Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Iacast. All right, we're back for another episode. This is kind of a pre episode to what's coming, and that's Apple Christmas, also known as WWDC Worldwide Developers Conference. So I have a good group of folks with me to talk about our predictions this time. So back on the show, we have Michael Babcock. Hello, Michael.

Hey, Michael. Thanks for having me and for visual people on YouTube. There's a dog behind my right shoulder, and you'll see some VoIP phones behind me, and my headphones are on.

Yes. I don't know that I see the dog, but I tell people that because.

He will come in and out of view, and I've just gotten used to that with AMI.

There's going to be a camera bomber.

Going to come and say hi or he won't.

And that voice you heard was Angie Fisher.

Hello. Good to be here.

We also have Lynn Snyder with us. Hi, Lynn.

Hey there, everybody.

And we have Taylor Art back with us.

Hey, everyone.

Yes. So we have a great show lined up for you guys today, and we are going to talk about some news, but very little because we're going to just give you guys so much news on Monday. This show will come out tomorrow after recording, and that's going to be Sunday the fourth, and then we will have a show on the fifth, and that will be coming out either on Monday or Tuesday. So we're going to be busy. I'll be busy. But today's news to start out with very interesting stuff. So Reddit may be pulling a Twitter that seems like it should be a weird pun or joke or something nowadays, but it's truth.

Yes, it's so true these days, it's, like, ridiculously authentic.

Basically, what's happening is the creator of Apollo had a call with Reddit, and Apollo is an app. I got a notification from Mona and their sounds are very loud through headphones. Oh, my Lord. That was like I haven't enabled my wait a minute.

Wait a minute. I did not put two and two together. Do the new sounds work on the Mac app?

Yes, they do.

Okay.

That's just what blasted my ear off.

And I was going to cut this out, but no, we'll just leave it in because turns out that is some news that we need to talk about. Mona, for mastodon on Mac does have or on iOS, and Mac has sounds now, so that's pretty neat. It's very similar to Ivory, and they even have more sounds. You could configure your own sound. So unlike Ivory, I don't think you can configure the sounds which each one does on Ivory, but on Mona you can.

What I think was really interesting about this is, first of all, full transparency. I was not excited about this because 99% of the time, my phone's in vibrate mode, so sounds ain't going to do anything for me. However, now that I know that they're on the Mac, I have a regained interest in it. But what's really cool about this is the developer of Mona actually worked with blind musicians to put the sounds together. To be able to have a unique sound. I think that's pretty cool.

I did not know that they did.

Wow.

That's awesome. Honestly, that was super cool. All the more reasons to support Mona.

Yes, I have both, and I enjoy both apps. I agree for the simplicity, but I enjoy Mona for the complexity and the customization. I use Mona more on the Mac as a it's almost like Tweet deck for me.

It's really good on the Mac.

I use them both on the phone. Really?

Perspective. It's super accessible. It's just a really nicely done app.

Probably one of the best apps ever these days.

Yeah.

And you can use Windows in the Mac reliably with the app. So if you have a hashtag you want to follow, you can actually keep that hashtag up and then use your window chooser to switch between that hashtag and your main timeline. Or if you want to keep your mentions always up and switch between those with window chooser or Command grave absent.

Nice. So, Reddit, um, so what what happened was there the creator of Apollo, one of the Reddit apps for iOS, had a call with Reddit and they said that to keep if they moved to their pricing structure for the API, it would cost him $20 million a year.

Yikes.

And it seems like to just keep that app using Reddit, and it seems like Reddit is going to start charging for API use for third party applications. Now. I personally don't really use reddit. I've just never cared for their web page. And every time I find information that I might be interested in, it always is like, read more, and then it shows so many other you may also be interested in posts. It's like, well, I'm just looking for what I'm trying to find. And so I just don't really use it much anymore. But I know a lot of people do. And I think this will be I know a lot of people use the app that's in Test Flight Dystopia. So I think that this will really be kind of a blow to the accessibility community that use Reddit.

I just recently got into Reddit and I'm kind of bummed about it. I do like it. It's a wealth of information. The Reddit app is kind of like unlabeled button central, but if you can get around that and figure out what they're all for and label them accordingly or just find a different client yeah. I like it though, but I don't love it. The experience is okay, but it's great for researching opinions or just what other people's experiences are and getting stuff out there.

I love Dystopia. I was sad to see this come, but I'm also very confused. And maybe, Michael, you can help explain this. If I, as an end user, want to go from paying $4 a month to $20 a month and we'll go to that drastic extreme if I want to go from paying $4 a month to $20 a month to use I almost said Ivory. But to use Apollo with Reddit because that's what it's going to cost in order for the app developer to do it. Would it not make sense to be able to still offer that if the users want to do that? Because I interpreted that if this is how this goes down, the author is going to stop developing for Apollo.

Yeah. Well, here's the thing is does he have the user count to do this right? Would he have the number of users that would be willing to pay to keep the API usage up? And then you're looking at the $100 a year for the account on Apple and all of those things, and we're not even talking about apps on Android and other places.

So as a developer, do you have to prepay for API calls or do you just pay as they're used? Because to me, it doesn't make sense. Does he have the user count because he's not paying for something if the users aren't using the API calls?

It depends. I think you can typically get cheaper API if you prepay for them.

Okay, got you. That does make more sense.

Yeah. So it just depends on the method of charging and payment. It kind of goes back to web hosting. If you pay like DreamHost for a dedicated server for three years, you get it a lot cheaper than if you do month to month.

And let's see what really happens with this, because there's still apps out there on Twitter that theoretically should be gone and not working. And they're still working and there's no explanation to that. Like some automatic posters are still working.

Really? Wow.

Yeah. I can't mention names because of proprietary things, but I can tell you that there's some automated things that are still working, and I guarantee that people are not paying for those automated tools to be posting.

Well, didn't WordPress and Jetpack even say that they would be shutting theirs down because of that?

Yes.

I don't know if they'd be shutting it down, but they said they'd be charging $10 a month for Jetpack social over 30 posts or 30 shares.

Sorry.

So I don't know if they're shutting it down. Maybe they are.

Maybe, yeah. So we're coming to a time where social media is not the free and open place that it was. If you don't want to use their official apps, unless you're using Mastodon, I think, though, that it'll still be seen for Blue Sky because that's still supposed to be federated. Like Mastodon is an activity pub. I don't understand why they just don't build Blue Sky into activity pub. That just doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but it is what it is. But I'm just disappointed to see Reddit kind of go the same way as Twitter in doing this.

Now, would the cited community have objections? Because Reddit, that's pretty vocal customer base there.

Well, this affects us more because the Reddit app is, and correct me if I'm wrong, folks, I haven't really used it, but the Reddit app does have its accessibility issues.

Exactly.

And I think Apollo it's like unlabeled.

Buttons, and it's just kind of janky.

It is.

I think Apollo works better on iOS. Yeah, but I think Dystopia was the best, and Apollo was really kind of the next step up. So most sighted people really won't notice because of the you know, they'll just use the Reddit app. They don't need anything else.

Because I know, like, even cited folks liked using Twitter clients. Different ones.

Right.

A lot of people didn't use the main Twitter app. They liked their certain clients for what?

No, because it's limited.

Yeah, right. So they liked that flexibility of being able to that's what's really sad. You really lose that flexibility. You lose some of the creative things that people do.

The interesting thing is that the Twitter app is not created equally. So Twitter for Mac is not nearly as feature rich as the one on the iPhone.

I always felt like that was kind of an afterthought. Like, well, we have to make a Mac client. So here you go. And it never really got any better over time on the Mac. Here's your Twitter client. Shut up and go away. Here's the thing that should be the title.

The thing is that on Windows and Android, it's still not even better where there would be more users. It's just the iOS client for Twitter that has all the features.

That's true.

And that's not even the iPad version. It's just for iPhone.

And I still use Twitter. I have to yeah, I have to use it because unfortunately, the accountants have not got the memo to move to Mastodon. But of course, if I didn't have to use the Janky iOS app, I wouldn't because it's pretty terrible. Mean it's workable, but you don't want.

To spend a lot of time it's a mess. It's like really cluttered and just busy app.

And I don't even think the web I mean, the website may have some of the same features, but like, God.

Oh, God, don't get me started.

But for Twitter Blue, all the features that you get on the iOS app are not there on other platforms. So it's interesting that Reddit is going the same direction. So I wanted to share that with everybody. But yeah, some late developing news, though, that's pretty exciting, is Mac users may get to play better Windows games. And that's with Crossover 23 later this year. They're talking about DirectX twelve support coming to Mac gaming, which is very exciting. And there's talk that there might be a big push for that at WWDC. So gaming I think, might be a very big push for Apple this year. And we'll talk about that more later on in our predictions section. But what are your thoughts on this? I know that it's more of a visual aspect here, but any thoughts?

I think any instance of opening go ahead.

I'm sorry. Okay. It's more of a visual thing. But those graphics technologies could also help with screen readers and things probably, right? Because if you have better graphics cards and things that could maybe help cross over and things be a good way to run screen readers. I don't know, that's just something I've been thinking about. Because we always think about, oh, we need good graphics card for the blind. Why? Because of the screen readers.

Right.

The screen readers do better with better graphics.

I actually found that to be the case. A lot of people just used stock on board intel stuff and this is like back years ago, but when I used to use Nvidia cards, I found that Jaws was more responsive or better. Like using the Jaws cursor yeah, helps. But I feel like anything that opens the Mac up or gives us inclusivity is definitely a huge thing. And that's important. Sylvia. I'll not be able to play them, but I'll enjoy it hearing about it from Michael, that's for sure.

Well, and that's the thing. You may not be able to use a screen reader with crossover, but it does open the doors for if you get more people interested in the Mac if you could get more people to convert to the Mac hardware, then you get more people interested to say, hey, we need to do more with this. Right. So the more opportunities we have to get the world interested in the Mac is just that one more step towards getting better developers to pay attention. And one thing that I find very interesting that I want to find out is will the MacBook Air like the M two, not the Pro or Macs, but will those be able to run DirectX twelve games?

Yeah, that'll be interesting. Yeah, that would be awesome. I'm hoping that everybody will be able to play equally in this new sandbox as they were and there's not going to be any compatibility issues because that would just really big news. Really huge thing. Right. So hopefully that doesn't suck for certain people who don't have the latest and greatest.

Well, I mean that's how the line stuff, that's how it is on Windows. Like if you want to play the good game, have the Nvidia card, you have to.

Right?

I mean some of the built in graphics really do work, but not all the time.

No. Right.

So the last news topic I want to talk about this time is something that's very close to me and full disclosure. We're talking about way around and disclosure here I am on the Way Around development team. But I feel like not many podcasts have really just sat down and talked about Way Around and I wanted to do that for a few minutes. So way around 4.3 has been released. We've been working on that for the last couple of months. And it has some neat features and bug fixes for Android and features for iOS. Like if you're at a public location, you can share a way tag that you find with yourself or others so you can save it and keep track of that. And there's some other neat features like new languages. There's Portuguese and we also have support for Spanish and French and of course English. But we've really never talked about Way Around much. And I think that it's an under discussed topic in the at space and I want to just really michael, I know you use Way Around. Taylor. You use way around and I develop for it. Lynn and Angie. Do you guys use a way around?

No, but I have heard of it. But you're right, it doesn't get a lot of press, it doesn't get a lot of exposure in the accessibility podcasting community, which is really a shame because it's definitely a great it's another tool in the toolbox that could really help a lot of us.

I haven't used it either, but this is very intriguing.

So Way Around, if people are not aware, way around is a tool for iPhone and Android that lets you label items around your house or office. And in fact, we call it kind of our home and office product for individuals to go out and pretty much put NFC near Field Communications tags on anything and they sell [email protected] in stickers, two types of stickers. There's sewable buttons that you can sew onto clothing and pretty much anything. There is oval hole buttons that you could use safety pins with or just put with whatever you want. Rubber bands, all kinds of things. There is also clips that you could clip onto things and very useful there. And then there's magnets. Like, I even have a way tag that's a magnet on my refrigerator, which it would be funny if the refrigerator was a Maytag because way tag, may tag, yes, I had to make that pun. But I really think we have way tags on our cabinet. So one use I have for it is I have what I have in that cabinet on that tag. So I have my personal account and I could just scan and say, okay, this is where regular dishes and bowls are. If I just don't use a certain cabinet for a long period of time, I have an inventory of that cabinet in my kitchen. And you could do that with the stickers and just put them on wherever you want on your cabinets. And then you could do like stuff in your pantry, label each shelf right? So everything goes where it's supposed to go. You can label medications, like put it on the medication lid, things like that.

I'm thinking of the Pen friend. Is that like sort of oh, yes.

It'S very similar to the Pen Friend. The difference is that you don't record your labels. We always tell people if you can send a text message, you can label away tag.

Okay, yeah, I would actually prefer to type it in or same. I'd rather dictate than to have my voice apple Jacks, Captain Crunch, like, yeah, people really want to hear me talking to myself.

I don't want to hear me. So there you go. That's convenient right there.

Well, say you get like those big bins that you just pour your cereal into, then you can reuse the stickers. You don't have to get new tags each time.

So I use them to put on Tupperware lids for leftovers. And what I do is I put what is in there so I don't have to open it and smell it. And then I put the date that I put that in there and we do not have a dishwasher. So I'm not saying that the waste stickers are dishwasher safe, but I am saying that the waste stickers that I've used on the Tupperware container since I think February is when we started doing it, are still stuck to the lids after I wash them and I do wash my lids.

That is freaking impressive. I like, wow, that's pretty incredible stuff.

And it's all NFC, so it's a little radio antenna that you get your phone close to it and it just scans and it does a really good job. So there's so many ways of using way around, and then if you've been to any of the blindness conventions lately, like NFB and some of the different ACB conferences, we've had way around at those. And it's just a great way to navigate because we put up these signs that are NFC signs. And if you feel it with your hand to know that you're at this location, you can use your phone to figure out where you are, what's around you, and how to get from point A to point B. It's not a navigation tool, it won't help you navigate to that next place, but it will tell you instructions on how you can do that. So it lets you be independent while giving you the information that you need. And that's what's really wonderful about it.

If there are just a lot of different systems out there, it would be nice if someone could do a podcast sort of comparing the different systems, the pros and cons of each, and sort of showcasing what's available that people might not be aware.

Well, we may do that here.

I haven't heard it myself, but I have heard from some customers that Hadley actually did a podcast reviewing the Pin Friend and the Way around. And I think another device too, so it might be worth looking at Hadley's podcast, too.

Okay, yeah.

So that would be very good to listen to. And I don't just say all this and we didn't bring this up because I work for Way Around at all, but I feel like it's just something that we don't really talk about as a community much. And I wanted that to get out there. Like, why is Way Around so important in the at space? And it's because it really does help out folks.

Yeah.

And what kind of marketing budget does it have? Because I think so many times in the tech community, in the blindness field, especially if you have a lot of marketing behind something, it tends to get more attention.

And that's really where any product you talk about, like whether you put an app in the App Store, if you go to sell something at a market, it's just do you is it word of mouth and all those things? Way around does have marketing and those kind of things, but a lot of it has been word of mouth over the years. All of our users just say this is a great product. And I've heard Jonathan Mozone and his podcast just kind of say he uses Way Around, and that's a very big jonathan is very well known in the industry, so it's very helpful and it's just that oh, yeah, I use Way Around. What's way around. I need to go look into that. Word of mouth is a very good marketing tool. Of course, like I said, Way Around has quite a few marketing channels. I think when we look at something like IRA and others who have paid a lot into their marketing, I don't know if it's apples to apples, but it's one of those things that every company is improving, scaling and doing new things. And I think Way Around is doing that and I'm very happy to be a part of it, but we'll talk about new versions and keep the conversation going. But I think that Way Around is such an interesting tool because people only can way Around's limit is only based on people's imaginations. So if you can imagine using it for something, just even think about like putting it on an inaccessible greeting card, putting a sticker and then putting all the information or something special on that sticker. There are so many different things that are possible with this app and with these tags. So if you haven't, I would check it out, spread the word, hashtag tag, everything. So we're going to move on from that to what everybody's been waiting for. And that's to talk about the big announcement coming Monday. We've had Google I O, we've had Microsoft build, and we've had all of these things come by right, and they were great. I mean, we've got the Pixel Tablet, which not a big fan of. We got Windows Copilot, we got all the Microsoft things which are kind of interesting, right? But Apple is kind of where everybody is just, what are they going to do? What are they going to do? What are they going to do? And everybody is anxious. Interestingly, because it is so forecasted that Apple is going to release a VR glasses hardware device thing this this year. Facebook just quietly announced the Meta quest three headset. Funny as it is, the Quest Pro still has better optics, and this is newer. So I think Meta is struggling and they don't want to get left behind. So let's talk about Apple. WWDC it's going to happen for the next five days, starting Monday, and I guess I would like to go through and see starting with Michael. What are you hoping for? Like, what would make you happy?

I am hoping that the dog doesn't bark, so I'm warning you, but he probably will. But I am hoping, though, that everyone is wrong and they're not releasing the glasses. And reality. OS is a new version of Siri. That's what I'm hoping. Probably won't happen, but that would be awesome. And I left Michael speechless.

I was muted for just a second. But the issue, though, is that we do know it's confirmed. We've seen screenshots that show Xros.

Okay, well, then my hopes are dashed. Come on, do something with Siri, though. I will pay you $5 a month if you can actually make Siri be productive.

I know Siri has so much potential that has not been tapped and just.

Will Shortcuts help with that? And I hope we get to see some expanded capabilities with an operating system with Shortcuts come in this next year. And I don't think we'll see it everywhere, but I'd like to see some sort of side loading capabilities as well.

Yeah, that's rumored. That's rumored, but I think they said that side loading is going to start in Europe.

That's what's being said, but we don't know. The rumor websites say all these things, but we just don't know side loading capabilities.

I want voiceover bugs to be fixed. That crashy crashy thing where voiceover goes silent, this happened to me just now. I want that to be fixed.

The braille issue that I hope will be fixed.

And so Apple has had intermittent braille bugs since the days of yours. So I really wish they would fix it. Just fix it. I just want bug fixes, right? You know what? And I want Siri to be smarter. Harness all the AI goodness and fix Siri, make it better.

All the new stuff that is coming out and it's exciting and everything, but sometimes as a user, you stop and say, gosh, I just wish they would fix things that are broken and have been broken for a while and let's just get these things fixed. They don't get out my credit card and buy something new.

Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, if they come out with that headset, I don't care if it's $3,000.

Can it be in Michael's hot little hands?

Yes.

Mine too.

Y'all, if it's $3,000, I will buy it.

Me too. I will buy it because it's available.

We had this question well, I think the Iacast hadn't even started at this point, but a lot of blind people asked, would the Apple Watch be accessible?

Of course it would be. I never had any doubts.

I did, because I didn't know how they would make a watch accessible. I mean, I knew we had talking clocks and talking watches.

Well, we had the Siri remote for the Apple TV, and I just figured it would be or remember they had the stripped on version of voiceover, even on the Shuffle. Not the Shuffle, but the ipod nano. Or the ipod nanos back in the day. They figure out a way to make it happen.

That's true.

And that's a small face, the small screen. So I just thought, yeah, they'll do it.

Yeah. So that's very interesting. I didn't even think about that.

But watch OS Ten is coming.

Yes. Watch OS ten. Yeah, we're supposed to get Widgets widget based things, which is kind of like how it was originally.

I'm kind of curious about that.

I'm very curious what we're going to get. And I think that this year will also be a big year for the iPad.

I hope it's time.

Well, the iPad did not get the new lock screen goodness that the iPhone got last year. That happens. Like, there was a year that the iPhone got a big change and the iPad didn't get it till I think it was Widgets.

It was a year later.

And I think that that's going to happen on iPad this year.

How do you guys find configuring your lock screens as a totally blind user?

I don't do it.

I can't tell you how I did it. It's not intuitive at all, but I managed to do it, and I just wish it was better. I'm hoping that improves, too.

Customized lock screens, to me, though, makes a lot more sense on the iPad, because then that could be a product that businesses use and provide information right there on the lock screen, right there. Businesses are already using iPads in their workflows, too.

Well, you know, the the original iPad.

Had a click information right there without having to unlock it and go find the app.

The iPad had a neat feature, which was a picture frame whenever it first came out, and they removed that, and I was very disappointed that they did. But I think if they would have a Pixel Tablet, pixel put that back in. And that's one feature I actually do like on the Pixel tablet, it can.

Be a photo frame.

So I'm really hoping the iPads get some love this year, and then.

I.

Think the Mac is going to get a lot of attention this year. Just something tells me we're going. To see a lot of attention this year because of rumors about gaming and things like that. They've had big game developers spotted at Apple campus, and while the person was there, the Steve Jobs theater was off limits. So it looks like they've been doing filming. So I'm really hoping that we're going to see some gaming news. I think the Mac will be the.

Mac will be an awesome gaming machine.

If they're just doing well and it's getting the third party developers to come to the Mac. And I think it'll be very interesting to see how Apple makes the Mac work if they do have a new headset. Right? How will they work? Because I think that we're going to see a combination of virtual reality and augmented reality with this headset. I think it will do both.

We will see.

Apple has Apple Arcade. I mean, it's a huge library, and they've gotten some pretty big titles in there. And so I'm kind of curious. There was just an announcement, too, that no Man's Sky just came to the Mac, which is AAAA video game. So I'm kind of wondering I thought there was one more that just came to the Mac as well, and I don't remember which one, but with the crossover, 23 news and all of these things, the Mac is going to become a bit more of a platform. And it kind of comes back to what I've been talking about for a while, that it seems like a lot more activity is happening on the Mac. And Michael, you can chime in on this one because I'm curious your thoughts. I've been saying for a while, it feels like more native apps are being developed for Mac, like Mac GPT, Vivid for changing the light level, Mac Whisper. We have centered head. Centered head. But isn't there an equivalent program on Windows?

There's an equivalent, but it's not a cross platform app. It's not the same developer. But yeah, like, I-A-I-K-O is another one.

That was going to be my pick.

For today, but still can be.

Yes, still can be. Like sound source, audio hijack. There's always been those tools that have been just for the Mac, for sure, too.

Well, Draft is also on Mac Drafts, which is awesome because I use Drafts all the time. And seamless the way it works together with the phone is like amazing.

There's just hardly any good apps on Windows anymore.

What I will say has made a huge difference. And I just seen this app because I've been playing with it lately, need to play with it a lot more. And I on a whim said, can I do this? And I went and downloaded the revision fitness app on the App Store onto the Mac. I also downloaded what's the name of this called Prologue, which is an audiobooks app that you connect to your Plex server. So the fact that is, I can go and not every app, but a lot of these apps, I can just go to the App Store and be like, hey, let's download this to the Mac and use it overcast Castro. I have both of those on the Mac.

Too.

Accessible. Very accessible.

And not to mention, the authentic Audible app is now oh, yeah.

Test Flight. I have Test flight on the Mac, so I can demo or beta test apps. And Envision AI is on the mac now.

Oh, really?

No, it's on the iPhone. But it's downloadable on the Mac. There's not a native app, but it is downloadable.

Seriously?

Yeah. And you can send images into Envision AI on the Mac.

Well, I'm going to have to try this. No way.

Because I've got a 400 page six months now. I just assumed everyone knew that.

No, nobody did.

Apparently I did.

Well, it works.

It's actually better. I like scanning mail that way because.

It'S a lot I did not know this.

Messing with your phone and all that stuff. It's easier on the mac.

It is the iPhone version, but it is the iPhone version, which is okay. I mean, as long as it works, that's fine.

Yeah, as long as it works.

And so those on video who don't know, I'm using an iPhone twelve right now in a stand as my camera, using Camo camo. And right now it's in a ring light stand, so I can just slide my finger across the bottom to adjust the light on my camera if I need to. But you have these other camera holders that you can actually manipulate where the phone is being held. So right there you can go on Amazon, get a $20 or less little selfie stick that you can adjust the end. And there's your scanner. Like, you just hold your phone above it and use something like Envision to scan your mail quickly.

That's it.

Should have told me this about a week or two ago.

Get like a monopod, like a short monopod.

And you're right.

The recent update to Envision AI is, or seeing AI, I should say, is I just think it really makes the app a lot better. Like, I noticed it's picking up barcodes better.

Much faster, much more accurate.

Yeah, it really is. I remember just there was a point.

When it was pretty raunchy. It was just slow, and I opened.

It up and it started reading my box that I was holding. I didn't have to mess with things. I was really impressed.

I do wish seeing AI was available on the Mac. It is not.

Me, too.

I just checked.

It's not on the mac.

No, it's not.

Gosh dang it. I was going to ask that question.

Just Envision and you broke my dream.

Sorry, I was getting confused. You guys were talking about Envision.

Yeah. You broke banks, guys. You guys made me bank.

Well, but I think Envision, in ways, does some things better and I think Envision actually uses I could be wrong. I think it uses a lot of the Azure services that seeing AI uses. So very comparable product. Now that would be interesting if you could configure the glasses with the Mac app. That would be cool.

I'm really interested to see what kinds of applications that blind folks will be able to use with this new headset. Part of me is like, well, this is not something I need to be interested in because I'm totally blind.

But it does have applications. What I like to see is using it with GPS stuff.

Yeah, just all sorts of scanning.

If you think about it, the new headset will probably have if they do this LiDAR. So it'll work with door detection. It'll do door detection, it will do people detection.

I will be very happy about that.

It would just be nice to be able to do that all hands free and not have to worry about where you have your phone position.

Exactly.

Carrying your phone, having your phone out. I still can't find a viable chest mount that I like for my phone because we always have one of our hands tied up, either with a guide dog or yeah, that's a big deal. Taylor having glasses that just do that would be awesome.

Taylor, you found one that you like, right?

Yeah.

Well, thanks to the podcast that you guys did with Debbie Azelton. It was the one from God. Gadgets, can you send me a link?

Sure.

I think I can.

Yeah, we can find it and we'll send it to you. It's a lanyard from Guide Lights and Gadgets.

Yeah, and it works pretty well. I was able to use it in the mall when I was doing some test stuff for one of my contracts.

Awesome.

And Tap to Speak, that's going to be great on this headset. And I think that's why they are adding some of those features is because they know it will work on that headset.

So with Tap to Speak, do you actually have to touch this thing? Because if you're dealing with a touch screen at her face, you're going to activate all kinds of stuff. Your finger brushes it or even it comes into contact. But I'll be curious to see how it works. I can't wait to play with it.

Well, the Tap to Speak, you tap like a microwave or put your finger near a microwave and it will make a determination based on depth and LiDAR, like what you're pointing at.

Okay, so it is a point thing. Then you don't have to actually touch it.

Okay, right.

Because a lot of newer appliances are touch screen. They aren't like the buttons, the capacitive buttons. They're actually touch screen. So that can be like, oh, I just activated ten things.

Trying to right.

Yeah.

It would be nice also if it would work with in conjunction with IRA somehow, because so many times when you're working with IRA. I don't have the money to use IRA right now, except for who does five minutes. But sometimes I think if you have a camera that you're holding, it can be hard because your hand shakes. I mean, everyone's hand shakes a little bit. I forget what they call that, but there's a photographic name for that in photography. But it's called just screwing up a stud.

Hold still. Yeah.

It's really hard, I think, sometimes to hold camera to get it in your hands. Whereas the headset would be awesome because on your head you're not it's pointing.

Exactly at where you want to where you want to be. You could just line up that way. That would be super cool.

Yeah. And you know, Apple will put good sound in that headset.

Oh my God, that was going to be so cool. Yeah. Can you imagine walking down, like walking through a mall and you've got your stereo field, right? And you've got the stores on your right, like walking through the mall and it's announcing that would be freaking awesome.

That would make me sound as well, right?

It should. Other headsets have sound awesome.

I was saying that could be awesome for like, VR gaming for the airport travel.

Yeah.

Reading signs envision this game that I would love for a developer to make because I hate insects, flying insects, like bees and flies and stuff. But wouldn't it be cool if you had like a virtual reality game where.

You'Re like fly swatter?

Yes, flying fly swatter. I love it.

There's a lot of different things that could come out with this.

The possibilities are endless.

Yeah. And that's what's really exciting.

Airport trouble.

We're going to know so much more on Monday because some of our airports are huge.

I mean, here is ginormous. You've been to the Vegas airport before.

Yeah, it's huge.

It is.

But I'm convoluted confusing huge. I'm really excited to figure out what we're going to get. Just imagine also, here's another one. We did a few of these on Unmute. But how will this transform photography for the blind folks?

Yes, I thought about that too, because Michael, you and I have talked about that quite a bit. Quite a bit. My love of photography and videography. So yeah, that appeals to me hugely.

Could you imagine, too, if it has a port where you could plug in the Ambio headset so you can record?

That would be great.

Even if I can do USBC port, I could still use my adapter and use I can do that.

Right.

So there's so many possibilities with this headset that for low vision and no vision folks to just really get excited about. I mean, that's leaving alone the gaming possibilities for modern games, for people that who have sight or low vision. I'm very excited about the possibilities of this. And I know that it keeps at first I was very hesitant, like, okay, I don't know that Apple needs to do a headset yet, but if Apple's ready to do a headset, in all indications they are. They're going to do it well, or at least better than the others.

It seems to have had a little bit of a rocky start from what I've read.

Well, any headset right now has a rocky start because the technology to make it to where to Apple standards is just not going to be there. But let's look back at the original Apple Watch.

Oh, my God.

That thing was rough.

Yes, it was. But we got it. Those of us who were Apple Watch zero adopters, we thought we were just all that. We're like, oh, yeah, I can track all my stuff now. I can see my fitness stats. That was me too.

And then I ran my Apple Watch into a few walls and then the steam fell off on my head.

That was hilarious.

That really did happen. I was at a hotel, Michael Orlando.

The night before I met you.

Oh, my God.

I was at a hotel.

Was it them?

No, I was in corporate Christie. I was in corporate Christie at a conference and I was laying down on the bed. I had just gotten to the hotel and I was doing laundry and scrambling, getting stuff ready the night before. And I ran into a wall and I could just tell that something didn't feel right on the watch. And so I got into the hotel and I was laying down, looking at the watch, had it upside down, and all of a sudden the screen just landed on my head. Wow. Right on my forehead. We've come a long way. The wires were still attached and everything. I just put the screen back on. It was fine until it fell off again.

Here's the WWDC and screens that don't fall off.

Yes. But unfortunately the talk is that we will not see this thing until the fall. Or I would even guess maybe early spring.

Oh, dang it.

I'm going to be at the Apple Store trying it out when it lands. So I can tell you that.

But I can tell you what they may do, and we may be in a unique position here, is if we can make this happen, we will try. Apple has done developer transition kits for M One.

Holy crap.

So you could apply and put in a reason why you would like to have one. Then they charge you money to lease these things.

Since we're all on your developer team, Michael, can we all come to your house for a week and have like Camp Michael headset time?

Camp Michael and Taylor.

Camp. Michael and Taylor and camp.

Aftershocks just falling off my head, after.

Shocks.

They just fall off my head.

Yeah, this is just so it's very interesting.

Your head is just too small.

Yeah, see, I can't wear aftershocks they don't fit me like my head is genuinely too big because they can't be resized. I cannot wear aftershock.

They aren't adjustable at all. They are not. I have this weird thing with hair and they slide out everything that I put on. Like the back of my head just slides right off because my hair is really silky.

I wasn't playing. I'm wearing these for the podcast, but my AirPods Max need to go get into the Apple store again.

Yeah, her AirPods, Max. Well, we'll talk about that off the podcast, but it was not good.

Oh, my goodness.

So anyway, the headset is going to be very interesting, and I think that everything that Apple comes out this year is going to be based on that headset. And even some of the hints they've given to developers, say Code new worlds. What do you think that means? I mean, it just says headset gaming.

And New Horizons VR. Right.

Which is funny because there are boldly.

Go where no other headsets gone before.

Right. The funny thing is, I think Meta does have an app called Horizon. So I think that's kind of funny that you use that term specifically. So I think that's going to do it for this episode. Do you guys have any final thoughts before we wrap up? Is there anything that I missed that you would like? I mean, watch OS. Oh, yes, iPad.

Have you heard the thing about Siri? Apparently our little wake words getting cut down to just Siri. That's another remark.

I think that's a bad idea.

That's a big mistake. There are going to be so many false triggers, I don't even want to think about it.

I completely agree with that.

But again, like Michael said, I think if we see a lot of changes for shortcuts and just really improving Siri, but I almost think what needs to happen okay, this might spark a whole nother discussion, so we'll see what happens. I almost think that we need to.

Keep you just thought it was never guys.

Yeah.

False ending.

I think that Shortcuts need to stay. I love shortcuts, but I think that Siri needs to go. I agree, because Microsoft made the decision to remove Cortana from Cortana from Windows.

What assistant I have on my phone.

That would be great. But if Apple wants to have an assistant, they need to genuinely do something.

Redo it, bring a series, just take it out completely overhaul it, redo it, make a whole new thing.

As far as I'm concerned, it really needs the addition of AI.

It really needs yes, it does.

And just call it something else, not Siri.

Okay, so I always had a problem with Siri's. I guess the best way I can describe it is, like, her cute little vernacular things that it does or he or she whatever voice you have, and I get so tired of it. Just answer my question. Do what I want you to do. Stop trying to be cute and funny. You're not Aka. It's just tacky. Stop it.

Yeah.

And in the past, be productive being able to answer ask a question and get a direct answer. Now I'm getting a bunch of links working on it. It's not acceptable anymore. Search cannot be that.

Or even if you try to search for something in the App Store, a.

Lot of times exactly.

It comes up with a web search.

It's just searching the web for whatever.

I found this on the web. Have a look. Read it. Yes.

Really, Angie? The way that you said that reminded me of the Big Bang Theory episode where they make fun of Siri.

I haven't seen that one.

Oh, my gosh, this is so funny.

I found this on the web. Here, have a look.

It had an episode where Raj goes lazy and he goes to Apple's campus and it's actually all these people reading.

I think I've seen that one. Haven't we?

I think you have, too.

I was just going to say that.

Are you excited about the headset, Larry?

So what I think is the most frustrating about Siri myself, because I sent demos one of my HomePod minis, because I was just getting frustrated with whenever you ask Siri a question on the HomePod, it would say, I can answer this for you on your phone if you ask me again.

Why do I have to ask that? Yeah, I agree with you.

I think it's because it wants to show you information, like on a screen.

Why do I have to ask you again? Alexa? And Google can push notifications to my lock screen to give me the information. Sorry. I'm passionate about that.

I agree with you. You're absolutely right. There's so much and how that could.

Be done with it, and it's just sort of languishing there.

Siri has been siri was the AI or the digital assistant before anybody else. That was the sad part. It was a lot of time. No, it hasn't. It actually has better since it came out of beta.

Exactly.

It still feels actually going down a beta, right?

Yeah.

It was released October of 2011.

Yeah.

I even argue with the forest or.

As everyone used to say when they.

Dictate the four S. And the interesting thing is the team that made Siri went on to Samsung and made Bixby. Now, interestingly, everybody hated Bixby, but I liked it. I actually did, too.

You could do stuff with it that you couldn't do with Google Assistant. You could get to integrated more deeply into the Samsung phones and I could do more.

I liked the gamification of Bixby because you'd get experience points and all those and you could use that in the Samsung store.

Oh, my goodness.

That's true. I think what they did with it was pretty neat.

That was cool.

Yeah. All right, well, we need to wrap this thing up. But as we typically do, we have picks I have several to pick from. Some days I have a hard time finding something. But to start us off, Lynn, do you have a pick this week and where can people find you online?

I do, I have a pick, and my pick is called Iko Aiko. And basically it is if you know what Mac Whisper is, it is sort of the phone equivalent of Mac Whisper. You should know, first of all, that this is a two gigabyte download, so you do need to make sure that you have enough space on your phone. Also, it is pretty processor intensive, so your phone's going to get nice and toasty. Warm, but hand warmer.

Exactly.

But what it does is it does on the phone transcription of audio. So, for example, if you have a video on your phone, a podcast, a class lecture, you can have ICO actually transcribe that for you and you can export it as text or there are several different things you can different. It has tons of languages that it supports. Again, it favors quality over speed. So it's going to take time. You're just going to have to my advice is sort of start it and go take a shower. Right. If you're going to do something that's long, that's a long piece of audio. So it's basically transcribing your audio. It does a beautiful job. It's free. But again, you need a good quality phone, you need a newer phone and you need space on your phone. But if you have those things, I would recommend you try it. It's slow, but it's awesome. And for free, you have nothing to lose. Right. So there you go, ICO.

And where can people find you online?

I am at Caneprints [email protected], and I.

Want to mention one thing with ICO, it's a very neat app. The one complaint that I have is that you cannot edit text in place. So you get your transcript, you have to do what you want with it and send it out somewhere.

That's right.

And the funny thing is, I've seen how it transcribes text. I'm like, I've done that with my desktop app that I built with Python. So I do eventually one of the things, I would love to build my own Whisper app. I think that would be fun.

Yeah, that would be cool.

Yeah. So I've built one for Windows and Mac that I actually built before Mac Whisper came out, and it's on GitHub.

An idea for you later, Michael. We'll talk about it.

Okay. Speaking of developing things yeah, Whisper is a very neat framework for transcription, and it's free, it's open source.

Open source. I would say you might be better off using your Mac to do this kind of work. But if you just want to translate, do something on the fly, and you have your phone right there, and you say, I really want to get a text transcript of this, it's a great option.

And believe it or not, this will work in windows too. But it will be slower than it is on Mac because the Mac has the higher quality processors and things for this kind of work. Whereas windows there are ways to make nvidia cards work with whisper to be just as fast as the Mac. But it is a little interesting. So those are things to keep in mind with Whisper. So, Michael, how about you? What's your pick and where can people find you online?

Perfect. Michael? So my pick today is going to be something you can't buy, and I love to share that with people. At least you can't buy it at the price that it should be sold at Amazon, there's people selling it for $100 more than what you can buy it at the company for sale. And that is going to be the Ubiquity dream router. Now, if you're not familiar with this, this is a Ubiquity access point, and it also has the unify OS installed on it as well. So it'll work as your unify controller as well as it will work as an access point if you need wireless. The Ubiquity unify router also has four Ethernet ports on it, two of which are Poe. And if you don't know what Poe is, then you should research it, because I didn't and I thought that it was boring. And now it's like everything needs to have Poe because that's power over the Ethernet cable and then you can expand it or not, if you want to. And so if you're interested in more information about why I have 500ft of ethernet cable ran throughout my house, listen to the latest episode of Technically Working and you can find me online. I am at Payone. Let's try that again. I am on mastodon payone at Unmute Community.

Yes, Poe is really cool stuff. We have Google Fiber here and I love it. We have the Eero routers and I love Euro and they work really well with Google Fiber. And routers are people get very opinionated over routers these days. Have you all noticed?

I love eero too. I use Eero as well. Yes, they do.

Some people are like, don't buy Eero, don't buy this, don't buy that.

It's not configurable, it's trash.

Use what's best for you. Now, we did not have good luck with the Google Nest WiFi. But yeah. So, yeah, interesting stuff. And Angie, do you want to go ahead and if you have a pick and where can people find you online?

You can find me at tech Enthusiasts. That's T-E-C-H capital Enthusiast at Dragonscave space Masterpeople.

All right, and Taylor, what is your pick for this time and where can people find you online?

All right, so my pick is I just got the MacBook Air and I love it. Everybody's in the podcast saying Yay. So, yeah, I like it. Really? I use it for a lot of different things of course. Unfortunately, accounting software needs to be able to get around the Mac because it just doesn't. So just come on, guys, get your act together. But I like it for everything else, creative stuff especially. So you can find me online in a ton of places. I have macedon. So tayart. Tayarndt at Tacopoulos. T-E-C-H-O-P-O-L-I-S social. You can also find me on Twitter if you're still there at Tay Tayarndt and I'm on YouTube at Taylor Art. So those are all the main places you can find me. But if you really search my name, you can find me pretty much anywhere.

Yeah, that's really the cool thing about Mastodon is it actually does show up in Google search. Now. Like, even my techopos social account shows up on Google if you search for my name, which is really neat, you would think that Mastodon Google would not crawl that as well, but it does. So, interesting stuff. My pick is a video game that I just paid an astonishing large amount of money for. Diablo Four. Nice. It is made by Blizzard Entertainment. And what's interesting is for low vision users like myself, they have put a screen reader in the game. Now, that may make you think that it's completely accessible, and I really wish it was, but it does not read all parts of the screen and it does not tell you where to go in the game. But for a low vision user, if I point at an enemy, it tells me what enemy I'm looking at. And so that really helps. If I'm going through my inventory with my controller, it tells me what I'm on, reads the information. They have a bug where it lets you speed up the speech of the screen reader, but unfortunately, it also speeds up the pitch. So they didn't think that through very well, but the fact that they put that in there was really beneficial for me. They've never had that in any of the other games. And this is the fourth in the series. Yeah, exactly. So I'm really happy about that. Games that add more accessibility features, even if they are working on getting the rest of the way there, is great. So very good story, very good. There's actually books in the Dioplo video game series that you can read as well. And one thing that people forget about is there are loads of video games have some of the best stories. Like TV shows are great, video games are just as good as far as storytelling. And you could watch let's plays of video games or watch the cutscenes on YouTube, and then you could also read the books, like the Halo series, you're playing from cutscene to cutscene. That's really what you're doing. You're playing just to hear the story. Unless you're doing multiplayer, and I'm not too into that. But the book series for Halo is very extensive. It's very long. And it goes like, there's parts of the games that pick up from the books, and it's like, well, what happened there? Oh, you need to read the book. So I really like that there is that back and forth between games and books. So, yeah, all of that to say, check out Diablo. Four books are great, all that stuff. So as for where people can find me online, I'm Mike Doey's on Twitter. Mikedoey's at Techoplas social. That's M-I-K-E-D-O-I-S-E. You can email me at Mike Doey's at icloud.com and you could find me anywhere on the web. Just search for Michael Doey's. You can find me. And yeah, this has been a great episode. Great episode. So I'm glad all of you guys joined me today.

It was fun.

Thanks for having us.

Good to be here.

Yeah. And we will be back on Monday for an Iacast Plus exclusive. If you subscribe to that feed, you'll be able to listen to that coverage of the event, where we all join a room and talk about the event, and then we'll do first impressions at the end of the keynote. And then on Saturday, after WWDC wraps up, when we get all of the details, because we'll get details on all of this stuff throughout the week. Apple does sessions all week, and they only release certain sessions each day. So after all that's done, we'll come back together and do a wrap up show for WWDC and talk about everything that we've learned. So there's going to be a lot of great content from it's going to.

Be an IA castathon.

Yes.

We're all holding our breath, waiting for the big moment to arrive, and I hope we're not going to be disappointed. You ever notice, like, every Apple event, you see these journalists or people on Twitter or people well, that's totally boring, but I don't think it's going to be that way this time. I think there's just going to be a lot of cool stuff.

I really have never been that disappointed from an Apple event, but I think it's because I'm an Apple fanboy.

Yeah.

All right, that's going to be Apple.

Apple Christmas.

Yes.

And then we also get to start the.

So thanks, everybody, for being here, and we will have loads of content coming this summer. We'll talk about the betas, all of those things. So I want to thank you all for joining, and we'll see you all next time.

Take care, guys.

Thanks for watching, everyone.

And listening.

And listening. Yes, consuming. Thanks for consuming.

That just sounds awkward. Thanks for consuming.

Thanks for yeah.

Bye, everyone.

Bye bye.

Good luck editing, Michael.

Oh, I'm leaving all that in.

Good.

Oh, good. Yeah.

Thank you for tuning in to the IA cast. We hope you enjoyed the show and found the conversation to be insightful and informative. If you have any feedback or comments, we'd love to hear from you. Please send us an email at [email protected]. You can also follow us on Twitter at iacasnetwork to stay informed about new episodes and other updates. Don't forget to check out more great podcasts on the Iacast network, IACAs net. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon.

You nah.