Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the IA cast. All right, back with me this week, we have Marty SoBo.

Hey. All.

We have Angie Fisher.

Hello.

And we have Lynn Snyder.

Hello.

All right, so on this episode, it's kind of a crazy episode we recorded last week, and we're going to be dropping an episode of The Iacast today on the day of recording, and we'll be dropping this one this Saturday. So we've got a lot of content coming out for you guys very quickly. But we didn't think Google I O was going to be as big of an event as we did, which you can watch on the Iacast Plus feed. And to throw that in there, ICAST net iacast plus will get you to that promoted. Yeah. And you could hear our discussion during the event. So it was really good. We had a few folks there with us. Did you enjoy that, Lynn?

I did. This was the first year that I really paid attention to Google's I O, because usually I'm hanging out with just the Apple stuff, but this year Google had so much stuff that it was just pretty amazing.

Right.

I actually really enjoy the Google presentations because apples are apples are a bit different, they're more scripted, they're more polished. But I feel like Google's, I mean, yeah, they have their thing that they have to go by as well, obviously, but it just feels more like watching people showing off, look what I did, look what I made, and really enjoying it. That's the difference.

I would say the only downfall to it is that unfortunately, you know everything before the event happens.

Yeah. It seems like nowadays even well, even with Apple, somehow these rumors get, I guess, because the suppliers leaks can come from a lot of different places, but somebody works for a supplier or something can just put stuff out on the web. But, yeah, if you didn't have those leaks, it would be more of a surprise, I guess. But everybody was all excited about the phones, the new hardware coming out, and they saved that for the end. Saving the best for last, right?

Exactly. There's a YouTube channel, and if you guys do not subscribe to this, if you want to learn more about programming, the channel is called fireship, and.

He.

Has a dry sense of humor, but his name is Jeff, and he does great work talking about programming. And he has these videos. Name a programming language like Python or JavaScript, and it's JavaScript in 100 seconds. And he goes through all this stuff, but he does a weekly or few times a week segment called The Code Report, and he did one on Google, and he took every instance of them saying the word AI.

Oh, my gosh.

At the event. And it was pretty hilarious.

Someone might do that because it was definitely prevalent.

It could have been the AI drinking game. It really could. They said AI a lot. Google recognizes the writings on the wall open. AI and all others are competitors in this space. And Google should have been the ones out on top.

But the stakes were high for Google this time. Very high.

They were I was just going to say I was wanting us to take a step back and really talk about the first things that because Apple kind of showed Google up this time, didn't they? Because the day before I O, we got two new apps from Apple announced and do you guys think that that was a coincidence?

No, not at all.

Yeah, because now they have something pre Google, and now they're going to have something after because we have WWDC coming up.

Right. So what we're talking about is Apple announced a very exciting thing. And I personally find these almost more exciting than Google I O because I'm an Apple fan, but that's me. Apple announced Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad. We never thought we'd see the day.

No, especially since for so long now, they've been making these iPads that have so much power in terms of the hardware, and then we're going, what are they making these crazy high powered iPads for?

It.

But there's no software. At least Apple is not putting out any software to utilize the power that they're making with these things. So they just seemed like overkill.

The OS is kind of underwhelming as far as what it could do, given that I've had specs.

Yeah, it wasn't much different from what the iPhone OS was, really. I mean, there are third party companies that are making audio editing software, video editing software, photography software, but nothing from Apple. And so now we finally got the Apple professional apps. So we never thought I kind of at this point, thought we'd never see it, but surprise, surprise, there they are.

I knew it was a matter of time, but we just didn't know how long it would take. And we're starting to see. We have Final Cut and Logic Pro, and my question is, I haven't seen a new Xcode beta. What does that mean?

WWDC?

Are we going to see our third professional app come out at WWDC?

I'm thinking so, especially that's directly involved with WWDC. I would not be surprised in the least bid if they announced the new X code at WWDC.

And that would mean all of their professional well, most of their professional apps would be on iPad.

Correct.

That would be awesome. That would be so cool.

And that also means that we're going to see so many people saying, well, do I need a Mac anymore? And I think that's going to be a whole when these apps come out, that's going to be a whole discussion on its own for this podcast, is, do you need a Mac when these apps come out?

Well, I would put this caveat there and I would say that the great thing about the iPad is two things. One is even if you are a professional, you have the ability to easily take your work with you and work almost anywhere. I mean, you could work in a plane if you're traveling, you can work in a coffee shop. I mean, really, it gives you the ability to be able to work anywhere. And so for a professional, it's a great option to be able to have something like that.

Right.

The other thing about iPad, which is great, is there are a lot of people beginner to advanced that don't really want to deal with the operating system and learning all of the things you have to learn to actually run a computer. Because just running the computer is completely different. You got to know how to do all these other things. And then if you're someone who needs to use any of flexibility features like voiceover, well then you've got to learn voiceover. And if you're new or if you're a beginner to the computer world, all of that is daunting to learn how to do all that stuff before you even get into any production or productivity kind of work.

Whereas if you know your phone and use iPhone, you pretty much know your gestures and you're good to go. It's a matter of plugging that in.

Yeah, I'm taking a Mac class right now to learn how to better utilize my Mac, but I am completely comfortable with the phone now. I guess the whole thing is too, it's like most of the things that you would do with that would be based on Bluetooth, right? The question would be even braille displays. I had really thought about just getting an iPad because as Marty was saying, the power and the possibilities for the iPad are really starting to kind of compete with the MacBook Minis.

There are still limitations, at least in iPadOS 16, you cannot change individual volumes on devices. That is a big issue right now.

The only way you might get around that is if you use like a USB C mic. Like the profile, right. I would give you at least a bit of gain control, but that's about it, right?

You could plug in a USBC interface and plug your microphone into the interface. But I will say this for people who are in the podcasting world that still has a make or break deal for being able to use the iPad for everything, and that is you cannot record locally and remotely at the same time. So what that means is if you're working with other people and you need to be, for example, in zoom, right? But then you also need to be able to record locally. You cannot do that. That is a huge deal for people who are in the podcasting world and they will always go to a computer until that's resolved. If they resolve that on the iPad and you are able to do that, that'll be a game changer. But I think for majority of podcast people, unless you're a single person only recording by yourself and never with anyone else, then maybe that would be okay for you to do everything on an iPad. But otherwise, until they change that, I think that most podcasters are going to choose to go with the computer than to go with the iPad solely for that reason.

And we have limitations, we found with Final Cut. I Justine, who's a very popular YouTuber, got to go hands on with Final Cut, and I love watching those kind of things. She's one of my favorite YouTubers because she is truthful. She looks at this stuff and is honest about it. And one major issue, at least. And keep in mind, folks, when we talk about this, this is version one, right? I mean, we have Final Cut for Mac, but this might as well be version one for iPad, right? So if we're looking at these as limitations, it's only version one limitations. So I want to put that out there. You cannot use external storage for Final Cut. So if you have a 256 or 512 gig iPad, you're going to fill that up pretty quick with Final Cut projects. Because if you're looking at 4K or eight k and you have more just think if you have more than one video, yes, that's going to fill up quick. And if you can't store your libraries on other drives, that's going to be a problem. So that's one limitation. There's another one, and this one's also kind of big, and that is Final Cut projects are not, I repeat, are not cross platform. So you cannot send a Final Cut project to the Mac, to the Mac and open it in Final Cut for Mac.

What about coming the other way? Can you take a project from Mac and open it in iPad? Final Cut?

No, not cross platform, because apparently each one has its own feature sets that are not in the other. I think the Mac version has several similar features, but like the drawing and things like that are only on the iPad version.

I find that, yeah, I wonder if.

That'S a limitation that will eventually be fixed or I wonder if, again, like you said, this is version one. So perhaps this is coming in. I can't imagine that people would really want those limitations, right?

I mean, if you are traveling and you've got your iPad with you and you've just taken a whole bunch of footage and you're flying home on a five hour flight and you want to pull out your iPad and start cutting up some of the footage, and you want to kind of start getting organized and all that, then you're stuck on your iPad. You can't bring it to a computer once you get home and finish or.

Add or do whatever limitations.

Yeah, that's real big.

That's almost a deal breaker. How are you going to get it off the iPad?

The way that they're explaining it is you start the project on the iPad and then you'd finish it on the iPad because it has just as many features as the Mac version.

Okay.

It does have keyboard and mouse support, so people that are using that will be able to use keystrokes and the same keystrokes that they've used on the Mac. So all of that stuff is there. It sounds like it has more sound libraries in music that you can use that are maybe not on the Mac, which is interesting. New themes that are not on the Mac.

They've also changed the interface in the sense of they know that you have a smaller interface, so they've added some buttons to show things and hide things so that you're not trying to have so much clutter on such a small screen. So instead of moving windows around and having their own little spaces, or using multiple screens and sliding your timeline over here and some assets over there, blah, blah, blah, they've made it in the iPad so that you can turn things on and off if you're not needing them.

And bigger touch targets, too.

Exactly. And I guess you also, like you were saying, can use the pencil for editing and cutting and whatever, or your fingers.

Or you could use the pencil to actually annotate text right into a video, which is pretty neat.

Right?

Which I cannot draw that well, so that would not look good. Yeah, so I'm really excited about that. We also got logic. Pro. We don't know as much about that one, although we do know two things about these products. The Final Cut will require an M one iPad or higher. Logic Pro requires an iPad with an A twelve chip or higher. So that means, folks, Logic Pro should work on the iPad Mini.

Wow. That would be a very small editing space, but okay.

Yeah. Very interesting.

Now, are the rules standing the same for Logic Pro as well? It's only on the iPad, and you can't go back and forth from we do not know.

We do not know yet. We only knew about Final Cut because of Justine's video.

Right?

I mean, it may have been listed somewhere, but that's the only place I had seen those.

Well, so here's some great news for everyone. Since we don't know now, we will all know together at the same time on May 23, because that's when it's dropping. And it's going to be $5 a month or $50 a year for each one. So if you get both, that's either $10 a month or $50 a year. And if you get one, it's $5 a month or $50 a year.

Yeah, $100 a year for both. Now, you may think that that's another subscription, and that's just another thing that you have to add to the subscription. Things that we've been talking about. But think about this. You're looking at professional level tools, right? You're not looking at imovie, you're not looking at GarageBand, you're looking at professional level tools. And let's consider what we get if we have to get Premiere or Audition or any of those programs. You're looking at 20 plus dollars a month from Adobe, easily.

And I don't think they are on iPad. Right?

They're not on iPad. They have iPad versions, but the full.

Versions are not on iPad and they're not accessible.

Right. So think about that. If you go to Starbucks and you get a coffee, that's almost two coffees a month. Just think about that.

But as you were saying before, when you're talking about professional, if you are professional, you're going to need professional tools. You know what I mean?

Right.

And so that's going to be part of your business expenses.

Exactly.

You probably could write it off. I mean, that's not that huge.

Or even if you're a student, if you're a student, it's worth paying that amount as well.

Really good price.

Yeah. And I mean, it was only a matter of time before Apple did that.

Well, there's going to be a couple of us here that are definitely getting our hands on the software once it drops. So we'll have to report back on a later date once we give some time to be able to play with the apps and see how they work and all of that fun stuff.

And we will probably be doing some reviews and demos of it here on our YouTube channel, on the ICAST network.

Do a demo from like install the installation process through Arista.

It'd be nice.

I need to get an iPad mount.

For the most yeah, this is kind of attention. Get an iPad.

Kind of it's worth it makes everything okay.

Yeah. Because I've always thought traditionally, being totally blind, what was the draw? What was the thing that why would.

A blind for me, I like the iPad because it lets me see literally in real time or real space where everything is on the screen. I like the larger screen. I like I like having all the the additional screen real estate. A lot of people don't. They go for the Mini because, you know, it's just a lot of space to deal with. But I like knowing where having to scroll constantly to get from place to place and such.

You bring up a good point, Angie, because one of the points that I really like to stress on this podcast is a lot of blind people just like to swipe to everything. It's not the best habit to have because if you just rely on swiping, you may miss information that is not in the swipe order. It should be to be accessible, but it's not always. And so if you can use the Explore by touch and kind of understand the relationship and it kind of helps you with your sighted peers, if you could say it does.

What you're looking for is in the upper left hand corner down from blah blah Xx thing on your screen.

Absolutely.

I also take advantage of the vertical bar on the right side of your screen. I use that a lot.

You know what? Vertical navigation first came out, I thought.

A lot of, I hate this thing. A lot of people felt the same way, but I loved it. I'm like because I have a huge Audible library, and swiping to that thing is a disaster. Even scrolling, it took forever. So that really helps me a lot.

Yeah, I get an email where a whole bunch of events are broken out, and sometimes they'll do on the weekend for an organization that ACB their community calls, and they put their whole weekend worth of community calls in there. And if you didn't have that bar, I mean, you would literally have to swipe or scroll, like when they get to Sunday, I know it's going to be at least 50% of the way down. So with the bar, it's so much easier. You just get places faster.

Yeah.

And I totally agree with Angie about and you guys about the swiping. I do think that as a blind person, you need to learn how to explore by touch. That's just something that's really important.

To each person their own. Obviously, no two people learn the same way, but it's not very convenient to touch the top of your screen, swipe 15 times to the right and then click this, or tap this button, or double tap here. No, don't do that.

Believe it or not, I was helping Taylor with something and a dialog that if you use Vo right arrow on the computer was not accessible. But I did explore by touch with trackpad commander. You know how you just drag your finger and it will read and it actually found the elements in that dialog?

Yeah. I love trackpad commander for that reason. I use that most of the time on the Mac where I can, and keyboard is kind of secondary.

It was very interesting. So, again, we're going to find out more about these apps, but I think that Google came out with a bunch of stuff and we're going to talk about that next because it's important. And we'll double back to the iPads in just a minute when we're talking about the Google stuff. But I think that these apps are important. We're going to have to keep a very close eye on this and we're going to have reviews and talk a lot more about these things in the next couple of weeks. So it's going to be very important.

Do you want to get an iPad.

GoPro.

The iPad, not the camera, right?

I plan on it. Yeah.

The 12.9 inch has the best speakers. I mean, it has more screen size, but it has amazing speakers.

I really like that form factor. That's my favorite one right there. If you're going to go iPad, go.

And it has the LiDAR sensor. So the Air doesn't have the LiDAR, but the Pro does. And the magic keyboard is also really good too, at that size.

The trackpad works with voiceover.

It does not.

Okay, I wasn't sure. I'd heard conflicting. Yeah, it does.

Try it now. Talk is that there might be and I'd wait to do anything for WWDC because there's rumors of a 14 inch iPad. So I would wait and see what so onto Google where they released their own hardware. But let's talk about AI. And we're not going to go into the depth of all the AI talk they did, but I want to talk about a few things that they did do. And they talked about AI for Duet, for workspace and professionals. And basically they're having where you can do help me write in Google Docs.

Where you can that is going to be very heavily utilized by me.

I have a lot of people that's.

Going to be awesome.

Google Lens as an app is going to have AI where you can do image description or any kind of image work where you could ask it questions. So this is actually going to be a more functional be my eyes equivalent.

Yes.

I'm curious about your thoughts on that.

I'm stoked. So much tech to buy. I want to get the latest Pixel, not the fold necessarily, but I'm going to wait for the eight, I think.

So where are they bringing this to? This particular app you're talking about, Michael?

I believe it's going to be well, I'm sure it's going to be on Pixel first.

It'll be on the phones.

They typically bring some of the stuff over to iPhone, but it will most likely start on the Pixel phones as well.

All right.

And of course, I believe their Pixel fold and tablet that they announced will have that as well. The other thing, and I signed up for this immediately yesterday, and you can do this easily, by the way, if you are a subscriber to Google One, hint, hint, go subscribe to Google One. You will get access and faster points on the waiting list for Google Generative search. And what that is, is it lets you get AI search results in standard Google search.

So what does Google One include for the people who don't know?

So Google One gives you extra Google storage. So like Google Drive for your personal account, there's several levels of it. I'm paying like $20, I think, for two terabytes just because I like space.

Me too.

And so you get two terabytes, you get a few other things. You don't get anything YouTube related, but it gives you like rewards and other perks at Google, I think unlimited Google Photo storage so that's there things like that.

So is that email and all the docs as well, like all the office suite, I guess you could say.

Well, they have everything google gets included into that space.

Well, they have google workspace for individuals, which is all of that for free. I think it lacks a few of the AI components that you get on the paid plan. I also have Google Workspace for Tech HOPOS Online solutions, which I really like.

You also don't get the hard drive space until you pay. Right? I mean, you get 15 gigs or something, right?

You get 15 gigs on the free. So if you have Google One, you get to get into Google Labs, which is in the Google Search app. Just the Google app on iOS.

I signed up last night.

Did you? Yeah. It's worth it.

I can't wait.

Yeah, we're all on the waiting list for that.

What's the monthly cost for Google one.

I think there's several pricing tiers. I think it goes all the way up to $30. So I do have that mainly for the space for my Google account. So all of those are interesting things to check out in the AI space. There's a lot of developer stuff. They have several not just one, but several equivalents to GitHub Copilot that will help you write code. Did not see a Visual Studio code extension, which is what pretty much most of the Internet uses. They started naming off all these developer things I've never even heard of, and I hear of a lot. Of course, Android Studio will have an equivalent in there, so it's interesting what we're seeing. But the biggest thing I think everybody wants to hear about is devices.

Yes.

We got a Pixel Seven A, which is their affordable which I think is what the A stands for. Affordable version of the Pixel Seven.

It's a little bit more expensive this year, I believe. Out of all of the A's that we've seen so far, it's the most expensive. I think it's coming in at 499, I want to say.

Yeah, that was kind of the price point yesterday for everything. The 499 range. The fold is not 499.

No, definitely not.

That'd be cool if it was.

Yeah. The Pixel fold is a 7.6 inch tablet when it's unfolded and a regular phone when it's folded. It cost 1000. Yes, you heard that, right? $1,799.

Hefty hefty hefty.

Yeah.

If you go for the 512 gig storage version, it's 1900.

So for those of you who maybe don't know if you think about taking two iPhones, let's say the average middle of the road iPhone, so a 13 or a 14 regular size, not the large, not the mini, and you were to stack them on top of each other. That's what it would basically look like if it was closed. And you'd have a screen on the outside, so you can use it closed if you want. But then when you open it up, think of both screens facing you. And that's kind of the idea. Of what it would be if it was opened up and you'd get that full screen on the inside. Now, some of the things that they only really have one other competitor in the market that they're competing with right now, and some of the improvements in terms of the hardware is they've made the joint where it opens up the hinge. They made it a little bit more streamlined, so it's not so bulky, it's a little bit flatter, sits a little bit closer together. And the phone overall, when it's closed, is a little bit more streamlined and a little bit flatter and thin when it's closed compared to its competitor that's out in the market right now.

And all of these fold phones have three screens. They have the one on the outside and then the two.

That two inside when it's open.

Although when you open it up on the inside and it's opened into one big screen, it really looks like one screen. At least that's the look they're trying to give you.

Yes. So, Lynn, are you going to buy a folding phone?

I don't think so, not right now. But it's a good point that you guys brought up. Is that all of these new hardware I wonder if blind people are going to start getting excited about Google products again. Do you feel that talkback is, I guess I don't want to say advanced enough, but robust enough for someone to consider moving to the Android platform. I know this is going to be a very loaded question and cause a lot of controversy, and you have some people love Android, but my experience with it has been that it's not as robust as voiceover, but it's getting there. Yeah, it would be really interesting to see. I didn't hear any talk about accessibility yesterday, which I was kind of they.

Had a whole session on it.

They have a ton of it. There's a ton of it.

And I pasted that in our and.

Did you guys they had a sign language version of the keynote yesterday as well. Yeah. And then they had gaming for muscular distributed people.

Oh, wow.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

So they're definitely doing the accessibility.

So happy to hear that. I really am. Because you just feel like, again, the importance of having a choice, of having the option if you wanted to go with a more stylish or more modern phone or whatever.

But we did not get audio description at the event, which was kind of a bummer.

Yeah, I don't think they ever had that, have they?

I don't think so.

Here's the thing about going to Android hardware, which is still a problem, but I guess you could solve that problem somewhat by sticking with Pixel. And what I mean by that in current state of Android is it's still wild, wild west with Android. You've got all these manufacturers making all these different phones and they all want to fork. The OS into their own OS. But the issue with that is you have every manufacturer on different versions of the OS with different updates coming at different times, and some things you get in some versions, some things you don't get. So it's really convoluted. What I would say is if you want to have the best Google Android experience, pixel is going to be the way to go because it's coming straight from Google. You're always going to be the first to get the updates and it's not going to be forked with all of these other things, it's just going to be the raw Android operating system. And typically, especially with accessibility, that's going to be the best experience if you want to go to Android. But I think that if you don't go with Android, it could be possibly a rough road just because you don't know when things are coming, when updates are coming, what versions you're going to be running of operating systems. I mean, there's all kinds of weird stuff.

Well, is Samsung faster about update updates, like patches and stuff now?

They're faster than they used to be. I've become more of a Samsung fan than a Google fan just because I like what Samsung does with their cameras and some of their display hardware.

They have really good cameras. Oh my gosh. And their devices are rock solid, they're just built like tanks. They're amazing.

What about when do you get software updates? And what about accessibility and all of those things?

So one thing to remember with Android that we always forget because we're all iPhone users, right?

On iPhone I use Android pretty extensively though.

Do you?

Yeah.

Okay, so for the rest of us it's a split.

I mean, I mostly use iPhone, but I have used Android quite a bit.

I have as well on the Chromebook.

Well, the Chromebook uses Chrome OS, so it's a bit different. Yeah, that's a bit different, but Android has this neat feature where the operating system is now different from the rest of the features of the operating system. So what I mean by that is like talkback and the camera and pretty much all the software on the phone is handled through the Play Store, so they can update what we would consider integral parts of the operating system through the Play Store without getting an operating system update.

So accessibility suite can get an update whenever they want to push it. Whereas with voiceover users, we have to wait for OS updates or beta updates exactly for voiceover to change. And if they don't fix anything with voiceover, you're stuck waiting until the next time. Whereas Google updates accessibility stuff, spell check exists. And that was a big productivity hurdle for me the last time I really went Android, no spell check. I wasn't able to effectively write documents on my phone and I do that all the time with my iPhone. So you can now do spell checking with Android, you can with Android 14, you're going to be able to do navigation with the Braille keyboard. You wouldn't even have to use the other regular keyboard because the Braille app.

Accessibility, though, that was what I found.

Sort of, oh, there's a ton of accessible apps on there. Okay.

Because I'm glad to hear that because.

Yeah, and one thing with Android, things are just done differently as far as how to navigate and things like that. Now, Android, like Telegram on iOS has some weirdnesses, but on Android but on Android it's great. And so there's some things that are better on one that are better on the other.

I started out using Telegram on Android and I loved it. And then I went to iOS. I'm like, the hell is wrong with this thing? It's so weird. Just the way you have to navigate the list, you have to scroll and it doesn't really tell you they're scrolling because like, where am I?

Right?

How is brow support on the Android phone getting?

I think that's the keywords on Google uses the words AI. Android accessibility. The keywords are getting better. It's always getting better. So they're talking about the Hid support is coming for USB Braille displays. They didn't say Bluetooth, which is unfortunate, but it's getting there. They're working on it.

That's healing. That's a bummer. Yeah, well, I don't know. I've had some weird crap going on with my mantis and the iPhone lately. It's like two steps forward, two steps back with them and they fix something. It's working really well and they break it again. I don't know what it is, iOS.

But definitely there are some weirdnesses with the mantis on the iPhone. But I still think it's quite doable. Yeah, as long as you learn the keyboard, the keyboard equivalent for how to do things. But even if you don't remember, then you still have your phone right there to just do things manually.

But.

Since I've gotten my mantis, I love my phone even more. Right.

The one thing about the Pixel phones, they are running the stock. Android I do like Samsung's, one OS I do like it a lot. Or one UI is what they call it. It's slightly different. Basically it's based on Android 13 now. So they are updating it. Even my S 21 has the update, so they've gotten a lot faster with updates. In fact, I almost get more Android updates now than I get iPhone updates, which is strange on Samsung. So those are all good things. The last product, well, one thing I do want to mention, did anybody get the complete jab that Google did at Apple?

Oh, yeah, RCS.

Yes, I did.

Pick it up, guys. Come on. Apple will not touch it. I don't know, they just refuse.

RCS has its own problems. It is not imessage. And I think that Apple would like there to be a better solution. Because one thing that's a problem with RCS is it's a huge data privacy issue. And the reason is imessage. You can send through a phone number or an email, whereas RCS is tied to a phone number.

Just a phone number.

Right. But Messages or Apple Messages is the only app that you can send through something besides a phone number. Everything else is phone number based. Even if you use a third party app, it's phone number based.

Phone number based.

Except for Facebook Messenger.

And here's the other thing. The other thing is that Facebook, you don't want that phone number in the US. Apple Messages, because everyone has Apple devices, is really popular. But that's only in the US. In the rest of the world, other things are much more popular. WhatsApp and other things? There's signal, there's WhatsApp? I mean, there's a bunch of other stuff.

I just think that RCS is a great attempt, but again, it's tied to the carrier. And so another problem that means is the carrier is getting all that data that you're sending back and forth, even.

If it's in the they wanted to tie like wallet to it and you're pointing passes and stuff to that.

And I just don't trust RCS that much. I really don't.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think so any better than any of the other apps that are out there that already say that they're great security with encryption, end to end and all this other stuff.

What's up? And the microphone on Android devices. Have you guys seen this thing?

Yeah. So we're going to have to end pretty soon, but I want to talk about the last item on the list and that's the Pixel tablet.

Yeah. So again, is this the same price point?

Is this coming in at 499 and they're giving the speaker dock for free? For free with the tablet. And so basically you get a Pixel tablet and a little dock you can charge it with. But there's a caveat that people aren't realizing. I looked at the technical specs. Guess what you're not getting with the tablet? Standard charger.

A standard charger?

What is the connection on it? Is a USBC or something else?

It looks like it's a round connector on the back of the magnet thing, isn't it? Yeah, I think it magnetizes to the home dock. And the home dock has like a little round standard AC to DC like plug. That plug.

But if you don't take your dock with you, then do you have a way to charge the device with just cable?

No.

Are you serious?

I'm serious.

Charger.

It says charger not included on their website.

Right, but can you charge it though?

Oh yes, it has a USBC port. Yes, but the charger to do that is not included in the box.

Well, nobody is chargers in the box anymore. Everyone's just putting a cable.

I'll have a billion USBC cables, especially when the iPhone launches. Yeah, I'm going to be so glad to get rid of Lightning cables.

Me too.

I love the fact that I'm trying to get every single thing on USB.

Yeah.

Because then I got one cable, if all one, I got one cable going.

To charge all things except for my gaming equipment. Everything here is USBC.

I love USBC.

Go ahead.

Everything. iPhone is MagSafe anyway.

Now, one thing though. Well, I have to have Lightning for developer stuff or else I would just use MagSafe. There's a few things about this tablet that they didn't talk about and I want to bring them up. And the biggest thing is the screen. It is an LCD. Yeah, it's eleven inch, it's LCD. It's not quite even four k, I don't think.

No LCD. Really? Yeah, really outdated at this point.

Yeah, it's very low spec.

They're using the Tensor G two chip in there, but like 256 gigs of.

Storage maximum, I think.

Does it have a SD card slot so you can at least no. Wow.

Bluetooth 5.2, not 5.3. WiFi. Six. Not six.

E.

So who is this for?

Is this for home users? I was really expecting a Samsung Galaxy Tab killer. I thought this was going to be they were hyping this thing up for a year, right? Like this was going to be the tablet of all tablets for Android.

I was hoping.

And I'm looking at specs and I just don't see it.

They basically advertised it like you can do videos, conferencing, like zoom stuff, you can do home automation, pretty lightweight stuff. Honestly. This is not going to be just something that you keep it at the house and use it there. That's kind of what they touted it as your device for home media consumption and such. It wasn't touted as something that you'd use to get work done. It's not really going to be a productivity device. No keyboard stuff.

I mean, they have a Kickstand case, which looks kind of neat for it, but that's about it.

Just lets you stand it up. That's all that's for.

Yes. I think that they've been teasing this thing for a year.

Total. And the climax I was like, what?

Yeah. And I thought, well, I don't think Google is going to do that great with their Pixel Tab. Okay. That speaker dock is kind of neat, I won't lie, that's the best feature of that whole thing. But I'm glad that I went with the Galaxy Tab s eight plus as my Android tablet that I purchased. It has an Led screen, has the latest WiFi and Bluetooth. Yeah, it's a good tablet for Android and it comes with basically the S Pin. Now this tablet is you can use it with a pin and they say the kind of pins that it works with, but Google does not apparently make one and you have to buy it separately. So I don't even think it has a charging place on the tablet to charge a pin and only one camera. It looks like the original iPad camera.

Wow.

I don't know what they were thinking with this device, but it sounds like they really cut a lot of corners.

Right.

And it's still coming in at somewhat of a premium price, I would say.

I heard something a while back. I don't remember when. This is like months ago by now, but I heard it was going to be kind of low spec, and unfortunately, that was true.

So, again, going back to the iPad, I feel like Apple has kind of one up to Google again with just announcing two apps that aren't even out.

Yet for the iPad tablets.

And what does that mean for WWDC, which we don't know yet. But does this mean there's going to be new iPads coming?

Well, this is the year of the iPad. Typically, the expression is a tick tock cycle. So we have iPhone, which is tick, and then iPad is talk. So last year was iPad with the redesigned lock, screen, widgets and all those things. This year, iPad didn't get all of that. So this year we're going to see a giant upgrade for iPad.

I think there's a rumor, though, that the iPhone is going to get a bit of an overhaul with its body this year.

Well, the hardware, yes, but I mean, just the OS, because this is the third that we've had three years of the same iPhone design.

It's fun.

They always do it in three year.

Increments every three years.

So this is going to be very interesting. And I think that let's be real. Google is our software company. Apple is a hardware company.

Mmhmm.

So but also, I think Apple's getting into that professional, you know, environment again with final cut and logic, and I think Google just can't really keep up with that.

No. And they're still putting out or Apple still putting out the Mac studio, and we're going to see what happens. But supposedly there's a new Mac Pro coming, but we're not sure when or what that's going to look like. But if they continue to do those things along with their Pro software, they still definitely have a leg up in the Pro realm from Google.

Well, Lynn, you've been pretty quiet. What are your thoughts?

Sorry about that. I had a mouthful of mashed potatoes. Google has a lot of catching up to do in the AI space as well. They're poverty, they are busy as a company. They have a lot to do, and they've undergone a lot of changes this year. They had layoffs and they sort of had that shock of AI. I think we all had the shock of AI this year. That's huge. And I think they're scrambling to figure that out right now. Which shocks me, because I've always thought that Google would have something up its sleeve, something really great. So we'll have to see what happens.

I'm still holding on for the Pixel Eight. I want to see what they do with that.

Yeah, I do want to see what they do. I think this year is going to be very interesting to see what happens. So I think we're going to go ahead and call it for the day. And as we get more news, we'll be talking about it on the show. I think we'll be recording it again next week. And I have a very interesting topic. I'll tease you guys here on doing the show and our audience. I think we're going to talk about changes coming to streaming services.

That'll be a fun conversation.

Because apparently there are quite a few changes that are kind of brewing on the horizon. So I think that'll be a great talk.

Yes.

And I think it's actually not going to be a bad thing. So I'm really excited about it.

Yeah. Stay tuned for next week, everybody.

So we're going to go ahead and wrap up for today, but as we normally do, let's do picks and contact information. So, Lynn, do you want to go first? Do you have a pick and where can people find you online?

Sorry about that, guys. This time it was carrots. All right.

That'S going to be it. This time it was carrots. Come on. This time, no title.

Yeah, I'm eating well. I have mashed potatoes.

Carrots.

All right, so my pick for this week, I think is going to be well, of course. AI right. And I'm going to say Google Barb. If you guys haven't tried it, go try it. I root for the underdog. So if you haven't experimented yet with Google Bard, give it a whirl. It's getting better. It's definitely getting better. And the more smart people train it, the more smart hopefully it will get.

Supposedly on their new AI model that they announced yesterday. So that's palm Two, I guess.

Yes. It wrote me a really nice, creepy story last night, which I like before bed.

I love that stuff. It's so much fun to play with, isn't it?

Me, too.

Yeah.

Sometimes you just got to have fun with your AI. What can I say you do.

And where can people find you online? Lynn?

Well, they can write meprints that's [email protected].

Okay, Marty, where can people find you online? What's your pick?

Well, since we've been talking about iPad, and that's the big news this week, my pick of the week is going to be Farright for iPad, which is a super awesome audio editor for the iPad. It's cost effective and it works great with voiceover. So if you're looking for an alternative that has a lot of power but that's somewhat easy to use, I would say check out Ferret for iPad and you can reach me at feedback at unmute show.

All right, and Angie, what's your pick and where can people find you online?

I don't have a pick this time, but you can find me online at tech enthusiast at Dragonscave Space. That's my mouse handle.

All right. And I have to confess, I was really wrecking my brain to find a good pick, and I found one. I have been watching Good. I've been watching Star Trek Deep Space Nine, and I'm on season three. So season three of Deep Space Nine is my pick. Very interesting season. I feel like I've watched all of Voyager. I have not watched all of the next generation, but I started next with Deep Space Nine. Really psychological, compared to other Star Treks, it really makes you think about human interaction and how we view each other. And that season is like it just gets better and better. And I've heard that the rest of the show just gets even better. A lot of the fan favorites are Next Generation and Voyager, but I'm really growing to like, Deep Space Nine, so I'm a huge Star Trek fan, so check that out if you are into Sci-Fi and Star Trek. I think the next show after this one that I'm going to watch will be the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. So, so many good things to watch. As for where people can find me online, I'm Michael DOE's on Most Things. Mike Doey's at Techopolis social. I'm Mike Doey's on Twitter. If people are still there, the doors are still open, but the lights are kind of starting to get turned out.

It's a little dim.

Yeah, there's still a lot of people there. I kind of wish a lot of the YouTubers and creators that I follow would make the switch.

Yeah, me too.

That's a whole nother discussion on its own is blue sky and mastodon and that kind of stuff. I think that would be a fun discussion we need to have on this show. You could email me at [email protected] and I'm all over the web. Just do a search for me. This has been a great show. We've had so much good content and so many cool tech things come out. It's a great time to be in technology. I've kind of felt like the tech excitement in the last couple of years has been very stagnant. I feel like the momentum for new technology and the momentum that society needed to get people back into technology is kind of shifting again. I think we're starting to see some excitement and some buzz around this space. And so I think we're about to be on a very interesting journey into technology, and assistive technology will only benefit from this. So I'm glad that you guys here are with me for this journey and our audience as well. So thank you guys for all for listening. And we will be back next week for another show. We are kind of getting back into the swing of a weekly show, so I'm really excited about that. So I hope you guys will join me and you guys will come back and talk again and guys go to.

Wendy's and get your AI on. Go. Just go get your yeah, that was.

Such a neat thing that you can order with AI at Wendy's. That is crazy.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it is.

I don't know if it's awesome or not. I mean, if you make your living taking Wendy's orders, it's not awful.

But again, thanks for being here. Thank you all for coming and we will see you all next time.

See ya.

Bye, everyone.

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

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