WWDC, Apple Ring, and five years of Apple TV+ on the AppleInsider Podcast
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Hello, welcome to the Apple Insider Podcast. I'm William Gallagher. Our sponsor this week is Notion. More about that later on. Also, later on, if you're a premium subscriber, it's week two of our brand new Apple Insider Plus feature, in which this time, as ever, we're going to step away from the news, step away from everything that's really going on, and focus on things that matter to us all, all the time. In this case, Wes Hilliard and I are going to have a writing app

kind of smackdown we all write on our Macs and our iPads only I'm getting it right that's basically how it's going to run I think Wes Hilliard you're not going to try to argue against that later at all are you oh no no of course not I give way to you on anything writing in that case this week's Appensider Plus is a very short thing but I am victorious

So much to get to before we have that. I don't think anybody new is suing Apple today. So is there anything else going on in the Apple world? Well, I think we finally got an announcement, maybe not the one we were looking for. I was expecting WWDC, but it seems Apple has announced something called VVVDC. What's going on here?

Yeah, I've got to admit, I'm very, very confused by this. I'm wondering whether Apple used AI to design its WWDC logo. That's the joke. Because that would explain a lot, wouldn't it? I'm not the first person to think of it. Okay, right. Some people have called it Volkswagen DC because that's another interpretation. Okay, I get it now, yes. It's...

It's definitely a direction. I'm not sure if it's the right one because, of course, instead of talking about the upcoming developer conference, we are not talking about the silly logo. And I'm not entirely sure that that was the intent of the logo. But I don't know, maybe vision. It's going to be all vision. But, of course, we know that's not true. It's going to be all about AI. Yeah.

So it's just when you say that about a direction, it's a new direction. It's the kind of phrase you hear in projects like, well, it's an interesting project.

for something, and it's never a complimentary thing. But listen, every year, every year, there's a new logo, and this doesn't happen to be my favourite, but every one of them gets every pixel examined. I mean, I saw somebody saying, ah, but the colours, the Pantone colours match those of the Siri icon. So clearly it's about Siri. And yeah, it could be. My favourite, do you have a favourite? My favourite was the neon...

with the exploding emoji heads. I thought that was really clever. I'm not a massive emoji fan, so... Of course. I just thought the design was fun. Yeah.

No, Joe, isn't that terrible? You're listening to me think back through all of these things. I wish I had a poll. Who did it best? How long has WWDC been going? Quite a while, isn't it? So the one where they announced the iPhone. Nope, that wasn't the WWDC, was it? I think I'm going off on one here. Pull me back. The key thing is we now know when it is. And of course, we also know what's going to happen. We know everything that's going to be said.

Don't we? We have a good assumption anyway.

One thing that's interested me is I know this is a consistent thing that we're going to hear about AI and that doesn't seem like it could possibly be wrong. But just in the last couple of weeks has been like this slight change that it won't be that AI will somehow be part of iOS 18, that maybe there'll be an AI app store or that there'll be just kind of something else. And I don't really know where all that's come from. Are there strong rumours about this sort of stuff?

Well, there is definitely a lot going on in this space. We talked about it last week that there might be a new strategy where Apple would license Google Gemini and have its own smaller language models and AI tools inside of iOS and bridge out to Gemini and other LLMs when needed so Apple wouldn't actually have its own LLM. More evidence of that has actually popped up in the last week.

But also there's some suggestions that maybe as a part of this or an extension or alternative to this is Apple would have a LLM app store or AI app store, which I think makes a lot of sense.

Because then people choose what they do and don't want. So nothing's imposed on them, I suppose, which is a big thing about AI. Do you trust it if it's just slapped in your face, if you have no control over it? That would make sense, too. The evidence I was hearing about that supported all this was that Apple was purportedly in a deal with Apple

I don't know how to pronounce it. B-A-I-D-O, Baidu, which has since been denied. But in such a way that you're thinking, yeah, that's just happening there. The ink hasn't dried yet. That's all. But I don't know whether that's indicative of Apple reaching out to many different partners like they are with Google or just that Baidu is a Chinese company and there are regulatory issues there about partnering with people like that. Is it?

I'm sure Apple is in talks with a lot of companies and maybe we're only hearing about a few of those potential partnerships, but we have to keep in mind that.

Well, it's not really thought of this way, not in today's language, but every app on the App Store is a partnership with Apple in some way. You have to sign a contract and upload an app. So bringing apps to a new App Store that are AI-specific would require a new contract, so to speak. So, of course, there's negotiations. Of course, there's discussions as to how does this work? How much are we going to charge? How much commission are we going to take?

If this is an entirely new concept, I'm sure there's an entirely new business model. And again, it would be separate from the current app store where apps are experiences you download like apps, games, tools, and the AI app store would be a little bit more specific. So if I had to assume this is how it works, of course, don't take my word for it, but this is a guess. Uh, if, if you've been paying attention to the AI space, there are these different versions of tools, uh,

developers can build basically different specific renditions that do very specific things. I forget what they're called. I think some of them are very stupid. GPT, chat GPT calls them GPTs. It's a silly name. I didn't know that. Okay. Yes, but it's basically a branch of the larger language model that lets you do very specific tool sets. So let's say you need to very specifically expand

images by if you have a 4x3 image and you want to add some artificially filled in background well you could go download an ai that does only that that's been programmed to silliness to do that or if you need a writing tool like grammarly you could literally go and download just grammarly's ai tool and have it appear across your system and i think there's going to be um

system wide functionality with these tools rather than it being contained to a single app and that's why it would need its own app store because it would have API calls that went across the system it would just be very different from the conception of what an app is

So future dramas where the police lean in to the monitor and it's a grainy image and the hero says, enhance it. They'll go, yes, but I first have to go to the app store and find the right tool. Yes, I could say that that would work. That would actually be less distracting from it. But I might just come back. Contracts. Something surprised me recently about contracts is kind of related. I mean, not very.

Work with me on this. Yes, with a brand new business model, of course, it's going to be all brand new. But we recently had that thing where transcriptions appeared in iOS 17 and the latest version of macOS, the further podcasts app. And every podcast producer had to sign a new contract, say, or at least a bit of a new contract saying yes.

Yes. That kind of thing feels like that should have been there from the start or that if not the word transcription, at least some catch all term that covers every possible exploitation of the material should have been there. And it wasn't. So is Apple just, you know, not as good at contracts as it used to be? Or is it so busy doing so many of them that it doesn't have time to develop anything new?

You can get sued in America for everything. So I think Apple's just covering its bases by having specific language, updating its contracts. Being too broad is actually an issue in law. And yes, you don't want Apple to be too broad because, again, it just leads to lawsuits. And then you have to go to court and explain your interpretation as a law. But because it's so broad, someone else has a different interpretation. And then it's up to a jury to decide which interpretation is correct. Again, you don't want that situation to arise. Yeah.

Yeah, but, you know, lawyers have got to eat, haven't they? We need to keep them in business. Those poor guys, you know, they're struggling out there.

Multi-billion dollar DOJ lawsuit keeping them barely soup cans on the street. I expect if they have a roof over their heads, they can't sleep in it for worry. And I've just been reading scripts to the Alignable TV series, if you even remember that. And it's all very lawyer centric because the show was. So I'm on the side of the lawyers in this one. Forget Shakespeare. Bring back the lawyers that we need.

This is going so far away from what we're going to get at WWDC. And actually, something I'm really interested in, the customizability of iPhone screens. I don't know what I'd customize, do you? Do you know what's being said about this? So, again, in the broadest terms, we're not really getting much information here. But it seems Apple is going to open up more customization options for the home screen, which means...

More free placement of app icons and widgets. Someone actually pointed something out the other day. In iOS 14, when widgets were first announced, one of the demos Apple previewed that never actually released was the ability to actively resize widgets while in the wiggle view. And

and have widgets change based on the size that you pick for that area. Instead, you have to go into the widget picker and pick the specific size you want. That interaction never actually came to be. Also, many widgets are just...

unused different interaction types were never brought about we only just got interaction interactive widgets that can show more live updates but again it's still not quote unquote live because uh it has to basically do a push to the app to get new information rather than the app pushing to the widget so it's kind of upside down the information can be out of date clock widgets can be wrong because of how they're being refreshed uh the clock would just be the wrong time it's

Very odd. So there's a lot of stuff that can be improved there underneath, but on top of things, from the user perspective, we're expecting to see, like I said, free placement of objects. So right now, if you put an app on your home screen, you get a grid of four by, I don't know, eight icons. I think it's 32. And if you do...

That has to go in order, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, filling in those rows. You can't have any blank spaces unless you install a fake widget thing. There's ways to trick the system, but again, they're tricks. So you would actually be able to do this using iOS free placement, different grid types, have widgets anywhere, and the dock would potentially get a new launcher-like app library button that would launch the app library. Okay. Does any of that sound useful to you, William?

Not, you know, rushing to it. I think when you see it in action, and you know Apple will show it off in some clever way, after that I'll be going, yeah, yeah, I'm having that. But then I think I said that about widgets. Are you more interested than I am? Well, I usually get blowback for this, but I still believe it's true. Since iOS 14 and every iteration since, so it's increasingly so, Apple has been

crossed the customization paradigm of Android. So previously it was argued that Apple, with its simplicity, it's basically just grid of icons was...

very good. It wasn't very customizable and all you could really do is add a wallpaper and organize things alphabetically or put them in a certain order or put them in folders. It was very limited. Then they added widgets. Then they added interactive widgets and shortcuts and focus groups and all these things that allow you to basically change how your iPhone looks based on whatever

paradigm you're in work, personal school, and have everything change, including your wallpapers and design. You could go from, uh,

You know, a gaming mode with a silly anime wallpaper and gaming stats on your lock screen to when you walk out the door to go to work, it shifts over to a very business classy neutral tone and different apps and widgets for your work. All at the push of a button with focus modes. So very personalized, very custom in the last couple of years. So my argument is that Apple has actually...

become more customizable in a more useful way than Android ever has been. And I know I can hear the people screaming right now. Yes, you can't install those janky launchers that allow you to ride roller coasters when you open an app or basically get motion sickness every time you change which app page you're on because you're on a carousel. I get it. You enjoy your GPU performance.

driven interfaces but that's not what I'm talking about when I talk about personalization I mean truly making the device work for you in a way that no one else can and Android cannot touch Apple's implementation here I think

I like Apple's implementation, except I'm just looking at my phone now and I've realized I have one widget. I have that SmartStack widget on my second page. And I don't really even look at that. So you have a grid of icons on your first page? Yes. Well, three pages at the moment. At some point, William, I would recommend, you don't have to, but I would recommend get rid of all of your app icons.

start from a blank page and just add a couple of widgets, add the Siri recommendation widget, which is eight icons that just changes based on time of day.

and see if you can live with that for a while. Have everything in the app library, search for an app if you need it in Spotlight, and honestly, any app you need in the moment will most likely appear in that Siri widget that recommends different apps throughout the day. If that doesn't work for you, fine, but everyone I've shown this to and have this set up a single page with a few widget stacks in that rotating app view...

usually the best fit for a lot of people especially more casual users that maybe don't live on their phone someone like you william that you know is more just lift picking up the phone to do a certain task at that moment that little app rotating guy i keep saying it siri i don't mean to but the uh widget for that is actually so intelligent so useful that you'll never think about it again you just open your phone and say oh there's the app i need click it and there you go

Not convinced. I'll have you know my home screen is finally honed over many, many years. Your finger knows exactly where to go, of course. Yeah, it does. Actually, I dropped something recently. I've forgotten what it was because I wasn't using it anymore. And I think when I first replaced it, everything was slightly out of kilter. So yes, I would be tapping the wrong thing without looking at it. It felt like a personal attack. You open your phone, it's no longer yours.

Yes. Actually, when I pick up somebody else's phone to do something for them, I'm thinking it's all wrong. They've got all the wrong apps or in the wrong place. But also when they first brought out that app library, I thought it was so impressive. And during the beta testing period for it, I would swipe to that. And yeah, anything I wanted was right there. But I haven't seen that happen since we came out of beta. I mean, I just looked at it now and yeah.

I mean, there's a compass app is showing up. I haven't used that compass in ages. I don't even know what that next one is. What's that next one? We do. Right. I haven't been in that in a year. So where is that widget located right now? Well, I just mean I go into the app library. I have while you were talking, I loaded...

Well, I thought I did. I loaded these Siri suggestions. Oh, I appear to be going into my bank now. What are you doing? Stop it. Okay. It actually has to be there for it to learn. It doesn't learn from the widget selector screen.

Right, but the app library should, because actually I go into that quite a lot. I don't know why. That's the odd thing. App library, I've heard from other people, and it's the same for me, it learns what you need. It's the Siri suggestion widget, but across the entire app library. Everything that should be presented at the top should be what you need when you're looking for it, usually. But...

I've noticed that the categories jump around, so I'll go to click on something, and it's one spot higher than before, and it confuses me. Two wishlist items, I think, for iOS 18 for me would be able to fully customize the app library completely

Create a category, put apps in that category, organize the apps inside of that category, delete categories you don't need. That would be amazing. I would do that all day. Perfect for me. And sure, having the automatic system is great. Apple trying to take the control out of it is fine, but I think it's a little too aggressive. If it could find a way to land at a point and stay there, I would be okay with it, but it shifts around too much. And my other wishlist item would be just...

More system-wide extensions. I know this has nothing to do with the home screen, but this goes along with the AI App Store, so I hope this maybe is a thing. But I want more apps that are just basic utilities rather than downloading an app that's just for text...

for creating .txt files, which is an app I have on my iPad. I'll get into that later. Instead of just having an app that creates .txt files that I can share, have that just be an extension inside of a different writing app or an extension of the files app, right? Rather than having to launch an entirely different window. But that's what I want. Anything you want from iOS 18 or Mac OS 15 this year? Well, normally I think...

No, and it's a failure of imagination on my part. But I would like my photos icon to not keep moving around on my iPad when I go into the app library for it. That's a small thing. Actually, every year, I think, when I eventually figured that out, that I remembered that I need this, I would like Apple Mail to add more kind of swipe tool options, things like Spark Mail and...

I get so many emails that I need to put into my to-do app, OmniFocus. It would be, I mean, I have ways to do it now. It's all very quick, but it'd be nice just to be able to go swipe or tap a button and share properly into these things. More actions in mail. But, you know, otherwise, I like mail. I'm all right with that. I just, I'm saying this to you, my mind is on that TXT thing. Surely when you're in Pages or something, you can export files.

Well, I've exported to Word and PDF and RTF. Isn't text in there? I think I've opened Pages one time in my entire life. Oh, well, I'm definitely going to win on the Apple Insider Plus. Writing tools smack down, clearly. Okay, what's wrong with Pages? Nothing wrong with it. I have different tools. Okay. I write in drafts. I think you do sometimes as well, don't you? The way I see Pages, just for the audience that isn't paying...

The way I see pages is I'm writing a book report for school or I'm writing a book or, you know, I, this is a dedicated location where I'm literally creating pages of a document. Now I have, I lied. I have used pages to create documentation for our jobs. Sometimes we need to explain how we do something in case we're out sick so someone else can go and do it. And I find that putting text on one side and an image here and arrows and stuff, it

useful for creating those kinds of PDF export type deals. But again, Pages is a document creator. I am building something that's probably that could be printed or something like that. That's the way I see Pages. Whereas my text editing is not like that. I am a web creator. So everything I do is for the web and Pages is not for that.

No, I'd agree with that. I think a definition of a word processor these days is a writing app that was developed while we still all had printers. But I do actually really like Pages. Pages is very nice. It's very good. Apple's iWork suite is so underrated.

I know people who still buy Macs and iPads today, and they're like, can I install Microsoft Word? I'm like, just don't. Don't bother. It costs too much money, and it doesn't do enough on iOS. Just use Apple's free pre-installed apps. But anyway, we've diverged. The strange thing is, I have a long history of disliking Microsoft Word. I mean, there's very good stuff in it as well, but also ludicrously bad stuff for it. It's too busy. The design is awful.

oh terribly so but with excel for some reason i'm more of a fan of excel and yet maybe two years ago now i swapped over completely to numbers i was always using it for something but every spreadsheet in my business now is on numbers and i can automate it i can do so much in it i really like numbers the world should switch to numbers well possibly possibly not but

Anyway, OK, so spreadsheets going our way from text files and going further and further away from WWDC. Let me cover this. I have already heard the rumour that there will be hardware at WWDC. We hear this every year. I think I said this last time. Without fail. Oh, yes, this next thing is coming, the Mac Pro or whatever. And then it doesn't. And then the same people say, well, of course it wasn't going to WWDC. It's a software thing. But already it's started.

Is there any chance of hardware this year, do you think?

It's actually kind of going the opposite direction. It is a software event, but Apple has been good about making it focus on pro hardware because this is a developer event. So they want to talk about developer hardware. So I would expect the M3 Ultra Mac Studio with M3 Ultra and maybe the Mac Pro update. But again, that $7,000 computer getting updated on an annual basis just feels wrong to me. But we'll see what Apple does here.

To be fair, the previous year's version was $50,000. So, yeah. If they kept putting it down at that, what's the opposite of a geometric progression? Is it logarithmic? If they could keep going down at that trend, down that amount, $50,000 to $7,000 to $1,000. Yes. Okay. Wait till next year. They'll be giving them to us. It'll be a fire sale. Yes. Yes.

I've still got an old Mac Pro under my desk, although actually, after your advice last week, I can now sit down at this desk. I have begun moving things. Oh, beautiful. The Mac Pro may be the next thing to go. This episode is brought to you by Notion.

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Hardware. Normally, when I mean hardware, I'm obviously thinking Macs because I think of Macs first. We are still waiting for iPads and I don't know why. I think I'm taking it personally. I think I know why. I...

This is completely conjecture. And again, people rejected it, but I still think there's some value in it. Apple Vision Pro launched on February 2nd. It's a $3,500 face computer. And honestly, I would argue that the primary business it is aimed at is existing...

Pro iPad users, the guys who already lived on the iPad and could get work done on it and use it as a serious computer, is one of the primary selling points for Apple Vision Pro. It's not the only selling point. It's an amazing entertainment computer, but...

Yeah.

But anyway, Under the Radar is at least the name of the podcast, and the developers there discuss some of their trials and tribulations of development. And the latest episode, as you listen, they discussed the sales numbers of their apps, and they're very popular apps. One of them is Overcast, the podcast app, and the other one is Widgetsmith. And we're talking...

thousands of installs for these, you know, very, very popular apps that, you know, generally see millions of, maybe not for overcast, but again, just very low numbers compared to what they see on other platforms to the point that just to move on from this, but to the point that I think, uh, the widget Smith creator, uh, David Smith did the calculation of if I literally took

how many users use WidgetSmith on iOS versus how many use it on VisionOS and said, okay, out of 365 days of the year, how many hours, days, minutes should I spend developing each as an equal ratio?

And it was about six minutes for Vision OS by comparison. Like, so he could spend about, to get his money's worth, he would have to spend about six minutes developing Vision OS for how many users he has on the platform. So very nascent platform, very early on. But that's what I'm saying. That's...

the group of people I'm talking about. So for Apple to turn around after vision pro and release a new iPad pro with magic keyboard, possibly if you deck it out and buy all the new accessories, new Apple pencil, you're entering that $3,000 price range very quickly. And for a group of people that may have just already spent $3,000 plus on a vision pro headset, are they going to be ready to do that again? Three, four months later, uh,

Of course, this is all going to get blown out when Apple on Tuesday announces the new iPads. It's just the proximity, I think, was a little too ludicrous when people were saying, oh, it's coming at the end of February, early March.

April, May sounds more realistic to me just because you need that breathing room. You need that space to just get the market to where it needs to be for Vision Pro. And I think it has gotten to that point. They've sold as many as they're going to sell for that initial flood anyway in the United States. That's why it's about to go to the other countries very soon. Then get the iPads out in the spring and...

The people who have the money will buy both. The people who are waiting for the iPads will buy the iPads. Apple's going to do fine. I'm not worried about that. It's just I think strategically speaking, they couldn't release them weeks apart. It wouldn't make sense. The thing is, anything I say here feels to me like it's got to be fatuous because you have an Apple Vision Pro and I haven't even touched one. But you keep referring to it as like this...

iPad-ish tool. And I think that might be because it's coloured that way. You've come from the iPad. Whereas everything I look at it, and every example I see, it feels like it's a Mac on your face. So is that just because I'm coming from the Mac point of view? Are we both...

Bias is the wrong word, but leaning a certain way. You can put the Mac inside of Vision Pro. And I think Vision OS 2 even, we don't even have to wait on new hardware. I expect a future update to allow multiple Mac monitors or perhaps Mac Windows just open as floating spaces inside of Vision Pro. Any of those things could happen in the future. But right now, you can just open a Mac window, full screen,

quote unquote 4k. It's equivalent to 4k, uh, as a monitor and you can blow it up big and have a mouse and keyboard and mass around sitting in Yosemite on it, on your Mac as a 30 foot screen in front of you. All well and good.

But my argument for saying it's not exactly a Mac is because you still need a Mac to do that function. It's not doing that without a Mac. So it's an amazing Mac accessory. It's a good Mac monitor, I would say. But it's no different than using an iPad with Sidecar.

So that's why, again, I would lean into the iPad paradigm when describing Vision Pro versus Mac because it isn't running macOS. It isn't running Mac apps. It's running iPad apps. It's running juiced up my iPad apps for Vision OS, and it's able to connect as a Mac display, but it is not a Mac, I would say.

I was actually thinking of you on Monday because I was doing half a day for Apple Insider, half for the Writers Guild and I was in London away from my home. I was in a cafe and I had my MacBook Pro with me, but I don't know what it was. It was just something about getting out a very, very expensive MacBook Pro in this place where I wasn't.

feeling very safe, I got out my iPad Pro instead because it was kind of smaller. I could snatch it away faster. And I ended up, I thought I'd just do quick things I've got to do to set up, start up Apple Insider work and then move on.

to the MacBook Pro. And I didn't for the entire day. I actually spent it on the iPad Pro. And I've never done that before with Apple Insider. I found the odd hiccups for it, but I thought it would be slower. I thought I'd have image problems like I've done in the past when I've briefly tried it. But no, it all worked. And actually, one thing I want to ask you about is I came across an app. I didn't realise I'd installed it years ago. Actually, on like three iPads ago, I must have installed this. An app called Yoink, a shelf app.

app, Y-O-I-N-K. Yes. Do you use this to let me move images around more easily? Paste is better.

right so so yoink yoink is um actually an excellent app i don't even know if it's still in development it might be go to the app store and see the last time it was updated because i believe that's one of those shelf apps that came that might have came and went um or i might be thinking of a different one uh there's there's a there's three or four out there that are uh pretty good but i my current one is paste and it's

A universal clipboard tool, but also a shelf. So you can create categories and save copy and paste items and view them. It works so well.

And I really enjoy paste, but yoink is another really good one. If you're on an iPad and you just need a location for stuff, but then again, the files app also just kind of, you know, does that. So it really depends on what you're looking for. If you're using yoink as an image tool, then just use the files app, I would say, or photos. But if you're using it to save links, it's a, it's a good link saver tool.

I didn't realise that Paste was a shelf app. I'm not keen on Paste because the Mac version of it, I love Clipboard Managers. I seem to have accidentally got three of them. But Paste was very visual. You know, I just want to paste the last sentence and it would show me a big poster image of what it was. Right.

So I use Alfred 5 or sometimes Keyboard Maestro and Raycast has it for free and all this stuff. So I hadn't looked any further into paste. I will re-examine. I like uniformity and that type of display is still there. On the Mac, I have it mapped to, you know, it's by default, Command Shift V and it opens the paste button.

basically. And it is giant things you click on. If you want to go back in your history, I think there's a way to toggle that to make them smaller or lose the icons at least. But I, I,

Personally, I like having that universal access across the system. Again, I wish iPad would let me control shift V anywhere and just bring up paste. That would be amazing. And maybe if this AI app store is a thing, we'll see more universal tools like that across the system. Different apps are trying different things. Right now, it seems to be

Everyone's making a quote-unquote keyboard, but they're not actually keyboards. Paste has a keyboard that's just its UI inside of the keyboard. There's sticker pickers and all kinds of weird things happening with keyboard selectors these days. And I think Apple probably sees that and they're like, we need to break this out into a wider system. So maybe we'll get lucky with iPadOS 18 and a better stage manager as well as they continue to improve all of that.

uh andrew just got a mac and the sales guy tried to impress we'd already we basically paid for it and he was still trying to sell some of the benefits of it and one of the benefits he was championing was stage manager and i think he could see me going yeah you don't use it on the mac did you use it on your ipad are you still using that's where i first tried it um and i just i don't take to it anywhere um i suppose i just

When I was doing a thing in London, I was doing side-by-split view with like two-thirds of the screen and one-third on another, and that was surprisingly useful. Normally on an iPad, I like one thing at a time, and I don't know why, because on a Mac...

It's like I just feel you and I had started talking. I think I quit 15 apps that I was running. And it's not that I put them on and forget about them. I was using them all all day. So why I'm different on an iPad, I don't know. But they are different tools. What are we going to be like, though, when the next big excuse me, the next little thing comes from Apple, the smart ring?

Yeah? Tell me about smart rings. I'm interested in this as a concept because I want everything to be smart. I almost bought the Nike tennis shoes that paired via Bluetooth that could tie themselves.

no, no, no, no, no. Wait, wait. That's from back to the future. That isn't real. That's actually what, that's the reason why they were created in 2015. Uh, because that was the year that they traveled to and back to the future. Nike. Oh yes. Self tying shoes to celebrate the anniversary. You could connect to over Bluetooth. You'd slip your foot in, press a button on your phone and the shoelaces would tighten around your foot. Uh,

They stopped selling it about two years later and discontinued the app. So sorry, anyone who owns those shoes and can no longer tie them. But I'm sure the app still works, but it's just funny to me that –

Yes, I am astounded how interested I am. I mean, I'm an adult man and I still have trouble tying my shoelaces. I don't know what I get wrong about it, but I go to slip on shoes quite a lot. So this appeals. Yeah. I have Adams with stretch laces and I've never tied them. I just put my shoes on and go on about my day.

Anyway, I'm not a sponsor of a podcast, but I really love Adam's shoes. But no, wearables that are smart. I am so here for it. I want the silly future junk that you see in movies. I want the t-shirts that can change logos when you press a button. I want the pants that have the built-in battery that will charge your phone. Who knows how you wash those, of course. I just...

I want all the silly stuff because I find it interesting. Is any of it actually useful? Who knows? But a smart ring, I think, could be different. An interaction paradigm, so snapping your fingers, pointing, different things like that we've seen in these patents. A different health metric, it could...

draw if you wore your apple watch on your left arm and the apple ring on your right arm it could perform more accurate ecgs by doing a three-point ecg instead of a two-point because it could do the return route on the ring and back to the watch as well and yada yada so multi-point ecgs there's a lot of potential here but what what do you think william

Well, the reason I'm interested now is that I read a patent about it. And at the top of the patent, it was all about gestures, like you've just said. And I thought, what these sound like, Apple Vision Pro gestures. Then the more you get into it, it is specifically skin-to-skin contact. They say, I don't know how it would register the skin, but it's definitely not just waving your hands in the air. It's thumping your hands together or something. There's skin sensors. Those exist. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Now thinking about how they would get that in a ring. I'm pro-ring because I actually wore one for a while. A company called...

Wave for work had, I think they still do, a ring that it's quite, it's very plasticky, a bit rubbery, maybe in bits. It has a couple of buttons that will do certain things. And I was using it to present from. I would just kind of vaguely gesticulate at the screen and Keynote would switch to the next slide and stuff like that. And I really liked that because it was by far the least interrupting way of changing things.

I mean, I tried doing it on my phone and everybody thought I was just messaging somebody, you know, and I tend to walk around a lot. So I'm away from the keyboard and these things. And I don't have Steve Jobs's two clickers or whatever you say. So I thought actually practical things. That's my interest. But just for some reason.

Maybe it's this thing of when you're interested in something, you hear more about it. In the last week, I seem to be hearing more people saying, definitely coming. There's Apple inside a video about it. So, you know, it must be true. It must be happening. What else has gone on to tell us this? I think the Apple ring is...

something that's just... I mean, patents are everywhere for it, but it's one of these things we've been hearing about since like 2016. So it's definitely something they're working on internally, but whether or not it'll see the light of day is still in question. I could foresee this being an important augmented reality device. Imagine having the Apple Ring

and walking into a room and pointing at a HomePod and then tapping your finger and it start playing because it knows that you pointed at the HomePod and you did the play gesture. Or pause something on the TV just with your finger. Or control the light by pointing at it using ultrasonic frequencies and stuff like that. Maybe we have much smarter homes with these different tools that can tell...

where you are in a space, and then the ring communicates with that. So more advanced home pods and stuff like that. All very possible in the future, but you need a way to control it, and the Apple Watch isn't going to do that because it's on your wrist. So something more directional, more motion sensitive, like your finger, would be great. I just...

You say that and I'm picturing me striding into a room, right, with this macho image I've got, and going, Oi, own pod, you, start playing. And that just feels... Actually, hang on, wait a minute. More like the Fonz. Oh, hey, okay. Yeah, you kind of point with the finger guns, you know. Right, yeah, I don't think I can really carry off either of those looks. But, all right. Mm, mm.

I just, I wonder, would a smart ring replace the Apple Watch? I mean, because you've already got the time on your phone. If you are the kind of person who's desperate for a more...

or professional look, you could ditch the watch for a couple of hours, put on your suit, put on your Apple ring and still get your heart rate notifications and track your fitness and your steps and your stand goals just from your finger instead of your wrist. And then that way you can have your very nice watch, but it would be limited in scope. I think compared to the Apple watch, I think the pair will definitely be important. This goes back to the double tap gesture. I think if we have an,

an Apple watch and an Apple ring working in tandem, more things will be possible with both of them. So just, it's interesting. I just think that we need to get better at with future products, looking at them from an augmented reality standpoint, from a spatial computing standpoint, because I think that's the primary goal Apple's going to have here. Not just health sensors, which is a part of it, but I think spatial is where Apple is right now and where we should be thinking. Yeah.

It's funny, isn't it? Sometimes I feel like I'm the other side of a wall from you because I've never even touched an Apple Vision Pro and basically you're in the future. That's what it's like. Okay. I do wonder, one last thing before we move on from Apple Ring.

Is anyone going to use it as their wedding band? Yes, of course they are. First person. So, because, okay, so I don't know how universal this is. It's pretty universal. But generally speaking, universalism,

and you have an engagement ring that the woman wears, and that's usually just like a small diamond or something. And then when you get married, it's actually that part is the very simple band. It's usually maybe a gold or platinum band or whatever metal you would like. And the man and the woman both, or whoever partners wear the ring, would that be... I wonder if the first divorce...

would occur because someone suggests that they both forever wear an Apple ring. But I think that's dangerous because then you have to upgrade it every couple of years. And are you going to upgrade your wedding ring? Honey, it's, I know it's just a symbol, but it has more Ram in the new version. We got to get the next Apple ring.

With this ring, I USB-C charge you. No, wait a minute. How would you charge a smart ring? Magnetically. It'd be too thin. Well, just put it on the rim, wouldn't it? So there wouldn't be a lot of surface area compared to the back of a watch or something. Oh, that's true. Okay. Maybe you just zap it with like put a fork into an outlet and connect it to the ring and it just kind of charges.

Yeah, rushing to that. OK, that's right. Well, I tell you, I'm conscious that in many ways we've been talking about the future a lot today. WWDC, of course, but also smart rings, the potential for yet more spatial computing. But there are times when Apple will bring out something and it just doesn't happen. And this week on Apple Insider, we've been looking at one of them. HomeKit secure routers. Oh, not the deliveries app. OK, OK.

Not that you never said that. I'm still mourning that. I wish it would work. Yes. I mean, I wrote this piece, so I know something about it. But actually, before I started the piece, I knew nothing. I hadn't even heard of HomeKit Secure Routers. And you had. So I don't actually know. Have you got one of the legendary, fabled, two or three HomeKit Secure Routers that seem to have ever been made? Yeah, this story was my pitch, my candidate off to you, I think,

Yes, I'd done something wrong. Just to torture you a little bit. Also, I'm very much a software guy, and he's trying to show me the error of my ways and how much more interesting hardware is. So far, he's failed, but this was the latest I've done. It was really interesting, so thank you. But can you explain previously on HomeKit Secure Routers? Well, I have a problem. So I have Linksys Velop, and I have the Wi-Fi 6 router, and

I bought, so I had the Wi-Fi 5 system back in the day. This has been a couple of years. And Velop came out with a new set of routers and they actually put in the documentation, HomeKit secure router support coming soon. There was even, I think, a HomeKit Insider episode where we talked to the guys. It was coming. So I was like, okay, great. I'm going to go ahead and buy this router. Excellent. It's going to get it eventually. Okay.

bought it, it's, you know, paired it with my Wi-Fi 5 system, so it was kind of a bridge network at the time. Nope. Never happened. They never performed the update, but they did release a new set of Wi-Fi 6 routers that was HomeKit compatible. So I ditched the rest of my Wi-Fi 5 routers. I am now on a two-node system. One from the larger, more expensive Wi-Fi 6 router that was promised HomeKit didn't happen, and one of the

lesser versions that does have HomeKit. Turns out, can't do that either. Can't have a mixed network. Must be both HomeKit router support. So while I do have a router in my home that technically can do it, I would need to buy another router, remove the original, and have a two-node system with just HomeKit secure networking.

Didn't bother because by the time I got around to shopping for that system and maybe just upgrading away from Linksys, maybe looking at a different one, I discovered they just didn't exist. Because I was looking into Wi-Fi 6E, maybe even Wi-Fi 7, which is very expensive, and I just found no one was talking about it. So I started digging.

Who has Wi-Fi 6 routers with HomeKit? And Eero literally has a page that says, we're not doing this anymore. Linksys is mum about it. They removed their stickers from the pages that offered future HomeKit. Only the ones that have it now will ever have it. Then there's the one from Ubiquity, UniFi.

Just, nope, nothing, nothing, nothing. No more new HomeKit routers are coming anywhere. I couldn't get anyone to talk. William, I think, had a little more luck as far as finding out more information, but...

Long story short, to explain what a HomeKit secure router is, the idea is very simple. And it's actually being baked into Matter, so maybe Apple saw the writing on the wall that they didn't need to do it anymore and just pulled the program. That makes sense. But Matter will be able to do this probably. It seems to be the case. But the idea is you have a router that is aware of the devices on your network, and you can go into a settings view and say...

These devices are isolated from the internet. They are on an intranet for your home that can communicate with the Apple TV home hubs. It can communicate with each other, but can never, ever, ever access the internet.

meaning that way you can guarantee no one's, you know, secretly looking through your web, your, your home security cameras, no one's secretly going to gain access to your light switch or something, but it is absolutely isolated to your home network. And that is what home home kit secure routers promised and can do. If you go buy an old router today that is outdated and too expensive. What did you find out there on your research? Will you?

I started to wonder if it was a joke that if you were just ganging up on me and playing like a left-handed screwdriver or something. I did talk with Apple and basically Apple pointed me at a support page that listed the fact that there are two of them you can buy from somewhere. One of them was Linksys and Linksys just never quite got around to responding. Ubiquity, right? Eero did give me eventually a quote, but basically it's just what you said, as I say on the site, not doing it anymore.

And the implication was no plans, but no real reason behind it, given. So I started thinking it's unusual that Apple would have a dead standard. But I'm starting to think this is what it is. And I did not actually appreciate the matter aspect of it. I feel like now it makes more sense. You put it in a context that I didn't see. So that's good.

We should see this. I mean, it's useful functionality. It's not the end of the world that I can't get it. It's just I'm an Apple nerd. I want to play around with all the toys. And this was a interesting toy to me. I'm not really worried about security threats of that nature. It's just, again, it would be interesting. Maybe it would reduce Internet load, being able to isolate certain devices. I don't know. It was just a nice concept to explore that I never got around to and maybe never will.

I've realised, though, I said to you that I'd never heard of this, and I watch all the WWDCs. I must have heard of this. It was announced at the one in 2019. But I've realised the reason it just went straight past me like a football match was that 2019...

was also when Apple TV Plus was first announced. So, I mean, it didn't start streaming until, what, the 1st of November, but it was announced in March. So we are five years in since we first heard the term Apple TV Plus said by Tim Cook. I can't remember now if the name was rumored before. But five years in, they're doing all right, I think, aren't they? Apple TV Mass. You remember the iPhone Mass rumor? No.

So there was just a quick diversion. There was a rumor. So before we got the pluses, it was the iPhone 5 or whatever. Nobody knew how they were going to use terminology to describe the larger phones. And there was a leak from China that was a poorly translated leak that called it the Apple iPhone math leak.

And that was fun for a few minutes. But anyway, because the plus symbol translated to math. Of course it did. I'm slowly catching up on that one. Okay, I like it. All these years later, I get it. Yes, if there was an Apple TV+, why isn't there an Apple TV-? But...

Apple TV... Maybe that'll be the ad version. Apple TV Minus. Oh, hush. But yes. So, Apple TV Plus, five years ago, I was excited for the moment they announced it. I remember the silly, very specific Apple event they had. They talked to Oprah on stage and just...

I don't know. It was very much of its time. Pre-COVID, it was a sign Apple was moving in a different direction. Services was becoming a big deal. Wall Street was still worried Apple was going to go bankrupt any day now because they were too reliant on the iPhone. Five years, what a ride. And it has become probably one of my most watched services on my television. Yeah, same here.

to my great surprise because um there's a thing with all tv channels that they need one breakout hit um the big example netflix uh really took off once they did house of cards and they did it in this way of uh releasing it all in one go which at the time was kind of unheard of so that was a very good show in a very unusual circumstance and that was ignition for netflix and

You can go all the way back. HBO, the Larry Sanders show did it. It's one show to put it on the market, on the on the on the map. And with Apple, it seemed to be taking ages. And then suddenly there was Ted Lasso. And I know I'm not a fan, but everybody else is. And once it had that, it was somehow people paid more attention to everything else. And it had all these other great shows. I mean,

I would never have expected that I would watch so much. But proportionally, at the moment, I think I am probably watching more, certainly more of Apple TV than I am Netflix to the extent that I really should probably cancel Netflix. And I did cancel Paramount Plus because it just...

There wasn't anything on that. My bank has given me a year's free of Disney Plus, and I realized last night that was two months ago, and I haven't been in to look. So maybe I'm just not paying enough attention to the streamers for it. I really need to get rid of Netflix. I keep it around because there's literally two or three shows that I'm slogging through. I need to sit down one day and just binge through them. One of them is Pokemon. But the issue is...

you can't buy them on iTunes. If I had the option to just go by every season of Pokemon and stranger things. And, um, there there's the one from, uh,

Matt Groening, Disenchantment. If I could just buy those and own them in my iTunes library and cancel Netflix, I would have done it already, which is probably why it's not available on iTunes, because they really need you to come back to Netflix. That's their whole business model is you can only see it here. And I'm happy to see other streamers not doing that so much. You can buy all of Game of Thrones on iTunes. So I would...

I was excited when streaming was taking off a few years ago, a decade plus ago. Cut the cord, get rid of cable. I was already buying iTunes movies and TV shows at the time, so it was like, oh, I'm already ready for this. This is great. Apple TV Plus comes along even better. Apple's in on the game.

I subscribe to everything right now, and that's annoying because I don't get my money's worth out of everything. I'm watching one show on each, which I feel like everyone's kind of doing. It feels like a waste of money to pay $15 a month to watch John Oliver on HBO, and there's no active TV show I'm watching on HBO otherwise. It's just...

Now I'm kind of, it's that cycle. Now I'm kind of pulling back inward and I'm saying, do I need all these services? Do I just need to downgrade everything and get rid of all of it and subscribe just to watch an episode and then unsubscribe? And I'm thinking I might get back to that eventually. It'll take time, but it's just this market, it's out of control price-wise. And I think we're going to get back to cable soon, basically, where HBO is going to have 15 channels in it and you're going to have to pay $20 a month for it.

We're going back. Well, we're already seeing bundling happening more. Disney is who now? Yes. HBO is Cartoon Network. Yes.

uh nickelodeon is paramount you know everything is there is is so now all we need is one more streamer to buy another streamer and then there but there's basically two left and maybe it's a good thing because then i only have two subscriptions maybe it's a bad thing because those two subscriptions cost 90 but yes i'm not sure where we're gonna land here but it's definitely fun to watch

I know for the entire five years of Apple TV+, and actually I think before, all the analysts were saying Apple must buy somebody else's library. And I can't remember how strong this was, but there was a story that Apple had looked at MGM's library, for example. Because if you look at all of the streamers, Apple TV+, has by far the fewest shows. The smallest library by a very, very long way. And it keeps not buying others for it. And I think actually...

They're right, in a way. They don't have much, but what they have is, generally speaking, very good. And you can't say that about... Netflix just is enormous and has to keep getting new stuff. Yeah, people keep saying there's nothing to watch on Apple TV. And I counter, if you get Apple TV today...

it would take you six months to watch everything on Apple TV plus, and it would all be worth it. Honestly, there's probably two shows on there, a couple of kids shows. That's not worth your time, but, um, you, you know, you don't need to be watching the weenie dog cartoon or whatever, but, um,

There's enough there to keep you entertained. Their documentaries are amazing. Their nature shows are amazing. I love their dramas. Every drama they have on there is just spectacular. They have a couple of good comedies. I really enjoyed Ted Lasso, but of course I, I,

really liked the other one that creator did uh gosh shrinking uh it's so good i can't wait oh i've seen the first of shrinking and i thought that was tremendous but i just haven't got around to it's amazing and you know we're about to see severance come back that's another popular one it's in uh infinite production loops but i think it's coming around

Silo should have finished filming its second season by now, so hopefully that'll be soon. We already know Slow Horse is well into its fifth season production. They film those two at a time, always fun. Yeah, interesting. I don't know how they quite work it, but they were definitely preparing a series before Apple confirmed that they were re-upping it. So I would say Apple TV Plus is very interesting. It's

changing too uh i think ads are coming and i don't think that's a bad thing i think honestly that means the people who just are unwilling to subscribe in whatever way apple one or individually will finally get to watch the stuff i wouldn't be disinterested in a pluto tv style apple tv service kind of like apple music tv that's just playing on a schedule and you have to jump into the show

Just to kind of have that kind of throwback cable feature. Pluto TV does that now. There's so many ways this could go, but I was going to ask you a question and it came back to me just now, William. So you said Apple needs to buy something, right? Apple needs to own a back catalog. But did you know that? I don't think that, but everybody's been saying it. People have been saying it. There have been two, at least that I know of.

things apple has purchased back catalogs of do you know no well one of them is it come to you no i think it's something to do with sport in which case no but no no fraggle rock apple has the entire back catalog of fraggle rock oh and charlie brown yes sorry brown has the entire back catalog of charlie brown and there's one more it's not gonna you're not gonna know it i don't even know the title of it it's the ewan mcgregor motorcycle thing

Oh, right. I thought they made a new one of that. So they got the rights to the previous. To the other ones. Rights are so strange. I mean, I've always known they are. But just because this has just happened with my wife, Angela, she's watching a show called Manifest on Netflix and it gets the end of season one. And she doesn't often let it roll on to the next episode. It's one episode at a time. But this time she did and it rolled on. And she's thinking, God, this is...

God, this has moved on fast. It had gone from the end of season one to the start of season four because Netflix doesn't have the rights to seasons two and three. Isn't that... I mean...

Part of it makes sense. Netflix made the deal after season three was produced. But you would think that would get them one, two and three for it. But no, they can't have two and three until next year. Plus, of course, the opening moments previously on Manifest gave away two years worth of spoilers for the show for her. So she's well, she's, you know, carried on. She's six episodes in now. But it was a bit disappointing, including there's a character who dies or something. So, you know, all in all.

Not a good move, the auto roll that time. I would like to point out one last thing about Apple TV+. If you haven't noticed, I don't know how often the listeners might poke around the app. I'm there almost every other day because I buy new deals. I bought Look Who's Talking Now in 4K the other day. Have you ever seen that film, William? No. Oh, what? John Travolta is a cab driver and...

There is a baby that is born, voiced by Bruce Willis. And he speaks from the point of view of the baby, and it's very humorous. Very 80s in its style. But anyway...

So look who's talking now. And I bought Spongebob Squarepants, the movie, the original theatrical movie they made, for $5. So I'm always hunting little deals like that. And if you're like me and you actually enjoy the first three seasons of Spongebob, that is an excellent Spongebob movie. But moving on, I was wanting to point this out. Apple has started doing this thing.

Now, anyone who's paying attention knows that Apple did this before. They brought in movies from other things into Apple TV Plus briefly, and it went away. It seemed like they were doing a trial, and this was a couple years ago. And everyone's like, oh, is Apple TV finally doing the Netflix licensing? Are they going to have more things here? Didn't really pan out. But now, they're doing it again, and it's very...

vocal about it. They're advertising it. It's at the front of the page. They have a bunch of movies. I haven't counted, but like 20 movies based on

in current Apple TV Plus things. So people in Palm Royal that just came out, those actors starred in other movies. So Apple has licensed those movies for Apple TV Plus viewers to watch with their subscription. And there's actually a queue in Apple TV Plus right now that says currently available bonus movies or whatever and leaving this month. So it seems like they're going to continue to do this going forward, which is very exciting. Yeah.

I just found out last night the community is leaving Netflix in the UK very soon. So I've been rewatching the episodes of it. That's interesting, isn't it? I would never have thought of that before, but it does make you watch more knowing that they're going right. I'll tell you, I think that is our show, especially because now all of us have this homework. Go watch everything on all of the streamers and then come back next week. By which time?

Who knows? We may have some iPads. So that's before the new iPads come. Great talking to you. Where can people find you these days lurking around?

Well, they can find me probably watching Samurai Jack because I bought that for $25 the other day. I'm telling you, the deals they have are insane. Anyway, no, I'm actually on Mastodon. That's the best place to find me. What am I anyway? HillyTech at Mastodon.social. You can also find me on Twitter, but I'm not really there. I'll reply to notifications. I just don't really use the app anymore.

And of course you can always email me. That's at the top of any article that I write, click the email button and my email will appear in there. You can write me a note, complain about my podcast skills or write about, uh, you know, any articles that you may have read. Maybe you've read my couple of Apple vision pro stories. There are three big stories I've written now that I want everyone to go check out. Let me know what you think. Um, what about you, William? Where are you on the internet?

Well, as ever, I'm going to say it's email again. And actually, same as you, through appleinsider email. And I've had some lovely emails this week. It's been really nice. But what I would like to just for once to tell you where you will not find me, which is on the iTunes store anymore. I have a US and UK iTunes store. And I explicitly, it was very difficult to get a US store account when I'm in the UK. But I did it recently.

whenever the stores began, specifically because every September there would be the first episodes of practically every new American series on there for free. So my US iTunes account has hundreds of dramas, most of which admittedly got cancelled after episode two, but hundreds of them. Free episodes, it was great, and you did not ever get that in the UK, but just last night I was looking through again, seeing are there any, and that appears to be gone. So...

I'm going to have to go buy things now like a normal person. But that's where I'm not for the moment. Email is the best thing. Let me say thank you to our sponsor, Notion. Really interesting app. I'll dig into that more and we'll see you all next week.