

What, what, what, what, what?

Jeff Battersby (6s)

Oh, six, 6.1.

Jeff Battersby (8s)

You know, I'm always oversizing it.

Tom Anderson (23s)

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Dancing with Jeff Battersby.

Tom Anderson (30s)

Also known as Basic AF, man, he gets down to the intro song every time, and uh...

Jeff Battersby (35s)

Dig it. I dig it. That's why it's really sad when we don't have it when we have guests on.

Jeff Battersby (39s)

Because I can't embarrass myself in front of our guests.

Tom Anderson (42s)

Right, and if our, if our listeners have ever questioned how much we love them,

Tom Anderson (46s)

this is why we don't do a video version of this.

Tom Anderson (48s)

We'll spare you of that.

Tom Anderson (49s)

Plus our, our faces.

Jeff Battersby (52s)

Yes. Right. Our faces.

Tom Anderson (52s)

So anyhow, good morning, Jeff.

Jeff Battersby (54s)

Good morning, Tom!

Jeff Battersby (56s)

It's a fine Saturday morning in the Northeast. I haven't been outside yet other than grab the newspaper. Yeah it's windy last night. Yeah here we are. First day of March we're recording on.

Tom Anderson (56s)

And here we go again.

Tom Anderson (56s)

Episode is a breezy up your way.

Tom Anderson (1m 3s)

Yeah, pretty windy here today.

Tom Anderson (1m 4s)

It was windy last couple of days, but it is officially March.

Tom Anderson (1m 7s)

So spring blown in, hopefully.

Jeff Battersby (1m 11s)

You'll get this on the third day of March.

Tom Anderson (1m 13s)

Well, that's right.

Tom Anderson (1m 14s)

We don't record very far in advance.

Tom Anderson (1m 16s)

So if any of us ever get sick on a Saturday, we may have to skip a week.

Tom Anderson (1m 20s)

Um, we don't really have evergreen content as they say, but this is episode 56, moving up towards a hundred before, you know, well, another year or so,

Jeff Battersby (1m 25s)

No.

Jeff Battersby (1m 28s)

Dang.

Jeff Battersby (1m 32s)

Moving up towards a hundred.

Tom Anderson (1m 33s)

another two years, it won't be before, you know, it, um, show notes can be found@basicafshow.com/56 and also just in case you're not,

Tom Anderson (1m 43s)

aware, we do include chapters every episode.

Tom Anderson (1m 46s)

Uh, and depending on your podcast app, you may see a little chapter icon where you can tap it rather easily.

Tom Anderson (1m 52s)

I don't know if podcasts, Apple podcast supports, I think it does support chapters, but I don't think at least on CarPlay, it's not super easy to get to.

Tom Anderson (1m 59s)

But the reason I bring it up, uh, we know not every topic is for everybody.

Tom Anderson (2m 4s)

So if we get into the topic, you don't like just hit the chapters and you can see what's coming up next, jump ahead to it.

Tom Anderson (2m 9s)

if you want, won't hurt our feelings in the least.

Jeff Battersby (2m 12s)

Yeah, cool, and we're gonna do a couple shout outs at the top of the show instead of the end when nobody's listening.

Jeff Battersby (2m 17s)

First of all, I'm currently sporting,

Jeff Battersby (2m 19s)

which Tom can see, a very cool Dungeons in the Attic hat

Jeff Battersby (2m 26s)

that's keeping my wig warm as we record here.

Jeff Battersby (2m 31s)

So, was able to pick this up, so actually a live show that Dungeons in the Attic, if you're not listening to them,

Jeff Battersby (2m 37s)

that they did this past Wednesday.

Jeff Battersby (2m 42s)

So, highly recommend that you check that out.

Jeff Battersby (2m 43s)

That is Patreon-only content for them.

Jeff Battersby (2m 46s)

So, if you wanna hear the live show,

Jeff Battersby (2m 47s)

you gotta go to Patreon, but the gear is cool.

Jeff Battersby (2m 50s)

Tom even said something about it when I got on.

Jeff Battersby (2m 52s)

Yeah, it's a nice-looking black hat with their logo on it.

Jeff Battersby (2m 56s)

So, we'll shout them out.

Jeff Battersby (2m 57s)

Show music, Psychokinetics and Celsius 7,

Jeff Battersby (3m)

which were always great before.

Jeff Battersby (3m 1s)

That is what I'm dancing to when we come on.

Jeff Battersby (3m 5s)

So, if you wanna see something Uh, of Elaine Bennis quality dancing.

Jeff Battersby (3m 10s)

That's, uh, that's me, baby.

Jeff Battersby (3m 12s)

That's, that's me all the time.

Tom Anderson (3m 13s)

It's accurate, too.

Jeff Battersby (3m 18s)

I'm a better dancer in a, in a larger space.

Jeff Battersby (3m 21s)

Um, and then, uh, our show, uh, our, uh, show, uh, artwork is Randall Martin design, which we highly recommend that you head over to Randall's way for all your design needs.

Jeff Battersby (3m 36s)

There we go.

Tom Anderson (3m 36s)

we do great good job and also if you want even more of this kind of content you can sign up for my newsletter goes out just about every couple of weeks tomfanderson.com/newsletter i've got just over a thousand of you there now which is crazy um so do appreciate you being there so if you want to sign up for that you can so we've got um oh sorry

Jeff Battersby (3m 36s)

I did all that at the top.

Jeff Battersby (3m 57s)

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, feedback at basicafshow.com.

Jeff Battersby (4m 1s)

You can always talk to us, send us messages, tell us how much you hate us.

Jeff Battersby (4m 6s)

We expect that.

Tom Anderson (4m 9s)

Any attention is good to us.

Jeff Battersby (4m 9s)

Yeah, right, that's exactly it.

Tom Anderson (4m 13s)

We're old and lonely.

Jeff Battersby (4m 15s)

We take all the negative attention we can get because we like attention.

Jeff Battersby (4m 19s)

And then you can also send us voicemail messages and speak to us directly if you want to via

Jeff Battersby (4m 27s)

the podcast app, so do it.

Tom Anderson (4m 28s)

There you go.

Jeff Battersby (4m 30s)

Yes, Tom, now I'm done.

Tom Anderson (4m 30s)

Is that it?

Tom Anderson (4m 32s)

Okay, good.

Tom Anderson (4m 33s)

Didn't mean to cut you off there.

Jeff Battersby (4m 34s)

Now you can talk.

Tom Anderson (4m 34s)

Okay.

Tom Anderson (4m 37s)

Uh, so we've got a kind of a, I don't know, three or four key topics we're going to talk about today.

Tom Anderson (4m 43s)

We've got a new iPhone to hit on.

Tom Anderson (4m 44s)

We've got some new betas, a couple of other software related things.

Tom Anderson (4m 50s)

And then the big discussion portion of the show is going to, uh, be about Jeff's.

Tom Anderson (4m 59s)

Into forever notes.

Tom Anderson (5m 1s)

When we had bill McLean on last show, he, he talked about that a little bit and that has inspired Jeff to check it out.

Tom Anderson (5m 7s)

And he's actually, he's been sucked into the vortex.

Jeff Battersby (5m 8s)

sucked me into the vortex.

Tom Anderson (5m 11s)

So we're going to dig into that.

Tom Anderson (5m 13s)

Um, so if you have any curiosity about that, I think this is going to be good.

Tom Anderson (5m 16s)

Cause I do, I have not used it.

Jeff Battersby (5m 21s)

Yeah, good stuff. And I'm happy with it. So but let's, let's talk Tom iPhone 16. What do you have to say about

iPhone 16e

Tom Anderson (5m 28s)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (5m 30s)

Well, so we have a new phone just went on, I think it's available in stores as of yesterday, the 28th of February.

Tom Anderson (5m 37s)

As we record this, as Jeff said, it's the first, uh, replaces the iPhone SE in the lineup, which I joked with you about this.

Tom Anderson (5m 47s)

I think it was last week.

Tom Anderson (5m 48s)

Uh, the S and SE always felt like spare parts, uh, because it, it, it looked so ridiculously outdated compared to everything else.

Jeff Battersby (5m 51s)

laughs Yes you do.

Tom Anderson (5m 56s)

Uh, didn't get updated a lot.

Tom Anderson (5m 59s)

Uh, but now there's a new one.

Tom Anderson (6m)

It is 16.

Tom Anderson (6m 2s)

So it's officially in the, uh, the 16 family, which leads me to think there'll be a 17 E and an 18 E, but we'll have to wait and see.

Jeff Battersby (6m 6s)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (6m 11s)

Um, so how about some of the, let's run through the specs real quick, and then we can talk about just for a minute.

Jeff Battersby (6m 17s)

Sure. So a 18 chip, same chip as in the iPhone 16, which means

Jeff Battersby (6m 26s)

also capable of using Apple intelligence comes in two colors only, which surprised me by the way, we get black and white,

Jeff Battersby (6m 34s)

Apple going all in on not making anything in color. 16.1 inch

Jeff Battersby (6m 42s)

super retina, what, what, what, what, what? Oh, six, 6.1.

Tom Anderson (6m 42s)

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Jeff Battersby (6m 48s)

You know, I'm always oversizing it. 6.1 inch 16. Holy smokes.

Jeff Battersby (6m 56s)

Yeah, I promise way more than I can deliver. 6.1 inch super retina XDR OLED display. It has an action button. It has Apple intelligence support visual intelligence using the action button, which by the way, is supposedly coming to the 15 as well. I'm on the beta right now. And I haven't tried playing with

Tom Anderson (6m 57s)

That'd be big.

Jeff Battersby (7m 17s)

it. But that is supposedly coming there. So yeah, Apple Intel, sorry, visual intelligence using the action button. A new Apple developed C one cellular modem. 48 megapixel

Jeff Battersby (7m 32s)

fusion camera with a 2x telephoto and 4k video capability satellite safety features 12 hours longer, more

Jeff Battersby (7m 41s)

battery life than the iPhone SE uses USB C spare parts.

Jeff Battersby (7m 48s)

There is no magsafe. It does. I don't even know how to pronounce that. Qi, Qi, Qi, Qi, Qi charging up to 7.5 watts, Qi Wiz, I don't know how to say anything. And it priced at 128 gig model is $599, $256 is $699, $512 is $899. Do want to point out and this is something that.

Tom Anderson (7m 53s)

Chee.

Tom Anderson (7m 54s)

Chee.

Tom Anderson (7m 55s)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (7m 57s)

Chee whiz, Jeff!

Jeff Battersby (8m 18s)

Your favorite guy, John Gruber pointed out in a post that he did this last week is that now you can buy phones in $100 increments all the way up the line.

Jeff Battersby (8m 30s)

So it's it's a it's an interesting breakdown.

Jeff Battersby (8m 34s)

So you can basically jump for $100 from one to the next leapfrogging each one, which is kind of interesting.

Tom Anderson (8m 41s)

That's across all of them, right?

Jeff Battersby (8m 43s)

All right.

Jeff Battersby (8m 43s)

What do you think of it?

Tom Anderson (8m 44s)

16, like 16 E, 16 to 16 pros, not the specific model.

Jeff Battersby (8m 45s)

Correct it.

Jeff Battersby (8m 46s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (8m 47s)

Yes, right.

Jeff Battersby (8m 49s)

Not in this model range, right?

Jeff Battersby (8m 51s)

Correct.

Jeff Battersby (8m 52s)

No, no, no from from all across all of Apple's iPhones.

Jeff Battersby (8m 56s)

You can you can buy something that's $100 more each each jump.

Tom Anderson (9m 2s)

right. I think it'll, I think it's going to be a great phone. I think that there's been some

Jeff Battersby (9m 4s)

All right.

Tom Anderson (9m 11s)

complaining that, you know, the SE was considerably less to get into that. And so now you don't have that kind of that, what we'll say the low price option for the phone. So it's 600. But I think the trade off there is you're getting a modern phone. And I think Apple wanted wanted to do that for the Apple Intelligence component.

Jeff Battersby (9m 17s)

Mm-hmm, all right six hundred bucks. That's not low

Jeff Battersby (9m 27s)

Yeah, definitely are

Tom Anderson (9m 33s)

But like I would, the SC never really set all that well with me just because it did feel like leftover parts to me, like it, it was like, because it had the, yeah, I mean, it had the home button forever and it looked really, really old and so I'm kind of glad to see them do this, you know, in terms of, well, will people buy it because it's more expensive than the SC?

Jeff Battersby (9m 41s)

Mm-hmm for what reason

Jeff Battersby (9m 46s)

The Frankenstein model

Tom Anderson (10m 2s)

And will they, that's Apple's problem to figure out and market will decide that.

Tom Anderson (10m 7s)

But, and I imagine this particular phone will be subsidized a lot by the carriers to get people in.

Tom Anderson (10m 14s)

But I think hardware wise, I think it's pretty good, you know, I think the battery life is great.

Tom Anderson (10m 20s)

I think no MagSafe sucks, typical Apple, they get you 90% there and then they take out something that would have cost them what?

Jeff Battersby (10m 23s)

Yeah, that's a little weird

Jeff Battersby (10m 29s)

There is some talk that this is because of the C1 cellular modem. I don't know whether that's BS or true, you know

Jeff Battersby (10m 36s)

That that's something about that new money. Yeah

Tom Anderson (10m 36s)

Well, they better figure that out because if that's the case, but, um, so that,

Jeff Battersby (10m 41s)

I mean, let me ask you this question. How often do you use MagSafe? Okay, me not that much

Tom Anderson (10m 41s)

that kind of sucks all the time.

Tom Anderson (10m 46s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (10m 47s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (10m 48s)

I'd never plug.

Tom Anderson (10m 48s)

I just throw it on MagSafe charger on the desk.

Tom Anderson (10m 52s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (10m 52s)

Um, USB-C is good.

Tom Anderson (10m 55s)

Let's say one less piece of lightning or one less device with lightning left.

Jeff Battersby (10m 59s)

When I think it's one less strike of lightning

Tom Anderson (10m 59s)

Uh, right.

Tom Anderson (11m 3s)

Uh, so that's good.

Tom Anderson (11m 4s)

Satellite safety features, I think, are nice.

Jeff Battersby (11m 5s)

Mm-hmm

Tom Anderson (11m 6s)

I know Apple's been working on that modem stuff for a while, you know,

Tom Anderson (11m 9s)

do you hear stories of that?

Tom Anderson (11m 11s)

Yes, no, yes, no.

Tom Anderson (11m 12s)

And so they've put it into this one.

Jeff Battersby (11m 14s)

which means we'll see it in the next model.

Tom Anderson (11m 14s)

And probably so.

Tom Anderson (11m 18s)

Yeah. And I think, you know, they're touting they're just the power efficiency that they've come up with,

Tom Anderson (11m 23s)

which is kind of one of their strong points with their chip

Tom Anderson (11m 26s)

designs and everything across the board anyway.

Tom Anderson (11m 29s)

And it will be interesting to see, now that they have this C1 chip.

Tom Anderson (11m 36s)

that's the modem, if that will trickle into the MacBook family,

Tom Anderson (11m 39s)

which I think would be great.

Tom Anderson (11m 41s)

I think that's overdue, but so maybe that's what they were waiting for.

Tom Anderson (11m 45s)

Maybe when we get, you know, refreshed computers, which by the way, the MacBook Air is due to get the M4 chip, probably this month, and that would be a nice little surprise feature to add to that, we'll see, right.

Jeff Battersby (11m 52s)

Mm-hmm

Jeff Battersby (11m 55s)

Yes

Jeff Battersby (11m 58s)

Yeah, so Yeah, it's an interesting phone and the camera's supposed to be pretty decent I'd like to play with it and see you know I I really presently and I might need to change this point of view, but I buy phones for the cameras

Jeff Battersby (12m 11s)

You know, that's really what I'm buying for so would be interesting to see what the quality is and then I could you know

Jeff Battersby (12m 19s)

Given to me Chris Freytag weakness

Jeff Battersby (12m 22s)

and pick up a Fujifilm camera.

Tom Anderson (12m 25s)

Hi Chris.

Jeff Battersby (12m 26s)

Yeah, how are you?

Jeff Battersby (12m 28s)

You got anything used you want to sell me?

Jeff Battersby (12m 32s)

The yeah, so there's there's a lot going on here.

Jeff Battersby (12m 35s)

I do find it odd that they you know,

Jeff Battersby (12m 37s)

this is usually a model.

Jeff Battersby (12m 39s)

Well, I shouldn't say that's the next model up.

Jeff Battersby (12m 42s)

The 16's not the 16 in this case the SE's the old ones

Jeff Battersby (12m 48s)

that had many colors,

Jeff Battersby (12m 49s)

but I'm surprised that this only has two colors.

Tom Anderson (12m 52s)

All right, not quite as many as the Pro, which is what, three, I think, three colors, is what that is.

Jeff Battersby (12m 52s)

That is interesting.

Jeff Battersby (13m 1s)

Mm-mm.

Tom Anderson (13m 6s)

But yeah, so we also got some new betas in the last week.

New Betas

Jeff Battersby (13m 9s)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (13m 10s)

We got the .4s I think we're up to.

Jeff Battersby (13m 12s)

Yes, correct.

Jeff Battersby (13m 13s)

Are you trying any of those or no?

Tom Anderson (13m 14s)

I just put 18.4 on my iPad last night, but that's the only one thus far.

Tom Anderson (13m 22s)

Got off the betas on my MacBook Air.

Tom Anderson (13m 25s)

I may jump back into it, but I can't remember why I jumped off.

Tom Anderson (13m 29s)

I think I only did that to see if there's any difference between the final release version and the last public beta or something, but it's for work stuff.

Jeff Battersby (13m 34s)

Gotcha Yeah, I'm on the betas now on on my MacBook Pro my iPad in my iPhone

Jeff Battersby (13m 42s)

This computer that I record on down here. I try not to do that just so we can record just in case something goes wanky

Jeff Battersby (13m 49s)

Like I said, I have not yet tried to see if visual intelligence works on that supposedly that was in this beta I just haven't had a chance to do that But a couple things in this new beta one that I really like is Apple and Apple news+ has added a

Apple News+ Food

Jeff Battersby (14m 5s)

I

Jeff Battersby (14m 8s)

Am very much a

Jeff Battersby (14m 11s)

Very much a New York Times

Jeff Battersby (14m 14s)

Cooking app guy. I love that and then I have a couple other subs

Jeff Battersby (14m 18s)

This does not include the New York Times. That's not one of the things that comes up in Apple's news+

Jeff Battersby (14m 24s)

but it does have the ability for you to

Jeff Battersby (14m 28s)

See recipes, which I've seen quite a few and then you can save them to a recipe book

Jeff Battersby (14m 32s)

Which is part of part

Jeff Battersby (14m 34s)

of the news at which I kind of like that so good stuff mail app categories on Mac and iPad now

Jeff Battersby (14m 41s)

Which I like that unified feel I am using the categories

Jeff Battersby (14m 47s)

Quite liberally actually I like them a lot and so I'm happy with that and then you know some of the other Apple intelligence

Jeff Battersby (14m 53s)

Features such as priority notifications and summaries that still suck

Jeff Battersby (14m 59s)

Suck they just suck. I won't say what they suck

Jeff Battersby (15m 4s)

And it have you a fool around with the Apple vision probate is at all no

Tom Anderson (15m 10s)

I have not, no, but we'll talk about that in a second.

Jeff Battersby (15m 11s)

Okay

Tom Anderson (15m 15s)

Real quick, before we forget,

Jeff Battersby (15m 16s)

Mm-hmm yes food stuff

Tom Anderson (15m 16s)

you mentioned the food stuff that's in food stuffs,

Tom Anderson (15m 20s)

Apple News Plus food.

Tom Anderson (15m 22s)

So I looked at that this morning and they've done a couple of nice things in there.

Tom Anderson (15m 27s)

So if you go into the recipe section,

Tom Anderson (15m 29s)

it gives you the recipe, of course.

Tom Anderson (15m 30s)

And so down the, at least on iPad,

Tom Anderson (15m 32s)

I didn't, I don't have it on the phone.

Tom Anderson (15m 33s)

So maybe you could look at it and let me know.

Tom Anderson (15m 35s)

But on the left-hand side of the recipe,

Tom Anderson (15m 40s)

and then on the right-hand side,

Tom Anderson (15m 43s)

right two-thirds probably you've got the directions.

Tom Anderson (15m 46s)

What's cool with the ingredients is as you add them in,

Tom Anderson (15m 49s)

so maybe you're just kind of prepping and getting all your ingredients ready.

Tom Anderson (15m 52s)

You can tap them off on the list of ingredients and it will change the color shading on them.

Jeff Battersby (15m 54s)

Oh, I haven't even tried that yet.

Tom Anderson (15m 58s)

Like, you know, yep, put that in,

Tom Anderson (15m 59s)

put that in, put that in.

Tom Anderson (16m 1s)

But really slick, I thought, was in the directions.

Tom Anderson (16m 4s)

So if it says, you know, bake for two hours,

Tom Anderson (16m 8s)

The two hours is.

Tom Anderson (16m 10s)

Actually a shortcut to start a timer for two hours and so when you touch that it's like start a timer and you can adjust it to it's not set to two hours. Maybe you want it only for an hour, so I thought that was pretty nice. So they've they've put some thought into the design and it looks pretty good.

Jeff Battersby (16m 24s)

Yeah, I'm gonna have to play with it. I haven't done it yet. Maybe I'll find a recipe I'm getting ready to go grocery shopping after this, so maybe I'll find a

Jeff Battersby (16m 32s)

Recipe I wonder if if you can add ingredients directly to your shopping list - that's a and

Tom Anderson (16m 36s)

I tried that and I didn't see a way to do that.

Jeff Battersby (16m 38s)

Yeah, okay, right, so we're halfway there

Tom Anderson (16m 39s)

Yeah, I even tried like a long press to see if it would pop up a little thing,

Tom Anderson (16m 43s)

add to a groceries list or something,

Jeff Battersby (16m 44s)

No doesn't all right, right

Tom Anderson (16m 44s)

which you have to save something for updates.

Tom Anderson (16m 47s)

So I'm sure it wouldn't surprise me if they added that,

Tom Anderson (16m 50s)

like down the road.

Vision Pro Update

Tom Anderson (16m 53s)

Then no, Apple intelligence on the Vision Pro.

Tom Anderson (16m 55s)

I was happy to see that.

Tom Anderson (16m 56s)

Shows they're still investing into the Vision Pro.

Jeff Battersby (17m 1s)

After you've invested $3,500.

Tom Anderson (17m 3s)

I did, and I will say I've...

Tom Anderson (17m 6s)

I used it four times this week.

Jeff Battersby (17m 9s)

Really?

Tom Anderson (17m 9s)

I did.

Tom Anderson (17m 10s)

It wasn't for any extended period of time,

Tom Anderson (17m 12s)

like it wasn't for like hours,

Tom Anderson (17m 14s)

but watched a couple of videos and there was a new immersive video that came out,

Tom Anderson (17m 23s)

I think it was this week that it came out.

Tom Anderson (17m 26s)

So they've got a couple of different series that they're doing and this,

Tom Anderson (17m 29s)

they have one called Adventure.

Tom Anderson (17m 31s)

And so the video for this one was Deepwater Solo and it actually came out yesterday.

Tom Anderson (17m 36s)

And Kai Leitner is a cliff climber,

Tom Anderson (17m 39s)

I guess you would say, rock climber,

Jeff Battersby (17m 41s)

Mm-hmm. Oh.

Tom Anderson (17m 41s)

but these are cliffs in this particular video,

Tom Anderson (17m 43s)

over water.

Tom Anderson (17m 45s)

And it was in Spain and it was gorgeous.

Tom Anderson (17m 51s)

And it also had me sweating profusely.

Tom Anderson (17m 56s)

Because, I mean, of course, you've got the closeups and you're just looking down and it's like,

Jeff Battersby (17m 59s)

Was it?

Tom Anderson (18m 1s)

and it was pretty good.

Tom Anderson (18m 4s)

This is probably my favorite one.

Tom Anderson (18m 6s)

That they've done so far.

Tom Anderson (18m 7s)

So it's good to see them progressing and it's not too surprising.

Tom Anderson (18m 12s)

I am sure they're figuring a lot of things out too, with, you know, how to do these things and okay, what worked, what didn't, and this one was a little longer too, it was about 15 minutes.

Tom Anderson (18m 21s)

So it was nice to see that a bunch of them were short.

Tom Anderson (18m 23s)

They had another one.

Tom Anderson (18m 24s)

Uh, they came out recently.

Tom Anderson (18m 26s)

I, I want to say it was Arctic surfing and it was in Norway, uh, with, uh, some surfers that like to surf.

Tom Anderson (18m 36s)

in the winter and, uh, but it was really short.

Jeff Battersby (18m 37s)

Oh, not me.

Tom Anderson (18m 39s)

It was only like six and a half minutes.

Jeff Battersby (18m 40s)

I'm sorry, short?

Tom Anderson (18m 41s)

Um, yeah, probably it looked really cold.

Jeff Battersby (18m 44s)

Shrinkage?

Jeff Battersby (18m 45s)

That kind of short, pal?

Tom Anderson (18m 50s)

So, uh, but they're doing that.

Tom Anderson (18m 52s)

And so, you know, kudos on the last one that that was good.

Tom Anderson (18m 56s)

I liked it.

Jeff Battersby (18m 57s)

Okay, good. Okay.

Tom Anderson (18m 57s)

So hopefully they'll, they'll keep that, that up.

Tom Anderson (18m 59s)

And it seems like the pace is picking up a little bit.

Tom Anderson (19m 2s)

Um, which is nice, but you know, I joked around there with them, you know,

Tom Anderson (19m 6s)

and there's a lot of stuff that goes around.

Tom Anderson (19m 9s)

Like the, the stories will come out and they'll say they've shut down production for the vision pro.

Tom Anderson (19m 14s)

And it's like, well, that doesn't mean they've discontinued the vision pro.

Tom Anderson (19m 17s)

It just means, you know, maybe they're not making any more because they've got inventory or there's something else coming up or who knows, but you know,

Tom Anderson (19m 25s)

they, if, if you look around and especially I see this on LinkedIn,

Tom Anderson (19m 28s)

there are a lot of businesses that are looking into that thing for training of different sorts.

Tom Anderson (19m 33s)

Um, and so I think it's, I forget what the number was.

Tom Anderson (19m 36s)

But it was a significant number of like Fortune 500 companies have got them for some, you know, we're not talking huge numbers because they're just not making that many, but you know, they're, they're, they're still working on it.

Tom Anderson (19m 47s)

And I think Vision OS is probably the long play here.

Tom Anderson (19m 51s)

Vision Pro, the hardware is a starting point and where it goes, who knows?

Tom Anderson (19m 55s)

But, um, but you know, Vision OS is still gorgeous.

Tom Anderson (20m)

Like every time I put it on, I'm like, man, this looks great.

Tom Anderson (20m 3s)

It just wasn't quite as heavy.

Tom Anderson (20m 6s)

That stupid battery with the cable.

Jeff Battersby (20m 6s)

Right, all the things that you said, and I think one of the things is too, you know,

Jeff Battersby (20m 14s)

Apple really is, for better or for worse, good at shrinking things, you know, making things smaller and smaller, whether or not, you know, anybody's really asking for smaller,

Jeff Battersby (20m 25s)

they're good at doing that.

Jeff Battersby (20m 28s)

So you know that that's going to happen with the Vision Pro.

Jeff Battersby (20m 32s)

eventually going to get something that is that is small.

Jeff Battersby (20m 36s)

Or whether or not it's in line with Meta's glasses, I don't know.

Jeff Battersby (20m 42s)

Whether or not I love Meta's glasses, I don't know.

Jeff Battersby (20m 47s)

By the way, anybody wants to watch a really interesting kind of dark movie.

Jeff Battersby (20m 53s)

There's a movie called Anon, A-N-O-N, which is a world in which everybody has implants in their eyes and that allow them to...

Jeff Battersby (21m 6s)

It basically records everything that's coming through their eyes.

Jeff Battersby (21m 12s)

Scary, good.

Jeff Battersby (21m 15s)

Highly, highly recommend it, definitely recommend it as a movie to watch.

Jeff Battersby (21m 21s)

I just happened to catch wind of it this last week and watched it.

Tom Anderson (21m 25s)

I've been looking at those Meta glasses.

Jeff Battersby (21m 27s)

Yeah, they look interesting. I won't do anything with Meta, but go ahead.

Tom Anderson (21m 28s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (21m 30s)

That's my biggest hesitation with it.

Tom Anderson (21m 32s)

Like I have a very light prescription.

Tom Anderson (21m 36s)

And so it's like a minus one.

Tom Anderson (21m 38s)

And so I wear contacts most of the time during the week

Tom Anderson (21m 43s)

for work and it's mostly for distance,

Tom Anderson (21m 44s)

but I'm at the point now where up close is a struggle because, you know, I'm on the other side of 50,

Tom Anderson (21m 50s)

just like our show episodes.

Tom Anderson (21m 51s)

and it's causing me some problems.

Tom Anderson (21m 56s)

And so I was like, you know, I might have to switch to glasses because all weekend I don't wear them.

Tom Anderson (22m 2s)

I drive around, you know, 'cause I know the town and the layout and street signs.

Tom Anderson (22m 5s)

And I can see fine, like for objects,

Tom Anderson (22m 8s)

like there's no chance I'm not going to be able to see something in the street or anything like that.

Tom Anderson (22m 11s)

So it's not a safety thing.

Tom Anderson (22m 14s)

And so I was like, maybe I'll get a pair of glasses just to, you know, wear for distance.

Tom Anderson (22m 19s)

And then when I'm at my desk at work,

Tom Anderson (22m 21s)

I'll just take them off and everything's good.

Tom Anderson (22m 23s)

And then there's--

Tom Anderson (22m 26s)

the listener of the show, and I won't say who it is in case he doesn't want me to, but

Tom Anderson (22m 31s)

he's had a pair for a few weeks now and seems to be liking them and their prescription of the Metis, yeah, and their prescriptions. And I was like, "Hmm." But it's just the Meta piece, like,

Jeff Battersby (22m 36s)

Of the metas? Okay.

Tom Anderson (22m 45s)

you know, I like the idea of being able to take pictures hands-free and things like that if I wanted to. And just being a nerd, I like trying them out. And they're not prohibitively expensive.

Tom Anderson (22m 53s)

I mean, they're like a tenth the cost of a vision.

Tom Anderson (22m 56s)

So I don't know, I don't know if it will or not, just because it's meta.

Jeff Battersby (23m)

Little little shout out here to Gene Hackman who passed away just a couple days ago actually apparently on the 17th he actually passed away, and they just found him a few days ago, but

Tom Anderson (23m 9s)

Yeah, they're still trying to figure out that.

Jeff Battersby (23m 10s)

What happened I know?

Jeff Battersby (23m 12s)

But I am his character and enemy of the state more and more I don't know if you've seen that movie highly recommend it, but you know this super paranoid

Jeff Battersby (23m 22s)

Living in a Faraday box Faraday cage, that's me, baby

Jeff Battersby (23m 26s)

I'm not sticking anything on my eyes that medic can see.

Tom Anderson (23m 30s)

Dude, dude, we need to start a conspiracy theory show.

Jeff Battersby (23m 30s)

Let's do it.

Jeff Battersby (23m 36s)

Might as well.

Jeff Battersby (23m 37s)

All the way.

Jeff Battersby (23m 38s)

I'm halfway there.

Tom Anderson (23m 40s)

Welcome, I've been there for a while.

Jeff Battersby (23m 43s)

So anyway.

Tom Anderson (23m 44s)

It's our destiny.

Jeff Battersby (23m 44s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (23m 45s)

Anyway.

Jeff Battersby (23m 46s)

Yeah, I did.

Tom Anderson (23m 47s)

This week on Software Side of Things.

Highland Pro Updates

Jeff Battersby (23m 49s)

I'm really excited.

Jeff Battersby (23m 50s)

And I'm kind of disappointed in myself.

Jeff Battersby (23m 52s)

I didn't realize that they had moved their beta channel from Slack to Discord.

Jeff Battersby (23m 58s)

And my favorite writer...

Jeff Battersby (24m 1s)

Highland Pro has a version coming out on Tuesday.

Jeff Battersby (24m 5s)

So tomorrow, for those of you first-time listeners,

Jeff Battersby (24m 9s)

the moment that we get here,

Jeff Battersby (24m 12s)

you know, when we arrive in your podcast feed.

Jeff Battersby (24m 15s)

Highland Pro, I've been using Highland for ages as my writing app of choice.

Jeff Battersby (24m 21s)

It's amazing.

Jeff Battersby (24m 23s)

Have written, really, everything from grad school papers to poetry, short stories, novels.

Jeff Battersby (24m 31s)

articles for various magazines.

Jeff Battersby (24m 33s)

Over the last 10 years or so,

Jeff Battersby (24m 35s)

I've been using that application.

Jeff Battersby (24m 36s)

It's fully text-based, marked down at the back end,

Jeff Battersby (24m 41s)

but nothing that you can see.

Jeff Battersby (24m 43s)

Really simple, straightforward, good stuff.

Jeff Battersby (24m 46s)

The beauty of it is, unlike other writing programs,

Jeff Battersby (24m 50s)

and let me just say that this is designed for screenwriting, novel writing, paper writing.

Jeff Battersby (24m 55s)

It's like any kind of writing that you wanna do,

Jeff Battersby (24m 57s)

you can do it.

Jeff Battersby (24m 58s)

that it was originally.

Jeff Battersby (25m)

created by John August, who, another shout out, we're doing his musical Big Fish right now.

Jeff Battersby (25m 8s)

That's what I'm stage managing.

Jeff Battersby (25m 9s)

He was the creator, the writer of the movie Big Fish, and this is a essentially text-based writing application that he created with a group of people, and they are now upgrading to a version that will run and I've kind of been complaining.

Jeff Battersby (25m 30s)

about this for a while.

Jeff Battersby (25m 32s)

It's going to run across all platforms so that there will be a Highland Pro for Mac Highland Pro for iMac Highland Pro for high pad.

Jeff Battersby (25m 43s)

I do not think there's one for Vision Pro yet, but that kind of makes a little bit of sense to me anyway, but this is an updated version unified across all of those platforms, which

Jeff Battersby (25m 54s)

I love because now that's going to give me the opportunity if I, you know, have some brilliant thing that I want to write

Jeff Battersby (26m)

and to something I'm working on while I'm standing in the grocery store store line.

Jeff Battersby (26m 4s)

I can do it with my phone a couple of new features.

Jeff Battersby (26m 8s)

There's a lookup feature.

Jeff Battersby (26m 10s)

It's not using AI per se but if you type slash and then some question you get definitions for words or you can get you know,

Jeff Battersby (26m 18s)

when did the Civil War end you can get you know dates on things like that within the the thing that you're writing.

Jeff Battersby (26m 25s)

There's a shelf feature which they've always had something called a bin, but they have a shelf feature.

Jeff Battersby (26m 30s)

There's a title page builder, but there's some other new things coming as far as title page creation.

Jeff Battersby (26m 49s)

There's some custom pages that you can create, so if you needed to put a preface or a cast list or a location rundown, you've got that there.

Jeff Battersby (27m)

Tons of new features coming to this.

Jeff Battersby (27m 2s)

They've been talking about this for quite some time.

Jeff Battersby (27m 6s)

It is the best writing tool that I have ever used, and that is not an overstatement.

Jeff Battersby (27m 17s)

It's capable of handling every single thing that I've had to write over the last many years, so I'm excited about that.

Jeff Battersby (27m 24s)

It will be subscription-based, $60 a year.

Jeff Battersby (27m 31s)

month.

Jeff Battersby (27m 32s)

It's not, so I'll do $60 a year, but the beauty of it is, and I get this, this app has essentially been free for as long as I've used it.

Jeff Battersby (27m 44s)

I paid for a pro version to get some other capabilities that were there and to support the company because they do really, really good work and they're committed to it.

Jeff Battersby (27m 57s)

So $60 a year for apps.

Jeff Battersby (28m)

platforms, and I'm going to be happy to pay that.

Tom Anderson (28m 6s)

Is it going to sync through iCloud sync or any idea?

Jeff Battersby (28m 9s)

That's my guess. I already save all my writing in iCloud anyway. I just have a folder set up for what it is that I'm doing.

Jeff Battersby (28m 16s)

So my guess is, yeah, it's going to sync across, sync using, using iCloud.

Jeff Battersby (28m 21s)

They don't link any data to you. They do look at usage and diagnostics data.

Jeff Battersby (28m 27s)

So this is a super private application.

Jeff Battersby (28m 31s)

It gives you the ability. Here's kind of the beauty of this for those doing screenwriting or playwriting or things.

Jeff Battersby (28m 40s)

Final Draft is kind of the king of the hill or has been over many years.

Jeff Battersby (28m 47s)

This is, this is capable of importing any Final Draft files and saving to a Final Draft format if you need to do that.

Jeff Battersby (28m 57s)

And the beauty of it is, this is, you know, Final Draft is proprietary, very proprietary.

Jeff Battersby (29m 4s)

This is non-proprietary. So good stuff.

Jeff Battersby (29m 7s)

and you can find out.

Jeff Battersby (29m 9s)

more information about this at quote unquote, apps.com and I will put that in the show notes.

Tom Anderson (29m 17s)

Speaking of notes, so for the last 15 minutes or so that we have with our conversation with Bill McClain last episode, which by the way, if you haven't listened to, I encourage you to go back and do that.

Jeff’s Forever Notes

Tom Anderson (29m 32s)

That was a good show.

Tom Anderson (29m 34s)

Uh, he brought up, uh, you know, he uses Apple notes and then he has kind of built on top of that, a little system using the forever notes, uh, system.

Jeff Battersby (29m 46s)

Oh

Tom Anderson (29m 47s)

So that intrigued you and tell us what you've been up to the last couple of weeks.

Jeff Battersby (29m 48s)

My god

Jeff Battersby (29m 51s)

So, um, yeah, he mentioned it and so I've been using Apple Notes for a long time if we use for this show craft

Jeff Battersby (29m 59s)

we tried for a period of time to use notes as a means of

Jeff Battersby (30m 6s)

Doing whatever we were doing on the show, but it kind of drove you bonkers

Jeff Battersby (30m 11s)

So we we switched over to craft, but I use notes for everything I have

Jeff Battersby (30m 16s)

an idea I write it down I said that you know during the month of February which just ended yesterday I write a poem a day and I had folders for every single one of those poems and it gets a little onerous to manage and get to those things so when when we had that conversation last week with mr.

Jeff Battersby (30m 40s)

McLean about forever notes I started

Jeff Battersby (30m 46s)

looking at it literally as soon as we finished recording the episode just kind of see and I am now it's two weeks later so we recorded that two weeks ago two weeks later I'm all in I I really have found this to be an excellent way of managing all the notes that I have in a way that's simple and thoughtful I have not converted everything completely right now I'm syncing everything I just open notes on this computer and it's been a

Jeff Battersby (31m 16s)

long time since I've done that. So it's all all sinking over as we speak. But what what forever notes, and we'll put a link to it in the in the show notes as well what forever notes does is rather than a folder system uses tags and smart folders in order to organize everything that you're doing, uses a concept of

Jeff Battersby (31m 40s)

a home note. And that home note has

Jeff Battersby (31m 47s)

essentially it becomes a centralized hub for you to be able to link to. So I have created a home note that has writing theater poetry cocktails because I bartend books in movies. I'm not completely built it out yet. I'm still trying to refine that the the notes for writing theater and poetry take me to a writing note that then has a bunch of sub notes underneath that.

Jeff Battersby (32m 16s)

And so I've got novels that I'm working on,

Jeff Battersby (32m 19s)

short stories and plays that I'm working on,

Jeff Battersby (32m 21s)

poetry, like I said, that I've been doing every day.

Jeff Battersby (32m 25s)

And what you can do then is you can link to these groups of notes or individual notes,

Jeff Battersby (32m 30s)

depending on what it is that you're doing,

Jeff Battersby (32m 32s)

using the tagging system.

Jeff Battersby (32m 35s)

I will verily confess that it is not 100% perfect,

Jeff Battersby (32m 41s)

mostly due to limitations that are in apples.

Jeff Battersby (32m 46s)

For example, you can link directly to other notes in apple notes,

Jeff Battersby (32m 51s)

but you cannot link to folders or to smart folders.

Jeff Battersby (32m 55s)

So you're limited in terms of what you can do that way.

Jeff Battersby (32m 58s)

And so the only way to work around that is to use apple shortcuts.

Jeff Battersby (33m 2s)

So it took me a little while to figure that out.

Jeff Battersby (33m 5s)

I will say for the first probably four or five days that I spent working on this on this and trying to figure out whether or not.

Jeff Battersby (33m 16s)

Forever Notes would work for me.

Jeff Battersby (33m 19s)

I was banging into this limitation in Apple Notes.

Jeff Battersby (33m 24s)

And so I started digging around both the forum that is provided with Forever Notes, a really good forum,

Jeff Battersby (33m 36s)

and then also the documentation that's provided by Mattias,

Jeff Battersby (33m 39s)

the guy that created this.

Jeff Battersby (33m 42s)

And, uh, finally figured out how it is that I.

Jeff Battersby (33m 46s)

That I could make this work in the way that I need to.

Jeff Battersby (33m 50s)

And once I figured that out, other than the initial setup part, which I have to create a shortcut for every single smart folder that I want to link to, um, now that I have that created, I just duplicate it, change whatever it is I need to change for a particular one, change the title on it, and then, and then have that link, this works brilliantly for me.

Jeff Battersby (34m 11s)

It's, uh, one of the things that, that, uh, Mr.

Jeff Battersby (34m 16s)

Klain said that he said was problematic for him is he has, uh, 1200 notes.

Jeff Battersby (34m 22s)

I did a little cleaning before I started working on this.

Jeff Battersby (34m 24s)

I had over 1100 notes.

Jeff Battersby (34m 26s)

I'm now down to 982, you know, after tossing some stuff that I didn't need anymore, and then I had dozens of folders.

Jeff Battersby (34m 36s)

And that was another complaint that he had is that he had dozens of folders as well, and he just didn't see how to do it.

Jeff Battersby (34m 42s)

One of the things about notes is you can create.

Jeff Battersby (34m 46s)

Small, but very important.

Jeff Battersby (34m 48s)

Smart Folders from any folder so what it does is it ends up tagging that particular note with the folder name and then you link to the Smart Folder.

Jeff Battersby (34m 57s)

So this is going to raise an obvious question.

Jeff Battersby (35m)

So you're telling me that you have just as many Smart Folders as you did folders?

Jeff Battersby (35m 4s)

The answer is yes.

Jeff Battersby (35m 7s)

But the difference is when you're using a folder you have to open up Notes and then you have to go to Folders and then you have to find the folder that it is that you want to work with and once you find the folder

Jeff Battersby (35m 18s)

with you have to go down into that substructure when you're using tags in the shortcuts feature in the smart folder feature for example for the poetry that I have you know the the stuff that I've been writing for 2025 I created a shortcut that only looks at the tagged items for February 2025 poems I click that link and it brings me just to those particular items that I have

Jeff Battersby (35m 48s)

which is amazing it's it's truly simple I see every single poem that I've written in for you know this particular this particular time so it's it it's a very thoughtful simple way to organize that I will confess that in the past especially when I was blogging or doing anything like that I have immense difficulty with tags because I want to create a tag for every blank.

Jeff Battersby (36m 18s)

and then it becomes, you know, unmanageable.

Jeff Battersby (36m 22s)

So I'm trying to be really thoughtful about that and only tag things very specifically,

Jeff Battersby (36m 30s)

not as, you know, not as wildly as I was doing when I was tagging websites.

Tom Anderson (36m 37s)

Yeah, easy for that stuff to get out of control

Jeff Battersby (36m 37s)

But it really is, and I do have a lot of tags I can see right now.

Jeff Battersby (36m 41s)

I've got probably close to 20, maybe 30.

Jeff Battersby (36m 46s)

But...

Jeff Battersby (36m 48s)

It is working in a way that I'm really happy with, and what it does is it simplifies the overview of all the notes that I'm working with.

Jeff Battersby (36m 59s)

The beauty of it is, now that I'm not working on a poem every day in February, I have access to that if I want to, but I can get rid of that from my writing page because I'm not currently working on that, so I can move it and then I have it set in stone by stone.

Jeff Battersby (37m 18s)

Basically on a poetry page that I'm using, and I have links to all that.

Jeff Battersby (37m 25s)

Really slick, really happy that I learned about this, and I've now sent a feature request to Apple saying, "Hey dudes, let's make it so you can link directly to a smart folder or directly to a folder folder.

Jeff Battersby (37m 45s)

It seems dumb that you can't do that.

Jeff Battersby (37m 48s)

If that were in place, then I'd be able to bypass the shortcuts piece of it altogether.

Tom Anderson (37m 51s)

Shortcuts

Tom Anderson (37m 54s)

Well, my first statement is welcome to the rabbit hole of power note-taking

Jeff Battersby (38m 1s)

Okay, thanks.

Tom Anderson (38m 4s)

Your life will never be the same in in many good ways and it's

Tom Anderson (38m 9s)

Some did I really just spend three hours doing that I did

Tom Anderson (38m 15s)

And I think that's important to

Tom Anderson (38m 18s)

Well, not that, but one important thing to note about this.

Tom Anderson (38m 21s)

Framework is so it's forever, myforevernotes.com.

Tom Anderson (38m 26s)

You can go read all about it.

Tom Anderson (38m 27s)

I think he even provides the docs, the shortcuts, everything to help you get it set up.

Tom Anderson (38m 31s)

But you could easily replicate this type of a framework in other note-taking apps.

Tom Anderson (38m 39s)

Um, so that's, that's one of the things I liked about it is yes, he has focused on Apple notes, which I think is, which is great because it really does make Apple notes more powerful.

Tom Anderson (38m 51s)

But the concepts with, you know, having a homepage with links to different

Tom Anderson (38m 56s)

sections and everything, um, is something that you can do.

Tom Anderson (39m 2s)

You can do that in craft.

Tom Anderson (39m 3s)

You can do that in obsidian.

Tom Anderson (39m 4s)

You can do that in a bunch of places.

Tom Anderson (39m 5s)

And I think that's, what's great about it because if you're like, well, that's nice Jeff, but I don't use Apple notes.

Tom Anderson (39m 11s)

That's okay.

Tom Anderson (39m 11s)

Just, you know, if you're struggling or looking for better ways to organize your notes, wherever they are, as long as it's a modern note-taking app, I think, go check it out because.

Tom Anderson (39m 21s)

Linking and everything, I think that's really what makes this work is that Apple added those links to other notes in recent updates and, and that's, that's where a lot of the power for it comes from.

Tom Anderson (39m 33s)

And there are other systems and he mentions these down at the bottom, you know, with the, it's kind of a little thank you note for inspiration to some of the other ones, like the bullet journal, Tiago Forte's PARA method,

Tom Anderson (39m 43s)

which is projects, areas, resources, and archives believes what that stands for.

Tom Anderson (39m 48s)

Which I've looked at those a little bit.

Tom Anderson (39m 49s)

Um, don't.

Tom Anderson (39m 52s)

use those per se, but I'm sure I've picked little bits and pieces from them

Tom Anderson (39m 57s)

into my setup, but, um, how far did you go with this?

Tom Anderson (40m 3s)

Because as I was watching some videos on it, like he has, there's hubs.

Tom Anderson (40m 8s)

I think there are collections, there are journals, um, daily notes,

Tom Anderson (40m 12s)

monthly notes, yearly notes.

Tom Anderson (40m 14s)

Uh, so where did you end up?

Jeff Battersby (40m 17s)

There's nothing about journaling that I would be doing with this, so I'd skip that completely.

Jeff Battersby (40m 22s)

That's not a thing that I'm using, that I'm using at all.

Jeff Battersby (40m 27s)

I have created basically everything else, and that's kind of the beauty of this is he's providing ... His name is Matthias Hilse, I think I said Matthias previously, H-I-L-S-E.

Jeff Battersby (40m 48s)

What he's done is he has created a framework around which you can do whatever it is that works for you.

Jeff Battersby (40m 56s)

He's giving you ... Initially when I started doing this, I was being really strict about I need to create a calendar, and projects, and areas, and work it out that way.

Jeff Battersby (41m 7s)

In the end, what I've ended up doing is I've created what works for me specifically.

Jeff Battersby (41m 17s)

is using that home note, breaking it down, and I'm going to add some others because I haven't done this completely yet, but that writing area, theater, things that I'm working on presently, poetry area, which I do write a poem every day in February, but I also write poetry throughout the year.

Jeff Battersby (41m 36s)

It's not ... It's just a challenge to do it for the 28 or 29 days of February for me.

Jeff Battersby (41m 43s)

I was using

Jeff Battersby (41m 47s)

at a place where I was bartending,

Jeff Battersby (41m 50s)

I used the cocktails to store all sorts of new cocktails that I was working on.

Jeff Battersby (41m 55s)

But it was a hassle to get to it.

Jeff Battersby (41m 57s)

I literally had to navigate my way through that whole structure.

Jeff Battersby (42m)

So now this is right on that home note.

Jeff Battersby (42m 5s)

Tap it, and there I am.

Jeff Battersby (42m 6s)

I'm in the midst of cocktails and I can search within those cocktails to find the thing that I want to make that maybe I don't have yet in my brain.

Jeff Battersby (42m 14s)

So it's a really--

Jeff Battersby (42m 17s)

it's a really good way of being able to do that.

Jeff Battersby (42m 22s)

And this is one of the things that Bill McClain said--

Jeff Battersby (42m 29s)

Bill, right?

Jeff Battersby (42m 30s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (42m 31s)

I could use a few extra Benjamins myself.

Jeff Battersby (42m 31s)

Said the-- I wanted to call him Joe,

Jeff Battersby (42m 34s)

and I was like, wait a second.

Jeff Battersby (42m 36s)

We have Joe, and Joe Moyer, and Bill McClain.

Jeff Battersby (42m 38s)

We need more Benjamins.

Jeff Battersby (42m 41s)

Those are easier, difficult names to remember.

Jeff Battersby (42m 45s)  

• Yeah, well, that's a different Benjamin.

Jeff Battersby (42m 47s)

But yeah, thank you.

Jeff Battersby (42m 48s)

I can do that thing.

Jeff Battersby (42m 50s)

One of the things that Bill said that for him is not quite working is

Jeff Battersby (42m 57s)

he doesn't like extra notes.

Jeff Battersby (42m 59s)

And one of the things that the structure for the calendar does is creates a bunch of extra notes for journaling.

Jeff Battersby (43m 5s)

I'm not gonna use this for journaling.

Jeff Battersby (43m 7s)

That's just not a thing.

Jeff Battersby (43m 9s)

I really haven't journaled.

Jeff Battersby (43m 12s)

I write every day, but I haven't journaled in any kind of formal way for quite some time.

Jeff Battersby (43m 17s)

even though we had Joe Moyer on,

Jeff Battersby (43m 19s)

talking about the beauty of journaling, I know.

Tom Anderson (43m 20s)

He's going to be so upset with you.

Jeff Battersby (43m 22s)

I know, sorry, Joe.

Jeff Battersby (43m 25s)

But it's a,

Jeff Battersby (43m 29s)

I have, for what I currently use notes for,

Jeff Battersby (43m 33s)

which is anything that comes into my head if I don't have a paper notebook around,

Jeff Battersby (43m 38s)

and I often transfer those paper notebook notes,

Jeff Battersby (43m 42s)

for example, if I'm working on a novel,

Jeff Battersby (43m 43s)

I might have some genius idea while I'm doing something.

Jeff Battersby (43m 47s)

And it's not appropriate to be typing on a phone at that time.

Jeff Battersby (43m 50s)

But it's always appropriate to pull out a notebook and a pencil and, you know, scratch something out.

Jeff Battersby (43m 55s)

So I'll add those to the things that I'm working on.

Jeff Battersby (44m)

So I have not gone as deep dive as you possibly can.

Jeff Battersby (44m 8s)

But the beauty of it is that it's super customizable to suit your specific needs.

Jeff Battersby (44m 12s)

And I have begun to customize it to suit my needs.

Jeff Battersby (44m 15s)

So that's--

Jeff Battersby (44m 17s)

that's a long way of saying--

Jeff Battersby (44m 19s)

I'm kind of using a lot of it, but not all of it.

Jeff Battersby (44m 24s)

So home, yes.

Jeff Battersby (44m 25s)

Tags, obviously, have to do that.

Jeff Battersby (44m 27s)

Collections, kind of, maybe not in that way.

Jeff Battersby (44m 29s)

Hubs, yes.

Jeff Battersby (44m 31s)

Journal, no.

Tom Anderson (44m 33s)

Okay.

Tom Anderson (44m 34s)

Did you do anything organizationally within your note structure?

Tom Anderson (44m 38s)

Like, did you put the home into its folder of its own?

Jeff Battersby (44m 41s)

Because of the way that this is set up, he has created a couple of shortcuts to help you get set up in the beginning, including setting up those basic first notes.

Tom Anderson (44m 41s)

It's like their folder and then,

Tom Anderson (44m 42s)

or is it just in a bunch of loose notes?

Jeff Battersby (45m 2s)

One of those is a shortcut that gets created that I have on my phone, on my main home screen.

Jeff Battersby (45m 11s)

I also have it on my lock screen, so I can just tap it on the lock screen and it opens me up to the home note where I can navigate to anything else.

Jeff Battersby (45m 22s)

And the beauty of that home note again is that it's very clean.

Jeff Battersby (45m 24s)

It just has a very few items, you know, basically major subject areas that then link to, you know, more detailed areas.

Tom Anderson (45m 26s)

Right.

Jeff Battersby (45m 34s)

So it doesn't really matter where that home note is because you're using it, you're using

Tom Anderson (45m 42s)

Just going right to it, right?

Jeff Battersby (45m 42s)

the shortcuts that have been created.

Tom Anderson (45m 45s)

Yeah, that all sounds really good. And I think you know, it's so funny. We've said a couple of times. It's like we're in this

Tom Anderson (45m 51s)

Golden age of note-taking apps because they're they're so good now and there are so many to choose from I mean notes is free It's built-in Craft, of course, we've talked about we've talked about

Tom Anderson (46m 2s)

Obsidian there's gosh notion is a big one It's not a pure notes app, but it can be used obviously for that

Tom Anderson (46m 12s)

More capacities any type? I mean just goes on and on and on

Tom Anderson (46m 15s)

Lots of different things and you know, heck even the elephant is still around Evernote still around

Tom Anderson (46m 22s)

And and they're still there They've been you know, they they did a good bit of that early on and then lost their way and they're trying to come back But whatever different topic but especially with linking

Jeff Battersby (46m 32s)

I dumped them a long time ago.

Tom Anderson (46m 36s)

Because that that really opens up a lot of things and so that's why I was happy to see Apple add that to notes

Tom Anderson (46m 42s)

Recently, of course, you could always link to web pages and stuff But you know drop links in but to be able to link directly to your notes is great

Tom Anderson (46m 52s)

Where's it gonna go with that? I don't know but but oh, I know what I was gonna say

Jeff Battersby (46m 53s)

I don't know Tom, I can't follow them.

Jeff Battersby (46m 56s)

You need a good organizational system to help you out, pal.

Tom Anderson (46m 59s)

It's my brain is not that

Tom Anderson (47m 2s)

No, what I was going to say is like it it seems so far removed from like I have a note that's just text

Jeff Battersby (47m 12s)

And you have to search for it to find.

Tom Anderson (47m 12s)

Doesn't link to anything. It doesn't go anywhere. I've got a folder full of notes. I'm like, oh my gosh, that sounds absolutely dreadful now

Tom Anderson (47m 21s)

And and so what are you kind of looking at as you kind of so you haven't gone all the way yet?

Tom Anderson (47m 26s)

You've got some new things some things you're considering adding to it

Jeff Battersby (47m 30s)

I'm going to end up adding everything.

Tom Anderson (47m 30s)

What do you?

Jeff Battersby (47m 31s)

It's just a matter of, I really want to be thoughtful about how I do it.

Tom Anderson (47m 31s)

Everything, okay

Jeff Battersby (47m 36s)

Because as I said before, I am inclined to collect tags, a fine collection of tags, and I don't, I don't want to do that.

Tom Anderson (47m 44s)

Yeah, that'd be a good show title.

Jeff Battersby (47m 55s)

So that's the thing that I'm trying to do is I'm trying to be very thoughtful.

Jeff Battersby (47m 58s)

Well, some things were obvious.

Jeff Battersby (48m)

You know, the breakdowns were really obvious when I needed to work on them.

Jeff Battersby (48m 2s)

So it was easy.

Jeff Battersby (48m 3s)

And the conversion, and this is a nice feature of Apple notes is you can converge any, it can vert any existing folder into a smart folder and it will tag it with the name of that.

Jeff Battersby (48m 13s)

So that's some of what I was doing too, is I was renaming folders.

Jeff Battersby (48m 18s)

Cause I didn't want like 50 word, you know, I might have a title, say I have a poem that's titled, you know, 10 words or something like that.

Jeff Battersby (48m 26s)

And then I have a bunch of, a bunch of things underneath that.

Jeff Battersby (48m 30s)

I didn't want that as a tag.

Jeff Battersby (48m 33s)

I wanted, I wanted clean tags after which I could rename whatever it is that I was working on, but it's, uh, or link to, you know,

Jeff Battersby (48m 42s)

the link can be as wordy as it wants to be with the tag is being smart.

Jeff Battersby (48m 46s)

So I'm still working my way through how to handle particular things.

Tom Anderson (48m 49s)

Well, it's only been a couple of weeks, so, right.

Jeff Battersby (48m 51s)

It's only been two weeks, right?

Jeff Battersby (48m 52s)

And it took me the first week to really figure it out in a frustrating fashion initially.

Jeff Battersby (48m 58s)

And one of the things that I will say is--

Jeff Battersby (49m 1s)

Matthias, if you're listening, and you're probably not,

Jeff Battersby (49m 3s)

but if you're listening to this,

Jeff Battersby (49m 7s)

almost every single one of your videos needs to go one step further to say,

Jeff Battersby (49m 12s)

this is how I link for yourself to get something over.

Jeff Battersby (49m 18s)

'Cause it's good to leave a lot to the imagination,

Jeff Battersby (49m 21s)

and that's what you've done.

Jeff Battersby (49m 22s)

And I like that, but a full-scale follow-through,

Jeff Battersby (49m 28s)

Maybe even with, "Hey, here's how you..."

Jeff Battersby (49m 30s)

create a shortcut if there's not some way of linking to a particular smart folder or a tagged folder. So you could do this. Those steps would be useful. So I had to figure out those things on my own. And once I did figure it out, it was really easy and really thoughtful. And a lot of that I found by going to the forums. But the documentation could use a little, like one step further, taking you to the end of the entire walkthrough.

Tom Anderson (49m 59s)

Yeah, just help you think through things

Jeff Battersby (50m)

So, right, exactly. And you don't have to use it, but here's how you get from point A to the end.

Tom Anderson (50m 2s)

Right get some inspiration

Tom Anderson (50m 8s)

Yeah, yeah, so that all sounds you so why don't we put a

Tom Anderson (50m 12s)

Reminder I will revisit this sometime over the summer and see how it's progressed where you've settled in a little bit Like it's just been a couple of weeks We'll give you another three months and should be fairly locked in I think by that point I mean, you'll always find little things you'd want to change your directions to

Jeff Battersby (50m 14s)  

• Yeah, sure.

Jeff Battersby (50m 23s)

I think so, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (50m 27s)

And there are weaknesses in Apple's system, sadly.

Jeff Battersby (50m 31s)

For example, if you say I'm on a web page and I want to save that web page in a note,

Jeff Battersby (50m 38s)

it's easy enough to save it in a note,

Jeff Battersby (50m 40s)

but if you put a tag in the note there,

Jeff Battersby (50m 42s)

it doesn't get picked up as a tag in Notes.

Jeff Battersby (50m 45s)

You have to go into Notes, look at the note,

Jeff Battersby (50m 48s)

and then basically hit a return after the end of the text.

Jeff Battersby (50m 53s)

So, these are weaknesses in Apple's infrastructure. It's not a weakness in the ForeverNote system.

Tom Anderson (51m 1s)

That almost feels like a bug or something, so maybe they overlooked a bit all right excellent. I like it

Jeff Battersby (51m 2s)

Yeah, it does.

Jeff Battersby (51m 4s)

All right. Yes, me too.

Close

Jeff Battersby (51m 9s)

Tommy, I think we're done.

Tom Anderson (51m 9s)

Okay, I think we are sir

Jeff Battersby (51m 11s)

Cool. And we still burned 45 minutes. More than.

Tom Anderson (51m 13s)

Yeah, and a couple

Jeff Battersby (51m 15s)

Yeah, you know, 51 minutes.

Jeff Battersby (51m 18s)

All right. Go for it, Tommy.

Tom Anderson (51m 18s)

Yep, all right, well we did we did all the stuff up front, so I don't think we need to do that Yeah, this is this feels weird. This doesn't feel right usually say Jeff take us home

Jeff Battersby (51m 21s)

Yeah, we did.

Jeff Battersby (51m 23s)

So we don't have to say anything at the end.

Jeff Battersby (51m 26s)

Oh, I'm sorry.

Jeff Battersby (51m 28s)

Uh, okay.

Tom Anderson (51m 29s)

All right, we're done

Jeff Battersby (51m 30s)

Feedback at BasicAFShow.com.

Jeff Battersby (51m 32s)

Randall Martin Design.

Tom Anderson (51m 32s)

You

Jeff Battersby (51m 33s)

Cycle Kinetics.

Jeff Battersby (51m 34s)

Celsius 7.

Tom Anderson (51m 34s)

Done all right great. I love that

Jeff Battersby (51m 35s)

There you go.

Jeff Battersby (51m 36s)

Did it all.

Jeff Battersby (51m 37s)

All right, man.

Tom Anderson (51m 37s)

Close out five seconds all right, so thanks everybody for being here

Tom Anderson (51m 42s)

As always we greatly appreciate it, and we will talk to you again in a couple of weeks

Outro Music (51m 46s)

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 gon' smash my whole world Lost in illusion Drowning myself up in the sauce Put my glasses on backward And rewind my watch 'cause

Jeff Battersby (51m 47s)

See ya!