Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of The Iacast. And well, that's who you have today is Michael Doe. It is me again, at least starting off with a solo group, just a group of one for this week's episode. So if folks join, we will introduce them as they come in. So I always think that's fun to do when we have folks that kind of join mid episode because it's like it's an open discussion for our hosts to come in and join and talk about all things tech. So I really enjoy that. I think it's fun and really enjoyable. So I want to thank you guys for all coming back and listening again. It's always fun doing this podcast, just a way to talk about tech and all things technology related. So let's get into it. The first thing I want to talk about is some changes and things that we have going on here with I, accessibility, tecopolis, and everything in between. We have a new app coming out. Well, I say new, I mean old, but new old or old new or something. There's an app that you guys may have heard of. It's kind of a small app. It only had 60,000 downloads or so. It's called vo starter. It was the first voiceover training app on the iPhone back in December 2012, and it started the group of apps that helped people learn to use Voiceover. And I'm very excited to say that it's coming back in the store. Vo Starter is an app that I enjoyed developing when I started building apps. And so it's really exciting seeing it come back and it's now built with a lot more lessons and more information, so it's really exciting and even has some iOS 17 content, even though that was just added very recently. So it's very exciting. And there's a little surprise I'm not going to tell you guys about until you get to listen to it when the app comes out. That's the hint. That's the hint that you guys get to go on for when the app comes out. So I hope you guys enjoy vo starter. It will be a free app once again. So I'm very happy to see that coming to the App Store. I was hoping Apple would have gone through the review process by the time the podcast came out, or at least was being recorded, but it doesn't look like that's the case, so that's unfortunate. But it's going to get also, the next bit of news that I want to talk about is our wonderful and awesome radio station that we are currently broadcasting on. You guys have been using the heck out of it and I'm so excited about that. In the past week, since our last episode, there has been over 100 hours of listening on Iacast Radio, and I'm pretty excited about that. So it's great to see that 117 hours in total this month. So that's pretty exciting. And I want to welcome Michael Babcock to the episode. He is now joining us here on Zoom. Hello, Michael. Welcome to the Iacast in progress.

Hello, Michael. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks for joining me.

Yeah, certainly.

We just started talking about some of the cast radio and Vo Starter stuff, so I don't know if you've been listening since the episode started, but thanks for being here.

No problem. I got stuck watching my pick.

Oh, great. Oh, I know what your pick is. Excellent. Yeah, I've started watching my pick as well. Both, I think, are on the same network.

More than likely.

That's pretty exciting. I'll have to watch your pick, and it's funny because nobody knows what we're talking about. You probably don't even know what my pick is unless you've been following social media.

I did not. I'll have to take a look on social media while you're explaining what's going on. Yeah.

So we've been talking about Iacast radio, and we already talked about Vo Starter, but we are also very thrilled to have our live content. And this past week we've had technically working and the Unmute community call on Iacast radio. And I like to see more actual live content here on the radio station. It's been very exciting, and especially that we've had over 100 listener hours in the past seven days. That's awesome.

That is amazing. Nice.

Yeah. I mean, we went from last Saturday when we started our first live broadcast of 17 hours or 16 hours, to this week, where this month we've had 117 total hours. That's exciting.

It can stay stagnant and go down, but we hope it'll just keep going up. So that's positive.

Right. And we've had a lot of people listening through the week, so I hope people keep listening and they keep liking the content. We've uploaded programmatic episodes. We've uploaded a lot of the latest Unmute episodes and the latest Iacast episodes. So there's always new content every day on this radio station. So I'm really excited about it.

Are you live streaming now?

We are. We are on the radio.

Hello, live audience.

Yeah, I don't think we have many people at the moment, but probably not.

That'S what we should work on next is building that traction for live content because you're consistently going live at a regular time, right?

Exactly. And so we have our YouTube, and I believe we've already had a chat from Taylor on there. And so, yeah, we've been having some great content come out, so that is all fantastic. And it's just kind of fun running this radio station, and we want to do more interactive and live content on the radio, so we're always thinking about new ways of leveraging that. All right, so that's kind of what I wanted to talk about with our stuff. Michael, you guys have had some great stuff with Unmute this week. Like I said, y'all have done technically working here on the radio and you guys have done a lot of other episodes. Do you want to let people know what you guys have been doing?

Sure. So on Unmute Presents, you can get the latest content, and we are publishing iacast one week late. I need to go in there and start scheduling that because I almost forgot this morning, but I got it out there, so that's positive. However, yesterday Lyn did her first solo episode of Friday Finds, so that was pretty exciting to see that grow on Thursday. It was. I think she did a great job on it. Thursday, Lucy and Marty sat down and talked about Mallory's calling me. So I've got to make this quick about the fact of books with Lady A. We talked on about the Shellphone show, moving files, and then the Unmute Presents regular show.

Yeah. So they have been producing some great content. Check it out on the radio station or subscribe or follow whatever they call it this day for the podcast fee. For unmute presents. It's always great content. Always. I always look forward to when they produce new stuff. So check that out. It's going to be great listening, and we'll keep you busy for a while. All right, so this week we have a few interesting topics to talk about, and this one has caused quite the stir on Mastodon. It's very extreme, I guess you could say. So if anybody knows me, I went absolutely crazy on Prime Day because I found what I thought was an amazing deal on this four terabyte SSD from SanDisk. It's the extreme pro, and I quickly bought one for $239, and it showed the retail price was $900, and that was a steal in my mind. Well, I've been using this for nearly a month, so I think I'm going to be in the clear. But The Verge did a large article on these drives, and they talked about this on this Week in Tech, and I liked the video which sent it to Mastodon and Twitter or X. Twitter, X, I'm going to call it that just to cover all the bases. But basically, this drive has been shown that there's several versions of this drive the My Passport and several others from Western Digital. And I didn't know Western Digital bought SanDisk. I had no clue.

When did that happen?

I have no clue, but apparently it's a thing. And so several four of these brands of SSDs apparently got a firmware update to fix a bug where the file systems on these drives were losing files. But according to The Verge, the firmware update has not fixed the issue. And so you have these huge drives that have fast transfer speeds and high capacities that are losing files because that's.

What everyone wants their hard drive to do.

Right? And these are very popular drives, right. So according to The Verge and Twit, what's happened is they really haven't said how they're going to fix this issue. What they did was they discounted the drives, and the rumors are they're going to discontinue them. Now, interestingly, Amazon now says there's twelve left in stock, and the retail price has gone down from $899 to $315 now.

Big drop.

Yeah. And so it's like, what's going on with these drives now? There's been a big conversation on Mastodon between me, Robin Frost and Andre Louis, and he's saying that you can look up to see if your drive is in the bad batch. And I believe Robin has said that hers does show up in the bad batch, but she hasn't had any issues yet. I don't know if mine is or not. I haven't looked. I use mine for backup purposes only. But even just knowing that these drives have a defect is kind of a big thing that something could happen with these, because they look rather nice. They are nice looking drive, and it's like, man, even $230 is a lot of money, and I think it would just be better for them to recall if they're having problems and fix the issue. But I don't know. Now, apparently, again, not all of these drives are in the bad batch of units. But according to The Verge, the way this is handled is not the most professional way that SanDisk and Western Digital could have handled. You know, back in the HDD hard disk drive days, I did not always have the best luck with Western Digital. And I'm kind of disheartened that SanDisk is a Western Digital company because I've seen so many drive failures from them. So I don't know if I'd buy another one. But at the same time, I thought this was a good deal, because you're getting two gigabyte a second downloads, I believe, and that's huge. That's fast. And apparently this is happening to the extreme, not just the extreme pro drives. And I believe Taylor has an extreme drive. So it's like, man, what SSDs do you buy now? Because that makes up a big part of the portable does that's a big.

Part of the SSD market is ran by one company. That's kind of scary. Yeah. I don't know the model of the SSD that I got that Damasi gave me, but they're in enclosures, so I can grow it or change those if I want to. And then I have a SanDisk, I think it is spinning drive that is two terabytes on Amazon for like $50, which to me I thought was a great deal. And then I realized how slow spinning drives are.

Yeah. And the other drive that I have is, I always say Lacey. I don't know if it's Lassie or whatever the name is, but it's a two terabyte SSD, and it's actually smaller than in design. The only thing I don't like about that one, it has two plastic ends on it and the rest of it's metal. I'm like, man, what happens if those two plastic parts come unglued because they actually kind of move, and I'm like but I like their drives. I also have a rugged, spinning drive from them that I really like. That's two terabyte. I do recommend them. They're a little more expensive than other brands, but they've made good. And go figure, they sell them at the Apple Store. So those are all things to think about when you go out and buy a new drive. And I mean, I'm not saying I would stop buying these drives because maybe they're about to bring out something new that fixes the but I just I think it's good for people to be aware that there may be a fix. There may not be. I know Andre Louis was very confident that this has been solved and that you could figure out if you have a bad drive and things like that, but if they're dropping the prices on these things left in stock, it sends a message, right?

It does. And who knows what will happen? And I'm sure we'll be sharing more information about it.

Yeah, we'll keep you posted. Because I thought this was such a steal of a drive, and even know Marquez Brownlee was like, this is the drive to get right. Know, he was really pumped about it on, you know, I do kind of feel like a lot of tech journalism is a lot of doom and gloom these days, so take that as you will. I do like this week in tech stuff, but sometimes I do kind of have a lot of negativity towards technology, and sometimes The Verge does, too. So that's just kind of my view. They lost a lot of important files on their drive, but I kind of feel like I only use this drive for backup. I don't use it for any live production. I do everything on my local machine, and then when I'm done, I back it up. Right.

Do you back up your backups?

I really do not. I know it's good to do that, but I don't have the drives to do that. Right.

So what I've thought about doing is setting one of these backups as a backup or one of these drives as a backup, and then setting something like backblaze to just backup that backup drive. That way I have an onsite and an off site backup. I have not set that up yet, but it's something that I've really considered doing. I think Marty's doing that.

That's a really good idea. And Backblaze is a great service.

It is. Yeah. And it's doable on the Mac, at least. I've not tried it on Windows, but it's my understanding it's fairly accessible on both platforms, too.

Yeah, I've heard good things. I just haven't used them. So it's one of those things. And we could have a whole episode on proper backup procedures. That brings up a story how important backups are. This happened to my family friend this week. They got scammed by somebody at their work and they had their backups of their financial data on their local computer and it was using some desktop software. And the scammer got in with a tool and deleted their entire backup, probably copied it off site and they said, well, we can set this up for you if you pay us money. And they were posing as the company that they were posing as the company that they were trying to get support from. But it wasn't them, it wasn't the company. So it's kind of like a social engineering ransomware attack. So backing up off premise, off the machine that you're using is very important when you say michael oh yeah, definitely, definitely.

So my files, this is my setup. I use mistro M-A-E-S-T-R-A-L on the mac for my dropbox client. And all of my Dropbox client files are stored on an external drive because then naturally any of the things that I and I work directly out of Dropbox. So anything that I do is backed up in Dropbox and is available whenever I restore the computer or if I have to sign out and sign back in, or if I switch to different device. And the reason I picked Dropbox is because it's just working just fine for me on Windows and on the Mac. And Mistral gives me the ability. It does take the Share file option out of the context menu. There are some keyboard maestro macros that you can set up to put those back in place or to give you keystrokes for it. Otherwise you go into Terminal and you type in Maestro, Share Link, Create, and then it gives you and then the path to where you're sharing it. And then it gives you a link that you can copy and paste and share. So there are ways to do it, but that naturally gives me a backup. And then my Reaper config file is set to save in my document, reaper that's inside of Mistral on my Mac or on the external drive. And any tool that I use tries to either use icloud for my documents or Mistral for my documents. I was using Mistral for a while, just for all my documents. It became kind of a pain for me to configure. So I've kind of fallen back over to icloud because, well, I'm going to be given Apple $33 a month anyway, so they can give me two terabytes of storage. So that's my current set up and how I'm naturally backing things up, but don't use another tool to back things up.

And my developer stuff I just put into Git anyway. So GitHub, there's so many ways to backup and again, we could have a whole episode on that. But it's very important, very important to consider good backup solutions, especially with how security and things like that are going these days. I guess we should talk about something a little more positive. And that's the whole point of today's episode. And I think it's pretty exciting to talk about this because we've talked about Android and iOS or specifically iPhone before on this show and which one's better. But what about tablets? What about which tablet is better for everyone or anyone? Would it be the iPad or an Android tablet? So Michael, do you have any experience with I'm sure you've used iPads, right?

I have an iPad to my left. Right now it's iPad mini with a no, this might be an error, I don't know. I'll look here in a second and let you know for sure. But it's a iPad something. As you can tell, it's not my primary computer or my primary mobile device at all. I use it primarily to check state email because I am a commissioner for the state of Oregon. And so we get our state email to the iPad and that's literally all I use it for every once in a while, jump into a zoom. I don't personally like the interface of iOS. Well, let me rephrase it. I don't like the real estate on an iPad because as a completely blind individual, I do get a little overwhelmed. And I feel like the keyboard support for iPad OS is not where I'd like it to be, or there's enough different keystrokes or enough different changes that it makes switching between iOS and macOS sometimes a little difficult to navigate. But from my experiences, because I have very limited experiences with an Android tablet, I'm going to be an Apple fanboy and say if you need a tablet, the iPad's the way to go.

Well, and that's kind of the point of this episode is, is Apple always the way to go and is Android worth looking at? So, in reference, I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab S eight plus as my Android tablet. It's not a cheesy donkey Android tablet that you can break easily. It's a premium tablet, right? Kind of like the iPad. And there are some benefits for the Android tablets compared to the iPad. And I want to talk about those and talk about the differences. And the one thing about the iPad that you're always going to get is a great media experience. Even the iPad mini is just superior in sound. The S Eight Plus is not even the biggest size Android tablet, but its speakers are that of probably worse than the iPad mini. So the iPads just have sound figured out. I mean, the Samsung does have stereo, but bad stereo is not better than.

Stereo, right?

Well, I think the iPad mini may have top it has top and bottom speakers, so I think it's stereo, but it doesn't have the four speaker system. It has four speaker holes on each side, but it's just still two speakers. It's kind of weird. So it's not the same as the four speaker set up that even the Galaxy S Eight plus has but it's just the amount of sound and the quality that it puts out is just not as good as an iPad. So that's one thing to keep in mind. But now the Samsung lineup now all has on the S Nine OLED, which the iPads do not have even at their highest quality device. So you're going to get a slightly better screen on the Android tablets. But miniLED on the iPads is still pretty close. It really is.

And I apparently have an iPad eigth generation.

Okay, I think they're on 9th or 10th now.

Yeah, something like that. I'm not sure there's nothing wrong with it, it's just not my preferred way to and the one thing that I have problems with honestly is text editing. Even with a keyboard I find macOS text editing, which can be a little finicky in some instances with voiceover, to be a lot more stable than text editing on iOS with a keyboard or iPadOS.

For a long time iPad OS did not have great keyboard support and app developers didn't implement good keyboard support. But one thing that's interesting, y'all know I'm a big gamer and I don't know if it's something Apple did or Microsoft did, but Microsoft bedrock implemented full keyboard support. So with my magic keyboard I was doing WASD to move around and the trackpad to look around just like on a desktop. That's cool, that is so cool. And to see that kind of development going into the keyboard of the iPad Air and Pro lineup is very exciting. To see where this is going for gaming in the future. We talked about, or Apple has talked about really improving gaming support on their operating systems and I think they're doing that and I think we're going to get there eventually. They're just very slow to the party, they always have been on gaming. So it's really neat seeing that. But at the same time Android, especially Samsung, and that's one of the drawbacks with Android is each ecosystem of Android is slightly different. Know, you buy a Google Pixel tablet or whatever they call it, Pixel Tab or whatever and that's basically a Glorified hub. I mean it could play some videos and content but it's not where any near where the Samsung devices are.

I've never used a Samsung so I wouldn't know that. But that's interesting to hear.

And one thing that you will experience, though, on Android tablets is that is different from an iPad is every app on Android tablets run in full screen, whereas iPhone apps on an iPad, if they're not meant to have an iPad interface, will have these bars, these black areas around the app. Even if you scale it up to be bigger, So you never can get a full screen experience. With an app on iPad that's meant for just the iPhone. An example of that is threads. So the app will always have area around it that is not the full user interface, whereas any Android app will run in full screen on the tablets that I've seen anyway. Now, they don't look like a tablet experience, they don't have a tablet experience, but they at least run full screen. They look like giant phone apps, but they are scaled up and they do not have those stretching and all that that you have to do to make them look good. Now, Threads does have something that you could do on the iPad and that's to use Stage Manager with it. And that actually looks pretty cool, right? And I have not tried to use it in split view with another app, but that might also work pretty well. But Android does not have that restriction of making an iPhone app or Android phone app full screen. It just is it may not look great. And in fact, one of the problems with Android tablets is that more of the apps are not tablet apps. Now, here's where Michael, I would like to know your perspective because the problem with tablet apps on iPad is they are so cluttered, they are huge for voiceover because you almost have to be spatially aware of where things are, right? But if you had a giant iPhone or Android app that took up the whole screen, would that make a tablet more user friendly as a screen reader user?

I don't know. And as we talked about this, I realized maybe my experience with iPad OS, because you're right, if you're spatial aware, you can just reach up and tap on that thing that you want. And maybe my experience with iPadOS and a keyboard might be improved if I started leveraging the item, chooser more because then I could just do Voi and then start typing the name of the element I'm looking for on screen. And that would focus it right away. Because for me, it's not the touch screen that's the biggest issue. It's trying to navigate from, for example, one button in the top left corner to a tab that's second in on the lower right side, just getting from the top to the bottom, where visually as a visual interface, you just tap on the part that you want. So I'm going to try with item, chooser more and see if that makes it a better experience for me to use a lot of keystrokes on the iPad. Now I've noticed, for example, in zoom will translate over though, and that's one of the nice things. So I can hit Command Shift A on zoom on the iPad and that will mute and unmute you. Or option Y will raise your hand.

And you know, with the iPad, with the USB C and the new webcam support, you can hook up like physical webcams and not use the iPad one. And with logic we've seen where you could even pick which input destination or input device that you use. So you could use other microphones or pick the iPad microphone. So we're getting into a realm where we're getting more choice of how our devices work. Whereas on Android you have more fine grained controls of on the tablet. Like I can plug in USB C and pick my microphone. I have noticed though, on certain Android devices, and I'm not sure if this is on Samsung, but whenever I had a pixel, if I hooked up a microphone, it did some weird mechanical isolation or things to the audio even like in a voice recording app, whereas iOS did not do that. So again, any media related stuff? I would go with the iPad. But again, I'm wondering, do you think that if an app on Android was more for a phone based device, would you prefer that compared to a split view menu on the left, content on the right kind of approach that the iPad does?

Yes, I think I would because I already know what I should be expecting there and I won't get lost in the mass amount of quantity of content.

Right, because certain Android apps do have that, like the Android settings and things like that are you have your options on the left and then you have your menus on the left and your options on the right. Kind of like on iPad. But many apps do not have that yet. It's still just a giant phone app that just takes up the whole screen. And I even think apps like WhatsApp even run on Android tablets where it does not on iPad. I believe my Samsung tablet even has a phone app and the iPad has FaceTime. Yeah, but it's kind of interesting that the and one thing to keep in mind though is Android tablets are not created equal. So the Samsung tablet has a feature, and I think even the phones have this feature that if you hook them up to a keyboard and mouse, they actually go into a desktop mode. I've heard in the past there's some accessibility issues with that, with Talkback and the screen reader. But Samsung's model of that is called Dex and it makes it into basically a computer where you could have your files and all those things. Do you think that's useful or do you think just a tablet, being a tablet connected to a keyboard and mouse would be more preferable?

I don't know because I've heard horror stories about Android and keyboard support, I don't have any experience with it. So I think having an Android tablet connected to a keyboard that has not good keyboard support might not be the best experience.

Right. That makes Sam. And here's the problem and one thing people have to keep in mind, samsung may have good keyboard support, but others may. You know, the one thing that a lot of people do not realize with Apple is if you make a good iPad app and you make it also work for the Mac, any menu options, any keystrokes you. Make for your Mac app to work with the menu bar, translate to the iPad to use with their keyboard shortcuts. Did you know that, Michael?

I did not.

Yep. Keyboards are tied to the menu bar. So if I build an iPad app and I make a menu structure so it could be a Catalyst app and work on the Mac, then all those keyboard shortcuts will transfer over to the iPad.

Okay.

Even though there's no menu bar.

That's interesting.

Because on the Mac, the way that most keystrokes are added is through menu shortcuts. So if I remove command C, for example, or if I remove copy from the menu bar from the edit menu in my Mac app, or an iPad app that has Catalyst, if I remove that option, then command C will not work at all.

Okay, so those aren't tied to the operating system, they're tied to the app itself then, correct.

They're linked to the operating system, but typically they are added in the app. It's just that they are mapped to operating system level menu commands, as my understanding. But I can have an app that has just like, say I'm building a Python application and I don't implement the edit and all those menus, then I cannot use the command C or command V in that app on the Mac. Same with the iPad. If I don't add the menus or give it that ability. I think actually on iPad, copy and paste are just given, right? But if I were to specifically go in and remove them, then they wouldn't work.

Got you.

So it's kind of interesting, and I think they do that so that it's just standard, you know, how it works. Whereas on Android, you have to add functionalities, you have to tell it what you want it to do. And if you have a menu on Dex, or however they do their interface, how that works on Samsung's decks may not work the same on Google's implementation and things like that. So that's why it's again so fragmented on Android. But at the same time, when apps are made on a tablet for Android, they're going to work pretty well. And one thing that the iPad does not have, that the Android devices do have is a vibration motor and a lot of the things that phones have. So if you're playing a game on Android and it will vibrate your phone, it will also vibrate your tablet as well. So you even get keyboard click vibrations and all that on Android tablet. So if you like that feedback, that's also something that you could get there as well. So it's kind of interesting.

It is. And I don't see myself going out and picking up a tablet, but I'm glad to know that in this day and age, we definitely have.

And you know, Samsung has been putting out Android tablets for a while and Google just did not think that they were a viable option for a long period of time. But I think they're starting to see know, Samsung is doing good with these. And I think that it's just we need choice, right? And I think know, going between the choice between Samsung, Google and Apple, we have choice where we didn't in the past. And I think that's what is really important is that we do have the ability to say, okay, I'm an Android user and I'm a Samsung user. Maybe I want to look at a Samsung Tab s Eight. And you're not getting A or the A series if you want a cheaper tablet and you're not getting a substandard tablet that can't do things. You're getting a tablet that may not do the media quality of sound that an iPad can, but you're getting a good screen and a good app experience, right? So I think that that's also it depends on the ecosystem. He's used Samsung throughout his whole experience of using smartphones. And my stepmother uses, you know, they can text each other from their tablets. And he was thinking about an iPad and I told him, I said, dad, you won't be able to text from your iPad, it doesn't work because it will not connect to that Android phone. He says, well, there goes that idea. So he's going to stick with his S series tablets because they work and let him text to his iPhone or to his Android phone where switching up the system would not. Same with my stepmother. She uses iPhone and she had a hard time setting it up. But I helped her set up where she could text from her iPad and now they could just text from their tablets. It's not something they have to worry about, right? So it just depends on what ecosystem you're in. I think a lot of people are like, well, I've got an Android device and I need a good tablet and I don't think that there are good tablets out there. And the truth of the matter is that's not really the case anymore. And I feel like it's just based on what ecosystem you're in and what your preference is. Because I think there was a time we had the Nexus Seven. Did you ever have one of those, Michael?

I did not.

It was like a $200 amazing Android tablet from Google. It was just like, this is the Android tablet to have. It was just $200. And it was a good form factor and it was great. But they stopped making them and it was sad. But even back then it was mainly phone apps. They didn't really have a lot of tablet apps and it was a seven inch tablet. It was just perfect. After that, the tablet appeal on Android just kind of lost its steam. And I think that Android is kind of just finding that again to kind of build back up to. And I think even Apple is kind of having to figure out how do we reinvent the iPad because the Mac is just blowing it out of the water. Right. And you all know I'm a tech enthusiast. I love my devices, I love everything I buy. I have the M One iPad Pro and I just didn't see the need to get an M Two version. And I feel like that's kind of like, okay, maybe M Three if they do something great. But I'm very happy with what my m one does. So I feel like we need or Apple, if they want to keep people coming back for these iPads, they need to keep innovating. Because Samsung just brought all the iPad lineup. I mean, not iPad. The Galaxy tab lineup to OLED. Now mini Led is great and the speakers are top notch. But what is going to be that next thing that says I need the M Three iPad Pro? Right.

They're going to bring macOS to the iPad Pro. That's not been said ever before.

Right. I would love a mixed iPad in saying that. I think that's something that Apple could do know they're already making OS into iOS plus plus, so I think that they could do that, but they're just working their way to touch screen max is what I think they're going mean. We've covered a lot of stuff today and so do you have any final thoughts, Michael, on any of this stuff before we go ahead and wrap it up?

Not really. Just realize. I think it's important for people to realize, especially if you're getting into this tablet game or getting into new technology game. Wherever you're going, research the return policy. Because if you try something out and it doesn't work out for you, chances are you can return it. Maybe pay a small restocking fee, but make sure you're aware of that and see if it works for you. And maybe 14 days isn't enough, for example, to try something out, but at least you have a general idea of, you know what, I can probably grasp this even though I don't fully right now, and try some of these things out more, especially if you're interested in newer technology or different types of technology. An iPad might work better for some, whereas a Samsung tablet might be the.

Best solution for and you know, one thing I was just thinking about that we didn't talk about, and I'll keep it brief. One thing that I do not like on the Android side is the space. iPads are expensive devices, but they offer huge amounts of storage. I think even the iPad mini goes up to 512 gigs. And I love my mini.

Wow.

Yeah. But I think the biggest Samsung at the most, it's either 128 or 256.

That's small.

Yeah. And I think they do have an SD card slot, if I remember right. So that's a plus. But at the same time, what if you're trying to do video editing what if you're trying to do some of these things? You know, we, we do have final cut and logic on iPad now so that's, you know, another thing to keep in mind. What are you using it for and can you get away with having a tablet with like 64 gigs or 128? I actually think that's the S Eight lineup had only 64 and 128 even at a 14 inch size tablet because I think what they're trying to get people to do is pay for their cloud storage. It's kind of that little gotcha there. So it just depends on what you're trying to use these things for. If I'm downloading my pick and I want to watch all the episodes on a plane, I'm probably not going to be able to do that on a Samsung tablet and most definitely not on the Google tablet. So I think that those are all things to really consider. And the nice thing about an iPad or a Samsung tablet is you can just take it out and turn it on and you've got a big screen whereas even a MacBook Air, you have to take it out, unfold it, turn it on, log in, get to your app and do all the things you want to do. It's so much simpler on a tablet to just get to specific content and get into what you're doing faster than on a full computer. And that's kind of the attractive value of having a tablet. That's just my final two cent there because I feel like one of the things that I like to do on the Iacast is give people an informed choice why go this and not that, right? And whether it be as a user that uses it with your vision, low vision or screen reader. There's always advantages and disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage for an iPad is they're expensive. They are very expensive. But you're going to get your money's worth. I mean this one I've had for two years and it's on Verizon and it's just always there. It's always working right. And I don't even think that the Samsung's have a cellular connection. I could be wrong but yeah, it's just always things to look at. There's advantages and disadvantages. It's just what you want to use. And I like native apps for things and to watch our picks, I think you have to have a web browser. You have to be in Chrome to do like you could listen to Apple Music as an app but I don't think that they have an actual Apple TV app yet for Android.

There's not.

Yeah, although interestingly. So I was working on an app the other day that uses web debugging to debug problems and guess so I was playing episode of Star Trek in the Apple TV app on my iPhone and guess what was a web view that was debuggable?

I don't know what's that?

The Apple TV app. So apparently it's a wrapper around a web view. So when it plays videos, it's just pulling them from web content anyway.

That makes sense because if you have voiceover turned on and you're listening to a video right before the end credits, you hear voiceover say something like, web page loaded. And so it's really interesting to hear that because then I know that the credits are about to come up and it's going to offer me to jump to the next episode.

Interesting.

Wow.

So, yes, we have figured out that the Apple TV app is just a regular native app, but it's loading the content from a web page. Very interesting.

TV Apple if you're not an Apple user.

Yep.

But you want to check out Apple TV.

So good. I don't know, though, if you could watch all of your I if I purchased seasons of Star Trek.

I don't know if I think it's only Apple Plus. I think it's only Apple TV Plus. I don't think it's your purchase content.

Yeah, it's a shame because it would be nice if you could just any web browser just open up the Apple TV Apple and watch all of your purchased TV shows. And that shows you that they do want you to be in the Apple ecosystem to watch. So well, I think we've gone on nearly our you know, everybody messes with me about going over an hour, so I guess we should go ahead and wrap this thing up here. So, Michael, what is your pick for this week and where can people find you online?

So my pick for this week is a thriller. So if you're not interested in thrillers, maybe you may not like this on Apple TV Plus called Hijack and Hijacked with the Ed. And I heard about this on Double Tap, and I'm like, I'm not going to watch it. But then Steven and Sean kept talking about, I'm like, I need to go check this out. And then someone on Twitch Mastodon Social mentioned it and I'm like, all right, that's it, I'm done. Well, that happened Friday, and I have one more episode left. So if that tells you anything, watched all of it. It is very enthralling. You don't know who's doing what, when and why. When you think you got it figured out, someone comes out with a gun and you're like, oh, I was not expecting that. So definitely worth checking out. Again. That's hijacked on Apple TV Plus. You can find me on Mastodon at payome payown at Unmute Community. Just search for Unmute Community to find it in your Mastodon platform if you can't. And on Tuesdays, 10:00 a.m. Pacific time, 01:00 p.m.. Eastern, marty SoBo and I are in the ACB community answering your tech questions. And Michael, thanks for having me.

I think we've had some great conversations, so I always look forward to when we have great folks like you, Michael, to come on. And that way I'm not just talking to myself and people are like, oh, we're only getting one perspective. So I'm glad you made it on today. So my pick is also on Apple TV. And if you know anything about me, I love science fiction and what better science fiction than some of the original made into TV. And that is foundation season two. Oh man, it is so good. I started it this morning and the visuals are amazing. The story is great and they brought a lot of the characters back and that just acting is fantastic. So you have to watch season one to get what's going on, but just a fantastic story. They do take some liberties with Asimov's work, but what I like about it is the fact that they keep I mean, there is some adult content, some adult scenes, but a lot of the science and the math, they just give so much respect and so much it doesn't seem like regular TV. They kind of have an older Star Trek vibe to some of the science and math things that they do. And I really like to see that in current day TV. And I feel like it's sometimes even missed from regular Star Trek. So foundation is just fantastic. Check it out. And yeah, it's on Apple TV. Plus, as for people can find me, I'm on Mastodon at Mikedoeys at Techopolis Social. You can email me at [email protected] and I'm on X as Mike Doeies, pretty much Mike DOE's on anywhere you can find me. And you can send us feedback at [email protected]. We always love to hear your feedback, what you think of the show, what you'd like to hear us talk about, and we always enjoy being here. I want to thank everybody that has been on each episode of Iacast, all of our listeners, all of our online viewers, our chatters. And again, if you have not used Iacastradio, iacast Net, Slash, Listen, the accessibility app for iOS and so many other ways to get it. Also the Iacast live skill from the echo or Lady A, as it's called. So I hope that you guys have enjoyed this episode and we will be back next week for another where we'll be on episode 192. So we're getting close to that 200 mark. So pretty exciting party. Yeah, we'll be partying at 200. Again, thank you and we will 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 Iacast Network iacast Net. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon.