Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 190 of the IA cast. We have Marty SoBo with us.

Pale.

And we have Michael Babcock.

Hello.

So we're at episode 190 of the podcast, and we are getting very close to our 200th episode, which is very exciting and it's crazy. We've been doing this since 2015, and we're almost at 200. How long have you guys been listening to the show?

I started listening because I am not a longtime listener. I think I started listening about a year and a half, two years ago.

Would it be exactly the same for me as well?

Well, I mean, there are some people that are just finding the show, so it's cool that people have been listening, and it's interesting that so many people have been listening for a long time. So it's very exciting that we're coming up on 200. We are going to work on a few changes at episode 200, so I just want to let people know there. And I'm not going to go into any more details, so you'll have to be surprised. So very exciting stuff. And I think this episode is kind of the calm before the storm, you could say, because September is kind of going to be the next big place where we're going to have a bunch of tech, you know, new iPhones, new Betas, all those things. So I'm just very excited to see what we get during those times. So Michael and Marty do this thing called unmute presents. You might have heard of it. And so do you guys want to talk about that and what's going on on the latest episodes that you guys have been producing?

Go for it, Michael. Of course.

I'm in the middle of replying to social media, and you're like, Go for it, Michael. So, yeah. Every Tuesday, 10:00 a.m, Pacific time, 01:00 p.m. Eastern. We go live in the ACB community. It's currently streamed to ACB Media. We're going to be trying some experiments, so Michael and I might be talking. So stay tuned to Iacast Radio as well. We need to figure out if I have that name right or not, but we come in and answer your questions for technology. Michael D shows up and answers all the low vision questions that I don't know the answers to or that Marty doesn't know. And if you want to join in, you can visit ACB Community to get the details about how you can actually join in on the Zoom Link clubhouse. If you follow the ACB Club I think that's what they're called this week, then you'll get alerted of it again. Tuesday, 10:00 a.m. Pacific time. 01:00 P.m eastern. That and so much more available at Unmute in your favorite podcast app.

Yeah.

And to talk about Iacast Radio, we're very excited about this, and we're basically running a radio station for all of Iacast and Unmute Presents content. So if you want to check that out, you can use in the I accessibility for iOS app, you can go to the Live button and turn on the radio. I might change that to Radio in the next update, who knows. So be looking for that. And on Amazon with the echo devices, I don't want to say its name, but A-L-E-X-A you could say open Iacast live or play Iacast live and that will play our radio station. So it's very exciting stuff. We're now starting with Live and Michael, we could cut this out if you would rather not, but do you want to talk about what we're going to be doing each week on top of the Iacast on the radio station? Because I think this will be coming up right after this broadcast or pretty soon after it.

Yeah.

So we are making Michael actually keep his schedule in a reasonable time and stay under that 2 hours or whatever so he can't have super long shows at 05:00 p.m. Central, not Eastern. Damasi texted me and said, that's Central, right? I said yes. Well, I gave him the thumbs up and he goes, well, I mastered on you said Eastern. So clarification. Six Eastern, five Central. We're going to go live and do technically working today. If you haven't heard that podcast, look up Technically Working. Damasi and I sit down and talk about how we are technically working. We had a request to go into Clubhouse and said, huh, well, you do Clubhouse. Damasi and I'll do other streaming services, iacast and YouTube. And I'm having some technical issues with YouTube. So yeah, that's where we are right now. And my part of Technically working will be I will figure out how to fix it. And I don't know if we're going to stick to that time because normally Demossi and I record on Fridays at 05:00 p.m. Central. So stay tuned and eventually we'll create an ad. So you'll hear that on the radio network as well.

Fantastic. Yeah, the Iacast Radio is pretty exciting just because if you've tuned into it and we've gotten quite a few people that have tuned in in the last week or so. So I love to see people using it. I mean, it's not the cheapest thing to have out there, but just seeing people using it and hopefully enjoying it, we had somebody talk about it on mute. So fantastic. I love to see people really listening to this because my goal for Iacast and Iacast Radio is to present a podcast that people could tune into and listen, like even for myself in any of our hosts, to just get content on our network that they didn't produce that is interesting. That is like you'll be able to tune in and always get something new. So that's the point of the radio station. So it's pretty exciting. We're going to have talk radio and everything's going to be recorded and published as podcasts. So it's a great platform. It took me a minute to get this thing set up with the audio hijack and all that stuff before the podcast, but I'm pretty excited about it. So we're doing YouTube, we're doing the radio, we're doing chapters in the podcast, transcripts, all these things. I remember when we started, it was just, oh, here's an MP3 file upload it.

Times have changed.

Yes, just a little bit. Things have changed, right?

Yeah, just a little bit. Going into our first news story, things may change a lot if this proves to be true. A lot of people don't want to talk about things until it's completely proven. But this fascinates me a lot, and I've been watching a lot of TikTok and have seen in the science community that it looks like some folks in South Korea have found a new what's called a superconductor that can be at room temperature and not have any problems. It could be room temperature and just doesn't need to be protected or anything like that. It doesn't have to be in vacuum, none of it. So what will this mean? It's called LK 99, and it's very common element that they've been able to put together. And it could make battery technology completely revolutionized, make it to where you could charge batteries in minutes instead of hours, and even change how maglev trains work and make power lines less dangerous. So what are y'all you know, it makes it to where there would not be heat generated by electricity, so your processors wouldn't need fans or heat sinks, all these things. So I'm kind of curious what you all's thoughts are on this.

Well, one thing is, if they're able to pull it off and actually make it successful, then you're talking about having machines that would be way thinner, way lighter, and easier to carry around, because they wouldn't have to have space for fans and heat and all of that stuff. Now, they still would need space for ports and other internal components that go inside there. So it'd be interesting to see how thin they actually could make a machine and not have to worry about heat. So that'd be one thing I would be really interested in, because if you're moving around and you need a powerful machine, currently I've got a 16 inch MacBook Pro, and it is not the lightest machine in the world to carry around. So if I can have the same power and have it a lot less in weight, that'd be great, right?

What about you, Michael? What are your thoughts on battery?

The power abilities of being able to take away that heat, which means it's going to save energy, which means it'll be a lot more efficient. What we saw with Apple and their M chips is just the beginning of the next step in technology innovations. Mallory and I were talking about it a couple of days ago. A lot has changed in technology. When you look back at the last 15 years. And a lot of times people say, hey, look at how much technology has changed since 2000. But when you actually take a step back and look at how much technology has changed in less than 23 years, less 1015 years, I can't imagine where we're going to be by 2030 at this point in time, and this is surreal to think about. I was listening to it on another favorite show of mine, Double Tap. At this time. If I was to fly into Phoenix, and I don't know if I could get it from the airport, but if I was to go to Phoenix, I can independently summon a driverless car, get in that car, and go where I want to go. And that technology, though it's not everywhere, is already available. And 1015 years ago, I remember people telling me that's not going to happen until 2030, 2040, and we're in 2023. I'm astounded to see what this type of technology will bring and think about it. If it's less room for it to take up, and if you don't have to worry about heat, how is that going to improve transportation? I'm getting more and more passionate about transportation lately.

Currently, if you have a modern machine, battery power lasts from a full charge. I'd say anywhere from 1015 hours. Maybe you can push 18, depending on what you're doing. But if they're able to remove a lot of this heat, I wonder how much more battery performance you'll get out of a machine you think will hit 20 plus hours. That'd be insane.

That would I mean, it's potentially where you could get to 40 hours of battery with this. Who knows?

It'll be interesting to see.

Yeah. Basically what it means is this material, I believe it's lead and phosphorus. And I think they said aluminum or copper. One of the things it would allow for electrons to move through material, kind of like we already use metal and glass or I think standard conductors. Right. Water conduct, electricity. This would make it to where there's no resistance as the electrons move through. So it can do that, basically without losing any of that resistance. So that's really what's interesting about this. So we'll have to keep track of it and see what comes of it. Hopefully it's not fake, but I think eventually, no matter what, we're going to find a superconductor that can be at room temperature, that can be mass produced and things like that. So it's all very interesting to me. All right. One topic that I did not mention, that I wanted to bring up to the group is I read an article or saw something online that Threads has now lost, I think, 82% of its traffic.

Yes, it's the honeymoon. Newness has worn off. People wanted to jump over there, see what it's like. It's like Mastodom was in the news for a couple of weeks because it was building a lot of awareness and now it's kind of faded back. Someone posted on Mastodon today. I went to Spotlight and typed in TW and X came up because that makes sense and unfortunately in this day and age, that's the case.

Well, I could tell you if you go delete your Twitter app or your X app and reinstall it, it will not do that anymore.

Okay, good to know.

Because I was curious about the same because I still go and wait.

Well, I think in the very beginning there's a new thing out, the new sparkly, right? So everyone's got to jump on and check it out and see what it's like. But once they try it out and they're on there for a few days, maybe a week, they realize there's still some bugs because it's brand new. They don't have all the features that other platforms may have, that they're used to having. And I think that people are so impatient, they jump on there and then if they don't have exactly what they're looking for from somewhere else, then they're disappointed and they give it a bad rap. But they're rolling it out and they're taking time to make sure that it works well before they implement all of the other features that they want to implement. And I'm sure over time, just like anything, they're going to be implementing those other features that everybody wants. So you just got to give it a little time. Not that it's any better than anything else, but I think sometimes people are a little impatient to say, well, it doesn't have this and it doesn't have that, and this other platform over there does and so I'm going to go back, or whatever the case is. So we'll see.

Yeah. The issue with Threads is, at least especially in the accessibility world, people like Threads. The issue is that it does have accessibility problems, but it has a lot of other bugs and limitations. Two of them are kind of big showstoppers for me. One, no iPad app, and two, no way to access it on the desktop.

Right? And here's something to also think about, is that most other apps, they have an invitation in the beginning so that they can slowly, gradually have people come on there. So it's not just overwhelming and the thing crashes and you have all kinds of problems because you have way more people than it can handle in the moment, right? So they do this slow, hey, get an invitation. A lot of people are waiting in line to try and get their invite to be able to get on there to try out a certain thing. In this case, they didn't do that. They're just like, we're open for business and boom, everyone come and hang out.

Well, the way they were able to do that without crashing their systems was they're using the and you know, they're just basically doing the same thing. So it really didn't overload them. That much because they were already doing it with Instagram. It's just another way for Instagram users to communicate.

I really was speaking to the amount of numbers they were getting in the beginning compared to everyone else. They didn't have that wait for an invitation type of thing. They just kind of opened the floodgates and let everyone go for it, which is not how it usually works. So I think that, yeah, they had a lot of numbers in the beginning, but I also think that's a little skewed since they sort of just bypassed the whole invitation part of they and.

They had the numbers because they are meta. They're Instagram, and if they just have a thing where you could press a button and boom, you have everybody from Instagram there, then that's an easy kind of shortcut way to get more users. I listen to a lot of tech podcasts and they're like, well, this network is this and this network is this, but Blue Sky is this thing. And I'm like, I don't understand how you guys can talk about Blue Sky. Nobody other than you guys who are pundits can get on Blue Sky.

Right? And that goes to my point. You can only get on Blue Sky if you get an invitation they let you on.

Exactly. And so that's kind of my big thing is you can't really talk about Blue Sky because of that reason. The other thing about I think a lot of people in the mainstream have dismissed Mastodon because it doesn't have the features that they would want from quote tweets or quote posts and things like that. But I don't know that we're going to get that on Mastodon.

Yeah, well, if you look at how Macedon got going is because there was other platforms that were having major issues and people wanted something new. And they also discontinued, or I should say Twitter discontinued a lot of the third party apps that had the capability to be able to use Twitter. And so a lot of those companies just basically sunseted their Twitter apps and they just created Macedon apps. And pretty quickly we had some pretty amazing apps. I mean, there's a few out there that were already ready for prime time with just a couple of months, and they're still making major updates all the time, and they're considering accessibility as well. So I think that's pretty cool.

And I think the thing with Mastodon is people don't realize that it is what you make of it. And I know a lot of people do have trouble with it. And the way I always tell people to think about Mastodon is it's Twitter and email combined. If you understand email and you understand Twitter, you understand Mastodon. When you sign up for an email address, you have to go pick where you want to sign up at, right? And then you have your Twitter account. So you combine the two together, you've got mastodon.

It doesn't always have to have every feature in the world. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes people just like simple.

And it's interesting because I'm a huge fan of how social media and social networks work and how people interact with them. It's a fascination of mine. And I wrote a long post on Mastodon. I'm not sure if you guys saw it, and I want to pose the question to you guys. Does there need to be a centralized town square like Twitter was anymore? I wrote no and gave a long explanation, but I'll mention that here. But I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts.

I don't know, that's a tough one because who are you going to pick to be that central town square? I mean, you'd have to pick something. What would it be? Who would it be? Would it be a public type of thing? Would it be a private I mean, how would you figure that out so that everyone comes to one place to gather? Because right now we have a bunch of different things. We've got Facebook, we've got Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it. We've got Macedon and there's others. So how do you foresee that?

And I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Michael, to answer your original question, I don't know if we need a town square, but having a town square is nice. So let me give a quick example. I just installed Twitter and Michael, I'm sorry, X and Michael, although it does still come up as Twitter in the App Store. Michael knows that because I just tagged him in a post and I suspect he gets push notifications. Interestingly enough, complain about it if you want to or not, but the accessibility of signing in and actually posting was surprisingly pretty comfortable. And then I went to my notifications to look and see, hey, what have I missed on Twitter? Who's mentioned me? And a couple of weeks ago, people know I had an issue with Keurig's warranty replacement process. They wanted a handwritten note, a photo of a handwritten note underneath the Keurig to replace it. And I complained about that on mastodon. And of course I got a couple of people who felt the frustration with me, but I didn't ever receive any sort of response from Keurig because they didn't have a presence on Mastodon. I also posted a similar message. Thanks to Chat GPT for helping me craft that message on Twitter and I'm horrible about not looking on Twitter and I'm sorry Elon, I'm going to call it Twitter until X gets into my brain. So I posted on there and then I went back and looked at the notifications. They replied to me less than 6 hours later. So that says there's a use for support assistance or for tools like Twitter or the town square and you can get support solutions that may not normally be available when you have to give that support to people in front of others, if that makes sense, what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, it does. And that's why I always tell people, it's like I try to be everywhere. I'm on Threads, I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok, I'm on Twitter, X, whatever. But my favorite is Mastodon, right? If you want to see me just talk about random stuff, it'll be on Mastodon. But I'm on all of the platforms because everybody is on all of the platforms. But my solution, and I think this is where we're going to go in the future, is all of these platforms can be the town square. And what needs to happen is for us all to adopt a protocol such as Activity Pub. Once we do that, and if Elon ever added, which I don't think he'll ever do it, activity Pub to Twitter threads is already going to add it and others are looking at it. Blue sky is working on their own. But if it could be interchangeable with Activity Pub, then we have our town square. We would not have to worry about any company. Just saying, well, I'm going to change how I work. Too bad for you users. If we all had a decentralized way of federating our content to our social network of choice, then anybody will be able to connect to anybody else. So your problem of being on Mastodon and communicating with Keurig would be a non issue. And if you think about it, if Keurig's aren't going to be on Threads, then you could mention [email protected] and you'll be fine, right? Whereas instead of being on the social media platform that you don't like, right, you could just mention whoever at whatever server and it will just all work. And that's where I think that we need to move to with social media is to that kind of a space where you can federate with whoever you want. Now, I'm curious about this from you guys. You guys have unmute community and I have my three instances because I just kind of like Mastodon. It's just a little thing. But other blindness related servers are already talking about, at least that I've seen on Mastodon, blocking Threads net out of the gate before they even federate. What are y'all's thoughts on this? Do you think that's advisable or do you think that kind of limits our users?

I think it limits our users. I mean, if you can get your information out to more people, doesn't hurt anything, really. I mean, then you're kind of like keeping everyone inside the wheelhouse. If you can expand out and not be able to, or if you can do it from one place, don't you think that'd be better? Why would you want to have to go log into five, six, eight different places just to get your message out? If you can do it from one place, then it would go out across all the places, right? That'd be way easier. Don't you think?

Well, I think the biggest problem is that they're worried about hate speech and other things coming through as well.

Yeah, but they're already having that issue with they're finding hate speech and other sort of things that aren't appropriate in other places, especially being able to have your own servers and things like that. So, I mean, they're going to have that issue and until they resolve it and figure out how they can keep that at bay, that's going to just be a continuous problem. And they have those problems even on the biggest platform. So I'm not sure how you're ever going to totally make that go away.

Right.

I've often said social media are in the game for themselves and right now Mastodon doesn't have a monetization strategy behind it and I wonder if that's going to be a detriment to it. And I will say having one place to go to log in is super nice. If I have to go to log into five or six different social networks, I'm not going to do it. Go look at my Twitter profile. I've never said I'm going to delete my Twitter profile, but I also don't post there because Mastodon is where I live. Right.

Mean, I I post on all of them. I wish there was an easy way to post to all of my places. I guess kind of the issue with X and all those things is knowing where you can post automatic posts and what's going to work and what's going to not work anymore. I mean, that's kind of the big thing with reddit and all those things. Well, I guess we should move on to something that Marty and I have just purchased. And I'm really excited about these, although I don't know that I'm going to use them as monitors again. But we just bought the Beat Studio Pro Headsets. And what color did you get, Marty?

I got black.

I got the navy and it's very similar in color to the black, but just the B is in blue, which looks really cool. And they may be a very navy blue, but they look very nice. And they're 350 from Apple. Very nice headphones. Mine kind of creak when I open them up, I will say, but they unfold. These things are kind of back to the basics of headphones. They unfold so they can fold up and be a lot smaller than your typical AirPods Max, in my opinion. And tell me if you think I'm wrong, Marty, but they sound as good as the AirPods Max. They have the same sound.

Yeah, they're pretty close. I mean, it's pretty impressive how good quality of sound you get out of them for the price. And they're definitely way lighter weight and they fold up much smaller into this cool little case that they come with. So they take up way less room in your backpack, especially, as we all know when you're traveling and you've got everything that you can imagine in your backpack. Everything from cables to backup batteries and snacks and drinks, whatever. Right. So real estate is definitely a thing. And I find that the Macs are definitely way heavier. And because they don't really fold up or anything like that, they take up a lot of room in your bag. So that was a couple of things I wasn't too keen on.

Yeah. One thing that is different between the two is these do fold up, so it adds more height. The case is taller, but definitely not as wide and long as the AirPods Max. So it is another dimension. Like the height of the case with them being folded is a little different, but it does hold the headphones and it holds two cables, so you could put the charger and the USBC charger and the audio cable that it comes with. So that's pretty nice. And one of the things that is a pro, studio pro is they can work without being powered on, so they can be used even if they have no battery, which is pretty incredible if you ask me. I'm a big fan of that.

Yeah, definitely. That's a great feature. Definitely. If you're one that's taking a mobile rig with you and you need to podcast or do whatever you do on the road, you don't want to have to take multiple headsets with you. So this can cover your entertainment. It's got Bluetooth transparency mode, as well as what's the other one I'm having.

A brain fart, has transparency. Noise cancellation.

Noise cancellation. Thank you very much, Michael. So, yeah, it's got all the utilitarian value of being able to just be good entertainment, but at the same time you can use them for monitors and stuff like that. As yeah.

And one thing I really recommend with these is to get Apple Care. That is always the thing you want to get with any headset, because I think I've had my AirPods Max for two years now and I got to thinking about it, like, man, if these break today, that's going to be expensive to get replaced.

Oh, yeah. And it's not even that bad on these. I think Apple Care was like $30 for $2.

Yeah, it was decent.

Not too bad. I would say it's worth it, especially when you hit that $350 mark. Then you're making an investment, I feel like. So you want to protect your investment.

And keep in mind, too, these will work really well with Android and iOS. So another plus, I'm calling this a plus. People may not think so, but the one thing I despise on Apple headphones is when I'm doing something on my phone, listening to music, and I go to do something on my watch and it takes the audio. I do not like that. I don't like it at all.

I would agree with you. I get that with my computer all the time. I'll get a. Phone call which I'll be talking and then something happens on my computer and audio comes through voiceover, something like that and boom, it just hijacks my earbuds to the computer which I didn't want it to do. But you have no way to stop it from doing that unless you totally turn off Bluetooth altogether which isn't always great because if you have a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard or anything else that connects via Bluetooth, then you're pretty much hosed if you do that.

Now you can change the setting on each device to not take your audio. I don't remember the name of the setting but you can go into Bluetooth settings for your AirPods and change that to a different setting and it will not automatically switch. That is a thing, but just having to do that on all devices and I don't think it's an option for the watch. I don't think I could be I.

Am not sure about that, I'd have to go check and see. But I will say another really cool there's two things that I'm really impressed with these. First of all, they actually give you the cables, the max you pay way more money and you don't get the cables so that in itself is excellent. One of the cables is a USBC cable and the cool thing about this is, yes, they have USBC on the headphones so that's what you use for charging them. But they threw in a little extra bonus. Which is you can plug them into a device that has USBC, for example, like an iPad, something like that, and you can play your audio through it at full quality, which to me is super awesome. Because if you're traveling, for example, and you're on a plane for however long, or you're wherever, and you're really paying attention to charging your devices and things like that, well, you can plug it. In and you don't need to worry about charging. You can just turn off your headset and use them through USBC and still get great audio quality.

Another pro tip is you could take, if you do have the cable for the previous Beats that had lightning or for the AirPods Max that charged through lightning and that goes from a Lightning to 3.5 adapter you can plug the lightning side into your iPhone and the other side into the headphones. Your iPhone will ask you if the accessory is used for headphones. You say yes, it's for headphones and it will power down the Bluetooth on the Beats and just use it as a headset. So it's almost like you have your headset jack back on your iPhone. It's fantastic, it sounds great and you could even use the headset mics outside of Bluetooth mode so that's pretty exciting as well. So it's a very versatile headset. When the power is off, you cannot use the buttons on the side but you can still use noise cancellation or transparency mode if you have power. And I don't think those take up nearly as much battery, so they'll work pretty well. But the one thing about it is I do not feel the transparency is as good as the AirPods Max and a few little things like that. Plus you do not have the H One chip. So all of the Apple switching goodness that a lot of people like you do not have, those are two very small trade offs. Like, if you're looking for an all purpose headset that extends outside the Apple ecosystem, this is perfect. And I kind of feel like that's what Beats are meant for. It's like this is Apple's product that can exist outside of the ecosystem. And I think that's important and I'm all here for it. So will I. Probably get the AirPods max, too. Yeah, I will. But I like having the two options because these work better as a gaming headset than say, the AirPods Max. And they're lighter too.

They hold a way better utilitarian value due to all the ways that you can use them via Bluetooth, and you can also plug them in with a and, you know, the pro tip that Michael was just talking about? Is that you can get that lightning to headphone jack, plug it into the lightning port, and then plug the other end into the headphone jack on your headset. And that is just incredible to me. You have so many ways to be able to use these. I just think the value is just really great compared to what you would get for the Max, even the lightweightness of them. Because the Max to me, get heavy after a while.

And the ear cups kind of have that different kind of leathery foam that the AirPods Max do not have. They kind of have that meshy foam and that irritates my head after a while, but these do not.

Now this is going to be sort of a personal thing for me. Personally, I feel like that these new Beats Studio Pros fit me better than the Max. That's me. Personally, I feel like the Macs are almost a little bit too big for me. They feel sometimes like they're just a little bit too large. Where these feel like they just are firm, they fit right on. They are very comfortable. They're not too heavy. So that's me. Everyone's going to have a different experience in terms of the way they fit because everyone's different.

For me, I do kind of feel like they do kind of push in my ears a little bit, but I have big ears, so the AirPods are more comfortable that way. There's always sacrifices. Nobody's ever going to get it just right. But the one thing I do miss is sometimes I reach up and like, okay, I'll just turn my digital crown for volume. Oh yeah, I got to go here and press a button. So I do kind of miss that and little things like that, but there's trade offs and they are the Beats version. So I think Apple is going to have to really do some amazingness for the Max two S if they're I'm.

Really curious to see what features from these Dre Beat studio they're going to add or bring over to the next generation of the AirPods Max. I think it would be really interesting to see are they going to give all of the same features? Are you going to get USBC? Are you going to get to use them through the USBC port for audio? Are you going to get that same kind of headphone to whatever I guess it would be USBC because if they change things across the board to USBC, then they'll probably change that cable up to be a headphone jack to USBC. But it'd be interesting to see what they bring over.

I guess the last thing I want to mention is we're getting closer to getting our releases this year for iOS, iPad, OS and the Mac. And I really haven't played around with the Mac beta that much, but I've been very pleased with what we've gotten with iOS and I'm really excited about the journal app, but we still haven't seen that. So I guess that's kind of the last thing that we're waiting on. Is that kind of a big deal for you guys? Is that something that go ahead, I.

Was just going to say so I have a love hate relationship with journaling as a whole, so I see the value in it. I love the fact that I should journal and I'm going to be fully transparent and say day one was not doing enough to prompt me to journal. However, what I really like about Apple's integration is I'm keeping more track of additional health stuff than what I didn't keep track of in the past. And a lot of that is being stored in health itself. And I think having a journal where I can go look back at how I was feeling and if I leave feelings in there, then that's good. But if I go back and look and say, oh, on my birthday, I had this going on, or at this time of the year, I had this going on and having that data automatically captured is going to make a big difference in my journaling experience. So I am kind of excited about it. Like you, I'm pretty happy with iOS 17. There's some cool things that I haven't even played with in iOS 17, but this is probably one of the more stable betas that I've been involved in for a little while.

I would say that that's cool. They're adding a journaling app. I guess if people are into journaling, there's a lot of good use cases for it. They say Journaling is really good for you. But I mean, again, it's a journaling app. It's just like anything if you're going to be a journaling type of person, you'll be excited about it. And like Michael Babcock was just know, day one wasn't doing anything enough to pull him in, to continuously journal all the time and keep up on it. I'm not sure that that would change for him in this case just because now Apple came up with a journaling app. He may open it up and look at it and go, oh cool, yeah, this thing's pretty know, but he's going to go back to his workflow and probably never open it again. I don't know what difference it would be for him to journal whether it's in one app or the other app. So we would have to see that. The thing I'm most excited about is I'm okay with having less features. I'm looking for fix the bugs, let's get some stability going. Let's get some of these things that have had issues for a long time worked out. We don't always need to have an update that has every new app and every new feature and every new bell and whistle, sometimes resolving issues that have been plaguing us for a long time. Things that they don't get to. Stability is always the best way to go, in my opinion. Because if you're spending more time trying to fix bugs, reboot your computer, whatever you got to do to keep it running, stability is a great fix across the board.

In my know, the biggest thing for me that I've always had a problem with on Apple devices comes from one word and if they could just get this one thing fixed and not keep breaking it because they do it so well and so often is Bluetooth. Bluetooth is the most broken thing most often on iOS.

I agree with you 100% right now. I'm almost willing to say that Bluetooth is borderline dumpster fire. There's just so many problems. And I've tried testing Bluetooth with many different earbuds or headphones and there's always problems no matter what you do. And I just don't understand. You would think by this point, something like that, there should be no problems. It should be straight ahead. It's not like a brand new technology. It's not like they're still trying to figure it out. To me, this is something that should be no bugs and it should be behind us. Or if they do end up having a bug, it should be something they're able to fix quickly. I mean, this stuff's been plaguing us for a long time and they need.

To get it resolved right. I mean, for an example, we had an interesting situation the other day, I think it was yesterday, where I was getting in a lift. I got an announced notification that my lift had arrived and I said, Are you here for Michael? The driver said yes. And my phone said, Calling Michael Babcock. And of course I couldn't get to the button to stop it in time. So it rang once and Michael's like I'm calling you. Uh, it was a you know, they just have to get this stuff right. We've had it on our devices long enough where it's been problematic. It's kind of like, we need a resolution. We need this to be fixed.

Well, this is a perfect example of what I was saying last year. They came out with a bunch of new features for Siri. Right. There was things that you can do in 16 that you weren't able to do in 15. But what do you get with that? You get instability and you get more bugs, and it's harder to use. I mean, I would say in 16, Siri has just been really difficult. I mean, people across the board are having all kinds of problems with Siri. Add the new features, but make it stable. I mean, that's the least you can do. It's not new.

You know, I saw on one thing that people were rid should Apple just get rid of Siri? And I don't think they should. They need something, but at the same time, they just need that something to do well, right?

Definitely. I agree with that, especially if it's not a new product. We're not saying that this just came out this year or last year. I mean, Siri's been around for years and years. There's no reason that it shouldn't be stable at this point.

Well, I think that's going to do it for this episode, so let's end it on a positive note and as we always do. Michael, what is your pick for this time and where can people find you online?

My pick for this time is Audio Hijack. And for those who don't realize, Audio Hijack has a manual connections mode, and that makes a huge difference in being able to build the session that you want. There will be more information on Technically Working about how you can get my live streaming session and demosses. We'll give you more details during the Technically Working show. So tune in on Monday or live on the IA cast at 05:00 p.m.. Central. People can find me by searching for Unmute on Mastodon Payone at Unmute community or by searching Unmute present in your favorite podcast app. One last announcement. If you're hearing this on or before Monday, the 7 August, tune in to ACB Media Five or come join us live at ACB community. I am stepping in and helping Diane with Blindshell 101 and beyond, and on Monday's show, we're going to show you how to subscribe to podcasts, including Unmute and the Shell Phone Show. So thanks for having me today, Mike, and have a great week, for sure.

And Marty. How about you? What's your pick and where can people find you?

So my pick is going to be this Belkin MagSafe iPhone stand mount for doing streaming video. If you choose to use your phone for that, this thing's really cool. It's super simple. It's built really solid, and basically it's a MagSafe magnet which clips to the back of your phone and you can either hang it on your display and use your phone as a camera, or you can just flip it over and then it becomes a little desktop tabletop MagSafe mount for your phone. Which is going to be really cool because when the new feature for Michael Deutsche what's that new home screen called at know where the alarm clock shows up or standby mode. Yeah, it's going to be great for standby mode. So this is a cool little thing. It was really cost effective. I think it was only like 30 or $40. It's built solid, so check that out. Also, if you want to find me, you can find me at Marty at unmute community. You can also find me over at unmute. If you want to email over there, you can do feedback at unmute show. And thanks Michael for having me once again and everyone have a great one. We'll see you next time.

Great. And for me, my pick is well, I'm using them right now and that is the Beat Studio Pros. We talked about them at length, so I will spare you, I mean from all of the same stuff we've talked about. 350 from Apple. Check them out. Great headphones. And let me know if you're part of the Navy crew so as where people can find me online. I'm Mike Doeies on X. Yes, Twitter. I am Mike Doeies at Techopolis Social on Mastodon and you can email me at [email protected]. I have so many email addresses I got stuck for a second. And you can also email the podcast at [email protected]. I want to thank Marty and Michael for being here. This has been a fantastic show and I think we kept it to about an hour this time, guys.

Can you believe that?

Under an minutes.

We nailed it this week.

Yeah, it's been fantastic and it's been a good show. We've had a lot of good information. Hopefully we'll know the tech news has been so crazy the last little while and this week was kind of a slower week I think. So maybe we'll have more to talk about next week, so stay tuned for that and stay tuned to Iacast Radio. There is no telling what you'll find on there now, so check that out and we cannot wait to see you on another podcast. So thank you all for being here and we'll see you all next time.

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 iacast network to stay informed about new episodes and other updates. Don't forget to check out more great podcasts on the network network IACAs Net. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again sooner.