Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the IA Castle Dowies. And this week we have another great group of folks with us. We have Angie Fisher with us. Hi, Angie.

Hello.

Good to be here. Yeah, thanks for being here. We have Marty SoBo.

Hey, how's it going?

Good. Glad you're here. And we have Alicia Geary. Hello.

Hello.

All right, so I think we are oh, I do want to bring in one other thing that I did not tell our other hosts. That kind of is more interesting, I think, as a discussion topic that I think we'll start with is I've been hearing some rumors and some rumblings about some possible new Apple toys coming this month. Has anybody heard about this?

I've heard there's a possibility of new iPad Minis or maybe a new iPad Air and Mini possibly.

That's what mostly mostly iPad stuff. Yeah. It's funny because I was like just a few weeks ago, I was like, I want an iPad Mini. I wonder if I'm going to upgrade it and sure enough be curious to see what they do with that.

Well, Mark German was at one point saying there will not be anything else this year, and now other people are saying there might be some other things this year.

Well, from what I understand, it's not going to be a huge change, except for probably they'll put an M version of the processor in probably M two or M three, I'm thinking, but no one has clarified one way or the other what it's going to be. I don't think it's going to be a design change. This is a new, brand new design for the Mini this last go around. So if anything, it'll be just a small bump, probably with a new processor is what my guess is. The only other thing I heard is maybe they'll come out with a Mini in two sizes, like a small size and maybe one that's just a little.

Bit bigger, but who knows?

Right now there isn't anything confirmed, just.

All speculation, really, at this point.

Yeah, it'll be a surprise.

I love my iPad mini. It would take a lot. I don't know. I don't know what would get me to upgrade my Mini. Apparently, there's what they're calling jelly scrolling effect for visual users that I don't quite understand. My iPad works great for me, and it's supposed to fix some of that. But now if they put like 120 Hz refresh rate on the iPad Mini, you bet you I would update, but I don't think they're going to do that.

I want to document it here right now. Guys, there's actually Apple product coming out, potentially, that Michael is not going to buy right away.

Well, that's happened a lot lately because I have not updated my Mac yet to the M two max, and I think I'm going to go ahead and stick with the Apple Watch Ultra One instead of going up to the two this year.

Really nice.

I think that there's some neat features. Like the new ultra wide band chip, I guess. The u two.

Yes.

And not the band that's going to be in there. But I feel like it's the same form factor, same everything. My watch is still a great watch. I charge it every two or three days. It's a great watch.

I want the Bono watches. They're going to have you two in there.

Yeah.

Just letting you know I got it.

The thing I struggle with the watches is currently I have the eight, the larger one with cellular, and it's a great watch. I have no problem with it. I love it. But if you want to have local Siri and you want to be able to do the double tap technology, you have to bump up to the new watch. That's kind of I really I have a six.

I'm pretty ready to get rid of it at this point, but I don't know what I'm going to do.

I think if you're going from a six, that's a good time. I just don't feel like I rarely use Siri on my watch. I know we have friends that use it all the time. I never mean that's beneficial for them. I think you all know who I'm talking about, who unfortunately can no longer be on the podcast. Still sad about that.

Yep.

He uses Siri all the time on his watch and dictation and that kind of for I only use it for.

Like, timers and.

Like, starting workouts is a big thing for me on the watch with Siri.

Totally.

Yeah, I've heard that's pretty seamless. I'm probably going to end up using.

The you're going to love it. Yeah.

I'm kind of upset about the iPad upgrade because I've only had this iPad for like, three weeks. There's going to be an upgrade? Are you serious?

Well, I think I've only had it.

For three weeks and it's already outdated.

Depending on when they come out with this because I don't think that they're going to have an event. I think it'll be a quiet press release like they did last time, like they did for the Pros and Max machines.

Well, I don't think there's any design change because, like on the Mini, they just redesigned it this past go around. The current model that's out right now is a new design change. And it was actually from the Mini. Before that, it was a full design redesign from the ground up. So I don't think they're going to do any design change. I think it's just going to be an incremental processor, probably update is what I think. And the Air is kind of the same. I mean, I don't really see them changing too much on the Air in terms of design language either. I think they'll probably go from M one to M two in the Air, and I don't really know exactly what they're going to do with the Pros. I mean, they don't really need a design change either, if they're sticking to the same design language, but I don't know what they have in mind.

Now, the Pros, the talk about the Pros, and I don't think we're going to get those this year. But the Pros, they're talking about some big major refresh. The Talk is some big I've heard.

That'S going to be next year. It's not going to be happening until next year.

The M three pros. Now, that is something I'm looking at. Mini, maybe not an upgrade. The Pro, now that and there's talk of a 14 inch Pro as well.

Oh, my, that's right.

They shouldn't have any iPads at this point without an M One processor because a lot of the software now developers are developing it for M One software. So, like, for example, I use an app called Fairwrite, which is an audio editor on the iPad specifically. It's great. It works with voiceover and it's super powerful, and it's a great app. The developer just came out with a companion app to just it was released just recently, like, within the past week, called Transcriptionist, where it will transcribe your audio. Right. Within Fairwight, there's also a standalone app, but you have to have an M processor in order to be able to utilize that software. And I feel like more and more developers are developing to use their technology. You need to have one of the M, at least an M One processor to be able to use it. So, like, for Transcriptionist, for example, you can't use it if you don't have an M processor. So at this point, I think that if they're going to be going to M Three, then every iPad should have at least some version of an M processor in at this point.

Yeah.

And.

It really just depends on what it's supposed to do. Right. Like, the Mini is a good book reader and things like that.

True. I mean, that's what I ultimately use it for, is consumption because it doesn't have an M processor in it at this time. So there's things that I'm unable to do with it. So I need to go back to the Eleven Pro, which is kind of like my main iPad.

So you have a mini too, marty yes. I did not know that. All right.

I have an iPad Pro, eleven inch, and I have an iPad Mini. And the iPad Mini, I basically just read stuff on it, watch stuff on it, whatever.

I've noticed a lot of people replacing Kindles with those. Yeah, because they're a bit more beefy.

Right. There's a lot more in there. Kendall.

Everybody loved.

Mm hmm.

Kind of going into nowadays, tell you.

A story about my sister after we're done.

Kindles are nice devices. I have a few Kindle devices, but believe it or not, I think that they are not as much in demand as they used to be because of iPad Minis. I have a Kindle Oasis that I was like, I gave it to my mother. I'm like, can you use it? Too small, can't read it. I was like, okay, well then find somebody else that would want it. And she's like, I can't. Nobody wants it. And that's a $300 Kindle, right?

Yeah.

My sister got kicked off her phone one time and so she snuck downstairs at night and sold Mom's Kindle to go on the net. That was my story. So they have their uses.

Was it a Fire or just a.

Whatever the first one to have WiFi would have been I think it was a Fire, probably. Yeah. She got grounded for something and by using Mom's Kindle.

So I think these are going to be great updates. I think that I'm just excited to see what we're going to get from Apple, but time will tell. And these are all rumors, so we'll see if we get anything or if we have to wait till, like, March, because we just got the A 17 Pro chip, and that's a great chip, but I don't know that they're going to adapt that into an M three right now. And I think honestly, anybody that has a current iPad Air or even a Mini is really fine with staying with what you have until not this coming release, but the next one. Unless they really surprise us, which they could, but I just don't see that happening. So the next announcement that came out this week might bore some folks, but I'm a gamer and I like to keep up with current tech news. So this is kind of the highlight of the week. There has been a development in the acquisition of Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard, and I guess it's called King.

I was looking at this whole process today and wow, what a convoluted. Since the beginning of last year. That's crazy, right?

Wow, they've had a lot of the.

Whole process, just a ton of stuff.

They've been having a lot of internal problems that have been plaguing them though, and that's part of the reason this is taking so long and it's so difficult.

Well, a lot of the problems have been external, with the UK saying that they were not going to allow this merger all the way to other countries saying they were not going to allow it. And originally they laid out this plan to work with Sony to make sure that players could play the most popular games like Call of Duty for ten years. And Sony still made a big deal about this issue saying that it was going to make it to where there was not competition in the space where Microsoft was going to make these games be exclusives. And Microsoft was like, no, we have the paperwork right here, the contracts and everything that says this is what we will do.

I was talking about within Activision and Blizzard, or maybe not Activision, but Blizzard itself. And they've had a bunch of internal problems and I think that's causing this merger to be a little bit of a slower process than it would normally take. So they've got all of the different issues going on internally that they're trying to now. Microsoft's having to go in and try and clean up those messes and then I think also dealing with all of the different countries and their laws and rules and everything else is also making a little bit more difficult. Take a little bit longer. Well actually it's actually longer, not even a little bit at this point.

Activision. Blizzard has had a very toxic internal work structure and even gaming environments like the gamers that Play are very toxic. And so they're trying to clean, microsoft plans to clean that up, but the suspicion is this is a way for Blizzard's CEO, I can never remember his name, bobby something to kind of step away quietly with all the stuff going on so that he's out of the press. And I think that's going to be what happens. It was a $69 billion deal and it went through completely yesterday.

That's a lot of money.

That is a lot of money. But it was approved yesterday, it has been finalized. So that means more games will come to game pass that are older games, like newer games like probably Diablo Four. Some of the others will still have to be purchased. That's the word on the street. But I think it's exciting because Microsoft does have a commitment to have games be on other platforms. With that being said though, there are games that will obviously be on Xbox and the PC store first from like look at Starfield, that's an example of one.

Yeah, I'd be happy as long as they don't try to make a bunch of stuff that wasn't exclusive originally turn into exclusives.

I mean if you look at it, they purchased Minecraft and they've let Minecraft be Minecraft. In fact they've made more games in the Minecraft world since they purchased them, so I'm not terribly worried about it. I think Microsoft does a good job letting the game studios do what they do best, but that's just my opinion.

That's a good thing though.

Yeah, it's a very good thing.

Because the whole process started like in January of 2022. So this has been quite the slog. I'm glad they finally got it to go through.

Yes, that's like a year and a.

Half in the making.

Yeah, it's been a very long process because the FCC, FTC, pretty much any government agency said, whoa, hang on a minute, this is a big merger. And so there have been a lot of things though that have come out. In fact recently some emails leaked or came out about Xbox's roadmap and now we know what Xbox plans to do over the next ten years. So that's fun. Too. I'm excited about this as a gamer just because, well, being able to get all of my favorite games on Steam is great. Or from Battle Net, which is Blizzard's Launcher. But being able to get them from the Microsoft Store or the Xbox app is going to be even better. Kind of excited about that. And more achievements. Always more achievements. Being able to get achievements in StarCraft. Oh yeah, I'm down for that. And maybe even be able to get Achievements on other platforms too. That's exciting as well. So if you sign in with a Microsoft account yeah, I am totally down. I've been an Xbox player since 2006, actually since 2002. So really excited about this.

I want to play with it. I want to see. I know blind people who play it. I've never done it before, so I want to experience that.

A lot of people. And you can watch Blind Streamers play Mortal Kombat and Soul Caliber.

I've never done it. I want to play. I want to experience it. I've never done it.

Yeah, we'll have to fix that.

See how good I am.

Well, a lot of those games it's memorization pressing the right buttons at the right time. Less so about being able to see and judge distance. Yeah, the skill is pressing the buttons and memorizing the combinations.

Okay, that shouldn't be hard.

The way I get out of being destroyed by blind players is by getting out of reach.

Because I know if I get close.

I'm not going to win because I cannot remember all that stuff. Because seven different button presses of five or six different buttons on the controller is just not something this is kind.

Of the kin to how we navigate our computers too. Yes, it's kind of the same idea. I'm going to kick your ass.

It all right. So I'm excited about this merger. It's going to be great. So I want to go on to what we are here to talk about today, because I've been wanting to bring up this topic for a long time on this podcast, and that's called platform shaming. I think other people have used the term. It's one that I've really used a lot to describe this and we really talk about it in terms of iOS and Android. But the more I got to thinking about it, talking about a discussion that we had before the podcast, we were talking about it being mainly done with the bubbles in Imessage compared to regular text. But platform shaming has been around since everything.

It's the Mac, it's Windows, it's all the whole thing.

PC Mac. Which one do you pick? Because it was very much frowned upon in the early two thousand s to have a Mac.

Yes, it was.

I remember those times you were platform shamed.

Yeah, they called it mac and trash.

Really?

Yeah. I knew a lot of guys who called it Mac and Trash.

Marty, did you ever experience that, like when you were starting with a Mac, people kind of ridicule you for using a Mac.

Didn't really start until later. I mean, in the early know, people didn't look at it that way. And it was obviously harder to have a computer in your home during those years. It still wasn't where every single house, every single person had their own machine. Maybe you had one for the whole family in those years, but as people had the accessibility to be able to have a machine in their house, as the technology of computers, home computers, came down in price and made it more affordable for people. That's when you started noticing the bad trends picking up. And, oh, you don't have this, so you're not cool. Or you have that, and that's really a piece of crap. And whatever. You know what I mean? That's kind of when it started, really.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

There wasn't any smartphones, really, or tablets yet at that time. So in the 90s, like when those imacs first started coming back around with those new redesigns with the colors and all of that stuff, there was really only windows in the years previous to that, because when Jobs was gone from Apple. Apple went to a really dark place and didn't have anything, really, that people were interested in in the market at that time. Until Steve Jobs came back. And when he came back and they released those first IMAX with the colors and all of that, that's kind of was the beginning of Apple being revised and making its way back know, the more consumer market.

The ironic thing for me is when I was a kid, when I was like eight or nine, I learned to type on an Apple. This is going to date me, guys, but whatever. Our school had, like, old Apple, Q, E's and two GS's, it was back that far. And I learned to type on those guys, and that was a thing. And then it became windows. Everything just shifted to windows. But I enjoyed that experience. I really liked what they had going as far as the older Apple stuff.

Angie, since you were using computers, Mac computers, around that time, back in those days, it was more of a cult kind of a thing. For example, the only place that you can find flying toasters was on those Macs. They had special screen savers that were really cool, and they put a little extra oomph into a screen saver more than what Windows did. And the big thing was those iconic flying toasters. That was the thing for a few years.

See, that's a visual thing. I had no idea, but this is super cool. I love this stuff. So, yeah, it's a bit of a two E's, two GS. The big back when discs really wear floppies, that was a thing.

Yeah, they had those three five inch, 3.5 inch drives, and the screens were interesting at that time, they were like this weird black with kind of like a bluish sort of color. Some of them were green, some of them are blue.

But.

When they start up worrying noise. Noise when they start up. Yeah, those were fun.

And the originals were the five and a quarter that were really soft.

Really soft. Yeah, I remember those. I used to use those.

Yeah.

The only other real big consumer computer that was out during that time was those Commodore 64s, which was a huge popular thing also. And so that was the big thing was either you had a Commodore 64 or you had one of those Apples, and they were both pretty new on the home computer brunt for having a consumer computer at home.

But even today, I had a person tell me this week that I said I could not open a certain kind of a file. And they said, oh, you really need to be using a real computer.

That's rough.

We won't go into names here, but yeah, I was told that during a meeting.

Oh, my God, this is a professional.

And I've actually I've actually seen other blind know do that, too. It's like you use Mickey Mouse computers. If you guys didn't use you, wouldn't you'd be able to get stuff done? Have you ever used a both both platforms exist in my life just fine. I don't know why people can't just get on board and let it ride. It's technology. It all helps us. They all have their bugs and their issues, but they all have their amazing points, too.

Yes.

And nobody seems to want to realize that. Or very few people people want to.

You're going to say something, Marty? No, I thought I heard somebody say so. For me, it's why I wanted to bring this up, because I feel like as humans, we like to think that my thing is better than their other thing.

Somebody told me they like to one up each other.

Yes. Well, not just that. People have what I like to call the like me disease. The like me disease. If you're not like me, then you're wrong. And that goes to what we use. I use an Android phone. So if you're not using Android, your device is inferior to what I use. That's kind of how people think is evil. Well, not even the walled garden, because the walled garden is a little different. Well, I guess if you say yeah, okay, I see what you mean. Because Apple's walled garden is like the way that people look at open it's.

Configurable it's that the walled garden is evil. Well, it keeps things know to an.

Extent, but yes, to an right.

Yeah, yeah.

To the extent that anything can be these days.

Yeah. Because at the end of the day, people are going to do what they want to do, and people are going to break down those walls any way they can.

So they'll be people.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's why we're at security.

Fixes bull patching.

So it kind of comes down to how do we resolve this? How do we change our views so that we can say that what somebody else has. And we kind of do it too, if you think about it, because in the blind community, we have a device called the Blind Shell Classic Two. And everybody goes, oh.

Yeah, I'm one of those people.

But if you think about it, for the type of person that needs it, the Blind Shell Classic Two is a great device, right? For the people that need it, it's a great device. It does what they need and that's all they need. And I think it's kind of like what we say on this podcast, is you need to make the best choice for your situation.

That's the great thing about tech. It's so versatile. People like buttons. That'd be a great thing for people who prefer buttons. Just touch screens, right?

In this day and age, with all of this technology we have now, honestly, it's all pretty much the same. It really depends on what your preferences and what your needs are. Any smartphone is going to have a web browser. Any smartphone is going to have an email client. You can listen to music, watch videos, take notes, do all of that stuff on any device. It just is what do you prefer to use, what is going to suit you better in whatever situation you're trying to do, whatever that is. And you need to look at the different devices and figure out what has the thing that is going to suit you the best. It should be a personal choice. Not because everyone says you're not cool if you don't have A, B or C, whatever it is. You know what I mean? You have to look at what your needs are as an individual and make the best choice for yourself on what your personal needs are. And honestly, like in the end, with how powerful everything is these days, they all pretty much do the same thing. It just really comes down to kind of what hardware do you prefer and what needs do you have that maybe one device has over another device that maybe doesn't have a certain thing or know.

Speaking of the and you know, Angie kind of brought this up whenever she know people who prefer buttons are going to like the blind shell. Did you know that the Blind Life did a video on this? And I can't remember what the device is called, but there is like a small handheld module that you could get for your iPhone that basically allows you to use physical buttons.

The hable one.

No, that's a keyboard. That's a keyboard.

It's called a sense player. And the Sense player allows you to be able to sync it to your iPad. And then once no, that's not what I'm talking about.

The Sense player does, like several million things, but I'm talking about it's literally just a small Bluetooth module. Its specific purpose is to be physical buttons for the iPhone.

Isn't that the hable?

No, I think there's different ones. Yeah, the hable is a braille keyboard. But I think what she's talking about I think I've heard of this literally.

It has, like, the typical up, down, left, right, the T Nine Dialer a Back button, the Go Goodness Send Return button.

A sense player.

No. A sense player is not a sense player.

A Sense Player is a standalone full device. This is specifically just a Bluetooth module for smartphones. No, it's meant to be paired with just a smartphone. Yeah, it's not meant to be a standalone device. It has to be paired to something that's interesting.

Now, the Synth player can do those things, but I think there is an individual device.

There is. That's not what I'm talking about. I didn't even know the synths player existed until this week.

Yeah, they can connect to your devices and do that, too.

That's why a lot of people actually buy the Sense player, because you can sync it to your iPad and use the tactile buttons to actually control your iPad. And people who are new to vision loss or have lost their vision recently, and they have to learn how to use an iPhone or an iPad or any device for that matter. The biggest thing is they don't really understand the gestures and the swiping and all of that stuff. And a lot of people say, how do you work a slab of glass? Isn't there something more tactile about it? So one of the cool things about that Sense player is that you can, even though it does a million other things, it does have a way to sync it to your iPad or any iOS device and use the tactile buttons to control your iPad or your iPhone. But there's a lot of people buy.

It just for that.

The best part about the device that I'm talking about, though, is it's more entry level because the Sense player is like $300.

No, it's 800.

$800.

Well, that's even more that proves my point even more, honestly, because this device that I'm talking about is like $40 over 800. If you wanted something that was like entry level and was more easily accessible, because not everybody's going to have $800 in the bank, especially if they just lost their sight.

Like you said, I don't think you would want to pay $800 no. Or even 699, or whatever, the non OCR version.

I wouldn't want to pay 300 well for something that I'm just going to use to sync to my iPhone and.

Make that's what I was getting.

Yeah.

Is if you have the Sense Player has its purpose as an ereader, as a device, to run Android apps, as a device to do all these different things. But. Even the Orbit writer or the Habel or this other device which will be in the show Notes will be I'm.

Looking it up now.

Okay, I think those will be better options than paying for a Sense player, I think. I would not want to pay that kind of money just to control my because you're already paying $1,500 for an iPhone for certain iPhones or $2,000 for certain iPads, or as low as like $500 for an iPad mini. But then you're paying another six to $800 for a Sense player. I don't know how much sense that makes again. But I mean, of course if you want an alternative player for books and things, it has that added bonus of being that book player and controlling your device and these other things. So there's bonuses and weaknesses for everything. I don't think the Victor Reader stream third gen can control your devices.

I don't think so either.

I mean, I could go and ask Taylor because she has one, and find out, but that would have to be for her to follow up. But back to our discussion, it just depends on what your needs are Android can do. And kind of going back to the messages and things, I really kind of fault some of these companies for their marketing because they kind of say you need this. Apple really has just said imessage can do these things. They haven't really said you need imessage and that's why you need to buy an iPhone. They may kind of subliminally be marketing that. But I do kind of say that Google is making the situation worse by saying blame Apple for the Blue and having their what's their protocol called for texting that's similar to imessage.

Does anybody remember, I forget what the actual name of technology is called.

I am just drawing a blank. And it's basically their equivalent to imessage, which is worse because it relies on the carrier to work. I want to say RTS, but that sounds wrong so I don't remember. So I think that we have some of these companies to blame because of how they market it's. Like let Apple know that you're missing out and that's kind of not helping the case of people in Know because people are going to buy and well.

Here'S a question for Angie since she is an Android user. When you have an Android device, does it have the same type of security stuff, know imessage or message or whatever they're calling it on Apple devices? Now, when you're using an Android device, do you get that same kind of encrypted security that messages or imessage gives you right out of the gate kind of a thing? And can you be seamless across all of your Android devices the same way Apple is? Or how does that work? I guess my last question to that would be also can you just use Wi Fi and not have to use cellular data to be able to send back and forth messages to anybody on Android device like you would anybody on an Apple device.

Likely. You're a developer. What do you think of the RCS?

That's what I was looking for. That's what RCS so going off marty.

I've heard yes and no. I don't really mean I think it tries to be. I think it thinks it is. It wants to be. But I don't know. I'm still led to believe that imessage is more secure. It is tied to your number.

You are right. I think you do have to use RCS. And that was what I was trying to think of earlier.

I'm sorry. I was trying to look up that thing, that device.

That's what I was trying to think of earlier. RCS. And RCS is the technology behind it is more it is encrypted. It encrypts end to end. But it does rely on the cell phone carrier to negotiate the connection, which introduces a privacy issue because of it.

Relying not all carriers are created equal.

And they can still log the fact that you're messaging. They may not be able to get the message, but they're logging the fact that you are, whereas imessage is end to end.

Well, I'm pretty sure that if you are on an Apple device talking to somebody not on an Apple device, then all of everything in terms of security goes out the window and it just becomes a regular plain text message.

That's correct.

Without any security or any features or anything. It's just a straight up plain text.

But if you're on an Android phone texting an Android phone, it uses this RCS feature provided that you're using Google Messages.

I think that's the key Google Messages.

Does it samsung Messages does to bring it back to the physical buttons for the phone subject. It is a Habel device, but it's an earlier version of not the it's an earlier version of it. I can't even remember what it's called. It is from Habel, but okay, interesting. Yeah, it's an earlier version of it, I think because it came out like a few years ago. Because the Habel one I think was one of those things that just came out.

But correct me if I'm wrong, pretty recently.

Yeah, no more entry level device. This device literally fits in your hand. It's like super small. But yeah, it is a Hable device. It's just an earlier model of it.

Speaking of android.

All right, so back to RCS. It's a good platform if you're talking to Android phones, but it will not go between the devices.

I think Google really wants Apple to conform and do this unified, but Apple will not. But they won't do it.

There's no way because of the non end to ENDNESS of cause.

So then you've got apps like Beeper out there that will you have to sign in with your Apple ID. I don't like that. I don't like my apple ID. To third party apps, right?

I signed up for the beta of Beeper a long time ago because I heard it was going to be really neat and I think like last month I got into the waiting list, let me in and I deleted the email because I had no clue what creature was anymore.

I like it, it's cool because you can use it on your Android devices. You can use it on Windows. Wow, yeah, I totally forgot we should play with it. I don't have it yet, but I've heard it's pretty good. The accessibility is a bit rough, there's some unlabeled buttons, but once you figure out what they are, the developer seems amenable to fixing it, so that's a good thing.

Fantastic. But I think what people need to realize is that it's all down to personal preference. I like to wear blue. Well, my favorite color is blue. I wear polo shirts that are single color. I wear like, slacks, that's my preference, right? I like an iPhone, that is my preference. I use Macs, that is my preference. I like the music, I like that's my preference. And buying an iPhone or an Android phone should be a personal preference, not because it works differently, like, okay, I can write shortcuts that can do so many things on an iPhone and you could do the same things on an Android phone. I just sit there.

They're harder to make though. They're a lot harder to more complicated, I think, to put together.

Yeah, but some people love that complication, they love it, they thrive off of it and that's just not me. There are people that use Linux command line as their primary use of a computer. We have an individual that's in the I accessibility community and if you're listening, you know who you are and I have ultimate respect for you, sir, who edits audio with a audio editor.

Oh, my God.

That's insane.

That is amazing. That is dedication, sir, my hats off to you. That is incredible.

And instead of saying, well, you should use Logic Pro because obviously that's the best program to use.

If you can do that, you're good where you are, just go on. You know what?

My hat's off to you.

If I wore a hat, my little brain goes, yeah, okay, good for you guy, good for you.

Yeah, I couldn't do it, it would drive me. But that's what he likes. There are people that use vim I'm looking to you all you vim developers or VI? I can barely quit vim when I get into it. Colon q. Enter now. Okay, don't get me started. But there are people that love it. There are people that love editing in that there are people that like writing code in Notepad. More power to you. That's just not me, right? Well, I don't think they use Notepad as much anymore with how they've made changes but there are people that like Windows ten instead of Windows Eleven, or there's people still running Windows Seven. I don't think that's advisable for security reasons. No, but what the thing is that and there are applications, I think it's called Openshell that will make Windows Eleven work. Like the older versions of Windows, like Windows Seven and Windows XP. One of those.

There was this utility that would give you back your Start menu functionality like Windows Seven. I can't remember what that was called.

And that's great. The ability to make something yours is more important than what people think about it. I think it's very important for people to realize that you should not be ashamed for anything that you do and for the way you do it. Now, I think it's good to hear feedback of how to make your workflow better. For example, I'll use our podcast network for an example with this. Michael, Babcock and Damasi do pretty much everything on their computers from the command line. So they install apps from the Mac App Store with a command called MAS. And that's brilliant. That's wonderful and awesome. My style is not to do that, but I think it's awesome that they can do it. They use an application called Launch Bar, which is fantastic. It has more features than you could ever think about.

Love launch bar.

Do you?

Yes.

It breaks my brain.

Launch bar keyboard maestro. Yeah. Every time I get a new Mac, those go on first.

Really interesting.

Oh, yeah.

I tried Launch Bar, and even just using it the same way I would Spotlight just didn't work for me. And I'm like, I've got to go back. I can't do this.

You're used to spotlight, though.

Yes.

It's a matter of coming.

Yeah. Everything that I do on a Mac is command space type in. That's how I start every action on the Mac.

And when I teach Launch, not Launch Bar, when I teach Spotlight, it's more than just a search utility. You can do so much from there. You can run websites from there. It's amazing.

Right? And so for me, when I tried Launch Bar, it's a different mechanic, a different dynamic. And so for me, it just didn't work for me. But that's the whole thing. Use what works for you and don't blame people. And I'm not saying anybody here does. I'm just saying for those out there that do platform shame, I advise you, don't blame people for what they use because they know what works best for them. Or at least I would hope so. If they don't know what works best for them, then a learning opportunity is always a good thing. But just saying that Android is lame or boring or this and that is not helpful. Here's the thing. I develop for iOS and Android, and I build iOS apps, and I build Android apps. And building Android apps used to be the biggest pain in the neck. Just because you'd have to write your code and design your user interfaces with XML. And it was not easy to get things looking the way you want.

I've heard that from more than one developer, though you're not the first person to say that.

Now, Google has changed the language to what's called Kotlin, which is very similar to Swift. And you could build your interfaces all in one file or similar files with your data, how you handle data. And that is very similar to what Apple does with Swift UI. And so we're at this point in even development where we can't say one. I mean, okay, I still prefer SwiftUI just because I like the style, but I can look at an application developed for they call it Jetpack Compose. It's how you build Android apps for modern platforms. And I can look at it and say, I know what this does because it's modern. It works great.

As a Talkback user. The degree of accessibility on Android apps, and I don't know if this is by accident or design, but it's amazing how accessible apps are over there. And that's pretty much the case on iOS as well. It's incredible how that's kind of become a thing. You don't see a lot of unlabeled buttons or things you can't controls you can't get to. It's really good stuff.

So again, it's down to what is right for you. It's not no longer the case of, well, iPhone can do all these great things. And that Android phone is always going to have a keyboard and a stylus.

No, the DPAD and that little nerf thing, the little track ball. The track ball, little eraser looking thing. Yeah, that thing.

I remember those on Android phones. Ice free shell and all those mobile accessibility. And even before that with computers, windows had the lead in the then when we got the new imacs, like Marty said, when Steve Jobs came back and we started seeing, we're going to have to wrap up pretty soon, but does anybody know a quick history of macOS? Like when Steve Jobs took over?

Well, there was still classic, which was OS nine versions of that operating system. And those originated well, not originated, but those were on those original new IMAX when he came back. Those colored IMAX, I want to say it lasted till around 99 or 2000 when they started doing versions of OS Ten. And you were able to get a version of OS Ten and run it either on an external hard drive or you could partition a drive and have part of your drive running the classic version of the operating system, which would have been anything previous to Ten. That would have been at that time, it would have been any of those nine variants, is what they were in in those years. When those IMAX came out. I want to say it was a few years. They had some reiterations into 2001, two, three, when they had those variations of the OS Ten. I want to say probably the biggest marketed version of that was around 2004 or five when they released Tiger, which was a major update to the Ten operating system. And probably like the real first time, they really marketed it, promoted it, and really got it out there in front of people as like, this is our new operating system, and this is what we're going to move forward with. And I believe around that time they also discontinued the Classic and they started kind of sunsetting the whole anything previous to Ten versions of the operating system. And they started putting all of the versions of Ten on all of the new computers that were coming out and eventually completely phased out Nine altogether. And then they moved forward from there. Now the other thing they were doing in those years was releasing the new operating system. I Cannot speak they were releasing the new operating systems on DVD and you had to purchase it. So for a while, it was purchasing the new operating system. When they released them, when they came out every year, slowly, once the App Store came out, they started selling it in the App Store, and at some point they made that transition to no more DVDs, you'd now just get it through the App Store and at some point it became free. And they decided, we're just not going to charge for our software anymore in terms of our basic tools, which is the operating system and the Iwork suite and the Ilife suite, and all of that would have been whatever version of OS Ten. And then you got Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which were the equivalent to Word, PowerPoint and Excel in the Microsoft world. They made all that stuff free and they just started putting it on every single computer that you would buy. And it was the same thing with the Ilife Suite. Now the only thing with Ilife Suite is the Ilife Suite pretty much became Imovie for the most part because they discontinued Iweb, which was their website management software, where you could build websites using Iweb. And then they also had iDVD, which was how you could author DVDs. After you were done editing them, you would burn to DVD and that's how you created the digital menus and do all that stuff. When you had a DVD, when you would pop into DVD, you had all the cool play here and there was the pictures and the graphics and all that stuff. That's kind of how you did that as a consumer is you would use iDVD when you were done editing your video in Imovie and Iweb and iDVD, they ended up discontinuing and not really developing that anymore. And so we just really have now the Imovie along with Pages, Keynote and Numbers, and that's kind of where we stand at this point. And it's all free. You could just get it.

And I'll say with Tiger that's when a voiceover was introduced.

Correct. That was also when that was just I believe that was 2005.

I want to see. I think 2000 happened. 2004.

It didn't happen right away.

I think 2005, yeah. 10.4, I think was the version.

That's what it was.

10.4, yeah, but that's the public facing story. There's actually a little more of a hidden story here, kind of we were joking about it earlier, but the rest of the story the rest of the.

Story.

This is where they go. One more thing, right?

When Steve Jobs came to Apple, came back to Apple, the way they did that is they bought his company. Did y'all know Steve Jobs had a tech company?

Yeah, he was building computers. He had started a tech company, I forget with who, but they ended up having Apple buy the tech company. And he just came back and went back into the CEO position. I think they were, for the life of me, what the name of the tech company that he had?

Was it was called that's yep, that's it.

And I think actually they were going to name the operating system Next for a while, and then he decided against doing that.

Actually, it was next. It was NextOS, and that was what it was called through the 90s. So when we talk about macOS Ten, and we're talking about the Macintosh operating system and everything on our iPhones, we're not using anything from macOS Nine. We're using NextOS.

That's awesome.

They brought NextOS to Apple and they incorporated it into the Mac. What they did, though, was they made and I think NextOS was kind of an offshoot of macOS when it started. And I think that's how they were able to keep compatibility through the development lifecycle. But when Steve came back, they made macOS Ten be Next OS, and it was compatible with macOS Nine apps for a while. And that's why you would see Classic and things like that throughout the OS. And then when they removed support from macOS Nine apps after a while, and it was just macOS Ten apps. But throughout the operating system of macOS, you see NS everywhere, NS View controller, NS Table View, NS, all these things. That's next step. And so that is kind of the rest of the story of how Apple was revitalized. I mean, the iPhone is all basically offshoots of those things. They called it UI kit instead of App kit and other things. And all the NS references were changed to UI and all those things. Now it doesn't even matter. You don't see either of those with Swift UI. But the point here is when know, going back to our original topic, when Apple came was purchased by Steve Jobs, windows was just the prime, right? Windows was just what you used. It's how you did things on your computer, and it's the way you are productive. And even when macOS was ten point 410.5, it was great, but it could not do like if you were going to go work in a business, you would not see Mac computers. In fact, I would say even up to about 2010, mac was just not something you'd see if you were in the corporate world. Even now, I think a lot of government agencies still buy mainly Windows. And so I think depending on what kind of career you're going to, you need to know how to use those. But when you're at home and working on your own computer, have a Mac if you want one. I mean, if you can afford one, that's the other thing too. Have that Windows computer, have that Chromebook, have what makes you happy, not what other people think you should have. Now because I've been talking a lot about that. I want to go and wrap this thing up. But what I would like to see is do you guys have any advice or tips for people that are kind of suffering from being platform shamed? Or do you recommend people have a mindset or want to say something to those that do platform shame?

I just think that go ahead, party. Okay. You sure? I just think that people should use what makes you comfortable, use what makes you happy. That's ultimately what it comes down to. Don't be intimidated by your friend or whoever wants to platform shame you. It's a real thing and it tends to make people feel that what they have isn't good enough, that it's not the cool thing. And that's not cool because use whatever helps you the most, use whatever is the most beneficial, lets you be the most productive.

Yeah, I would agree with Angie. I mean, that's what you should do. Look at what all your needs are and shop around and figure out what you can afford and what the best thing that would be in your budget is going to be able to get the most things done on the list that you have. That's going to be ultimately the best choice. I would say that all of the devices pretty much do the same thing at this point. They all search the web, they all have email, they all can make a task manager or to do list, they all can do notes, they can play music and do all mostly the same stuff. So with all of that being said, look at the hardware and the phone, look at your price and what you can afford and try and put together something that's going to be the best bang for the buck and be able to do the things that you need it to do.

I think a lot of the platform shaming too comes from an experience people just what they don't usually these guys have never used the platform that they're tearing down, right? And if they have, it's usually dated information. So that's another thing to think about.

That's a good point.

Because look at how many people passing around misinformation about Voiceover or about the Mac or about what you can do with the Mac. If you really start to dig into what those people are saying, they're basing it on information that's five years old and tech moves at the speed of light. Not only is it frankly crap, it's erroneous information as well. Right.

But I have to agree with what you guys are saying as far as the whole platform shaming thing, because I've been there, especially me being an Android user and my family being dominant iPhone. I've been there. Oh my goodness, why don't you just do this like everyone else in this house? And I've also had people tell me like, oh, wow, Android is so inaccessible and it's not usable for people like you, and I don't understand why you still try and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've been there. But I feel like it's people going off of what they've experienced and they haven't had the chance to actually sit down with these devices and see what they do and understand how they can help different people in different situations. They've just understood like, oh, it doesn't work for me, which means it probably doesn't work for anyone else. Obviously, that's not the way to go, but yeah, I'm in agreement. Don't let people talk you into switching or don't let people talk you into thinking that your device just isn't worth it and that it's not going to do any good. Just use what works for you.

Yes.

Well, this is kind of the episode that I've been wanting to have for a while. I've been wanting us to really talk through this topic and get some different perspectives. I know that we've all been platform shamed and I'm sure in joking ways we've kind of done our own platform shaming because we have been there where we talk about what we like. So I think it's just good for us to realize people have different needs and wants. Now, if somebody does come to me and says, I have what was one of the old, like, Google G one or something, I'm going to say why from 2008.

Well, I got a lot of it from when I started playing with Android. This time, a lot of my Apple people were like, I'm a geek and I just like to experiment and play with stuff. And I had an opportunity to do you know, I tried out Android and Windows and they all have a place in my life. You know, they all have things that one does that the others can't or whatever. They all fill a niche and that's the important thing to realize. They all have capabilities, right?

I mean, probably after the podcast in a little bit, I'll probably switch to Windows and do some gaming. That's why I use Windows personally right now when I can fully move everything to the Mac, because the game porting toolkit has gotten totally yeah, I mean, if I could just have one computer in the bag, that would be great. Yes. So it just depends on use case. So I think that's what really we need to come away with. I think it is okay to ask somebody, why, is this your preference?

Sure.

I think that's okay, right, that's acceptable.

I agree. Because you might be able to educate someone, teach them something.

But also, I do think it's good, though, to have a healthy conversation, to say, well, you know, that because somebody may not know that the iPhone can do shortcuts easier than an Android phone.

It can.

Those kind of things are good, healthy discussions. And I don't think that we should say, you can't have those. I'm just saying, don't just say mine's better than yours, because it really isn't right.

Especially if we're talking people who have the latest devices from each platform, because it's different if you're talking to someone who has an iPhone 15 versus like, an iPhone Five S. Obviously they're not able to use the most up to date software, and they're not able to do the things that an iPhone 15 could do. You could be like, oh, well, do you know that your phone's almost ten years old?

Right. It's funny because I have an iPhone 13, I think marty, do you have something like that? Another test iPhone?

Iphone 13 as a test device?

Yeah, so I think we have those for testing. And I'll tell you what, sometimes I pick up my iPhone 13, I'm like, Man, I wish I had this as a main device because it's just so small and so nice in the hand and it can do almost everything that day to day that the 15 Pro Max can do. It's just smaller and doesn't have all the specs, but it can still do a lot. Like, if you just need a phone to be a phone, then you can keep a phone for a while and just do stuff, like minimal stuff, not ray tracing and crazy graphics in 3D Spatial videos. It's just in what you need as a person. And I think what we're trying to say is you should be comfortable being you, not what somebody else wants you to be. So again, I think we went over our time, our hour this time, but as we sometimes do, we're almost up.

To an hour and a half.

It's my fault. I'm I'm a bad influence.

We're all a bad influence. I get passionate about this topic.

Totally, totally true.

So to go ahead and wrap it up, as we typically do. Marty, do you have a pick for this week? And where can people find you online?

Yeah, I talked about this just recently. We've been having a lot of conversations about RSS readers lately, so I am going to talk about Net News Wire, which has actually been around a really long time, but. It is an RSS reader. It works on iPhone, iPad and the Mac platform. It syncs using cloud syncing, among a ton of other ways as well. It works great with voiceover. It's a great app. If you're looking for getting into RSS and you haven't, it's a great place to start. It has all of the baseline technologies that you would need in RSS reader. It's not fake. It is great news, Voiceover and all of know. So give it a try. You have nothing to lose with it being free on all the platforms. So that's pretty awesome. If you want to track me down, I'm on Macedon. You could find me at Marty at Unmute community. Fantastic.

And Alicia, do you want to go next?

Sure. I have been playing around a lot with Ferrites, using it for editing and things like that for my audio, because I tried logic and wasn't really able to get the hang of it. So I feel like logic has its place, but not really for me. As a podcast editor, I feel like I'm probably going to be using Ferrite. So that is my pick for the week because it's really easy to use and easy to understand. Yeah, Ferrite, that's my pick for the week. If you want to reach out to me, I am on Macedon, Facebook and LinkedIn on Macedon. I am blind. One lives at Techopolis social on Facebook. I am Alicia Geary, obviously. And LinkedIn. I'm Alicia Geary. And, oh, I forgot to mention discord. Discord. I'm blind when lives. Or you can find me by just searching for my name, alicia Geary. You can also check out my [email protected].

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

My pick is something I was threatened to do before, and I'll just try to make this really brief. It's my concept heroer. It's accessible, it's good stuff. I could bang on about this thing forever. But it's computer. It's called a PM Five, and it connects to your phone via an app. And you can control the whole thing via the app. You can set workouts, you can just row, you can do all kinds of fun stuff. So, yeah, I love this thing. I've used it for quite a while. And accessible fitness equipment is a big deal, and there's not enough of it, in my opinion. So these guys go out of their way to make their things accessible. They're very aware of accessibility and the accessibility community. They'll modify their rowers for total and partial amputees so that they can row also. So it's really good stuff. You can find me on Mastodon Enthusiast at Dragonscave Space for now.

Is it basically like an accessible Peloton competitor? Basically.

They've been around forever. Yeah, it's a rower. It doesn't have the games. It's not based on Android or what have you. That would be like a water rower type thing. But this one is, it just has the PM five, which is its computer. You can even jumper a couple of rowers together via the it has like an Ethernet port in the back. So you can raise people. Yeah, you can race each other.

Oh, wow. That's cool.

Yeah.

So it's not really quite like a Peloton type.

It's not a bike.

It's not exactly like a bike. No, it's a rower. It's a row.

Well, Peloton has different they do. They have a rower, they have a treadmill, they have a bike, and they have an Olympic.

These guys do. They have a skier? It's called an ERG, basically, which is I don't know what that stands for. I should look it up. But anyway, they have a biker, a SkiErg, and the rower.

The Peloton has, like basically I don't know, it comes with its own subscription service or whatever. And there's like a coach that you work with.

Cool. Yeah. This is just you pay for the rower. You can get all kinds of rowing apps that are accessible, too. I might do a whole series on that because a lot of them are accessible and they work pretty well, and they'll interface with your performance monitor, and it just pulls your data from there. And then you can sync it with Apple Health.

I wonder if that's a podcast idea for accessible fitness.

Fitness. There totally should be, because more people should I mean, I don't want to be that person who's like, get off your.

Wink wink.

We can make it happen.

That would be kind of fun. That would be kind of fun.

We can make it happen.

We can have an accessible fitness podcast.

Yeah, it's a great thing for weight loss, which I definitely need. It just feels good. There's nothing like a good workout with.

How much you row each day. I see your activity on do.

Yes, you do. I cannot lie. Michael knows it all.

I forgot Apple Watch has the shared workout.

You can share work. Yes, you can share work.

That would motivate me.

And they have challenges.

You can challenge each other, too. Samsung doesn't have that. Well, I mean, Samsung has it, but it's not as seamless, it's not as.

Integrated, or there aren't many people.

It's not as social. That would really motivate me to get off my butt.

Maybe this needs to be a whole topic about the different types.

This should be, yeah, let's do it.

Fitness tech. Accessible fitness tech.

Fitness trackers. Because I used to use Fitbit, and you can still use Fitbit, but you have the app and the Apps dashboard. That's pretty much the only way you can access it. And I did that for years, and then Apple Watch happened, and I was like, this is so and the Pixel Watch, too, is pretty good, too.

So we will have a whole episode on that. But we're going to have to wrap this one up pretty soon. But great topics. My pick this time is an app that Michael Babcock and Demasi got me. They kept talking about it enough, and talking about it, and talking about it, and talking about it. I said, I just need to try it out and I'm on a trial. The app is called DEVONthink D-E-V-O-N think. Have you heard of this, Angie?

I've heard of it, but I'm not familiar with it.

So DEVONthink is an app where it works on your store. It's kind of like if you've heard of Notion. It's a much more accessible notion for one person. You can store your database in Icloud and you can add text documents, HTML rich text. You could add all kinds of other data. You can pull things in from the Internet, like clip things to it. It's completely accessible. You could store it in Dropbox, where people that use the app can also log in and get in your database and you can all collaborate.

I want this.

It's 99 a year. And what's neat about it is they also have Devon Think to Go, which is an iOS app, and it will sync to your database in icloud. Now, the next thing that's neat with it is you can add RSS feeds to DEVONthink. So it will pull in your RSS feeds, kind of like email. And you can read the articles. It'll give you a description. Then you can go and view the full article. And then you can go delete it like you've read the article. And then when more come in, you just read your RSS feeds. And it works like that on the mobile app.

That is cool.

And in the desktop. And like I said, they have a trial. They have three plans. They're $99 a year plan, 199 a year for Pro, and 499 for the server, which, yes, I am considering, because if I could put a server up in my house, a Mac server with Devon Think, and everybody can just log in and access it, that would be amazing because it's like Notion, but accessible.

My gosh.

So I'm really excited about this application. I've been playing with it for quite a bit. I need to do some more playing around with it. But I think we can even add a database to a web server or to Dropbox, and then other people can download it. So, Angie, if you want to play with that, we can, but you could just put any information you want, anything. So I'm really excited about this program. The one thing that it does not do is there's two platforms it doesn't support, and that's Windows and Android.

Android and windows.

But if you're using the web server, then Windows and technically Android will do it.

Yeah, you could totally get around it. Yeah, that's cool.

So really excited about this. I'm wanting to play around with it a lot. So that's my pick.

Sounds amazing.

I've spent many an hour in jeventhink this week because you could change your sorting order of RSS feeds.

Oh, my goodness.

You could put them in folders. I could go on and on and on about it.

That's awesome. No, I'm a stickler for organization. Like, my phone is something about folders, so I'm all about that. Anything that declutters my life, I'm all about it. That is yes.

Yep. I mean, this can almost be like your second brain, like Alicia says. Notion second brain. This is kind of an accessible second brain.

That's nice.

Notion is definitely my second brain. I've put everything into notion.

Yeah. So where you could find me online? I'm Mike DOE's at Techopolis Social. I'm Mastodon, which can be synced to DEVONthink, by the way. You can add mastodon feeds. Devanthink. Yeah, so it's really cool. That's where I am. On mastodon. I'm Mike Doey's on Twitter or X, and Michael Doey's on Facebook. I'm Michael Doeies on pretty much all platforms LinkedIn. Just search for me, and you can email me at [email protected]. You can email the podcast at [email protected]. You can follow the show. We do have some Mastodon accounts. Just look for Iacast. Believe it or not, I think most servers will find it. We have before we go, I want to mention the I Accessibility app. We got a huge update. We have a new radio station, and, well, it's the same content, new location on the radio, and so that's been updated. The app has a new look for iOS. There will be a new update for Android eventually. I'm working on that, and I'm really liking the new app. There are new article well, there's currently a new article in the I Accessibility Report. So go check that out. Really excited about that, by the way.

Those will be coming weekly now, probably since I posted it this Saturday. I'll probably keep it up, posting on Saturdays. Loving the creation of those so far. I think that's my first article that I've wrote for this, for I Accessibility. So I'll keep them coming.

And we're always looking for authors. If you want to have your content in the report talking about accessibility and different products, we are always up for content.

I think I might rework my BSI article and post it.

Fantastic. Fantastic. So I'm excited about that. The more content we can have, the more the app can shine. And we might even have push notifications on the iOS app from time to time when there's new content. So be on the lookout for that because people love that in the past. So I'd love to get back to that. So, great news. Great things going unmute's. Going really had there were some great topics. If you have not heard the Unmute with Jeff, and I mean, they're technically working with Jeff and Sean. Check that out. That was a great podcast we had. Marty, you want to talk about the lady, a episode from the last week on the Thursday?

Yeah, it was just a quick update on some of the new products that came out as well as some of the things you can do to connect your devices and how to enhance your a lady device.

Fantastic. And of course the community call and there are a few other topics so check that out. And this has been a great episode, a very long episode as can happen. So thank you all for being here, thank you all for listening on YouTube and the radio subscribe on YouTube comment like all the things that you should do if you're a good YouTube viewer and let us know your thoughts and we look forward to seeing you on episode 200 next week. I'm really excited that this will be episode 200 so check us out there and we will be back next week for some new content. Not sure that it will be a dedicated topic as we typically do. We might just be talking about Iacast the past 200 episodes or the past I guess 199. So it's going to be great. It'll be fantastic. So thank you everybody 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 castnetwork to stay informed about new episodes, 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.