March 2026: iPhone Literacy, Part 3

We started the iPhone Literacy series to address a common observation: an iPhone is a powerful tool, but most people are using it for nothing more than phone calls, text messages, and photos. An iPhone, particularly when running iOS 26, can do so much more.

With the rain of iPhone features and capabilities, where do you start?
With the rain of iPhone features and capabilities, where do you start?

This appears to be a problem in two parts: first, users are aware that the iPhone can do more, but they don’t fully understand what “more” might entail. You know your iPhone can display directions on the screen in your new car, but just looking at the phone doesn’t tell you how to do it. The second part is one of wealth and change: there is a wealth of things you can do with your phone — even without adding additional apps — but the wealth is not a constant: whatever you think the iPhone can do today, it probably can do more tomorrow.

In March, we looked at health and safety things, for the most part. We talked about how to turn on crash detection, how to use fall detection in concert with an Apple Watch, how to use the Check In feature with Apple Messages, how to get emergency alerts, how to trigger an SOS call to 911, how to block contacts, how to get a privacy report on which apps were tracking your location or use, how to set up and use the Medical ID function using Apple Health, how to set up stolen device protection, how to record a phone call, and some simple things, such as how to take an iPhone (and Apple Watch) screen shot, an excellent way to record funny memes, strange messages, and notes on things you saw or did.

Video of the meeting: iPhone Literacy, Part 3

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Transcript of iPhone Literacy, Part 3

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00:21:34.989 --> 00:21:39.989
On top of this program that I had waited 3 months to be shipped from the
United States,
00:21:40.597 --> 00:21:42.597
And I destroyed it. And I was thinking,
00:21:42.598 --> 00:21:45.116
If I'd had a Mac, that wouldn't have happened.
00:21:45.943 --> 00:21:51.943
Um, so that was what convinced me to buy Mac, and I went down to Akihabara
in Tokyo,
00:21:52.893 --> 00:22:00.893
Um, the day… they… they released him in Japan, and I bought one. I bought
the model that they had set up,
00:22:01.608 --> 00:22:14.608
for a display, because they were going to do a live TV broadcast. And
since that was the one that was set up, I bought it, and they were very sad,
and I didn't realize why until after they handed me the box. They said,
well, we'd set it up for a commercial.
00:22:15.187 --> 00:22:19.187
Oh, well. I've got a noun, so I went back to, uh…
00:22:19.678 --> 00:22:23.678
Back home with this Mac, but I bought the very first Mac sold in Japan.
00:22:25.997 --> 00:22:27.997
Completely by accident.
00:22:29.241 --> 00:22:33.241
Well, no. I went there to see it, so it wasn't too much of an accident,
but…
00:22:33.648 --> 00:22:39.648
Um, and that was long before I saw the commercial, but the commercial,
it illustrated
00:22:40.239 --> 00:22:43.239
Um, apples idea that…
00:22:43.965 --> 00:22:54.965
that computers, if they're just calculating devices, and you have to know
a whole bunch of… you have to memorize a whole bunch of commands, we're
not good devices, and so…
00:22:56.130 --> 00:23:03.130
Steve Jobs said that the Macintosh was not a computer, it was an appliance
for the mind.
00:23:04.023 --> 00:23:09.023
And in the original packaging, they talked about it being a mind appliance,
which…
00:23:09.100 --> 00:23:11.100
Uh, today would…
00:23:11.112 --> 00:23:15.112
probably creep people out, but at the time, it seemed like a good idea.
00:23:15.555 --> 00:23:17.555
Anybody have any questions?
00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:24.240
Um, I have one. Um, there was just, um, an update from Apple called
00:23:25.352 --> 00:23:27.352
23.1…
00:23:27.460 --> 00:23:35.460
23.3.1A, and do you know what that was about? They said some kind of
security emergency?
00:23:36.018 --> 00:23:39.018
Uh… when did you see that?
00:23:39.796 --> 00:23:41.796
Uh, today, uh, about…
00:23:42.040 --> 00:23:44.040
30 minutes ago.
00:23:44.509 --> 00:23:46.509
Uh…
00:23:46.509 --> 00:23:48.812
And it was in the… it was called Background Improvement.
00:23:48.977 --> 00:23:54.977
security. And you had to find this. It wasn't on general software update.
00:23:55.118 --> 00:24:00.118
It was, uh, in the privacy and security section,
00:24:00.811 --> 00:24:05.811
and you scroll down to background improvement, and there was the update
to install.
00:24:05.727 --> 00:24:10.727
And then it was called 23.3.1
00:24:10.737 --> 00:24:12.737
A.
00:24:12.738 --> 00:24:15.841
I do not see that. What device was this on?
00:24:15.839 --> 00:24:20.839
The, um, IOS and MACOS,
00:24:21.836 --> 00:24:29.836
And iPadOS, all three, not TV, but the iPad, the iPhone, and your laptop
MacOS.
00:24:29.876 --> 00:24:31.876
I…
00:24:31.876 --> 00:24:33.765
And they said, install it immediately, because there was some…
00:24:34.613 --> 00:24:36.613
uh, security issue.
00:24:36.613 --> 00:24:43.800
I would probably not do that, because the software update's not showing
that, and that's the only place that you should see that.
00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:47.000
kind of update, so I'm suspicious.
00:24:48.451 --> 00:24:51.451
I… I might be incorrectly suspicious, but…
00:24:51.452 --> 00:24:54.017
Well, no, it was in… it was in my security.
00:24:54.660 --> 00:24:58.660
When I looked in privacy and security, there was the update, and it said
install.
00:24:59.909 --> 00:25:03.909
And, well, except that it shouldn't be in privacy and security, it should
be just under…
00:25:03.909 --> 00:25:06.689
Yeah, I know, that was a very weird place for it to show up.
00:25:06.740 --> 00:25:08.740
Yeah, I'm…
00:25:08.740 --> 00:25:14.222
But on both the iPad and my iPhone and my laptop, all three,
00:25:14.938 --> 00:25:19.938
And, uh, I'm now running 23 point… 26.3.1A.
00:25:20.283 --> 00:25:22.283
Yeah…
00:25:22.283 --> 00:25:25.115
And if you look on your… if you look on your privacy security, you'll
see it.
00:25:27.284 --> 00:25:30.284
Well, I'm looking at privacy and security on my…
00:25:31.588 --> 00:25:33.588
right this second, and I do not see anything.
00:25:33.589 --> 00:25:38.215
No, scroll down to Background Improvements, all the way to the bottom,
towards the bottom.
00:25:39.324 --> 00:25:41.324
Background improvements.
00:25:42.137 --> 00:25:44.137
Alright, and then select that, and then you'll see
00:25:44.007 --> 00:25:46.007
Ah! Okay.
00:25:46.007 --> 00:25:46.773
23.3…
00:25:47.711 --> 00:25:49.711
26.3.1A.
00:25:49.804 --> 00:25:51.804
I…
00:25:51.805 --> 00:25:52.056
And it says, install immediately.
00:25:52.115 --> 00:25:54.115
Yeah, well, I would still…
00:25:55.878 --> 00:25:57.878
I'm still gonna hold off on this until I know more.
00:25:58.871 --> 00:26:00.871
Um,
00:26:00.872 --> 00:26:02.559
You know, I was wondering what that was all about. I was…
00:26:03.288 --> 00:26:07.288
Well, I'm just… I'm just by nature, I'm very paranoid, and sometimes
00:26:07.883 --> 00:26:09.883
paranoia means, um…
00:26:10.612 --> 00:26:14.612
don't follow, I mean, the rules. I know my rule was…
00:26:14.942 --> 00:26:19.942
install updates, but my up… the update process you're supposed to go
through is through the…
00:26:20.846 --> 00:26:25.846
security update process, and it's not there, so I'm going to investigate
this. The, um…
00:26:26.766 --> 00:26:30.766
is an example of something that happened once upon a time. The, um…
00:26:31.647 --> 00:26:34.647
Um, federal government ordered
00:26:34.742 --> 00:26:39.742
The entire government to install a Windows update on every machine that
the Windows
00:26:39.760 --> 00:26:41.760
that the government had.
00:26:42.085 --> 00:26:48.085
And I was ordered to install it on all the machines I was responsible for,
which were 700 Macs.
00:26:49.023 --> 00:26:52.023
And I said, I could not install a Windows update on Macs,
00:26:53.014 --> 00:26:57.014
And I was told in no uncertain terms by the CIO, who
00:26:57.745 --> 00:27:02.745
really was an idiot, that I had to. So what I did is that I followed the
rule,
00:27:03.321 --> 00:27:08.321
I created this file, and I told everybody to put this on your
00:27:08.803 --> 00:27:10.803
Uh, Mac. It won't do anything.
00:27:11.730 --> 00:27:14.730
But I can say that they… everybody… it was distributed to everybody.
00:27:14.731 --> 00:27:22.968
And so they… we had this, like, this software updates back then were small.
It was, like, 3 gigs. Not 3 gigs, it was about 3 megabytes.
00:27:23.453 --> 00:27:31.453
So, every single Mac that I had had this 3MB file on it, and it just sat
there for about 3 days,
00:27:31.454 --> 00:27:35.037
He came back with a very sheepish, oh, never mind, and…
00:27:35.747 --> 00:27:37.747
We threw it away, but um…
00:27:37.839 --> 00:27:39.839
I tend to…
00:27:41.599 --> 00:27:43.599
I tend to make sure that it's through, um…
00:27:46.059 --> 00:27:48.059
Well, let's…
00:27:48.059 --> 00:27:50.304
the standard process, so I will… I'll make… I'll look at the… I'll look
at that after the meeting, because I…
00:27:49.717 --> 00:27:51.717
Um,
00:27:51.718 --> 00:27:52.541
curious about this.
00:27:52.541 --> 00:27:54.774
I have one thing on my wife's iPhone,
00:27:55.090 --> 00:27:57.090
I had not updated it.
00:27:57.744 --> 00:28:01.744
to 26.3.1, it only had 26.3.
00:28:02.510 --> 00:28:07.510
But when I looked at the normal place for general software update,
00:28:07.511 --> 00:28:17.458
It said, update 23… 26.3.1A, and that was through the general software
update. But that's because I had not used
00:28:17.943 --> 00:28:22.943
23 point… 26.3.1 on her phone. Only 26.
00:28:22.944 --> 00:28:23.417
Yeah.
00:28:23.986 --> 00:28:25.986
Well,
00:28:25.986 --> 00:28:27.503
3. And so, but when I did it on her phone, it went through the normal…
00:28:27.503 --> 00:28:33.981
the normal channel, but on mine and mine, I had 23… 26.3.1 already,
00:28:34.236 --> 00:28:38.236
And to do the A, you had to go through the background improvement.
00:28:46.072 --> 00:28:48.072
Oh, okay.
00:28:48.072 --> 00:28:50.592
Okay, I, um, I will… I'll take that under your eyes, but I'm just not
going to do a software update before the meeting, so… but that is… that
is very unusual, and…
00:28:50.592 --> 00:28:56.923
Yeah, it is. It's very unusual. And to have it as an A, a letter,
instead of a number.
00:28:57.181 --> 00:28:59.181
Was we…
00:28:59.181 --> 00:29:00.270
Yeah… that is…
00:29:00.303 --> 00:29:02.303
strange.
00:29:01.763 --> 00:29:08.763
But when I look at my, uh, my Mac, it says updated to 26.3.1A, and
the A is in
00:29:08.762 --> 00:29:10.762
parentheses.
00:29:10.762 --> 00:29:12.298
Okay, well, again…
00:29:13.126 --> 00:29:17.126
That's the new, uh, that's the new thing they just implemented for…
00:29:18.107 --> 00:29:20.107
background security updates.
00:29:20.107 --> 00:29:20.396
Background improvement.
00:29:20.146 --> 00:29:22.146
Yeah, yeah.
00:29:22.146 --> 00:29:22.399
Right.
00:29:22.400 --> 00:29:22.621
Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:22.621 --> 00:29:24.647
Well,
00:29:24.647 --> 00:29:25.031
That's… I mean, the A thing.
00:29:25.078 --> 00:29:27.078
You know, the 8. Right.
00:29:27.079 --> 00:29:27.119
That's what that is.
00:29:27.260 --> 00:29:29.260
Yeah, I did it on mine.
00:29:29.745 --> 00:29:32.745
I will, um, look at that after the meeting.
00:29:33.768 --> 00:29:37.768
Um, and I'll also probably write to them and say, what the heck are
you guys doing?
00:29:37.769 --> 00:29:38.920
Yeah.
00:29:40.382 --> 00:29:42.382
Um, I know several of these.
00:29:43.366 --> 00:29:47.366
security people at Apple, and I give them a bad time. I still have a
machine…
00:29:48.343 --> 00:29:50.343
that, um, that, um…
00:29:51.764 --> 00:29:56.764
Um, is not doing a security thing the way I want it to. But, uh…
00:29:57.295 --> 00:30:02.295
their, uh… the lame excuse they gave me is, oh, that's an old Intel
machine.
00:30:02.427 --> 00:30:07.427
Yeah, well, too bad, it's still not doing what I want it to do, so…
00:30:09.562 --> 00:30:11.562
Such as life. Any other questions?
00:30:12.827 --> 00:30:17.827
Mr. Lockwood, you sent me a question which I've completely forgotten
about. So, what was the question?
00:30:18.843 --> 00:30:21.843
Uh, it had to do with the iPhone, and…
00:30:22.590 --> 00:30:25.590
with maximizing storage,
00:30:25.760 --> 00:30:27.760
Oh, yes.
00:30:27.761 --> 00:30:29.447
Where you can store… yeah, and I… my question was,
00:30:30.247 --> 00:30:32.247
If you turn that on, and then the… the…
00:30:33.127 --> 00:30:35.127
If you have space, apparently, it only…
00:30:35.722 --> 00:30:38.722
It's got some… it doesn't automatically…
00:30:38.996 --> 00:30:43.996
If I'm reading Apple's description right, it doesn't automatically
store everything,
00:30:45.008 --> 00:30:49.008
Uh, at low resolution on your machine, but it could.
00:30:49.670 --> 00:30:55.670
My question was, if that's turned on and you want to email a full
resolution version of a photo to somebody,
00:30:55.861 --> 00:30:57.861
How do you do that?
00:30:57.861 --> 00:31:04.751
Okay, um, to give you some background, um, that may seem not… may not
seem relevant, but it's actually…
00:31:04.890 --> 00:31:11.890
has a lot to do with this. I had a friend who bought an iPhone,
and they were going on a trip to, uh…
00:31:12.160 --> 00:31:21.160
Europe, and they bought one that didn't have a heck of a lot of storage
on it. It was back in the days when they were selling them, looked like.
00:31:22.125 --> 00:31:25.125
32 gigs, or 64 gigs, or something like that.
00:31:26.126 --> 00:31:33.126
And so what she did, she set it at the lowest possible resolution so
that every time she took a picture, it was at low resolution.
00:31:33.496 --> 00:31:44.496
When she came back from Europe after spending, I don't know how long
there, uh, she came out with all these photographs that, by our standards
today, were about the size of postage stamps. They were about…
00:31:45.184 --> 00:31:47.184
Uh, 800 pixels across.
00:31:47.211 --> 00:31:53.211
And by comparison, the iPhone today will shoot one at 4,000 pixels… 40…
00:31:53.726 --> 00:31:58.726
More than 4,000 pixels across. And larger depending upon the model.
00:31:59.997 --> 00:32:05.997
And, um, she wanted to know how she could get them larger, and I said,
well, she couldn't because she'd set it at a small…
00:32:06.586 --> 00:32:14.586
resolution, because she didn't want to use up a lot of space. So
she came back with a lot of space and a lot of really small photographs.
00:32:14.587 --> 00:32:23.217
I recommend that people shoot things at the highest possible resolution,
and I have an article up on the…
00:32:24.103 --> 00:32:26.103
smug site saying how to do that.
00:32:26.741 --> 00:32:28.741
with the new iPhone 17, which…
00:32:28.990 --> 00:32:31.990
It applies to older ones as well, but…
00:32:32.105 --> 00:32:38.105
Um, set it at the highest possible resolution. Because when it comes
to taking photographs and movies,
00:32:38.490 --> 00:32:42.490
You can throw away pixels by shrinking the photograph.
00:32:42.490 --> 00:32:45.258
But you really can't add them. If you add…
00:32:45.581 --> 00:32:50.581
pixels to a small resolution thing, what you're doing is just making
a larger image that's grainy.
00:32:51.782 --> 00:32:55.782
Because it's… it's just repeating the same thing over and over again.
00:32:56.247 --> 00:33:01.247
So, if you don't want grainy, shoo it at the highest possible resolution.
Well, the question is,
00:33:02.230 --> 00:33:04.230
How do you store that on a machine?
00:33:04.175 --> 00:33:15.175
Um, that may not have that much space. It requires a couple things
to do. First of all, have an iCloud plan that's not set at the basic
level.
00:33:15.812 --> 00:33:19.812
The free one gives you 5GB of space. Well, my new…
00:33:20.228 --> 00:33:24.228
iPhone 17 Pro Max, or whatever the heck it is.
00:33:25.383 --> 00:33:28.383
Each individual photograph is about ten.
00:33:28.873 --> 00:33:30.873
Um…
00:33:33.791 --> 00:33:42.791
100 megs, I mean, they're… they're large, because I shoot them not only
at the highest resolution, but I also shoot them as what's called raw.
And with RAW,
00:33:43.294 --> 00:33:48.294
It's hard to explain exactly why, but raw is a good thing when it's
shooting, uh, images because
00:33:48.683 --> 00:33:52.683
If the color is off, I can change the color without destroying the image.
00:33:52.911 --> 00:33:57.911
And the other thing is, when you're editing it, it leaves the raw image
alone, and you're editing
00:33:58.838 --> 00:34:06.838
basically a virtual copy, so you never mess with the original. So
I always shoot it raw, and so these things are over 100 megabytes.
00:34:06.985 --> 00:34:12.985
per photograph. Well, that takes up a lot of space, but I bought a
lot of space. But say you didn't have a lot,
00:34:13.186 --> 00:34:18.186
If you have a non-free account, when that you're actually paying for,
00:34:18.338 --> 00:34:27.338
You'll get… I don't remember what the smallest measure is. You can get
50 gigs, 100 gigs, 200 gigs, terabytes, you can get a huge amount of
space.
00:34:27.583 --> 00:34:31.583
So, say if you have 500 megs, or even…
00:34:31.728 --> 00:34:38.728
Um, 100 gigs of space. If you say you want to minimize space on your
00:34:39.261 --> 00:34:48.261
phone, your phone checks with iCloud, says, okay, I can send all the
high-resolution stuffs up to iCloud, and what I will do
00:34:48.343 --> 00:34:50.343
Locally, is have a…
00:34:50.647 --> 00:34:53.647
high resolution, but not full resolution,
00:34:53.731 --> 00:34:55.731
copy on the phone.
00:34:55.768 --> 00:35:03.768
And then, if somebody… if you want to look at your phone, your phone's
only a couple thousand pixels across. It's not as if you can have this
massive thing
00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:14.000
on that tiny little screen, it'll still look good on your phone, and
if you want to download the high-resolution onto your desktop machine,
which you
00:35:14.344 --> 00:35:16.344
should, you can do so.
00:35:16.567 --> 00:35:20.567
If you tell it to sync up to iCloud, and iCloud will…
00:35:20.567 --> 00:35:22.828
Pull down your…
00:35:23.773 --> 00:35:30.773
computer will pull down from iCloud the full resolution versions,
and you can have them on your machine, and you can edit them and do
whatever you want to.
00:35:31.526 --> 00:35:37.526
Well, his question is, if somebody… if you want to send a full resolution
copy to someone, what does it do?
00:35:38.382 --> 00:35:43.382
Well, there are a couple things to think about. One is, if you've got
a pick… if you've got a
00:35:43.797 --> 00:35:46.797
full resolution, even if it's a JPEG and it's not.
00:35:47.399 --> 00:35:49.399
a, uh, a raw image.
00:35:49.743 --> 00:35:52.743
The JPEG might be too big for email.
00:35:54.770 --> 00:36:00.770
It's very possible a lot of people have small email accounts. For example,
if you are with Verizon,
00:36:01.442 --> 00:36:07.442
The standard size of an attachment, if it's over a megabyte in size,
over a megabyte, which isn't very big,
00:36:07.884 --> 00:36:10.884
Grayson will scold you and say, hey, that's kind of big.
00:36:11.698 --> 00:36:25.698
Um, and I… depending upon what kind of plan you have, it might go up
to 10 megs, but it's still possible to send a picture larger than what
Verizon will accept. So that's one limitation. So what do you do?
You can send the thing anyway,
00:36:26.745 --> 00:36:30.745
And it's like, at that point, it's a… it's a, um…
00:36:31.228 --> 00:36:36.228
match between what you have on iCloud and what the other people can accept.
00:36:36.783 --> 00:36:38.783
And if they can accept a full resolution,
00:36:39.140 --> 00:36:41.140
photograph, it'll download it.
00:36:41.142 --> 00:36:43.142
from iCloud.
00:36:43.166 --> 00:36:45.166
If they can't,
00:36:46.133 --> 00:36:48.133
they'll get a smaller version.
00:36:49.296 --> 00:36:51.296
Because that's all that their system will allow.
00:36:51.524 --> 00:36:56.524
So, when you're sending it, keep in mind that if it's synced up to iCloud,
00:36:56.524 --> 00:37:00.141
It doesn't necessarily have to come from your
00:37:00.665 --> 00:37:06.665
Computer, from your phone. It can come from iCloud. And you'll actually
see that. Sometimes it'll say, um,
00:37:07.063 --> 00:37:20.063
Give them a photo drop or something, I can't remember what the
phraseology is. But what they're basically saying is, yeah, go ahead
and send it to this. It's not really going to come from your computer,
it's really going to come from iCloud, and that's where… and I shouldn't
do that.
00:37:20.446 --> 00:37:22.446
And that's where the full copy is.
00:37:23.422 --> 00:37:28.422
I had surgery on my shoulder, and this glove is on my hand to remind me
not to raise my hand.
00:37:29.160 --> 00:37:33.160
And I forgot. And my shoulder told me about that. Um…
00:37:33.463 --> 00:37:36.463
But anyway, that's… the answer is, if you have…
00:37:36.464 --> 00:37:39.748
a paid, uh, version of iCloud.
00:37:40.682 --> 00:37:50.682
It can store the full resolution up there, and you really don't have
to worry about not having full access on your phone. Because really,
on your phone, the limitation is the size of the screen.
00:37:50.889 --> 00:37:59.889
And the photographs are always going to be larger than the screen anyway,
so don't worry about that. If you want to send somebody a full resolution,
it's going to come from iCloud, it doesn't have to come off your phone.
00:38:01.264 --> 00:38:06.264
I realized that was a complicated answer, but I don't want you to get
into the habit of this
00:38:07.133 --> 00:38:12.133
poor friend of mine who was shooting low-resolution pictures in Europe
because she was trying to save space.
00:38:12.222 --> 00:38:14.222
That's not the right answer.
00:38:15.388 --> 00:38:17.388
Thank you.
00:38:18.783 --> 00:38:20.783
Any other questions?
00:38:23.530 --> 00:38:26.530
It is after 7. Um…
00:38:29.516 --> 00:38:35.516
Um, our, uh, president, Sabrina, wanted to say that she won't be here
because she is, um…
00:38:35.517 --> 00:38:38.505
Working today, uh, tonight.
00:38:38.506 --> 00:38:40.852
And our treasurer,
00:38:40.906 --> 00:38:45.906
Annalise says that basically she wants to…
00:38:46.929 --> 00:38:55.929
Um, somebody else take over the job of treasurer. And, uh, Sabrina
would like to do… somebody else to take over the job of president.
The current…
00:38:56.507 --> 00:38:59.507
straight Macintosh user group started back in…
00:39:00.397 --> 00:39:02.397
Uh, 2018.
00:39:02.789 --> 00:39:05.789
When Kathleen and Sabrina…
00:39:06.169 --> 00:39:14.169
And Annalise and I went to a meeting, and the current leadership
said that they were tired of running the user group,
00:39:15.225 --> 00:39:23.225
And they wanted to shut it down, and we asked the members that were
there, uh, if they really wanted to shut it down, and most of them said
no, they did not.
00:39:23.335 --> 00:39:33.335
And I… Sabrina was elected president, I was elected vice president,
Annalise was elected treasurer, and Kathleen was elected, um…
00:39:34.349 --> 00:39:38.349
Uh, secretary, and that was in 2018.
00:39:38.495 --> 00:39:44.495
And, uh, my spouse has since died, and Annalise and…
00:39:45.875 --> 00:39:47.875
Um, Sabrina would like to…
00:39:48.384 --> 00:39:53.384
not be officers anymore, because they've been officers for a long time.
So…
00:39:53.569 --> 00:39:58.569
Please give some thought, because I don't want to run the entire
group just by myself.
00:39:59.517 --> 00:40:04.517
Um, I would like some assistance. So please give that some thought.
00:40:04.609 --> 00:40:09.609
Um, between now and, um, when we meet in, uh, April.
00:40:10.169 --> 00:40:13.169
Um, the other thing is that, um…
00:40:13.582 --> 00:40:15.582
I'm going to be out of town for a while,
00:40:15.583 --> 00:40:19.969
But as long as we don't have it particularly complicated, um,
00:40:20.997 --> 00:40:25.997
program in April, um, I should be back in time to put something
together, so…
00:40:26.331 --> 00:40:32.331
give some thought as to what you want in April. I would suggest that
we talk about something else other than an iPhone,
00:40:32.604 --> 00:40:34.604
Uh, for at least for, you know,
00:40:35.531 --> 00:40:40.531
meeting or two, because, um, we've gone through a lot of iPhone stuff
in the…
00:40:41.657 --> 00:40:44.657
And now, this is the third month in a row we've talked about the iPhone.
00:40:45.066 --> 00:40:47.066
Um, anything else before I start?
00:40:49.989 --> 00:40:54.989
Okay, I'm going to share my screen. I am recording, and I do have, uh…
00:40:56.132 --> 00:40:59.132
closed-circuit, uh, not closed circuit, closed captioning running,
00:40:59.463 --> 00:41:01.463
It just reminded me, uh…
00:41:01.464 --> 00:41:04.565
that I should send you the attendance form.
00:41:04.566 --> 00:41:06.868
Because that would be nice to have.
00:41:07.612 --> 00:41:10.612
Uh, it'll be… I'm gonna post the, uh…
00:41:10.784 --> 00:41:12.784
link in the chat window.
00:41:13.429 --> 00:41:15.429
And, uh, chat window…
00:41:17.848 --> 00:41:19.848
It's posted now. Um…
00:41:20.707 --> 00:41:22.707
So, if you could fill out that, it would be useful.
00:41:22.725 --> 00:41:24.725
And now I'm going to…
00:41:24.729 --> 00:41:26.729
share my screen.
00:41:27.636 --> 00:41:29.636
And we're gonna share…
00:41:29.574 --> 00:41:31.574
fat screen.
00:41:37.648 --> 00:41:39.648
And… I'm going to…
00:41:42.608 --> 00:41:44.608
move this out of the way…
00:41:50.646 --> 00:41:52.646
Okay, can you…
00:41:53.323 --> 00:41:55.323
See this screen now?
00:41:57.482 --> 00:41:59.482
Are you there?
00:42:03.696 --> 00:42:05.696
Yeah, we can see it.
00:42:05.696 --> 00:42:06.987
Okay.
00:42:06.988 --> 00:42:08.145
Lawrence, before you go on the…
00:42:08.927 --> 00:42:10.927
the form says February 17th.
00:42:11.347 --> 00:42:13.347
Uh, it does?
00:42:13.604 --> 00:42:15.604
Well, shame on that.
00:42:21.275 --> 00:42:23.275
I sent mine in anyway.
00:42:23.456 --> 00:42:25.456
Uh, yeah, well…
00:42:26.292 --> 00:42:29.292
Anyway, maybe I made a typo.
00:42:35.790 --> 00:42:38.790
Uh, turn on recording, turn on closed captioning…
00:42:38.930 --> 00:42:40.930
Remember to sign out, sounds good.
00:42:41.656 --> 00:42:49.656
Um, I'm gonna repeat these references that I've mentioned before. If you
ever need help with your iPad, your Mac, or your, uh…
00:42:50.112 --> 00:42:54.112
iPhone, there is a TIPS application on your device,
00:42:54.031 --> 00:42:59.031
And you can use the search bar within it to find out what it is you
don't know.
00:42:59.188 --> 00:43:02.188
Uh, there are also these books from, uh…
00:43:02.667 --> 00:43:04.667
from Take Control Books,
00:43:04.668 --> 00:43:10.790
Uh, that are, because they're electronic, they're easily searchable,
and you can find out what you need from them.
00:43:10.997 --> 00:43:15.997
And this is a new book, it's not specific to the iPhone, just came out.
00:43:16.303 --> 00:43:18.303
It's supposed to come out on April 1st.
00:43:18.815 --> 00:43:28.815
called Apple, The First 50 Years. It's 600-plus pages long. Uh, it's
illustrated in color, it's available in hardback, paperback, or as
an e-book.
00:43:29.613 --> 00:43:32.613
And this is a screenshot from my Kindle.
00:43:32.610 --> 00:43:34.610
of, uh, what is it?
00:43:34.852 --> 00:43:36.852
page… something.
00:43:38.253 --> 00:43:43.253
But, um, it's basically a history of Apple, but it talks about a lot
about the design.
00:43:43.695 --> 00:43:49.695
and has a lot of interesting tidbits, and this is a screenshot from
the Super Bowl commercial that, uh…
00:43:49.909 --> 00:43:51.909
I was talking about.
00:43:52.666 --> 00:44:01.666
things you can do with them, uh, iPhone. You can take strange pictures.
This is an advertisement for Vistaprint, and if you look at the cup,
00:44:01.666 --> 00:44:03.724
It's shows just a…
00:44:05.091 --> 00:44:09.091
tremendous amount of care and craftsmanship, and makes you really want
to go out and buy
00:44:09.107 --> 00:44:11.107
something from Vistaprint.
00:44:12.895 --> 00:44:16.895
And I took this photo today, and I sent it to one of my relatives,
00:44:17.549 --> 00:44:19.549
And they made the joke that, uh…
00:44:19.549 --> 00:44:25.574
Actually, that's the second one. They said that the house was tilted
and I should straighten it out, so I straightened it out.
00:44:25.574 --> 00:44:28.151
And, uh, sent them back this.
00:44:28.746 --> 00:44:31.746
that's not particularly useful, but it did amuse me.
00:44:32.981 --> 00:44:39.981
You can make fun of AI, such as this particular cartoon that's talking
about an AI that…
00:44:39.971 --> 00:44:41.971
All you have to do is feed it, uh…
00:44:42.387 --> 00:44:44.387
10 baby giraffes a day,
00:44:44.413 --> 00:44:50.413
And they said, does it answer the questions correctly? And, oh, no,
it doesn't do that. But, you know…
00:44:50.891 --> 00:44:52.891
Small price to pay for AI.
00:44:54.217 --> 00:44:59.217
And you can see things like this. This is an actual National Park Service
tweet.
00:44:59.707 --> 00:45:02.707
Saying that trails often look flatter on the map, which is…
00:45:03.651 --> 00:45:06.651
Uh, not only good advice, but also quite funny.
00:45:08.093 --> 00:45:15.093
And here we have a VIN diagram showing the intersection between cats
and printers.
00:45:15.424 --> 00:45:25.424
And they have a lot in common. They're moody, unreliable, spend lots
of time self-cleaning, demand feeding when container is full, ignores
requests.
00:45:27.928 --> 00:45:29.928
Other things you can do that are more useful.
00:45:30.932 --> 00:45:34.932
The iPhone and the Apple Watch have, uh, the…
00:45:35.406 --> 00:45:37.406
more recent ones, have
00:45:38.478 --> 00:45:44.478
crash alerts. If they detect that you've been in a serious car crash,
it will wait
00:45:44.478 --> 00:45:52.577
Uh, it'll sound an alarm for 10 seconds, and if you can aim… if you're
able to, you can turn off the alert,
00:45:52.577 --> 00:45:56.290
If you don't, it'll send a, uh…
00:45:57.538 --> 00:46:03.538
Um, a 911 call with your location after a 30-second countdown. So you
do have
00:46:04.678 --> 00:46:10.678
an opportunity to stop the alert, but if you're in a crash, this is
a really nice thing to happen.
00:46:11.576 --> 00:46:14.576
have, because it happens automatically, it doesn't require that you
00:46:15.549 --> 00:46:19.549
Uh, you don't even have to be conscious. It'll, it'll send a notice
of a crash.
00:46:19.550 --> 00:46:25.898
The first time this technology was used was in a crash in Washington State.
00:46:26.649 --> 00:46:28.649
Um, they found a guy who'd, uh…
00:46:28.887 --> 00:46:30.887
His car had gone down a ravine,
00:46:31.812 --> 00:46:34.812
And, um, he was unconscious, but his phone…
00:46:34.933 --> 00:46:36.933
alerted the State Patrol.
00:46:37.665 --> 00:46:39.665
Is that the same as the fall detector?
00:46:40.325 --> 00:46:50.325
No, this fall detectors second. The fall detectors with the Apple Watch.
The Apple Watch, and even though the Apple Watch is not an iPhone,
00:46:50.993 --> 00:46:58.993
You actually set this up on your iPhone, and it works with your iPhone,
and so on and so forth. The Apple Watch has a fall detector, which if you
are
00:47:00.048 --> 00:47:10.048
Older than about 50, it's a good idea to have something like this. The
fall detector, if you fall, it'll come up with an… again, it'll come up
with an alert, it'll give you a chance to…
00:47:11.011 --> 00:47:15.011
cancel the alert if you are not able to cancel the alert, it'll also send.
00:47:15.891 --> 00:47:18.891
a message to the 911 operator.
00:47:19.931 --> 00:47:31.931
And again, the first time this happened was put to use was in Washington
State. A guy was going through the Cascades, and he fell down a hillside
off of a trail,
00:47:32.330 --> 00:47:34.330
And his watch alerted the, uh…
00:47:35.249 --> 00:47:39.249
911. In his case, because it wasn't a car,
00:47:39.333 --> 00:47:41.333
He was a little bit harder to see,
00:47:41.713 --> 00:47:43.713
And it took them a couple hours, but again,
00:47:44.416 --> 00:47:46.416
He… this completely without his help.
00:47:47.091 --> 00:47:49.091
So, it's a really nice thing to have.
00:47:49.191 --> 00:47:51.191
Other things you can do…
00:47:52.266 --> 00:47:54.266
In messages, you have the ability…
00:47:54.675 --> 00:47:56.675
to, uh, send…
00:47:57.135 --> 00:48:03.135
uh, check-in messages when you reach a particular point, and you do this
with messages down where that little…
00:48:03.763 --> 00:48:10.763
plus symbol is, you can add a bunch of stuff to your messages, and
one of them is a check-in, and in the check-in, you can specify if
you're driving,
00:48:11.036 --> 00:48:18.036
If you're in transit, if you're walking, it gives an estimated time of
when you're going to get there and say when you arrive, it'll…
00:48:18.788 --> 00:48:27.788
check in. Now, why this is useful, it's useful if you're trying to
meet someone. It tells you if they're in a crowded venue, it'll say,
hey, I'm here someplace.
00:48:28.427 --> 00:48:32.427
The other thing that it's useful for is if you're not certain about
00:48:33.291 --> 00:48:36.291
your trip, and you want somebody to be looking for you.
00:48:37.165 --> 00:48:45.165
Um, so it's a very useful thing to have. Uh, one limitation with this,
it really works only if you and the recipient
00:48:45.571 --> 00:48:49.571
have an iPhone. If they have an Android phone, I'm not sure how, um…
00:48:50.155 --> 00:48:54.155
reliable this is. Um, other things you can do…
00:48:55.154 --> 00:49:00.154
are emergency notifications. I have all the notifications turned on
in my phone.
00:49:00.624 --> 00:49:11.624
I have it turned on for Amber Alerts, emergency alerts, public safety
alerts, test alerts, um, and if you look under, uh, there's a section
here, it's called Enhanced Safety Alerts,
00:49:11.625 --> 00:49:18.534
If you look at that, you can see you can turn on earthquake alerts,
not a good… not a bad thing for us to have around here.
00:49:18.551 --> 00:49:22.551
An imminent threat alerts. Um, so…
00:49:22.551 --> 00:49:30.326
it's all kinds of things that your phone, without any intervention on
your part, can tell you what's happening around you.
00:49:30.832 --> 00:49:35.832
And, uh, alert you to it. Uh, the only time this ever really bothered me
is that…
00:49:35.934 --> 00:49:41.934
I had an Amber Alert for something that took place at Moses Lake,
and it came in at
00:49:41.952 --> 00:49:44.952
2 in the morning, and that kind of torqued me off, but…
00:49:45.819 --> 00:49:49.819
The, uh… I complained to the Washington State Patrol, and they said,
lots of people had complained,
00:49:50.517 --> 00:49:53.517
And they've, uh, they've refined their system since then.
00:49:54.711 --> 00:50:01.711
You can also send it in an SOS. Now, this is something that you trigger.
It's not something that happens automatically.
00:50:02.844 --> 00:50:09.844
But if you push the volume up button and the power button on the opposite
side, and you hold it for a bit, and then release it,
00:50:10.258 --> 00:50:15.258
It will trigger an SOS, which again sends something to 9-11.
00:50:16.156 --> 00:50:23.156
Um, why does it do this? It's doing this if you think you're being
carjacked, or hijacked, or threatened, or something.
00:50:23.208 --> 00:50:26.208
it'll just send this, and it doesn't require…
00:50:26.406 --> 00:50:31.406
Um, anything on your… else on your side. It…
00:50:31.882 --> 00:50:37.882
Also, we'll… this is another way to turn it on on a watch, because
you can do the same thing from a watch.
00:50:38.207 --> 00:50:47.207
Uh, with the watch, you push the two buttons that it has, rather than
just one, and it'll also turn on the severe crash alert,
00:50:47.652 --> 00:50:52.652
fall detection alerts. So this is another way of contacting 911.
But this is one that you
00:50:53.453 --> 00:50:57.453
you trigger on demand as you feel necessary.
00:50:58.251 --> 00:51:00.251
And, uh, in…
00:51:00.494 --> 00:51:05.494
Squim is probably not as necessary as in some places of the world,
but um…
00:51:05.495 --> 00:51:07.982
It's still a nice thing to know that it can do that.
00:51:10.001 --> 00:51:22.001
There are some things, because your iPhone does so much, it's nice
to know that there are things that you can keep it from doing. And you…
a lot of this you find under privacy and security.
00:51:22.009 --> 00:51:26.009
This is a screenshot from my phone, and you'll notice that it says,
00:51:26.029 --> 00:51:28.029
that there are…
00:51:28.697 --> 00:51:30.697
two applications I have,
00:51:30.697 --> 00:51:33.191
that are always showing location,
00:51:33.449 --> 00:51:35.449
And anyone that only use it
00:51:36.153 --> 00:51:39.153
When, um, I'm using the app in question,
00:51:39.714 --> 00:51:46.714
And there's one that allows tracking. So what exactly does this mean?
A lot of games, as an example,
00:51:46.804 --> 00:51:48.804
Want to know your location.
00:51:49.538 --> 00:51:54.538
Well, if you're playing a game, you probably don't want anybody to know
where you are. It's not really necessary to play the game.
00:51:54.539 --> 00:52:00.019
And they'll do the same thing with tracking. They try tracking your
activity, what are you looking at, uh,
00:52:00.936 --> 00:52:06.936
If you stop using the app and did something else, a lot of tracking
activity. You'll notice I only have tracking on one.
00:52:07.197 --> 00:52:09.197
thing. That one thing…
00:52:09.254 --> 00:52:12.254
is a speed test that I use on the internet.
00:52:13.120 --> 00:52:23.120
And the reason why I use… I turn on tracking for that is that if you're
doing an internet speed test, it really does kind of need to know what
it is you're doing. So I turn on tracking for the speed test,
00:52:23.245 --> 00:52:32.245
The two that I allow out location services always are Apple Maps
and Google Maps, and that's because when I turn on Maps and I want to
00:52:32.988 --> 00:52:36.988
get direction for someplace I'm going. I don't want to have to remember
to turn on
00:52:37.312 --> 00:52:41.312
Location services. I just want it to always be on, so…
00:52:42.249 --> 00:52:52.249
That's how I have it set up. But this… this privacy and security pane
will allow you to go through all your apps and turn everything off or
everything on, or customize it to your…
00:52:52.791 --> 00:52:55.791
Um, to your desires.
00:52:56.673 --> 00:53:01.673
If you scroll down a bit, you can come to the section where it tells
you about block contacts.
00:53:02.253 --> 00:53:06.253
If I get spam from particular numbers, I block them.
00:53:06.372 --> 00:53:13.372
And so, I block unknowns, I block things that are known. I don't
remember what 304 is, but it's some…
00:53:13.752 --> 00:53:18.752
company that, uh, I just don't want to ever hear from them again.
00:53:18.756 --> 00:53:23.756
And if you scroll down again in privacy, you'll come to the safety check.
00:53:23.813 --> 00:53:29.813
Which will allow you to do kind of blanket management of a whole bunch
of things at once. You'll notice that…
00:53:30.125 --> 00:53:35.125
One is emergency reset, which resets the access for everything, and…
00:53:35.255 --> 00:53:38.255
You would do that if you think your machine… your… your…
00:53:38.633 --> 00:53:43.633
phone is compromised, or if it was out of your control for a while,
you left it in a…
00:53:43.714 --> 00:53:48.714
restaurant and came back a day later, and you just want to make sure
that nobody was messing with it.
00:53:49.738 --> 00:53:51.738
Um, so it's got that safety check feature.
00:53:51.795 --> 00:53:56.795
If you scroll down in privacy and Security, you'll also see that you
can get a privacy report.
00:53:57.547 --> 00:53:59.547
And the privacy report will
00:53:59.547 --> 00:54:04.596
give you a report on what everything is doing. In this case, this is
a screen done from my…
00:54:04.596 --> 00:54:12.782
phone, it says that I use the weather app 50 seconds ago, and 56
seconds ago, a message came in. In 56 seconds ago…
00:54:13.045 --> 00:54:28.045
My photos synced in 57 seconds ago, it talked USA Drive Safe, uh,
USAA is an insurance company, and if I run this app on my phone, and it finds out that I'm using my phone while I'm driving,
00:54:28.222 --> 00:54:33.222
Um, I don't get a discount, so I run it, because I want the discount.
00:54:33.273 --> 00:54:39.273
And I used Fab Maps 4 minutes ago, and so on and so forth. And it also
tells you the times that
00:54:39.998 --> 00:54:41.998
You've been using things, and you see that I…
00:54:42.412 --> 00:54:44.412
look at the AP news fairly often,
00:54:45.061 --> 00:54:49.061
And, uh, Google Home, I use for…
00:54:50.250 --> 00:54:52.250
cameras and…
00:54:52.752 --> 00:54:55.752
um… smoke detectors and things in my house.
00:54:57.666 --> 00:55:10.666
things that you should do if you have an Apple iPhone, and if you haven't
set it up, you should set up the medical ID, and you do that using the
medical app, which is the one that's shaped like a heart.
00:55:10.667 --> 00:55:18.725
And you go in there, and you tell it your name, and it's your real name,
your real age, your real weight, so on and so forth.
00:55:18.725 --> 00:55:29.440
And it keeps track of a lot of things that you do, like the number of
steps you do a day, and, um, your heart rate if you have something like
an Apple Watch that can detect that.
00:55:29.921 --> 00:55:33.921
does all kinds of things. You can also sync it to your medical record,
00:55:34.683 --> 00:55:40.683
And I've done that, and the reason why I do that is I go to, uh,
Olympic medical physicians,
00:55:40.683 --> 00:55:49.199
And I have a MyChart account, and the MyCharts, quite often, especially
things like blood tests, it comes back with a bunch of stuff, and it
says,
00:55:49.300 --> 00:55:53.300
Uh, this is this, and this is that, and I have no idea what it means.
00:55:53.215 --> 00:55:58.215
the raw data on MyChart doesn't really tell me.
00:55:58.273 --> 00:56:01.273
But within the Apple Health app,
00:56:02.131 --> 00:56:05.131
it'll actually give an explanation and give you graphs of
00:56:05.217 --> 00:56:07.217
changes over time, and it tells you
00:56:07.515 --> 00:56:11.515
what that particular test is looking for. So it's really, really…
00:56:12.124 --> 00:56:16.124
handy. It's also where you set up the medical ID stuff.
00:56:16.406 --> 00:56:22.406
The medical ID, once know the name of your spouse, wants to know…
and if you're a child, your mother and your father,
00:56:22.672 --> 00:56:25.672
bunch of emergency contacts, and…
00:56:25.936 --> 00:56:31.936
Um, I'll show you in a second the, um, something else that it does
that's handy, but…
00:56:32.900 --> 00:56:36.900
It's… the medical ID is good for just your own tracking your own health,
00:56:37.296 --> 00:56:39.296
But it's also good if you are injured.
00:56:39.811 --> 00:56:41.811
And I will show you that in a second.
00:56:42.614 --> 00:56:44.614
When… if there is an emergency,
00:56:45.256 --> 00:56:50.256
These… you see on the left, the iPhone, you see on the right, the
Apple Watch.
00:56:50.928 --> 00:56:52.928
These are things that will appear
00:56:53.601 --> 00:56:55.601
on, uh, those devices,
00:56:55.602 --> 00:56:59.339
If, uh, you're unconscious in a healthcare…
00:56:59.778 --> 00:57:04.778
Our emergency services person comes and triggers it on your iPhone, and…
00:57:04.967 --> 00:57:07.967
I'm going to unshare my screen for a second.
00:57:08.414 --> 00:57:10.414
So I can show you what that looks like.
00:57:15.207 --> 00:57:17.207
And all I need is the…
00:57:19.039 --> 00:57:21.039
Right?
00:57:23.875 --> 00:57:25.875
Gonna share the screen again…
00:57:29.874 --> 00:57:31.874
If I can figure out…
00:57:34.112 --> 00:57:36.112
Can you see that on the screen?
00:57:39.774 --> 00:57:48.774
Uh, this is what happens. If the medical personnel come along, they press
the side buttons on the machine, it pops up this thing for medical ID.
00:57:49.476 --> 00:57:53.476
And it starts scrolling from the bottom. I cut it off there because I
don't want you to show
00:57:53.476 --> 00:57:56.576
all that. I don't want you to see all that stuff, but…
00:57:57.517 --> 00:58:00.517
Uh, I don't want you to know about, uh…
00:58:01.819 --> 00:58:07.819
all my various problems, but it's, um, it's… they don't have to… they're
not getting into the phone
00:58:08.832 --> 00:58:15.832
The only thing they can see is that medical ID. It's sort of like the
little wristbands that people used to carry around on their wrists,
and this…
00:58:15.766 --> 00:58:19.766
gives them a lot more information than those wristbands did.
00:58:19.880 --> 00:58:21.880
So…
00:58:27.419 --> 00:58:32.419
Well, other things you can do is you can set up stolen device, uh,
protection.
00:58:32.765 --> 00:58:39.765
And I'll let you play with this and figure out how to… what it does.
It says that it adds an extra layer of…
00:58:40.579 --> 00:58:44.579
Uh, security when your phone's something other than where it's normally at.
00:58:44.580 --> 00:58:47.535
And you can find this under the Privacy section.
00:58:47.535 --> 00:58:50.413
Um, something else you can do…
00:58:50.841 --> 00:58:55.841
And you can do this now with the iPhone. You don't need to…
00:58:55.998 --> 00:59:00.998
purchase any extra app. You can record a phone call.
00:59:01.973 --> 00:59:04.973
And to do that, if you look on the…
00:59:05.437 --> 00:59:07.437
Uh, right-hand, um…
00:59:07.638 --> 00:59:09.638
Um…
00:59:10.364 --> 00:59:16.364
display. There's, um, there's, right, there's a couple As that says AA,
and then right next to it are some
00:59:16.894 --> 00:59:18.894
concentric circles that look sort of like a target.
00:59:19.601 --> 00:59:21.601
That is the record call button.
00:59:21.602 --> 00:59:29.450
And these are available from Control Center, so you can be any… you
can be doing anything on the phone, go up to the upper left… oh, upper right,
00:59:29.819 --> 00:59:33.819
pull it down and start recording a phone call.
00:59:34.715 --> 00:59:39.715
Um, well, actually, that records the screen, that does not record the
phone calls, so never mind.
00:59:39.711 --> 00:59:41.711
That records the, uh…
00:59:42.453 --> 00:59:47.453
screen, but I'm going to show you what that, uh, looks like.
00:59:49.035 --> 00:59:51.035
If you're recording a call.
00:59:51.396 --> 00:59:53.396
And as I recall…
00:59:54.436 --> 00:59:56.436
It's not going to, uh…
00:59:58.553 --> 01:00:00.553
create any noise, which is, um…
01:00:01.502 --> 01:00:08.502
a problem. So this, this thing that looks like a target down here, that
is the record call… that is the record screen.
01:00:08.503 --> 01:00:14.515
So, I tell it it's going to say, record the screen. I'm going to use
Siri to make the phone call.
01:00:14.516 --> 01:00:17.795
And I do that by pressing the side button,
01:00:17.975 --> 01:00:22.975
And it triggers Siri, and what I'm saying to Siri is,
01:00:22.984 --> 01:00:31.984
I'm telling it to call the U.S. Naval Observatory. The U.S. Naval
Observatory is in my phone book, otherwise it wouldn't work,
01:00:32.458 --> 01:00:37.458
Uh, it'll call the U.S. Naval Observatory, and I'll get a… they'll
answer the phone,
01:00:37.459 --> 01:00:43.589
After they answered the phone, I can then start recording the call.
You'll notice that
01:00:44.297 --> 01:00:49.297
it doesn't… you won't hear anything for quite a while, but eventually
you hear what it's saying.
01:00:49.475 --> 01:00:54.475
And that's because when it says it's recording the call, the very first
thing it does…
01:00:54.476 --> 01:00:56.995
is it says out loud,
01:00:57.647 --> 01:01:01.647
Uh, this call is being recorded so that the other party can hear it.
01:01:01.648 --> 01:01:05.644
And then after it makes that announcement, then it starts recording
the call.
01:01:05.644 --> 01:01:10.379
You'll also hear why I'm calling the U.S. Naval Observatory when you do this.
01:01:10.798 --> 01:01:12.798
Or at least I hope you figure it out.
01:01:15.184 --> 01:01:18.184
Here, I'm asking Siri to call the U.S. Naval Observatory,
01:01:18.318 --> 01:01:21.318
And it says, calling the U.S. Naval Observatory,
01:01:21.765 --> 01:01:23.765
And the U.S. Naval Observatory comes up,
01:01:23.765 --> 01:01:26.740
I set it on speaker so I can hear it,
01:01:27.539 --> 01:01:30.539
Then I go down to this button down below that says More,
01:01:30.955 --> 01:01:32.955
And…
01:01:33.632 --> 01:01:37.632
Eventually, it'll show you that I'm pressing the more button.
01:01:38.997 --> 01:01:40.997
And…
01:01:41.996 --> 01:01:43.996
I say, call recording,
01:01:45.194 --> 01:01:49.194
And… this call will be recorded, it's actually saying that.
01:01:49.578 --> 01:01:52.578
And… now it's recording the call.
01:01:53.738 --> 01:01:55.738
And you're not hearing anything,
01:01:55.803 --> 01:02:00.803
Because it's recording it, and it's putting it into my Notes application.
01:02:01.143 --> 01:02:06.143
Why does it put it into notes? Notes, among other things, can, uh…
01:02:06.432 --> 01:02:08.432
transcribe, um…
01:02:09.002 --> 01:02:15.002
audio recordings. So, it'll do voice transcriptions if you dump an
audio file into it.
01:02:15.376 --> 01:02:18.376
Now, this is what it sounds like.
01:02:18.934 --> 01:02:20.934
And I hope you'll be able to hear it.
01:02:22.857 --> 01:02:24.857
As soon as I can find out where it is.
01:02:26.592 --> 01:02:31.592
U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock at the Tone, Eastern Daylight Time.
01:02:31.592 --> 01:02:34.278
13 hours, 34 minutes, exactly.
01:02:36.098 --> 01:02:39.098
Universal Time, 17 hours, 34 minutes, 5 seconds.
01:02:40.480 --> 01:02:42.480
Now…
01:02:43.857 --> 01:02:45.857
Any idea why I called the Master Clock?
01:02:49.739 --> 01:02:54.739
I called the master clock because I knew it wouldn't refuse my call
if I was going to record it.
01:02:55.292 --> 01:03:02.292
So, I didn't require… it didn't require another human being, but I got
to talk to something, I got to talk to this recorded voice,
01:03:02.380 --> 01:03:06.380
The U.S. Naval Observatory is in Washington, D.C.,
01:03:06.939 --> 01:03:11.939
And it's an atomic clock that, among other things, your computer and
your iPhone
01:03:12.199 --> 01:03:15.199
And everything else on the planet syncs up to.
01:03:15.867 --> 01:03:17.867
And it does it in universal time,
01:03:18.359 --> 01:03:20.359
Which is, uh, Greenwich Mean Time.
01:03:20.762 --> 01:03:26.762
And it then just adds or subtracts hours depending upon where you are.
01:03:26.908 --> 01:03:33.908
on the planet. So, that's why I call the Master of Clock. It's because
I didn't have to argue with it if I did it.
01:03:35.903 --> 01:03:37.903
So…
01:03:41.770 --> 01:03:48.770
You… I did… took a lot of screenshots to make this presentation. This is
how you take a screenshot on an iPhone.
01:03:49.238 --> 01:03:56.238
You press the volume up button in the side button at the same time,
and you release them. Don't hold them forever.
01:03:56.261 --> 01:03:58.261
Um, but just, uh…
01:03:58.878 --> 01:04:00.878
quickly press them, and it takes a screenshot.
01:04:01.662 --> 01:04:03.662
And you can do the same thing on the watch.
01:04:03.663 --> 01:04:08.723
If you press both buttons, there's a crown button, and then there's
a side button. If you press them both,
01:04:09.475 --> 01:04:11.475
At the same time, it'll take a screenshot of what's on the…
01:04:12.160 --> 01:04:16.160
watch. And these are two screenshots that I shot of the watch.
01:04:16.861 --> 01:04:18.861
the watch being a watch, and the other one showing the…
01:04:19.337 --> 01:04:22.337
Tides at Squim Bay. I have an app on my
01:04:22.671 --> 01:04:28.671
watch that shows me, on the watch, what the tides are at Squim Bay,
because I like to take
01:04:28.671 --> 01:04:33.539
photographs of the bay, when it's got water in it, and not when it's
just mud flats.
01:04:35.604 --> 01:04:37.604
And that was the wrong button to press.
01:04:43.437 --> 01:04:45.437
Why is it doing that?
01:04:55.741 --> 01:04:58.741
Oh. It's doing that because that's the last slide.
01:04:59.435 --> 01:05:01.435
Okay, that's a good reason for it to do that.
01:05:02.600 --> 01:05:04.600
And I've only used half an hour.
01:05:06.095 --> 01:05:08.095
So…
01:05:10.936 --> 01:05:12.936
Stop doing that.
01:05:16.393 --> 01:05:18.393
I went through that a lot faster than I thought I was going to.
01:05:20.513 --> 01:05:22.513
Any questions?
01:05:27.335 --> 01:05:29.335
A question you should have.
01:05:30.581 --> 01:05:34.581
is… how do I make a call on this using Siri?
01:05:34.883 --> 01:05:36.883
There are a couple requirements.
01:05:37.618 --> 01:05:41.618
You can only make a recall using Siri if that person is in your address
book.
01:05:43.400 --> 01:05:45.400
So if they're not in your address book, you can't call them.
01:05:46.495 --> 01:05:48.495
The other question you should have is,
01:05:48.496 --> 01:05:50.615
What if you have
01:05:51.636 --> 01:05:53.636
Uh, my spouse's name was Kathleen.
01:05:54.867 --> 01:05:59.867
There are Cathy's, Kathleen's, Catherine's, all kinds of different
variations of
01:05:59.969 --> 01:06:01.969
of, uh…
01:06:02.978 --> 01:06:04.978
of, uh, Kathleen out there.
01:06:05.117 --> 01:06:08.117
In order for me to be specific,
01:06:09.220 --> 01:06:15.220
There are two things you can do. One is if you put that person in your
favorites lists, um, then…
01:06:15.685 --> 01:06:18.685
It'll appear, if you look at the address book,
01:06:19.378 --> 01:06:23.378
for the phone, uh, your favorites are the people that you call all
the time.
01:06:23.399 --> 01:06:26.399
And it's not the same as your contacts, which are
01:06:26.976 --> 01:06:29.976
everybody else on the planet. If they're in your favorites,
01:06:31.322 --> 01:06:34.322
Kathleen's address and favorites was Kathleen, so I say,
01:06:34.960 --> 01:06:37.960
If I said, call Kathleen, it would call Kathleen.
01:06:38.570 --> 01:06:43.570
If Kathleen has two numbers, and at one point Kathleen had 5,
01:06:43.570 --> 01:06:49.525
Because she was that kind of person. I also have to say which phone I
wanted to call.
01:06:49.526 --> 01:06:56.000
So, if I said, call Kathleen iPhone, I don't have to specify anything
other than
01:06:56.604 --> 01:06:59.604
Make sure that her contact says iPhone.
01:06:59.606 --> 01:07:06.743
rather than just mobile phone, or cell phone, or desk phone, or work
phone, has to say iPhone, which is one of the choices.
01:07:07.458 --> 01:07:10.458
They say, call Kathleen iPhone, it would call her iPhone.
01:07:10.459 --> 01:07:13.878
If it was somebody else, somebody named Rick,
01:07:14.690 --> 01:07:19.690
And I had 3 ricks, then I have to have the last name as well, and again,
if they have multiple phone numbers,
01:07:19.690 --> 01:07:24.598
It'll ask me which one to call, and I mention this because…
01:07:24.599 --> 01:07:29.378
If you can use your phone with your car in CarPlay,
01:07:30.229 --> 01:07:37.229
It's a really easy way to call people with your hands on the wheel,
and you're not distracted, you just say,
01:07:37.422 --> 01:07:39.422
Um…
01:07:39.983 --> 01:07:42.983
you tell a certain robotic voice to…
01:07:43.561 --> 01:07:49.561
call Kathleen, and it'll call Kathleen. It's a… it's a… it's… you
have to kind of think through in advance
01:07:50.355 --> 01:07:53.355
what Siri will ask in order to avoid…
01:07:54.396 --> 01:07:56.396
a bunch of back and forth.
01:07:57.018 --> 01:07:59.018
But it works extremely well.
01:07:59.110 --> 01:08:04.110
With CarPlay, it also works with directions, so you can say, uh,
direct…
01:08:04.111 --> 01:08:05.187
Can you ask?
01:08:05.807 --> 01:08:07.807
It…
01:08:07.875 --> 01:08:09.875
you can say,
01:08:10.441 --> 01:08:12.441
I think… hmm.
01:08:13.158 --> 01:08:15.158
Uh, you can say directions to…
01:08:15.884 --> 01:08:21.884
a hospital in Port Angeles. If you're distinctive enough, you can say
Olympic Medical,
01:08:23.142 --> 01:08:28.142
Um, I don't remember what the… Olympic Medical Hospital, Port Angeles.
It'll give you directions there.
01:08:29.223 --> 01:08:36.223
But if you say, directions to Chipotle, it'll say, do you want
Poulsbo? Do you want Port Angeles? Do you want Victoria?
01:08:36.997 --> 01:08:39.997
And you don't want to get into that argument with your…
01:08:40.771 --> 01:08:44.771
computer while you're going down the highway at 50 miles an hour, so…
01:08:45.400 --> 01:08:48.400
just kind of think through in advance what it is you want to do,
01:08:48.414 --> 01:08:50.414
And it's fairly smooth.
01:08:50.444 --> 01:08:52.444
Um…
01:08:53.183 --> 01:08:55.183
And if you've never used… if you have a…
01:08:55.500 --> 01:09:01.500
a, um, car that's capable of using CarPlay, I highly recommend that you
give it a shot.
01:09:01.501 --> 01:09:05.264
CarPlay comes in two versions, depending upon
01:09:06.023 --> 01:09:11.023
How old your car is. My car came with CarPlay, but it was wired CarPlay.
01:09:12.063 --> 01:09:27.063
So you have to plug the phone in every time. And I found out I didn't
like that because, uh, several times I would plug the phone into the
car in order to use it in the car, and I'd forget it was plugged into
in the car, and I go into the bank, and the bank says, uh,
01:09:27.602 --> 01:09:32.602
Could you give me your blah blah blah? And I looked for my phone,
and it's, I can't do that because it's in the car.
01:09:33.500 --> 01:09:36.500
So what I did is I got a dongle off of, uh…
01:09:36.500 --> 01:09:41.149
Amazon that plugs in, and it sets up a Bluetooth connection,
01:09:41.220 --> 01:09:43.220
between the car,
01:09:43.531 --> 01:09:49.531
And the, um, phone, so that the car can be sitting in my pocket and
still work with
01:09:49.531 --> 01:09:55.489
CarPlay. The dongles run around 50, 60 bucks, and…
01:09:55.490 --> 01:10:00.258
In my case, it was well worth it. The other advantage is that if you…
01:10:01.283 --> 01:10:04.283
If you had the Carplay… if you had your phone plugged into the…
01:10:04.871 --> 01:10:10.871
car, and you got out of the car, some people would come along, see that
there was an iPhone in the car,
01:10:11.068 --> 01:10:22.068
break into the car. It wouldn't do them any good, because mine's
password protected, and they could never use it, but I'd still be stuck
with a several hundred dollar bill because of the damage they did to
the car, so…
01:10:22.513 --> 01:10:26.513
Not having it visible in the car because it's in my pocket.
01:10:26.513 --> 01:10:28.426
was a good thing.
01:10:30.125 --> 01:10:32.125
Any questions?
01:10:35.980 --> 01:10:38.980
Is there anything you wanted to do with your phone that I didn't cover
in the past?
01:10:39.580 --> 01:10:41.580
3 months?
01:10:50.341 --> 01:10:52.341
Apparently…
01:10:52.561 --> 01:10:56.561
If you have the Gemini app, you can't use it with the…
01:10:56.561 --> 01:10:58.564
CarPlay.
01:10:59.684 --> 01:11:04.684
It, um… it won't put directions up on the map or anything like that.
01:11:06.443 --> 01:11:10.443
Um, CarPlay does work with Google Maps, with…
01:11:10.444 --> 01:11:12.340
Yeah, oh yeah, but not Gemini.
01:11:13.219 --> 01:11:15.219
the app… there's an app called Gemini.
01:11:15.220 --> 01:11:20.708
Yeah, but I think that Apple is waiting for their release of
01:11:21.322 --> 01:11:25.322
26.45. Apple apparently has an agreement
01:11:26.243 --> 01:11:30.243
it's been rumored, I don't really know, that they have an agreement with,
uh…
01:11:30.458 --> 01:11:32.458
with, uh, Google to have
01:11:32.777 --> 01:11:39.777
Google be the back end for some of… some of the things that Siri does.
I suspect that…
01:11:40.065 --> 01:11:50.065
they're having a painful negotiation. On the one hand, Google wants
access to Apple's 2 billion customers, but on the other hand,
01:11:50.791 --> 01:11:57.791
Apple doesn't want to give up their reputation for privacy and security.
So Apple wants to send
01:11:57.920 --> 01:11:59.920
Google tokens, which
01:12:00.100 --> 01:12:02.100
which don't tell them who's reusing
01:12:02.725 --> 01:12:08.725
the app, and Google probably wants more information, so they're probably
arguing about that.
01:12:09.943 --> 01:12:11.943
But once they've figured that out,
01:12:12.237 --> 01:12:19.237
Apple will probably just incorporate it into Siri, so you won't… you
wouldn't use the Gemini app, you'd probably just talk to Siri.
01:12:20.412 --> 01:12:24.412
Will that be 26.4, 26.5, or 27?
01:12:25.262 --> 01:12:29.262
I do not know. There is…
01:12:30.367 --> 01:12:39.367
There is, um, a lot of pressure for Apple to improve Apple intelligence,
and one way to do that is if it has Gemini in the back end, that's
one way to do it.
01:12:40.329 --> 01:12:44.329
And there's an awful lot of angst in Google's camp.
01:12:44.281 --> 01:12:50.281
Because they want access to more customers. There's a big AI war going
on right now.
01:12:50.661 --> 01:12:54.661
And of the ones that I played with, the ones that I'm happiest with,
01:12:55.351 --> 01:12:58.351
Adobe, uh, Firefly,
01:12:58.550 --> 01:13:04.550
And you have to be an Adobe customer to really use them, um, usefully.
01:13:04.551 --> 01:13:06.558
And the other one is Gemini.
01:13:06.708 --> 01:13:16.708
Uh, but with Gemini, what I don't like is the fact that Gemini keeps the
information that you type into it. With… if they have this
01:13:18.104 --> 01:13:23.104
agreement with Apple, and Apple anonymizes the information, then…
01:13:23.729 --> 01:13:28.729
I'd be much more comfortable playing with it. But in terms of Google,
I've done some clever things.
01:13:29.226 --> 01:13:34.226
The illustrations that I've used for these three… last three, uh, um…
01:13:35.385 --> 01:13:39.385
presentations that I've stuck up on the website. Those were done with, um…
01:13:40.121 --> 01:13:44.121
Google Gemini. I described what I wanted, and then it drew the picture.
01:13:44.390 --> 01:13:49.390
So, the old man trying to eat an iPhone, and the princess with the umbrella,
01:13:49.605 --> 01:13:52.605
And the iPhone's raining down on top of our… those were done with Gemini.
01:13:53.702 --> 01:13:55.702
Does it do better than the playground?
01:13:56.685 --> 01:13:58.685
Yes, it does, because it's, um…
01:13:58.685 --> 01:14:03.245
The playground is… gives you a fairly restrictive, uh…
01:14:04.222 --> 01:14:08.222
set of parameters, because it's trying to make sure you don't give it
anything
01:14:09.135 --> 01:14:15.135
confidential. So, for example, I did a… I'm not going to show it to
you, because my…
01:14:15.988 --> 01:14:23.988
Daughter would kill me. But I have a picture of my granddaughter that
I turned her into a Japanese princess. And my…
01:14:24.914 --> 01:14:29.914
granddaughter, uh, her father's English, her mother's an American,
she doesn't look the least bit…
01:14:30.185 --> 01:14:35.185
Japanese, but, um, playground turned into a Japanese, uh, princess.
01:14:36.199 --> 01:14:38.199
And it did a really, really good job.
01:14:39.142 --> 01:14:42.142
But all of the computing for that was done
01:14:42.866 --> 01:14:44.866
on Playground. It never went to Apple.
01:14:47.520 --> 01:14:49.520
with… with Gemini,
01:14:51.331 --> 01:14:53.331
Gemini is capable of doing things that…
01:14:54.047 --> 01:15:00.047
it's not limited to just with your iPad or iPhone or Mac can do. And…
01:15:00.141 --> 01:15:02.141
Apple has it.
01:15:02.142 --> 01:15:04.472
So did it look… did it look more like a Photoshop of…
01:15:04.963 --> 01:15:06.963
of the photo, or…?
01:15:06.963 --> 01:15:17.794
It looked like a computer-generated image, a high-quality computer.
I mean, it had shading and everything, but it looked like my
granddaughter.
01:15:17.932 --> 01:15:24.932
Um, as a Japanese princess. I even specified I wanted a blue, uh, kimono,
and I gave her a blue kimono.
01:15:26.273 --> 01:15:30.273
Um, so, you know, it was really quite well done.
01:15:31.307 --> 01:15:37.307
That's not to say that I disprove of what Playground is doing, but uh…
01:15:37.708 --> 01:15:40.708
That playground is trying as much as possible
01:15:40.709 --> 01:15:43.545
to do 100% of the work
01:15:43.546 --> 01:15:46.943
on your phone, or on your iPad, or on your…
01:15:47.027 --> 01:15:54.027
Mac. And because of that, it has access to your photos. So you say,
01:15:54.545 --> 01:15:58.545
use this photo, and it'll use that photo and turn it into something else,
01:15:58.546 --> 01:16:05.673
But it doesn't go beyond your computer. It's not… it's not sending it
up to Apple, so Apple never has a copy of that photo.
01:16:05.920 --> 01:16:07.920
Uh, with Gemini, I think…
01:16:08.344 --> 01:16:13.344
Apple wants those same kind of controls, but they also want you to be
able to
01:16:14.102 --> 01:16:20.102
send anonymized data up there. So, for example, if you had a… if you had
a plot to…
01:16:20.908 --> 01:16:25.908
defraud, uh, Bank of America of $100 billion. I suggest that you not
01:16:26.801 --> 01:16:28.801
tell Gemini that.
01:16:29.470 --> 01:16:33.470
And even if Apple anonymizes it, probably not a good idea, because
01:16:33.471 --> 01:16:39.369
Apple might not say where it came from, but Google's still going to
retain that information.
01:16:40.302 --> 01:16:42.302
So you have to be a little bit careful, but uh…
01:16:42.859 --> 01:16:44.859
The way Apple is doing their computer
01:16:45.342 --> 01:16:50.342
security and privacy is very impressive. And in fact,
01:16:51.102 --> 01:16:54.102
you… if you… I don't know if any of you have a Windows machine,
01:16:54.550 --> 01:16:59.550
But Microsoft is coming closer and closer to Apple's point of view.
01:16:59.550 --> 01:17:09.257
Because the, uh, they've realized that Apple's reputation is built on
being trustworthy, and people don't really trust Microsoft, so…
01:17:10.058 --> 01:17:12.058
The only way to change that is to…
01:17:12.366 --> 01:17:16.366
change how they approach privacy and security. And…
01:17:16.367 --> 01:17:17.612
Yeah, Hewlett Packard…
01:17:17.612 --> 01:17:23.126
is now selling their laptops with Linux in it instead of Windows.
01:17:23.472 --> 01:17:27.472
Linux is actually more insecure than Windows.
01:17:27.704 --> 01:17:29.704
Really?
01:17:29.704 --> 01:17:32.427
The reason why it's more ins… well, yes, because it requires a higher
degree of, uh,
01:17:33.788 --> 01:17:41.788
understanding of systems, uh, engineering and system security in order
for you to secure it. Linux is basically just a…
01:17:42.248 --> 01:17:47.248
It's a box of tinker toys, and you put it together. And most people
don't know
01:17:47.204 --> 01:17:50.204
how to build things with Tinker toys.
01:17:49.824 --> 01:17:54.824
So, which True Unix workstation that requires an IT security manager.
01:17:54.824 --> 01:17:59.284
Well, it's not really Unix, but it's Unix-like, yes. And if you don't
know…
01:17:59.803 --> 01:18:02.803
If you don't know Unix, then you're not gonna…
01:18:03.606 --> 01:18:05.606
get very far. Most, um…
01:18:05.607 --> 01:18:06.441
Right.
01:18:07.403 --> 01:18:09.403
you just can't get very far.
01:18:09.662 --> 01:18:11.662
Right.
01:18:11.663 --> 01:18:14.976
the way in which I see that people use it a lot on laptops.
01:18:14.888 --> 01:18:21.888
is they use it with a shell over the top of it, so the… the shell looks
like it's a GUI interface.
01:18:22.426 --> 01:18:26.426
And they push buttons, and they don't necessarily have to know commands,
but…
01:18:26.878 --> 01:18:34.878
If they don't know how to update it, then they're going to be just
constantly falling, uh, behind, and Linux doesn
01:18:35.188 --> 01:18:37.188
Oh, it doesn't.
01:18:37.189 --> 01:18:38.244
No.
01:18:39.961 --> 01:18:41.961
You can build something that'll do that, but…
01:18:42.860 --> 01:18:44.860
Now, it doesn't do automatic updates.
01:18:45.546 --> 01:18:50.546
Um, so… but Windows 11, as an example, adopted…
01:18:50.957 --> 01:18:59.957
Apple's idea of having a security chip, so there's a security chip in
Windows 11 laptops and desktops, and um…
01:19:01.126 --> 01:19:06.126
you can… you can screw with Windows 11 so that it doesn't require it,
but that's kind of…
01:19:07.172 --> 01:19:12.172
stupid. Uh, it's better not just buy a Windows machine and make sure it's
got a laptop.
01:19:13.273 --> 01:19:18.273
Uh, it's got this chip inside. So a lot of things that Apple has done
over the years, um,
01:19:19.159 --> 01:19:22.159
Microsoft has come around to thinking that maybe it's a good idea.
01:19:23.323 --> 01:19:25.323
And, um…
01:19:26.087 --> 01:19:30.087
that's what I think they're trying to do with their partnership with, uh…
01:19:30.804 --> 01:19:35.804
Google. But so far, all I've read is… all I know are rumors. I haven't
even talked to anyone
01:19:35.824 --> 01:19:37.824
high-up level, who might…
01:19:38.334 --> 01:19:42.334
Know more than I'd have. I just know what I read in the, uh…
01:19:43.025 --> 01:19:45.025
industry publications.
01:19:46.922 --> 01:19:49.922
And it's a… it's a complicated thing, because I've seen…
01:19:49.942 --> 01:19:51.942
As an example, um…
01:19:52.424 --> 01:19:54.424
This woman in, um…
01:19:55.857 --> 01:19:57.857
Oklahoma. Um…
01:19:58.801 --> 01:20:01.801
uploaded a bunch of documentation on her…
01:20:02.175 --> 01:20:05.175
divorce that she was contemplating.
01:20:05.925 --> 01:20:07.925
into one of the AIs.
01:20:08.134 --> 01:20:16.134
And her husband, who was afraid that his wife was cheating on him,
uploaded a bunch of stuff about it, too, and came back with references.
01:20:16.423 --> 01:20:18.423
To her divorce, um…
01:20:19.758 --> 01:20:25.758
application, and that was not something she'd told him about, because he
was, uh…
01:20:27.025 --> 01:20:32.025
rather abusive, and that's one of the problems that you have with the
current AIs, that they…
01:20:33.343 --> 01:20:36.343
Um, they cannot tell the truth from a falsehood.
01:20:37.343 --> 01:20:39.343
If you upload War of the Worlds,
01:20:39.963 --> 01:20:41.963
which was written in the…
01:20:43.003 --> 01:20:45.003
1910, something like that.
01:20:45.194 --> 01:20:47.194
It'll take it as gospel truth.
01:20:49.204 --> 01:20:51.204
So…
01:20:52.642 --> 01:20:55.642
Telling it the difference between what is real and what isn't real.
01:20:55.727 --> 01:21:00.727
Um, is sometimes difficult. What is private and what is not private?
01:21:01.484 --> 01:21:06.484
It has no sense… AIs have no concept of privacy at all.
01:21:07.578 --> 01:21:11.578
And the AI that we currently have isn't really even truly AI.
01:21:11.578 --> 01:21:17.706
It's… it's called Generative AI, which means you're using a computer to
help you generate stuff.
01:21:18.109 --> 01:21:21.109
But it's not autonomous AI.
01:21:21.087 --> 01:21:23.087
It can't think and…
01:21:23.830 --> 01:21:25.830
problem-solve and find new problems on your own.
01:21:26.552 --> 01:21:29.552
people, we think of problems to solve.
01:21:29.553 --> 01:21:33.586
That's why, when we're sitting in a doctor's office, we'll sit and play
solitaire.
01:21:33.587 --> 01:21:41.910
Why? Because we're bored stiff, and so we find a problem that we can
play with, even if it's solitaire or crossword puzzles and so on and
so forth.
01:21:42.006 --> 01:21:44.006
AI cannot currently do that.
01:21:44.163 --> 01:21:46.163
So it's… it's basically just…
01:21:46.585 --> 01:21:48.585
regurgitating things that we already know.
01:21:48.586 --> 01:21:54.433
And it can do a good job at, uh, if there's a service called Grammarly,
01:21:54.784 --> 01:21:59.784
that it's a free and a paid service. With Grammarly, it'll check your
spelling
01:22:00.203 --> 01:22:03.203
Uh, if you're typing a message in a web browser.
01:22:04.166 --> 01:22:09.166
They'll check your spelling and check your grammar, and say, that's
the wrong tense, and you need a comma there.
01:22:09.630 --> 01:22:11.630
does a really good job of that.
01:22:12.444 --> 01:22:16.444
Pages does that, Microsoft Word does that, a lot of things do that.
01:22:17.247 --> 01:22:19.247
That is not really…
01:22:20.528 --> 01:22:25.528
AI, and that's what most of the AI engines do today. They basically
parse language.
01:22:25.529 --> 01:22:27.612
They really can't have a, uh…
01:22:27.613 --> 01:22:34.316
a new thought. On the other hand, you can go into ChatGPT and tell it to
write a limerick. Say,
01:22:35.068 --> 01:22:38.068
Write me a limerick about leprechauns and…
01:22:38.446 --> 01:22:40.446
toadstools, and it'll do it.
01:22:41.344 --> 01:22:46.344
And… because it's just manipulating language, and it knows the rules for
language.
01:22:47.284 --> 01:22:56.284
And when it comes to rules for language, that's actually fairly clever.
The Japanese were the ones who worked on this the longest, because the
Japanese, to graduate from high school,
01:22:56.606 --> 01:22:59.606
You have to know 17,500
01:22:59.924 --> 01:23:01.924
Chinese characters.
01:23:02.506 --> 01:23:04.506
Plus, you have to know Romanji,
01:23:04.506 --> 01:23:06.530
And, uh…
01:23:06.530 --> 01:23:12.115
Hiragana and Katagana, which are two different syllabaries written in
Japanese characters.
01:23:12.047 --> 01:23:17.047
And you have to know Romanji. Romanji is Japanese in Roman characters.
01:23:17.850 --> 01:23:23.850
And reading a newspaper article, you'll see Chinese characters, hiragana,
katakana, and Romanji.
01:23:25.147 --> 01:23:30.147
This places a huge burden on graduating from school in Japan.
01:23:30.835 --> 01:23:37.835
But it almost is impossible when it comes to computers and typewriters.
If you go see a Japanese printing press,
01:23:38.126 --> 01:23:42.126
They were all manual, because there were so many different character
combinations.
01:23:43.065 --> 01:23:45.065
So, Japan Telegraph and Telephone
01:23:45.550 --> 01:23:49.550
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, NTT.
01:23:49.551 --> 01:23:54.634
Started working on natural language processing, where you could talk to
01:23:54.634 --> 01:24:02.168
machines, and it would transcribe them. They started doing work on this
in the 70s, and when I was living in Japan in the 1980s, they gave some
01:24:03.114 --> 01:24:08.114
demonstrations, and I was very impressed with them. And the reason why it
was so important to the Japanese
01:24:08.993 --> 01:24:12.993
is that they didn't want to create a keyboard that had 20,000
01:24:13.560 --> 01:24:17.560
keys on it. So, if you could just talk to the computer, and it could
turn it into
01:24:17.561 --> 01:24:19.726
written Japanese, that's a huge…
01:24:19.749 --> 01:24:25.749
benefit for them. So they really pressed hard for this. In the United
States, it was done by…
01:24:26.917 --> 01:24:33.917
Um… trying to remember the name of the company [Kurzwil]. It was a
gentleman who wanted to create, um…
01:24:33.849 --> 01:24:39.849
Systems for the blind, so that the blind could use telephones, and the
blind could write.
01:24:41.587 --> 01:24:44.587
Um, they could send things to fax machines and so on and so forth.
01:24:44.587 --> 01:24:53.620
And so he started doing natural language processing in English, so that
the blind could communicate with the outside world and get jobs and
so on and so forth.
01:24:53.620 --> 01:25:02.014
And that was the big push in the United States. So what we're seeing
today with what they call AI, it's really just a step above
01:25:02.637 --> 01:25:08.637
what they were doing in the 70s and 80s, because it's mostly with
language processing.
01:25:08.638 --> 01:25:18.017
In my case, you'll notice what I've used it for are illustrations.
Why? Because I'm a terrible artist. If I can describe it, and it can
make a picture, that's great.
01:25:18.798 --> 01:25:25.798
But that's still… I'm the one who's coming up with the problem, and I'm
the one who's judging whether or not it's solved. It's not the computer.
01:25:26.515 --> 01:25:29.515
So, it's not really intelligence. It's a… it's a tool.
01:25:31.147 --> 01:25:33.147
End of my editorial here.
01:25:37.274 --> 01:25:40.274
So, so with that, I have a suggestion for next month.
01:25:43.778 --> 01:25:48.778
Um, about a conversation about AI and how to get started in it. Some of us
have
01:25:48.777 --> 01:25:53.777
No clue, um, and I really would like to learn a bit about it, but…
01:25:54.730 --> 01:25:57.730
But I don't know even how to get started, so I've…
01:25:57.731 --> 01:26:02.957
I messed around with GPT, or ChatGPT a tiny bit, and…
01:26:03.458 --> 01:26:08.458
perplexity, or something like that. I've messed around with that a little
bit, but I don't know what I'm doing.
01:26:09.002 --> 01:26:14.002
Well, I can… I'll give a… I'll give that some thought. Um…
01:26:14.513 --> 01:26:20.513
I'll give that some thought, but as some suggestions, um, if you're running macOS, uh,
01:26:21.392 --> 01:26:28.392
26, or iOS 26, or iPad 26, there is something on your machine somewhere
called Playground.
01:26:28.738 --> 01:26:33.738
And Playground is the image playground that Apple has, uh, set up.
01:26:34.542 --> 01:26:43.542
And just play around with that. All it can do is draw pictures. It comes
up with some ideas on general things you can do, and you can then type
in descriptions and
01:26:44.833 --> 01:26:51.833
Play with that a bit. The other thing to try, because it's reasonably safe, as long as you don't tell it… don't give it…
01:26:52.398 --> 01:26:57.398
personal information, is use Google's Gemini, and to get access to that,
01:26:58.233 --> 01:27:03.233
Just go into Google, into the search bar, and say, Google Gemini, and
they'll take you to a page
01:27:03.345 --> 01:27:05.345
And you can sit there and then…
01:27:05.370 --> 01:27:07.370
Uh, and type out
01:27:07.618 --> 01:27:13.618
questions that you want it answered, but the real fun comes when you…
when you want it to draw something.
01:27:13.619 --> 01:27:15.845
And to do that, you say,
01:27:15.870 --> 01:27:20.870
draw me a photo of a dragon eating a banana.
01:27:21.757 --> 01:27:30.757
And just sit back, and it'll give you different choices. How about
this one? How about this one? How about this one? And you pick the
one you want, and next thing you know, you have a picture of a…
01:27:30.814 --> 01:27:35.814
dragon eating a banana. And the reason why I suggest Gemini is that
01:27:35.984 --> 01:27:39.984
it can handle text, which is nice, and it can also handle…
01:27:40.530 --> 01:27:44.530
um, things like, it'll make short video clips, and it can do…
01:27:44.531 --> 01:27:47.046
photographs. Speaking of which,
01:27:47.192 --> 01:27:52.192
Pages is also hooked into Apple Intelligence. So, if you…
01:27:52.660 --> 01:27:59.660
If you wrote a letter to somebody, and you think, well, that's kind
of redundant, and so on and so forth, you can ask, um…
01:27:59.661 --> 01:28:05.830
Apple Pages to go through and summarize it, or make it more concise,
and it'll do that.
01:28:07.028 --> 01:28:20.028
If you're… if you're running a Mac OS 26 right now, you can set it up
so that when it's… before it shows you the message, it'll give you a
little alert that's a summary of that message. And that's done with
Apple Intelligence.
01:28:20.127 --> 01:28:24.127
And that's happening right now, if you just set it up that way.
01:28:24.733 --> 01:28:30.733
Um, if in settings, there's a whole section there for Apple Intelligence.
It's its own little…
01:28:31.421 --> 01:28:38.421
menu entry, and you just go flip what other switches you want, and
it works with pages, it works with numbers,
01:28:38.326 --> 01:28:40.326
It works with, uh…
01:28:41.071 --> 01:28:48.071
Image Playground, uh, it works with Siri, um, it works with a lot of stuff
right now.
01:28:49.099 --> 01:28:55.099
Uh, it's just… it's really good on the text part. It's not so great on the
other parts.
01:28:57.011 --> 01:28:59.011
Oh, look…
01:28:59.012 --> 01:29:04.141
Very good. So that helps. I mean, uh, one of the things I've tried to do
is there's some apps associated with, uh,
01:29:04.948 --> 01:29:15.948
3D printing that I want to be able to describe something and have it
develop a model for me. And that does work, but say, for instance, you
tell it you want it to
01:29:16.356 --> 01:29:18.356
draw, um, a tugboat
01:29:19.359 --> 01:29:24.359
with heavy armament, you know, like rockets and missiles and that sort
of thing, it will.
01:29:24.603 --> 01:29:30.603
And it'll actually make a model out of it for you. But I haven't been
able to figure out how to
01:29:30.604 --> 01:29:40.842
Um, make the instructions more concise. In other words, you know, after
you tell it you want rockets and guns and things, and it's got an idea
there,
01:29:42.164 --> 01:29:45.164
You know, I want to specify I want 4 rockets, you know?
01:29:45.281 --> 01:29:48.281
How do I add that on to what I've already done?
01:29:48.836 --> 01:29:57.836
Yeah, the best way to do that with most of the AIs right now is just
repeat what you said before, but you add in more adjectives and adverbs
to say,
01:29:58.254 --> 01:30:04.254
a red tugboat, like with my… with my daughter. It's a photograph of my
daughter.
01:30:04.500 --> 01:30:10.500
And I said I wanted to be a Japanese princess, and it did something.
I said, well, I wanted to have a crown.
01:30:10.500 --> 01:30:15.747
Japanese princesses don't come with crowns, but if she was going to be
a princess, my English
01:30:16.452 --> 01:30:19.452
granddaughters gonna think she's gonna need a crown. So, uh…
01:30:19.736 --> 01:30:24.736
She has a crown, and one of the down that she was wearing to be
01:30:25.621 --> 01:30:27.621
blue, so I specified blue. So I just…
01:30:31.238 --> 01:30:33.238
Yeah.
01:30:33.239 --> 01:30:39.619
kept on refining my instructions until I got something that I liked.
And that's basically… that's how it works with all of these right now.
You just ask for the same thing, but just getting more and more descriptive.
And sometimes…
01:30:39.619 --> 01:30:44.487
You'll ask for something, and you say, that's terrible, and you just start
over again.
01:30:44.487 --> 01:30:47.560
Because, again, it… it's just a…
01:30:48.208 --> 01:30:50.208
It's just a program someplace, and…
01:30:50.810 --> 01:30:53.810
They can be remarkably stupid.
01:30:53.833 --> 01:30:55.833
Um…
01:30:55.995 --> 01:30:57.995
We had, um…
01:30:58.095 --> 01:31:06.095
a, um, thermostat. It was a thermostat for a building in Silver Spring,
Maryland, that I worked in.
01:31:06.782 --> 01:31:15.782
Uh, we didn't like the fact that the… you could be in different parts
of the building, you could, uh, roast in one part and freeze in another,
so they came up with a new
01:31:16.710 --> 01:31:19.710
thermostat system that was going to, um…
01:31:20.109 --> 01:31:23.109
treat the entire building properly, and so on and so forth.
01:31:24.084 --> 01:31:35.084
One slight problem. It was made in Europe by a major… by a major German
company, which you can probably guess just because it was a thermostat.
And it was set for centigrade.
01:31:35.929 --> 01:31:39.929
And so the first thing they did is, we want everything at 72 degrees.
01:31:39.926 --> 01:31:41.926
That was not a
01:31:42.611 --> 01:31:47.611
pleasant experience. Your three-quarters of the way to boiling at that
point.
01:31:48.339 --> 01:31:51.339
Um, and we didn't quite get to boiling, but um…
01:31:51.347 --> 01:31:54.347
It took them quite a while to figure out what was wrong.
01:31:55.036 --> 01:32:04.036
And it was hilarious, because I worked at a science agency. Everything
we did was run in Celsius. But the building engineer was not a scientist.
01:32:04.570 --> 01:32:06.570
So, uh, um…
01:32:07.822 --> 01:32:12.822
You know, they're just machines, and they do what you tell them to do,
even if it's stupid.
01:32:14.436 --> 01:32:19.436
Yeah, everything having to do with 3D printing is… I mean, you can convert
it to, uh…
01:32:19.639 --> 01:32:25.639
non-metric, but everything initially is done in metrics, so…
01:32:25.639 --> 01:32:30.727
I mean, I even have whole sets of metric screws and nuts and all that
stuff just
01:32:31.538 --> 01:32:34.538
for that stuff, so I don't have to convert and all that, so…
01:32:34.539 --> 01:32:40.612
Well, there are 8 billion people on the planet, and only 300 million
of them use English, so…
01:32:40.613 --> 01:32:42.437
Yeah, yeah.
01:32:42.437 --> 01:32:44.074
We're outvoted by humanity.
01:32:44.272 --> 01:32:46.272
Yep.
01:32:47.624 --> 01:32:49.624
Any other questions, comments?
01:32:50.706 --> 01:32:52.706
I have a question about the iPhone.
01:32:52.707 --> 01:32:54.608
Yes.
01:32:54.609 --> 01:32:59.527
I know that you can, without an Apple Watch, you can use the iPhone when
you go out to walk.
01:33:00.807 --> 01:33:02.807
It'll count your steps and all that sort of thing.
01:33:03.686 --> 01:33:05.686
Does it also generate a map
01:33:06.094 --> 01:33:08.094
My wife has a, uh,
01:33:08.205 --> 01:33:11.205
Apple Watch with her iPhone,
01:33:11.398 --> 01:33:13.398
And she can walk…
01:33:13.726 --> 01:33:16.726
or ride a bike, or do whatever, without the iPhone.
01:33:17.385 --> 01:33:20.385
And the watch will generate a map of where she went.
01:33:21.282 --> 01:33:26.282
Uh, it… it's probably not the watch that's generating the map, it's
probably an app, like Strava.
01:33:26.935 --> 01:33:28.935
can do that. It's…
01:33:28.935 --> 01:33:30.729
Nope, no apps like this, just Apple stuff.
01:33:32.229 --> 01:33:35.229
I don't know of anything that Apple has that'll generate a map.
01:33:35.985 --> 01:33:37.985
Well, I'm telling you that hers does.
01:33:37.985 --> 01:33:39.985
Okay, I'll have to…
01:33:39.986 --> 01:33:41.906
It's just… it's just part of the information that it has, you know.
01:33:42.068 --> 01:33:46.068
How many steps you took, how far you went, and all that, and then it has
a map.
01:33:46.575 --> 01:33:48.575
The traces where you went.
01:33:48.834 --> 01:33:50.834
Yeah, cuz…
01:33:50.834 --> 01:33:52.407
And you can… you can blow it up, and, you know, it'll show you…
01:33:53.769 --> 01:33:56.769
what streets you were on and all that, or what trails you were on, and
so forth.
01:33:57.076 --> 01:34:02.076
I just wondered if the… if the iPhone without an Apple Watch did that.
01:34:09.664 --> 01:34:11.664
Okay.
01:34:11.665 --> 01:34:12.886
Um, I don't believe that the watch itself has that capability, but I
will investigate. I do know that the app Strava…
01:34:13.550 --> 01:34:16.550
Um, which is spelled… how is it spelled?
01:34:18.649 --> 01:34:20.649
It's T-R-B-V-A.
01:34:20.650 --> 01:34:20.750
S-T-R-A-V-A. Um…
01:34:20.751 --> 01:34:21.945
Yes.
01:34:21.946 --> 01:34:23.907
It can track whether you're walking,
01:34:24.329 --> 01:34:27.329
riding a bike, riding an e-bike, running,
01:34:27.841 --> 01:34:32.841
skiing, all kinds of different activity, and it all… it does draw a map.
01:34:33.057 --> 01:34:42.057
Uh, that's what Strava does, and it'll do that whether you have it
as a phone in your pocket, or you're using an Apple Watch. Um, but I'm
not…
01:34:42.331 --> 01:34:46.331
aware of anything inherent to the watch that'll create a map.
01:34:47.251 --> 01:34:50.251
But like I said, I will… I will do some investigation.
01:34:50.252 --> 01:34:52.844
No, I don't… I don't know if it's the watch or the phone, but it
01:34:52.969 --> 01:34:55.969
But wherever the… wherever she goes with the watch,
01:34:56.288 --> 01:35:00.288
Without the phone, it's still… there's a map associated with it when you
look at
01:35:00.676 --> 01:35:02.676
Well…
01:35:02.677 --> 01:35:03.506
You know, when you look at what she did for the workout.
01:35:03.507 --> 01:35:13.940
Yeah, well, if you have Strava on your watch, which I do, and I don't
have my phone with me, sure enough, it'll track what I'm doing very
accurately and give me a map
01:35:14.653 --> 01:35:19.653
And also tell me the elevation, whether I went up 200 feet, all kinds
of stuff.
01:35:19.654 --> 01:35:19.963
Right, right.
01:35:20.718 --> 01:35:23.718
Um, but that's… that's Strava doing that work. It's not, uh…
01:35:24.069 --> 01:35:26.069
It's not the Apple Watch by itself.
01:35:26.702 --> 01:35:28.702
Well, like I said, I don't know…
01:35:29.086 --> 01:35:31.086
I don't know whether it's the…
01:35:33.485 --> 01:35:35.485
Yeah, it doesn't…
01:35:35.486 --> 01:35:36.274
She doesn't have the phone with her, so the watch is recording all that
stuff, but then
01:35:35.890 --> 01:35:39.890
The watch is recording it because it has an app on there doing that work.
01:35:39.890 --> 01:35:40.948
Yeah, but then you look in the Apple…
01:35:41.104 --> 01:35:43.104
you know, the little Apple health thing with the
01:35:43.829 --> 01:35:47.829
circles the rings. You look in there for the summary,
01:35:48.064 --> 01:35:50.064
And there's a map…
01:35:50.908 --> 01:35:54.908
As part of whatever the activity was, whether it was riding a bike or…
01:35:55.595 --> 01:35:57.595
running or walking, or canoeing, or…
01:35:58.036 --> 01:36:00.036
Huh.
01:36:00.036 --> 01:36:01.345
But especially, you know, especially walking or hiking,
01:36:01.906 --> 01:36:03.906
It has the… it shows the map.
01:36:06.089 --> 01:36:09.089
Well, I haven't seen that, but I will look.
01:36:09.313 --> 01:36:11.313
Because if…
01:36:11.735 --> 01:36:15.735
If it'll do that without using Strava, that's fine with me.
01:36:17.887 --> 01:36:19.887
I will… I will investigate.
01:36:19.721 --> 01:36:21.721
Okay, thank you.
01:36:21.722 --> 01:36:23.608
Does Strava have a monthly thing?
01:36:23.770 --> 01:36:27.770
They have… you can get a free account, but it's really a trial account.
01:36:27.996 --> 01:36:33.996
Uh, then it doesn't cost you anything, but it really wants you… yes,
they really try really hard to…
01:36:35.069 --> 01:36:37.069
have you spend money. It depends upon…
01:36:37.662 --> 01:36:41.662
If you think about it, if you had a gym membership, it'd be a lot more
than Strava, so…
01:36:42.459 --> 01:36:48.459
It's not a bad deal, because it'll tell you a lot more than the guy that
you see at the gym.
01:36:54.855 --> 01:36:56.855
Where on the Apple Watch do you access
01:36:57.060 --> 01:37:01.060
you know, that information that your wife gets, which is the little icon
that you would tap.
01:37:01.901 --> 01:37:06.901
Listen, it's not… you don't… well, I don't know if you can access it on
the Apple Watch or not.
01:37:07.555 --> 01:37:09.555
Somehow I've lost the…
01:37:10.576 --> 01:37:12.576
But when she comes back,
01:37:13.418 --> 01:37:15.418
I can… I usually take the phone line
01:37:16.137 --> 01:37:20.137
hiking while she's going somewhere else with only her watch.
01:37:20.855 --> 01:37:22.855
On the phone, you look at that…
01:37:24.668 --> 01:37:28.668
I don't know if it's called the Health app, but it's the one with the
three circles, like…
01:37:28.668 --> 01:37:30.674
You know, the activity rings.
01:37:30.675 --> 01:37:30.812
That's activity.
01:37:31.238 --> 01:37:33.238
Yeah, and it'll give a summary of…
01:37:33.896 --> 01:37:35.896
what… how many steps she took, and…
01:37:36.902 --> 01:37:39.902
and have them, you know, what her heart rate was, all that kind of stuff.
But also, there's a map.
01:37:41.153 --> 01:37:46.153
Uh, I've been using the activity for years, and I've never seen a map.
01:37:46.897 --> 01:37:48.897
It's there.
01:37:48.897 --> 01:37:49.546
But again, I will…
01:37:49.546 --> 01:37:55.795
I agree with him, because I've left my phone behind a couple times when
I went biking or walking,
01:37:55.766 --> 01:37:57.766
And I use the workout
01:37:58.127 --> 01:38:00.127
A little workout button on my watch.
01:38:00.433 --> 01:38:05.433
And it does make a map, and when you come back and look at your phone,
there's the map and the whole detail of…
01:38:05.547 --> 01:38:08.547
your heart rate, your pace, all that stuff.
01:38:08.547 --> 01:38:10.591
And it has a map. Hmm.
01:38:10.591 --> 01:38:10.695
Yeah.
01:38:10.696 --> 01:38:12.280
Yep.
01:38:12.949 --> 01:38:17.949
Yeah, and she uses that workout thing where, you know, it counts down
3, 2, 1, and…
01:38:17.963 --> 01:38:19.963
Right.
01:38:19.963 --> 01:38:20.197
starts to work out on that, yeah.
01:38:20.027 --> 01:38:22.027
Yeah.
01:38:22.027 --> 01:38:23.894
Well, I will investigate.
01:38:23.830 --> 01:38:25.830
I wonder if this is the, um…
01:38:26.252 --> 01:38:28.252
activity plus…
01:38:29.019 --> 01:38:32.019
Um, instead of just the regular activity.
01:38:33.272 --> 01:38:35.272
Anyway, I will… I will investigate, because this is…
01:38:35.931 --> 01:38:38.931
a worthwhile question to investigate.
01:38:39.675 --> 01:38:41.675
Okay.
01:38:41.675 --> 01:38:42.825
Anything else?
01:38:43.799 --> 01:38:47.799
So should we send… are we gonna send you suggestions for next month, or
are we gonna do a…
01:38:48.656 --> 01:38:51.656
The rendering images in AI.
01:38:51.657 --> 01:39:00.662
Why don't you send me suggestions anyway? Because, again, I'm going on a
trip between now and then, and I don't really know how much
01:39:01.070 --> 01:39:03.070
time I'll have to prepare.
01:39:03.435 --> 01:39:05.435
Okay.
01:39:05.435 --> 01:39:06.352
Um, and I'll probably go with whatever's easy.
01:39:07.276 --> 01:39:10.276
Plus, we need a president, and we need a treasurer.
01:39:11.450 --> 01:39:13.450
So, think about volunteering.
01:39:16.157 --> 01:39:18.157
And with that, thank you.
01:39:18.157 --> 01:39:19.324
I had… I had one question.
01:39:18.934 --> 01:39:20.934
Yeah.
01:39:20.934 --> 01:39:21.486
Uh, real quick, maybe, uh…
01:39:21.487 --> 01:39:26.952
When you do a Google search using Mac OS26 or iOS26,
01:39:26.985 --> 01:39:31.985
Does it actually use Gemini to give you the answer?
01:39:32.435 --> 01:39:37.435
It has… the Gemini can give a summary at the top, unless you go through
01:39:37.829 --> 01:39:42.829
and tell it, Gemini, that you don't want it to do that. It'll give you a
Gemini summary of
01:39:43.556 --> 01:39:45.556
What it found. But that's not…
01:39:45.556 --> 01:39:49.304
that's not really the search. The search results are below that.
01:39:49.751 --> 01:39:52.751
But it does kind of give you a Gemini summary.
01:39:52.752 --> 01:40:02.380
Yes, and I'm a little… I always ignore that, because a lot of times, the
Gemini picks up what it has heard, which is not necessarily…
01:40:02.971 --> 01:40:04.971
accurate. But it's been…
01:40:05.355 --> 01:40:09.355
widely reported as an example, um, they, uh…
01:40:10.668 --> 01:40:13.668
Uh, there was a news story earlier this week about the, um…
01:40:13.668 --> 01:40:22.659
USS Gerald Ford got hit by a missile and caught on fire. The USS Gerald
Ford was not hit by a missile. It did catch on fire. The fire was in the
laundry room.
01:40:23.370 --> 01:40:26.370
So, part of that was true, but…
01:40:27.425 --> 01:40:36.425
All of the initial reporting said that the fire was by missile, so for a
short period of time, Gemini was telling people that there was a fire
aboard the, uh…
01:40:37.198 --> 01:40:45.198
that was caused by a missile strike. And it took a while for it… for Gemini
to decide that that was not true.
01:40:45.813 --> 01:40:48.813
But it was widely reported. And again,
01:40:50.015 --> 01:40:54.015
Google is basically a search engine. It reports.
01:40:54.190 --> 01:40:56.190
what people say.
01:40:57.132 --> 01:41:03.132
I won't give you the details, but there was a senator from Pennsylvania
who had a very…
01:41:03.671 --> 01:41:07.671
Uh, he had a history of saying really nasty things about…
01:41:07.672 --> 01:41:13.355
Uh, homosexuals. And so, a group of people got together and associated…
01:41:13.640 --> 01:41:17.640
His last name with an obscene act.
01:41:17.641 --> 01:41:23.817
And Google started reporting that, oh yeah, that means, and it was this
obscene act.
01:41:24.672 --> 01:41:26.672
So it's kind of crowdsourced…
01:41:27.894 --> 01:41:32.894
revenge, I guess? Uh, because a Google doesn
01:41:33.556 --> 01:41:35.556
amasses it and says, okay,
01:41:35.556 --> 01:41:39.399
based upon the wealth of data I have, this must be…
01:41:39.754 --> 01:41:42.754
the answer. As an example.
01:41:43.533 --> 01:41:46.533
going to Google, asking for pictures of an airplane.
01:41:46.534 --> 01:41:48.616
And it'll give you lots of pictures of an airplane.
01:41:48.617 --> 01:41:52.369
Google is absolutely, positively blind.
01:41:53.740 --> 01:42:00.740
Why is it coming back with those pictures of airplanes? It's because
somebody took a photograph and said, this is, and describes the plane.
01:42:01.736 --> 01:42:07.736
And that's what the metadata on websites has done. It says, you know,
this is a picture of this, uh,
01:42:07.731 --> 01:42:09.731
RC15…
01:42:10.544 --> 01:42:18.544
stage for looking at pressure in a boiler. And so you look up the RC15,
and there's a picture of it. Did Google know that? No.
01:42:18.545 --> 01:42:26.458
They described the picture, and Google read the description and says, oh,
this is attached to that photo, so that must be what it looks like.
01:42:27.880 --> 01:42:32.880
Google doesn't know what airplanes look like. Google doesn't know what
whales look like. Google doesn't know what you look like.
01:42:33.182 --> 01:42:39.182
But you can go into Google, probably type in your name, and it'll come
back with a photograph, because somebody took a photograph of you,
01:42:39.835 --> 01:42:42.835
and put it up on the web, Google search that page and said, ah,
01:42:42.930 --> 01:42:44.930
That's what he looks like.
01:42:46.055 --> 01:42:49.055
If you type in my name in Google,
01:42:49.330 --> 01:42:53.330
You'll get my photo, but you'll also get a lot of other photos.
01:42:53.369 --> 01:42:56.369
a lot of those other photos were photos that I took.
01:42:57.208 --> 01:43:02.208
Because I'd be on a magazine editor and a newspaper editor, taken lots
of photos, had my byline.
01:43:02.675 --> 01:43:04.675
So, it comes back and says, oh, yeah!
01:43:04.675 --> 01:43:07.875
This photograph of a bookshelf is Lawrence Charters.
01:43:08.748 --> 01:43:10.748
Because Lawrence Charters took that photo.
01:43:12.404 --> 01:43:14.404
Gotcha.
01:43:14.404 --> 01:43:15.873
So, that's… that's how it works.
01:43:19.473 --> 01:43:22.473
Anyway, have a nice night.
01:43:23.042 --> 01:43:25.042
Yep, thank you.
01:43:25.042 --> 01:43:25.906
Yeah, thank you, Lawrence. Thank you.
01:43:25.907 --> 01:43:27.156
Thank you.
01:43:27.157 --> 01:43:28.526
Thank you.

Awe Dropping event on September 9

Apple is scheduling another “Apple Event” for September 9, at 10 a.m. PT. This event will be keenly watched by tech gurus, import/export experts, tariff watchers, Wall Street junkies, and almost everyone else, as it will be Apple’s first big technical extravaganza since the tariffs went into effect.

Expected are details on the release of new software: macOS 26 Tahoe, iOS 26 for the iPhone, iPadOS 26 for the iPad, watchOS 26 for the Apple Watch, tvOS 26 for Apple TV, and visionOS for the Apple Vision Pro. These various operating systems have been in beta testing for months, and iPad enthusiasts, in particular, are eager to get iPadOS 26, which is a radical step up for the iPad.

On the hardware front, rumors say that Apple will announce at least a couple new versions of the iPhone. There have been sporadic reports of other hardware announcements, but it is unclear how much of that is based on fact and how much is based on wishful thinking.

You can watch the presentation on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac using the Apple TV app, or, if you have an Apple TV, you can watch it live on your TV. It will also be available as a recording a few hours after the event, if Apple follows past practices.

Click on the image to see Apple’s announcement, which tells you less than what is written above.

Awe dropping event on September 9, 2025, at 10 a.m. Pacific Time.
Awe dropping event on September 9, 2025, at 10 a.m. Pacific Time.

New Books, first quarter of 2025

Take Control Books has released many new books, or revisions to previous books, over the past few months. It is important to note that you get free updates to Take Control Books until the release of a new edition. In other words, if you have the 3rd Edition of Take Control of Your Cat, you get versions 3.1, 3.1.1, 3.2, 3.3, etc., up until they release the 4th Edition. Not that they’d ever produce a book about controlling cats, since they don’t publish fiction.

I’ve had many questions about these topics over the past few months. The nice thing about Take Control Books is that you can buy, download, and start reading them immediately. You can read them on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, using Apple’s Books app. And they don’t take up any space on the coffee table or your desk.

New books include:

Take Control of iCloud 9.2 (I probably get a question about this at every meeting),
https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/icloud/

Mac Basics 1.0 (this is a general survey of everything Mac, and covers pretty much all of the utilities we’ve been covering the past several months, plus much more, including an appendix on migrating to the Mac from Windows),

https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/macbasics

Take Control of Apple Screen and File Sharing 1.0.1 (something I use in every meeting),

https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/screen-file-sharing

Take Control of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 1.2 (updated to cover some new features added since the original release of these operating systems)

https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/ios-18-ipados-18

Take Control of iPhone Photography 1.1 (I’ve taken thousands of photos with my iPhone, and it covers many things I’ve never thought about),

https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/iphone-photography

Take Control of Siri 3.0 (the fine print says “Covers Siri on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, HomePod”),

https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/siri

Take Control of Your Apple Account 1.1 (previously called Apple ID),

https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/apple-account

Take Control of Your Online Privacy 5.1 (not always specific to Apple, and a great resource),

https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/online-privacy

If I seem to mention Take Control Books frequently, there is a reason. Once upon a time, Amazon listed thousands of books about the Mac and iPhone. Today, Amazon still has many Apple titles, but a great many of those listed are for obsolete Macs, iPhones, iPads, or obsolete software. It also doesn’t help that Apple devices usually come with just one sheet of basic instructions telling you little more than what the buttons do; the original Mac came with several complete books.

Pleasant reading.

Utilities Part 2: March 2025

Utilities Part 2: March 2025

We were supposed to look at Time Machine at the April meeting, but (ahem) someone forgot to do that. Instead, in a continuation of a review of Mac utilities from February, we looked at the Emoji and Symbol viewer, Find My, Preview (but only scratched the surface), and had a brief look at the Weather app, newly added to macOS after being introduced on the iPhone and iPad.

Updates: yes, get them!

One question in the Q&A: should you install updates when they are available? The answer is: yes. Operating system updates (and application updates) have two purposes: 1) they often add new features, or fix existing ones, for free, and 2) they patch vulnerabilities. The second one is important: when Apple (and Microsoft, and Linux, and everybody else) issues an update, they list things that were fixed. Hackers use this information to find vulnerabilities, and exploit them, so please, do not second-guess operating system or application updates. Here is Apple’s explanation of how Apple handles a particular kind of update, the “background update,”

https://support.apple.com/en-us/101591

Note that you won’t get these updates unless you turn on Automatic Updates in your System Settings.

Find My

Find My in action. It shows distances in feet, too, not just metric.
Find My in action. It shows distances in feet, too, not just metric.

There were a number of questions about Find My, which now works on the iPhone, iPad and Macintosh, and covers finding your computer, iPhone, iPad, some types of AirPods, and, with AirTags, other “things” ranging from wallets to pets to cars. Here is an Apple guide to Find My:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/104978

Emoji and Symbols

Emoji and Symbol finder in macOS
Emoji and Symbol finder in macOS

If you ever need to type in foreign languages, or want to include a symbol of a chess piece, a mailbox, a pair of scissors, or a dinosaur, you need the Emoji and Symbol finder, and the Keyboard Viewer. Apple documentation on these two utilities can be found here:

Keyboard viewer

Emoji and Symbol finder

You can add a menu item for these two utilities to the top menu in macOS by going to System Settings > Keyboard > Input Sources > Show input menu in menu bar.

Adding emoji and keyboard viewers to Finder main menu bar
Adding emoji and keyboard viewers to Finder main menu bar

Preview

We could probably spend an entire meeting talking about Preview. Preview can do almost everything except fry eggs. We briefly covered the main uses in the meeting, but Apple has an extensive online guide,

https://support.apple.com/guide/preview/welcome/mac

Weather

Apple’s Weather app is not that mysterious: it shows the weather.

https://support.apple.com/guide/weather-mac/view-weather-conditions-apdw93f0ea3e/mac

There are some tricks, such as adding additional locations if you want to see the weather all the time somewhere else. One question I was asked is: where does the information come from? The answer is: lots of places. Hundreds of places. Weather is not at all a simple subject.

Video recording of the March 2025 Meeting

Transcript of the March 2025 Meeting

Note that this is Zoom’s automatic transcription, and sometimes it is overly creative, adds words, drops words, etc.

18:30:42 Good afternoon, good evening. Today we're going to talk about utilities, but first we're going to have a question and answer session.
18:30:51 And before you ask a question, please check to make sure that your microphone is not muted.
18:30:57 Because… it's really hard to, and I'm not good at at lip reading so We'll just leave it at that.
18:31:06 Anyone have any questions?
18:31:11 Yes. Remember?
18:31:12 Hey, Lars. I was wondering, this is real basic, but I noticed on my software updates, I get automatic updates for my software, but then there was a paragraph that came up kind of like kind of to update my operating system because i'm at
18:31:35 Sonoma. I didn't get the Zoom meeting. 14.7.2. And then it had a description of the The new one.
18:31:47 Which is Sequoia 15.3.2, and then a long description of what it adds, iPhone mirroring and all that.
18:31:57 Is that something I should do?
18:32:02 My recommendation is to always run the latest operating system. And there are two reasons for it.
18:32:08 Okay.
18:32:11 The newer operating systems, and I'll tell you the carrot part.
18:32:15 The new operating systems always add something new, like iPhone mirroring. With iPhone mirroring, if I bring my phone near my Mac, the Mac can detect it and I push a little button in the dock and it'll show up on the screen so i
18:32:31 Have my phone on the screen. Now, why would you do that?
18:32:35 You can do that for teaching purposes. It's great to teach people how to use a phone if you can show it in a session and broadcast it.
18:32:44 But it's also a good way for just making sure that things match.
18:32:51 My spouse had a contact list that didn't match mine. She has five degrees in the sciences and I don't.
18:33:00 So her contracts were very different. And sometimes we'd have different addresses for the same people.
18:33:05 This way I could take her phone, put it up there, look at my contacts, look at her contacts and compare them. So lots of reasons why you might want to have that.
18:33:13 So the carrot is that the new operating systems offer new features.
18:33:19 There's a little… asterisk for that in that the new operating systems may not work on older computers. This one gentleman was telling me that he's trying to upgrade from machine that he bought back in 2016.
18:33:34 Well, that machine that he bought back in 2016 cannot run the latest operating system.
18:33:40 So he probably can't run the latest operating system. Here's the stick part. When Apple releases And it's a standard security. All computer companies do this. When Apple releases a new operating system.
18:33:55 They also list what they fixed. And in the process of listing what they fixed, they also tell hackers that there's a flaw in the old operating system.
18:34:06 You immediately should update to the latest operating system because The hackers are going to start working at how to attack old operating systems.
18:34:17 The only genuine hacks that I have heard Max in recent memory.
18:34:23 Have been with people running older operating systems. And when I say older operating systems, I mean something that Apple no longer supports.
18:34:31 And what they do is that hackers find out that that there's the vulnerability so there's run experiments to see how they can trigger that vulnerability to do something.
18:34:45 The most common one that you see In the Mac world, which is not particularly dangerous, but it is upsetting. And I already had two or three people ask me This week about this is called URL hijacking.
18:35:00 That this one woman said that she was getting this message that was allegedly from one person, but when she clicked on it, took her someplace else.
18:35:09 Well, that could be that somebody just has a message that they sent out that says that it's going to go to Holy Cross Hospital and you click on it and it really sends you to pink panther lounge in Las Vegas.
18:35:25 That's not even a hack. That's just they're hiding where it's really going. But another way to do it is that they will actually run a script so that if you type in amazon on your computer, it would take you to Target or to some competitor.
18:35:40 And that's true malware that somebody downloaded something to your machine. You said it's going to do this. And you said, sure, go ahead and do that.
18:35:49 Without realizing that one of the things that it did was that it was going to intercept where you were going and send you someplace else.
18:35:57 And that's genuine malware. And Apple does a really good job of protecting you from that.
18:36:06 But only if you have automatic updates turned on. If you don't turn on automatic updates.
18:36:11 If somebody finds a little chink in the armor, they can take advantage of it.
18:36:16 Now, we don't really in the Mac world have true viruses like they have in the Windows world.
18:36:21 But there are other things that people can do that will definitely upset you. So my strong recommendation is that You have a Mac OS set so that it automatically does security updates.
18:36:37 And when a new operating system comes up. You do an update to the operating system.
18:36:43 Before you update to a completely new operating system, though, there are some things you should do.
18:36:48 You should get rid of all your junk mail out of your mail. You should get rid of all your trash in your trash can. Get rid of everything.
18:36:56 Because when you get a new operating system, the first thing the operating system does is index everything on your computer.
18:37:02 And it slows it down for a day or two. As it's busy indexing everything.
18:37:08 You don't want it to waste time indexing junk and things you've thrown away.
18:37:17 And the other thing is that a lot of people, they have older machines with smaller hard drives.
18:37:21 And they added this new operating system in order to put the new operating system in place You need to have three times the amount of space that the operating system will require. The operating system say it wants five gigs, it means you need to have at least 15 gigs free.
18:37:38 Because you have the old operating system, you have the new operating system, and then you need a workspace for the two of them.
18:37:42 So if you don't have enough space, you can't really do an upgrade.
18:37:47 So there are some minor gotchas.
18:37:49 Can you say the other yeah can you say that again so I'm writing it down how much space? How do I figure it?
18:37:56 Three times.
18:38:03 Okay.
18:37:56 You want to have at least… three times as much space as the operating system requires. So they say it requires five gigs of free space, you want to have at least 15 free.
18:38:09 Okay. And so if that's the case, then I just go ahead and say upgrade now. And then what happens? How long does it take? Like the computer shuts down and reboots and all that?
18:38:24 It might take quite a while depending upon the speed of your internet. It might take quite a while to download it because if you download Say if the new operating system is 10 gigs.
18:38:34 Because it's a nice even number. And you have a connection that is one gigabyte per second.
18:38:40 One gigabyte per second is going to take a long time to get 10 gigs because 10 gigs is 10,000 megabytes. So it'll take at least 10,000 seconds.
18:38:53 If it runs perfectly. And of course, it won't because things happen So depending upon the speed of your internet, it could take quite a while to download it.
18:39:02 And my recommendation to most people is Answer all little questions it has about updating it. Tell it to update, and then go out to dinner or go to bed or something.
18:39:12 Probably better to go out to dinner because if you go to bed and then wake up in the morning and you go to your machine, you think everything looks different. You forgot that you upgraded and You think something's strange. I've had people call me and say, somebody hacked my machine. It looks so different. No, it just upgraded the operating system.
18:39:29 They went to bed and forgot that's what they were doing.
18:39:33 But it will…
18:39:34 Is it going to look radically different?
18:39:38 Sometimes it does in ways that you don't expect. For example, it might set a new bet in different background screen. Like when Sequoia came out, it had pictures of redwoods.
18:39:47 And I had a person call saying, there's a picture of trees on my screen. I don't understand why. It just changed the background screen.
18:39:55 Okay.
18:39:54 And you can change it back to what you wanted to, but you know that's just how it comes. So it… In terms of the biggest change recently was basically When it went to it.
18:40:11 Mac OS 11. When it went from it went from 10.0 to 10.1 to 10.2, blah, blah, blah.
18:40:18 But when it changed to macOS 11, Apple really did make some changes in the operating system that made things look different.
18:40:25 But 11, 12, 13, 14, the changes are incremental. So it's not usually that You're not lost trying to figure out where things are.
18:40:37 But in terms of the added functionality, like for example. With what is the current one?
18:40:46 What is it called? It is called Sequoia. With Sequoia, it adds Apple intelligence and what a lot of people don't realize is that a lot of the stuff You actually have to explicitly turn on. It's not obvious that it's there because it's not supposed to be.
18:41:01 It's in the background doing things. And so you might have to turn things on in order to experience them.
18:41:08 And a lot of people, for example, couldn't understand that the screen, the iPhone mirroring As an example, only works if you have one of the newer Apple Silicon machines. If you have one of the older machines.
18:41:21 It doesn't work because it's not really it's not really possible.
18:41:27 Oh, okay. And a question. I did get an iPhone finally, but it doesn't mean that if my iPhone gets lost, someone can access my laptop.
18:41:41 If you are a hacker, you can set up your phone so that it can access your laptop.
18:41:47 But you have to be a hacker in order to put special software on the phone to do that.
18:41:53 Most mere mortals, no, there's no way you can do that.
18:41:53 Okay. Okay.
18:41:57 So no, they can't get in. However, I will tell you that Mac operating system for quite a while now has had something on it called passwords, which is an application that stores your passwords. And one of the nice things is that it stores your passwords in such a way
18:42:15 That it sinks in between your Mac and your iPhone and your iPad and anything else you have, it'll automatically sync them.
18:42:24 If you tell it to sync through iCloud. That is a huge plus, but it can also be a minus if you lose your phone and you don't have it properly secured.
18:42:36 I used to I used to work for NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
18:42:42 And what I did is kind of hard to explain, but one of my duties was IT security.
18:42:47 And people would come in to a conference room when we'd be talking about IoT security And they put down their phone unlocked.
18:42:55 And anytime they did that, I kind of sneak over and I grab it and I'd set their language settings to Chinese. And then they couldn't get into their phone because they didn't know Chinese.
18:43:06 Now, where everything is located is still the same in Chinese, but they They would just panic and not realize that that was the case.
18:43:15 And how did I do that? I did that because they left their phone unlocked or they never set a password.
18:43:20 You always want to set a password on your phone. And because your phone travels with you.
18:43:26 It is the most vulnerable piece of electronics that you have.
18:43:32 And Apple has even done some things recently to make it less, you might have read stories about because when they're locked up.
18:43:42 It's really difficult to break into an iPhone. So recently.
18:43:48 People have been waiting to tell people leave them on desks and so on and so forth in a restaurant. And then they come by and they grab it while it's unlocked and then run off.
18:43:58 Because at that point it is unlocked and it's real easy to get into it.
18:44:03 Well, Apple has recently and recent operating systems made it impossible for them to get rid of the user information.
18:44:09 So if you try to get rid of the user information, you can't, which means they can't sell it.
18:44:15 And certain things like passwords requires a password. So even though they have a phone with them.
18:44:21 And they can look at your contacts and other things. They can't look at your passwords. They can't look at your wallet settings.
18:44:29 There's still built-in protection, even if they grab your unlocked foam.
18:44:33 Keep in mind that your phone has staggering amounts of information on it that's intensely personal to you.
18:44:41 It's got photographs of your family. It's got your home address. It's got the phone numbers of all your relatives and friends.
18:44:48 And if you're in an illicit relationship, it probably has lots of information about that. So there are lots of things that you don't You don't want visible on your phone.
18:44:58 And so that's why you should pay, you should be paranoid.
18:45:01 About your phone because it does it does it does travel with you.
18:45:05 Yes.
18:45:07 If you have a government phone if you have a government computer It should only be used for government purposes.
18:45:13 And I would quite often get some senior managers saying something's not working on my phone, even though I was not the help desk.
18:45:20 And they give me their laptop and they'd open it up and they'd have their income tax return on it.
18:45:25 Your income tax return has your social security number. It's got where you work.
18:45:31 How much you made. It's got all kinds of stuff. That really shouldn't be in somebody else's hands.
18:45:37 And because laptops are mobile. You should be almost as paranoid about laptops as you are about your phone.
18:45:44 If you think about it, you say, well, my laptop is on my desk at home. It never goes anywhere.
18:45:51 Then two things. First, you never should have bought a laptop.
18:45:54 Because an iMac is cheaper than a laptop. And it's got a bigger screen and it's faster and so on and so forth.
18:46:00 So you probably shouldn't have bought a laptop in the first place. But the second thing is it's also easier to steal. So even if though it never leaves your home.
18:46:09 Be paranoid. Make sure that your machines at home. Are set up with password protections.
18:46:16 Just like your phone is. People steal them.
18:46:20 Oh, thank you.
18:46:21 Be paranoid. Yes. Marcia you're your microphones. Okay, good.
18:46:29 Yeah, I think this is relatively simple, but my phone is not… It's not letting me know when I get text messages.
18:46:39 And I recently got an iWatch and I don't know if that makes any difference but So what do I need to do for it to let me know when I have a text message?
18:46:53 When you go into your phone and go into notifications.
18:46:58 Right.
18:46:58 And it has a list of things that you can notify and go to messages and just tell it how you want it to be.
18:47:04 Are notified of a message. On my phone, I have it.
18:47:09 Make a beep sound or kind of it's actually a bird chirp But anyway, it makes a chirping sound on my phone because that's how I have it set up.
18:47:18 On my watch, which I have an apple watch I have my Apple Watch vibrate.
18:47:24 Because I'll notice if it vibrates and I really don't want my watch to make noises.
18:47:29 That's my particular preference, but you can go and set it any way you want to.
18:47:33 You can set it so
18:47:34 Okay. Well, I haven't set for a horn but it's uh You know, I'm not getting any noise.
18:47:42 It could be that you have the volume turned down really low.
18:47:47 Okay, I'll try that.
18:47:49 The other thing is there's also a do not disturb switch on the side and you might have it set to that.
18:47:57 There are a number of ways that you… It's designed so you can silence it for church and so on and so forth. People forget to turn that off and at that point.
18:48:05 People call them or send them text messages and they say, I didn't hear it.
18:48:11 It's it's um There are many ways to control it and that also creates some confusion sometimes.
18:48:19 Okay, I'll try that.
18:48:21 Yeah. Yes.
18:48:22 Lawrence, it's Sidna. I have a question about a male group.
18:48:28 Into a situation where I need to send emails regularly to 35 people And I have them all in a little folder.
18:48:37 You know, near my computer, I mean on my computer But I don't know how to make it so I can just push you know push that that's a little folder and make it So that I don't have to manually
18:48:53 Enter 35. Addresses.
18:48:59 Yeah, male grove. Okay.
18:48:56 You can create mail groups in mail and That's really what you want to do is you want to go into Google and say, how do I create a mail group and Apple Mail? And Apple has a page telling you how to do it.
18:49:13 It's not that difficult but it's it's more than the short little answers that I like for the Q&A.
18:49:22 Okay.
18:49:21 But what you want is a male group. I have one for uh My brothers-in-law, Kathleen, has five brothers And rather than just type in everybody's. I just say james say And it pops up that group and it sends them to the five brothers plus her sister.
18:49:39 So I don't have to. My two brothers are not talking to each other, so I address them separately.
18:49:47 No. So I have another shorter question, easier.
18:49:53 I have a new printer, an Epson printer. And every time I want to print something, it doesn't automatically connect. I have to connect it.
18:50:03 And you know it recognizes that I have a printer that sees it I have to connect every time.
18:50:14 I'm not sure why it would do that. Is it wireless or is it is
18:50:18 It's wireless.
18:50:30 Is she talking about printing from her phone, iPad, or computer?
18:50:36 Computer.
18:50:38 Yeah, that's a good question. I don't. How far away is it?
18:50:44 Oh, maybe 12 feet, 10, 12 feet
18:50:48 Well, that shouldn't be a problem. I can't.
18:50:50 No, it prints when I, you know, when I say choose printer, it'll print, but it's just not automatic like it used to be with my antiquated one.
18:51:00 And the answer is I don't know. That's something I'd actually probably have to look at.
18:51:05 Okay.
18:51:05 A lot of these things I will tell you that i will tell you that I was in IT, I was a senior IT manager at NOAA for 26, 27 years, something And one thing I refuse to do, and I even made up a little sign outside my office saying, I do not answer printer questions.
18:51:25 I refused to change the toner. I refuse to put paper in it. And I also never printed. And in that 25 plus years, I think I printed 10 sheets of paper because i'm vehemently anti And having said that, I will also say that we have two printers in the house basically because Kathleen, one of the printers but
18:51:46 I just really, really, really hate printers. Printers are mechanical.
18:51:52 As well as being digital. And because of that, they've got all kinds of just strange peculiarities.
18:51:59 And sometimes you just have to actually look at it and trying to figure out what it is But I… sort of looking at it, I don't know that I have an answer.
18:52:11 Because it should work. Most printers that are wireless printers, they use Wi-Fi.
18:52:13 Okay.
18:52:16 And the Wi-Fi, the current Wi-Fi has a range of about 150 feet so 12 feet, it should be able to handle that unless you have it wrapped in aluminum foil or something.
18:52:26 No, no. Well, I just connect it and it prints. So it's just not automatic.
18:52:33 There was this is this is this is a C story is My dear spouse was a professor at the University of Maryland and this one chemist was constantly he was in a different building he was constantly complaining about the fact that his printer was not working. In IT would come over and say that it was working perfectly well.
18:52:53 And he didn't understand why it wasn't. Working. So Kathleen went over there and she found out that he was in his office and the lab was just on the other side of the wall.
18:53:04 But he was a chemist, but he had to have the the lab.
18:53:11 Electronically isolated because of some of the things that he was working with, very volatile chemicals.
18:53:14 So essentially, he had put a Faraday cage into his lab. His lab was a Faraday cage Which means that it was impossible for any kind of radio noise to travel from his office through the wall to his printer.
18:53:30 In other words, he had created his own problem. And she said, move it someplace else. And he said, well, I'd like it in there because that way I can't hear it.
18:53:39 Okay, well, you won't hear it because it won't work. But he basically had put it in a cage so that the radio waves wouldn't go into it.
18:53:49 And he didn't realize that that would block his access to the printer.
18:53:54 Some things you just can't fix other than just you know looking at it and seeing what the problem is.
18:54:03 Any other questions?
18:54:08 Somebody sent me a question via email and I don't know that they're on today, but The question was.
18:54:20 He went to this guy got a new laptop and he's trying to move things from his old laptop to his new laptop using migration assistant And it says that he doesn't have enough room. What does he want to do?
18:54:34 Well, I told him and asked the question during the Q&A period because a lot of people run into problems like this.
18:54:41 Anytime you're upgrading to a new machine. Some things that you need to take into consideration is you actually need to have free space And the easiest way to get free space is to Empty out all of everything out of your trash can.
18:54:56 Empty out the trash can and mail, delete all the junk mail. You can free up gigabytes worth of space that way.
18:55:04 But the other thing to do is that if that still doesn't give you enough room.
18:55:09 Then you need to think about offloading some things. And to offload them You can go out and get an external disk drive this is a external disk drives is two terabytes. That's two trillion bytes or 2000 gigabytes and it uses USB-C. So you just plug it into a modern machine and it'll just
18:55:29 Handy dandy little disk drive. This is another, I think this is also two terabyte disk drive You can get these off of Amazon. You can buy them at Costco.
18:55:41 If you don't want to spend that amount of money. This is a USB drive. I'm trying to pull it up in such a way that you're going to see it.
18:55:50 This is 128 gigabyte USB disk drive and Kathleen bought this and I have no idea how much it costs but I was looking on Amazon before the meeting started. You can get a 256 gigabyte disk drive Which is essentially two of these on Amazon for as little as
18:56:14 You can get to Amazon Basics, 256 gigabyte flash drive for $17.99.
18:56:21 And they can be $27, $37, depending upon who you get it from. Pny has a special, you can get three of these For $37.99.
18:56:33 One thing I will tell you about flash drives is that new machines have a USB-C connector and the USB-C connector is this tiny little thing And the older ones are USB-A connectors and they're much larger.
18:56:49 The new machines, you can't plug a usba flash drive into it. So you probably have to get something like a drive dock, which are inexpensive.
18:56:59 But the other thing you can do, this USB-C, this USB drive that I have.
18:57:04 If you push out on one direction, it's USB-A, push out on the other direction, it's USB-C.
18:57:09 So you can go between the old and the new. And that's one way to get around the problem.
18:57:16 And they're inexpensive. They only require power when they're plugged into the drive and the drive that your computer actually powers it. So it's a good way to do it. This kind of transfer.
18:57:28 The other thing that's critically important when you're buying these, make sure that they are USB 3.0 or 3.1.
18:57:37 And that the reason is that anything lower than three they are really really really slow. How slow? They can be up to 100 times slower.
18:57:50 So if you're trying to make room on your machine. You don't really want to spend a hundred times more time on the task then you have to. And the difference in price between the USB 2 and the USB 3
18:58:06 Is significant but If you can get 256 gigs for 20 bucks that's that may be significantly more than, say, five bucks but it's your time is more valuable than that.
18:58:21 Does it matter what brand or anything?
18:58:20 Just make sure. I am partial to name brands. The ones that I buy tend to be SanDisk, S-A-N-Disk.
18:58:34 Sandisk is owned by, I think, Western Digital. The other one that I use are Lexar.
18:58:39 Alexar big with the photography. I've been using Lexar. Flash drives in my cameras for, I don't know, 20 years So I like those. I don't go for the off-brand. So if it's Joe's Garage or something like that.
18:58:59 I don't know how many of you have ever been to a microcenter.
18:59:03 Micro Center are these huge electronic stores. They're the size Some of them the size of Costco, but they're regionally located.
18:59:12 And near the checkout counter, they have these bins full of flash drives and they're in primary colors, red, green, blue.
18:59:20 And you can get really, really cheap. Usb drives there. They are all USB 1.0, 1.1.
18:59:28 You can die of old age just trying to copy 10 photographs from your phone to one of those. But they're really cheap.
18:59:37 And they're no name brands. It just says…
18:59:52 Okay.
18:59:43 You want to look for a brand that you recognize it, whether it's Samsung or Toshiba or to shiver SanDisk or Lexar, something like that.
18:59:59 So where's the closest microcenter?
19:00:02 I don't know. Maybe Denver. I don't know. I don't know of any in Washington state.
19:00:11 They used to have, what was the name of that? Place.
19:00:15 It was a California store. They used to have one of their super stores.
19:00:20 And… Pardon?
19:00:22 Electronics. Surprise electronics.
19:00:26 Yes, fries. They used to have one of their stores over on the east side In Bothell or someplace, I don't remember what it was.
19:00:37 And when I moved back to Washington State, I thought, oh, good, I can go to a Fry's. They went bankrupt the week before I was going to visit them.
19:00:43 They don't exist anymore and it uh Yeah, I was… I went to Fry's back when they first started in the first 1970s. They would have new and used equipment in the same place. So you have to remember personal computers were brand new. So back then when you went in there, you got these boards that you went and then made your own computer.
19:01:07 And fries also had Coke machines. So if you're a geek, you could just wander around all day and drink Coke and play with electronics.
19:01:15 One time I was in there, they had a Russian cryptographic teletype for sale.
19:01:21 And if I'd had the money.
19:01:26 That was… That was my goal was to buy this. Why? Because the Soviet Union still existed even though I have no idea what I do with it. Just having it is kind of this 400 pound thing over in the corner would just give me great joy but
19:01:48 It was way too much money for me. I was working as a bookstore manager at the time and I think I was making two dollars and two dollars 40 cents an hour or something.
19:02:02 It would have taken me months to… to make the money. Anyway, it's now um time for the formal meeting to start.
19:02:12 And I shall, I shall. President there for a second. Hello, President.
19:02:16 How are you doing? She's unmuting herself.
19:02:26 There you are.
19:02:26 Oh, there. Yeah, you know, when you have your hot corner set and you go to turn audio on and you miss it and then you go to the corner and then you have nothing but a screensaver.
19:02:37 Hello, everybody. Welcome. Do we have anybody new?
19:02:48 Oh, hi, Brian. Brian is new. Yeah, I don't know who that is. I wonder if that's my dad.
19:02:44 I don't know who 858-7299. Is…
19:02:56 858? Doc?
19:02:56 You know? But that's not a real phone number.
19:03:01 858-7299-7538. It's too many digits. It's not the right placement. But I don't see him on here, but I know I set it up for him.
19:03:10 Yeah, I don't see them anyway. Welcome, Brian. Glad to hear about us.
19:03:17 I think it was via email.
19:03:21 You know, nothing to get flustered over than a cuckoo clock behind you that now I can't hear anything.
19:03:29 Oh, wow. My evening is starting out with a bang I'm sorry, how did you hear about us?
19:03:31 It's most.
19:03:36 No problem. I think I got an email from you guys or from somebody else who forwarded me an email.
19:03:43 So I just signed up and i just signed up I'm a geek at heart, so decided to join and see what this is about.
19:03:50 Cool. Well, we welcome you. Yeah, if you have any questions, there's a chat on the side. I try to watch it.
19:03:58 Because Lawrence can't see it when he goes and switches the view for his side of the computer.
19:04:06 Right.
19:04:05 So sometimes I'll try to chime in. Speaking of Lawrence, can you put the sign-in sheet
19:04:11 Yes, I can. How about that? Should have just popped up in the chat window.
19:04:14 Perfect. I think. I see it. Okay, perfect.
19:04:20 So everybody on the right side, when you, well, at the bottom, you click chat and it should pop up on the right side There's… a link there which you just click on. It should open in Safari and you can just put in
19:04:33 I believe name, date, you…
19:04:38 Name, email address, and just check a box saying that you attended.
19:04:44 Yeah, if you guys could do that i would Very much appreciate it. And I will turn it over to the treasurer Anything else we need to discuss?
19:04:57 Don't you have something coming up that you need to pay? Well, I guess you could tell the treasurer that.
19:05:03 I thought… Yeah. Yeah.
19:05:02 Oh, I sent her a bill.
19:05:08 Well, thanks everybody for those that sent in your dues. Very much appreciated.
19:05:14 Yes, we got quite a few of this. Past months and thank you very much to everybody who sent it in it brought our Total balance in the account up to $2,516.63.
19:05:34 So those pills.
19:05:34 Of course, that's before she pays the bill that I sent her but
19:05:42 Yeah, send me in the bills you have, Lawrence. Send me the bills you have.
19:05:44 Pardon? I did. I sent it to you last week or the week before last.
19:05:55 It was 500 and something dollars, so you would have noticed.
19:05:52 Oh, I didn't get any.
19:05:59 Yeah, I didn't see anything. Can you resend it, please? Yeah, that would be great.
19:06:03 Okay. Okay.
19:06:10 We're going to talk about utilities tonight. And last month we talked about last month I don't remember what we talked about.
19:06:20 And we're going to talk about different things tonight. So let me… open something here.
19:06:32 One second.
19:06:35 And I'm going to… share my screen.
19:06:40 Because that's always a nice thing to do. If I can remember how.
19:07:14 Zoom says that it needs to quit in order to share my screen.
19:07:19 Screen. So this is going to be awkward.
19:07:24 Let's try it. Can you see my screen?
19:07:32 Yes, we can.
19:07:34 Yes.
19:07:38 Okay.
19:07:41 Yes.
19:07:41 That your NASA space capsule there.
19:07:44 Okay. When it says that it might not be recording it until I quit. But anyway, I don't want to quit so We're just going to plunge along here.
19:07:55 What we're going to talk about today is… on the wrong screen.
19:08:02 We're going to talk about we had kind of a vote on this. We're going to talk about
19:08:12 Find my Preview.
19:08:18 Emoji and symbol viewer. And there was one other thing that I don't remember what oh possibly weather anyway We're going to start off with emoji and symbol viewer. Emoji and Symbol Viewer I will first show you how to get to it.
19:08:38 If you go into settings Under settings, there's this thing that says press the universals key, which is what this thing is. Let me blow this up a bit.
19:08:53 Press the universal key if you have a keyboard that's got a universal key.
19:08:57 To show emojis and symbols. So if you press that key, it'll pop up the emoji and symbol viewer.
19:09:05 But another way to get to it, which is actually what I prefer.
19:09:09 Is that if you go into your settings, there's this little button that says all input sources. If you press that, it pops up a new screen.
19:09:20 That allows you to add the screens to your menu bar.
19:09:26 Show input menu and menu bar. And so that's what I'm going to show you how to do that.
19:09:34 Go to settings. Type in keyboard because it's easier than trying to figure out where it is.
19:09:42 And here's the thing that says that you double press that key to show a noble.
19:09:48 Symbols, but if you come over here to where is it?
19:09:55 Layouts? Yes. It says show input menu and menu bar.
19:10:00 And so I have up here. In my menu bar.
19:10:06 The emoji and symbol viewers. So I can show emojis or I can show the keyboard.
19:10:12 Viewer. We're going to show emojis first. Because it's kind of cool. Right now, the last thing I was looking at obviously was pictographs this screen is resizable. So it comes up this size, but if you want to make it bigger
19:10:28 You can just drag it out and make it bigger. And these are things that are frequently used. These are various emoji. These are arrows. These are bullets.
19:10:38 Currency signals latin characters with little umlauts and diphthongs and whatnot letter-like symbols, math symbols.
19:10:48 Parentheses, pictographs and punctuation. Now, let me show you something about these things. Let's go to teach text, not teach text, what's it called now? It's called text edit We're going to make a new document.
19:11:09 Is called teach text and then they called it simple text and now it's text edit We're going to open up a new document in TextEdit.
19:11:17 Going to go to show mobigies and symbols, and we're going to go to pictographs and we're going to take this little chess pond, and I'm going to double click on it And it puts a chest pound on the screen. You can't see it because it's really small.
19:11:35 So I'm going to say show fonts And I'm going to go here and I'm going to say make it 288 pixels and we have a pawn.
19:11:43 And double click this and we're going to have a king And we're going to have a rook and we're going to have a knight Actually, that was a queen. Let's add a king just for the heck of it.
19:11:56 These, even though they look like pictures, are actually letters. They are formally defined and formally an extended character set.
19:12:07 So they are letters and it means that among other things, when you write these into documents, they will even work in a text editor like this.
19:12:17 Texted is really designed for for just text. It's not designed for text images at all.
19:12:24 Even though TextEdit can do that sort of thing too. But it means that if you go to You can put these into email to people and you can play chess with them.
19:12:33 Via email, just stick it in your message. Because they're not really pictures and they don't take up as much space as pictures.
19:12:42 Pictures, even small pictures can be fairly large. So that's these letter-like symbols and all these sort of things. All of these things down here are actually letters.
19:12:55 And they're also in different languages. You can set your keyboard preferences to Chinese and Japanese and hindi and lots of other languages and there are a whole other character sets that are internationally defined. And when you send them, they don't go as pictures. They go as
19:13:15 Characters. They're just in different languages. So the keyboard viewer is really, really, really handy if you want to do things to spice up something you're doing You want to send things with french with proper accents or you want to play chess by mail.
19:13:31 I have a friend In Japan, it was very fond of Japanese chess, which is called shogi.
19:13:38 And if I type in Shogi, it brings up the shogi characters and I lost it there.
19:13:47 Because… I don't know why I lost it.
19:13:53 But I did. If I click that, it'll add one of the I need to get this back over here so it knows what I'm talking about. You have to actually have a place where you want the character to go.
19:14:10 Right now, the cursor's over here on the second line. So if I type something now.
19:14:15 Like this Chinese character. It'll put it there. So if you… There are another ways to do it, which I will show you that the other ways are not necessarily as great as you think.
19:14:28 I can do a right click and say copy character info And then I say paste. And what it does is it pastes a bunch of stuff that doesn't make any sense to you.
19:14:38 And so I will shrink this down so we can talk about it.
19:14:44 These characters are defined in something called Unicode and Unicode basically is the international definition of how that is stored. It's stored as a number.
19:14:57 And it uses two bytes to store these Unicode characters. And so the character code for this is 68CB.
19:15:07 Which doesn't mean a thing to human beings, but it means something to computers.
19:15:12 And so it stores this as just some numbers that are very compact. You can store them in a computer, sends it off. And on the other side, it says, oh, you want that character.
19:15:22 And it takes it off of your machine where it has the the character drawing and it displays it on your screen And that's how all these things are sent. So you can send all of this stuff in relatively few characters.
19:15:35 If you sent this as a, well, I think the easiest way is I'll just save this.
19:15:40 Save as sample. I'm going to call it sample.
19:15:47 And I'm going to close up some stuff so I can find it.
19:15:51 And if I go away. If I say sample, I say git info.
19:15:58 It says that my tiny little document only uses 86 bytes.
19:16:03 So keep that in mind. It says 86 bytes. I'm going to erase all of this. And now I'm going to show you The other part of this, which is finding emoji.
19:16:14 You went to, say, have a tree And there are several tree emojis. And we're going to pick them all. There's this tree and there's that tree and there's that tree and a house in a tree.
19:16:26 And a different kind of tree and Chinese character for tree So we're going to take these and we're going to show you that They really are trees. We're going to increase the size.
19:16:39 So go back here to format. And increase these up to 288.
19:16:45 You see, there's a Christmas tree, evergreen tree, a palm tree, a house in a tree some kind of tree and the character here.
19:16:56 I'm going to save this and I'm going to call this I'm… I'm going to rename my original one so that I don't override it.
19:17:11 Okay, we're going to call this one. And that may not actually save me.
19:17:18 You might write it right over the top of it. Oh, well. Anyway, we're going to go back and we're going to say get info now.
19:17:26 And it didn't give me a
19:17:34 I do not know. Oh, there it is. And it says that it's now 24 bytes.
19:17:39 Which is not what I was expecting. One of the problems that you run into, these really are pictures.
19:17:46 That their picture is stored on your computer. And you can paste them in and use them as pictures.
19:17:52 The reason why my demonstration didn't go right is I forgot that the Mac is looking it up and it's pulling the pictures off of your computer. But you will notice that The emojis that you have on the Mac or on your iPhone, your iPad.
19:18:05 If you then go into Google and you paste the same things.
19:18:09 So let's bring up Chrome, for example, and see what Chrome does.
19:18:19 And…
19:18:23 If you look at these in Chrome, and you can't actually see it because it's really small.
19:18:27 All of the icons look different. They all are different. That's because Chrome defines them in its picture set.
19:18:37 As different. They look different. So if you go to the StraightMac site, I have i i have little emojis in several places.
19:18:47 If you look at the StraightMax site in Chrome and you look at it with the Safari.
19:18:53 The symbols will look different because the emojis are depending upon Google's set of graphics compared to Mac's set of graphics, but the characters and umlauts and everything are pretty much transparent no matter what machine you're using.
19:19:09 And the emoji viewer and the viewer and the symbol viewer, you really should learn how to use this.
19:19:21 Trying to put an umlaut over a character on a PC is very, very difficult.
19:19:27 Trying to find an arrow in Windows is very, very difficult. But on the Mac, it's really easy.
19:19:34 You say you want an arrow, type in arrow. And they'll go out and find out all kinds of arrows, including these up here showing you basically traffic signs and all kinds of mathematical errors and illustrative arrows.
19:19:50 And you saw what it did for Tree. If you type in the word house.
19:19:54 It'll come up with emojis of house as well as In some cases, we'll come up with some other languages with words that they have for house I think this is… Yes, that's a… I don't know what language that is, but anyway, that's a letter for the word house
19:20:13 And there are different kinds of parentheses and all kinds of things. So the character view is really, really, really handy.
19:20:19 The keyboard viewer is not quite as obvious why this is cool.
19:20:24 But it is. It's essentially reproducing the keyboard that I have.
19:20:31 Below me and I accidentally pressed the universal key twice, which is why I brought that Pick your graph up but If I press the uppercase the shift key shows you the uppercase characters. These are the lowercase characters.
19:20:46 This is the escape key. This will brighten and darken my screen.
19:20:49 And if you don't believe me. You should see it getting a lot brighter and darker.
19:20:56 If I press this, it'll tile windows. I don't have that many windows, but it'll tile them back and forth and turn the microphone on and off and all kinds of stuff. Some of these things won't work unless I have a movie plane or something.
19:21:09 But all that looks fairly cool. If you hold down the option key.
19:21:14 You'll see that you can do other things like, for example, option W is this sigma sign.
19:21:21 And option E is this accent sign. So if I wanted to have an accented key, I can press Option E and then press E.
19:21:30 And it'll give me an accented E. I need to bring up Text edit again.
19:21:41 Text edit, new. And let's increase the size of things.
19:21:56 Where's the font's character? Oh, they ran off the side of the screen.
19:22:02 Move this up to 90 seconds. So I press.
19:22:07 Option EE, and it gives me an accident E. If I press option.
19:22:13 You, you. I didn't work.
19:22:21 Because I'm hitting the wrong key. Gives me an umlaut at you.
19:22:26 It's a way to… write French and German and so on and so forth the way that the French and the Germans write without actually having to know anything at all about a special keyboard. And there are special things built in here like option k
19:22:44 Shows a degree. Option O shows that
19:22:51 Option 8 shows a different kind of degree Shift option 8 shows a degree sign.
19:22:59 What is it? That's what I wanted. Shift option k shift gives you the apple symbol.
19:23:04 This shift option A is not universal. If you stick this into an email message and it shows up on a Windows machine. I have no idea what it's going to display, but it won't show the It won't show the Apple registered
19:23:17 Symbol but if you want to get an Apple symbol, that's a way to do that. That's shift option K.
19:23:23 And you can look at the screen and it'll show you what happens when you press the various characters.
19:23:28 That's the regular keyboard. That's the option keyboard. That's the shift and option keyboard.
19:23:34 And just all kinds of neat things. I'm trying to remember how to get the sign for the… Oh, I remember what it was called.
19:23:48 You might have noticed that the little clover leaf symbol that for the command key, it's nowhere to be found.
19:23:57 Well, you can, using the emoji finder, you say feature
19:24:06 And… Or is it interest?
19:24:13 Interest, that's it. This little symbol that Apple adopted is from Norwegian mac makers when they wanted a point of interest on their maps, they used this symbol.
19:24:27 And the original type designer for Apple Susan. I don't remember her last name right this second.
19:24:34 She thought that was really cool. So she adopted it for the command key.
19:24:40 On the keyboard. And a lot of people since then have wondered, how do you actually come up with that command key? Because they can't find it.
19:24:47 Well, if you type in the word interest into the character viewer it'll show you that little symbol and then if you position your cursor where you want it and double press that it'll pop up on the screen.
19:25:03 So that's how the keyboard and emoji viewers work.
19:25:10 And I'm going to stop that for a second and ask anybody if you have any questions.
19:25:17 You don't? Pretty much all the national flags are in, you can find them in the emoji viewer If you wanted to have a national flag, it doesn't have state flags.
19:25:31 Which is a pity because the Maryland flag is quite pretty, even if the Washington state flag is a little bit boring.
19:25:38 I was born in Washington, so I can say the Washington state flag is boring if I want to.
19:25:44 Any questions? The next thing I want to talk about is find my And find my is a little bit difficult to find my little bit difficult demonstrate and demonstrate on a… something that we're recording because that's something that we're recording
19:26:05 Find my, among other things, could reveal information I don't want to reveal. So instead of showing you a live demonstration I'm going to show you screenshots.
19:26:15 I'll find my… This is Find My on a phone and we're going to start the other directions.
19:26:24 I'm going to start with this one. Find mine can do all kinds of different things. So you can have an air tag and stick it on your bicycle. You can stick it on your dog or whatever you want to have it
19:26:35 Airtag on. It'll show you yes
19:26:38 Lawrence? I'm sorry for interrupting. I just saw somebody did have a question. It's on the side. It says, is there any way to get musical notation such as piano or guitar chords?
19:26:50 Charts.
19:26:52 There is some musical notation, but it's extremely limited And I don't know enough about guitar. I don't read music so I just know that I have stuck little musical symbols. There's a symbol for a triplet and there's a symbol for quarter note and a couple other things, but it's really limited. You can't
19:27:12 You can't use it for creating music. There's specialized software for that.
19:27:17 If you're interested in that sort of thing, the most popular program is something called finale Where you can actually write sheet music on your machine.
19:27:26 I don't know enough about guitar notation to know if it has anything or not.
19:27:31 Because I wouldn't know what I'm looking for. I know it's called you know frets but frets the kind of Freddie Naidu is quite different.
19:27:43 Anyway.
19:27:46 Thank you.
19:27:49 Things that you can do with it. You can find your bicycle if it's got an air tag on it.
19:27:54 You can find… This says Belkin ear book buds but if you have uh apple AirPods, you can now track these as something that'll track.
19:28:09 You can track your phone. All of these things, though, you have to register with Find My. So if you get a new laptop or you Yes?
19:28:16 Sorry, here I am again. Somebody would like to know first what is an AirTag?
19:28:21 Oh, what is an air tag? That's a good question.
19:28:30 I don't happen to have. And AirTag is a small little disk You can buy them in sets of four for a hundred bucks. Amazon sometimes has on sale for 70 bucks for a set of four.
19:28:43 You can also buy them individually and i guess they're 25 bucks. I don't know what they are, but it's a small little thing. It's got a user replaceable battery when the battery dies.
19:28:54 You just unscrew it and put a new battery and It works. You hold the AirTag near your phone to register it and say what you're attaching it to.
19:29:04 And I have my camera bags have air tags When I go traveling overseas, my luggage has an air tag. Things that I might leave some place. I put an air tag in it.
19:29:19 As an example, when I'm traveling with my camera. In my car to go take pictures out at the Dungeness Restoration Center or something like that.
19:29:28 And then I go to Costco. When I get inside of Costco, my phone will beep and it'll say that that I've left my camera behind.
19:29:37 Okay, that's nice to know. Except that I really don't need to know at that point. But at other places, it's nice to know that you left your camera behind, but it'll just tell you where that air tag is located. And you can name them so you can say that
19:29:52 You know, this air tag, call it camera one or whatever you want to call it or, you know.
19:29:58 If you've got a dog named Bowser, call it Bowser. Whatever it is that you're tagging, you give it a name and you register it with your phone just by bringing it near the phone.
19:30:09 It says, oh, you've got an ear tag. What do you want it to do and where is it located and what's it going to be doing?
19:30:15 And the batteries last roughly a year. And there have been lots of stories in the newspapers about people finding their luggage in airports and And people finding their car after it had been stolen because it had an air tag on something inside of it.
19:30:30 They're really very quite useful. That's for AirTags, but they will also, you can use Find My to tell your computer to tell where it is.
19:30:41 Why would you do this for your desktop computer? Because it's going to be on your desk. Well, if somebody steals it.
19:30:48 Once somebody connects it to the internet, it'll tell people, hey, I'm located here.
19:30:52 And you'll be able to actually see where it's located. It's good for things like laptops as well as desktops and whatnot.
19:30:59 And you should also turn on Find My for your phone.
19:31:03 That way, if you lose your phone, you leave it someplace, you can find it.
19:31:08 As an example, my dear spouse had her phone in a shopping bag.
19:31:15 And along with some other things because she was doing a bunch of things and she just didn't have any pockets.
19:31:20 So she slid off the phone in the shopping bag. A woman came into church, saw the shopping bag, thought it was hers, took it home.
19:31:26 Kathleen said, I don't have my phone. I don't know where it is.
19:31:30 And we used the find my to go to this woman's house and ask.
19:31:34 Did you by any chance take a blue shopping bag from church? And she says, oh, yeah. But it was mine. I said, could you bring it to us?
19:31:41 She brought it to us and said, this doesn't look like my stuff at all. No, it wasn't.
19:31:45 Hers, it was Kathleen's. It was also useful to me for finding out where Kathleen was.
19:31:54 If I wanted to call her, but I was afraid she was in a meeting or something, I could look on Find My and see that, oh, she's here or she's there.
19:32:01 Yes, it's okay to call or no, I shouldn't call. My daughter lives in England. I have Find My Set on her phone.
19:32:09 And by the way, my daughter has to choose to share that information with me and I have to choose to share my information with It doesn't happen automatically.
19:32:18 It's under your control. But if my daughter's home, I know that I can probably call her.
19:32:24 Because she's not at work as long as it's the time zone difference.
19:32:29 If it's 8 in the evening, I can call her. Obviously, if it's three in the morning, that's probably not a good idea.
19:32:35 But it's a good way just finding out whether or not you can interrupt your loved ones.
19:32:42 When Kathleen got very sick in 2023.
19:32:47 I was at the hospital having a ultrasound. And I wanted to, before I came back to Squam, I wanted to know If I should get something in Port Angeles.
19:33:01 And I was going to call her, but first I looked to see where she was.
19:33:05 And according to Feinmai, she was in the hospital. Well, she'd driven herself into the hospital because she was bleeding And she spent two weeks in the hospital.
19:33:16 And then… things went downhill and then went downhill She died in January.
19:33:22 It's a way of keeping track of people and things and objects And it's built into your iPhone. It's built into your Mac, but it's an application that is on your
19:33:40 It's on your Mac, it's on your iPad, it's on your iPhone.
19:33:44 And AirTags come with it and the newest AirPods have the capability built into the case
19:33:52 I've been digging around and I found one of my air tags if uh That's what it looks like.
19:33:59 Yeah, it's about the size of quarter. They're not terribly large.
19:34:06 And as you go around looking around them with your phone, it'll even point you in the right direction.
19:34:12 You can set it so it'll show you the distance and feet rather than meters.
19:34:19 But it's um It's a useful thing. And if you have to be some distance away, it'll bring up a map showing you where it is and how to get there.
19:34:28 And give you directions. You can press that little button. It'll draw a map.
19:34:32 On how to find your your device, but you don't need an air tag for your phone or your computer because the capabilities built into them.
19:34:45 If they connect to the internet, it'll be active. The regular air tags they don't have to be, you don't have to do anything you just have to registering them with your machine and They work until the battery dies.
19:35:00 You might wonder, well, how do people find them? On an air tag because the range that it uses, it's using something called Bluetooth. The range is actually fairly limited.
19:35:10 And so if somebody is living out on a farmhouse. How will it find it if it's on that farmhouse and it's surrounded by farm fields?
19:35:18 The way that the location services work is really very ingenious.
19:35:26 Apple uses other Apple devices to kind of relay the signal.
19:35:32 So it's basically creating this huge invisible map of air tags.
19:35:37 And only your AirTags are presented to you, but it uses all other Apple devices within range to help you find it. So you don't The person, they don't have to have a Mac or anything. They don't have to be connected to the internet. You still might be able to find it.
19:35:52 It's very clever technology. Apple has a whole bunch of security built into it to make sure that it's under your control. You don't share your location with anyone else unless you want to.
19:36:09 Um and the only um The only thing that I would caution people about is… Personal relationships. If you were in a personal relationship with somebody and then you decide you want to end that personal relationship.
19:36:25 You should go and deregister. That person from sharing your location.
19:36:31 Because there have been some incidents where boyfriends or girlfriends would stalk each other After breaking a relationship but Aside from that, it's a really robust and robust and useful technology that people should people should be using.
19:36:54 Any questions on that?
19:37:00 No questions. The next one that I want to talk about is preview.
19:37:09 And preview is… a utility, if you do something like you have a picture on your screen and you want to look at it and you click on it When it opens, what is opening it is preview. Preview is a utility on your Mac. That's what it does
19:37:27 It was originally designed for previewing. Photos. So if you have a photo, just click on it and it'll open it up.
19:37:34 It has some other interesting features, though, that a lot of people don't know about. This is a TIFF image. And unfortunately, I need to change my background because nobody can see anything because the backgrounds So cluttered.
19:37:51 Desktop. That's not what I want. I want wallpaper.
19:37:59 Let's pick that. Okay.
19:38:04 If you find something that you don't know if it'll open or not, if you right click on it, say open with, and it'll list everything that you've got on your machine that can open this thing.
19:38:14 And if preview is one of the options. And… I don't see. Oh, it's right up here at the top. If preview is one of usually the safest things you can use to open something Because it's not judgmental.
19:38:30 A lot of things when you open up Photoshop, it asks, you know, are you registered and How did you vote in the last election? So on and so forth. But preview doesn't care. It'll just open it.
19:38:41 So I tell it to open this This looks like an odd little document.
19:38:46 This is the rental agreement for the house that we had in Taiwan in 1957.
19:38:53 It's written in Chinese and no, I can't read it except for this part down here that's got my father's name.
19:38:59 In English. But this is the rental agreement. And… Well, there's something about it that you should know.
19:39:10 I scan this on a scanner. And this document is 392 megabytes in size.
19:39:21 In other words, it's so large that it would take three of these little USB drives in order to hold it.
19:39:28 And then, of course, it wouldn't work because it'd be scattered across three USB drives.
19:39:33 However, with using preview. I could save it in different formats and I could save it as a PNG, which is a different visual format. And in PNG, it's still pretty huge. It's 211.3 megabytes Or I could save it in PDF.
19:39:54 And it would be… 252.6 megabytes. Still pretty big.
19:40:01 Or I could save it as a JPEG. And as a jpeg.
19:40:06 It's 26 megabytes. So think about this. Is originally almost 400 megabytes and now it's 26 megabytes I could save it in.
19:40:18 Apple's high efficiency image format And it's 13 megabytes. It's the same file.
19:40:24 And if I open them up. This is the original.
19:40:34 And this is Apple's high efficiency one that's just a fraction of the size.
19:40:39 They look the same. If you look at the size of the the dimensions of the document The original is the original 9,784 pixels by 13,000 360 pixels and so is the Apple high efficiency Document.
19:41:02 They're both the same dimensions and they look the same. So how do you perform this magic?
19:41:10 Well, you perform this magic by using preview. And here's an example of something.
19:41:19 This is… some punts on the punts on the Thames River in Oxford.
19:41:28 The students like to wander around pushing these. You run a punt by using a long pole and you push yourself along.
19:41:35 This is what the original photo look like?
19:41:39 And this is what I created. This is a mosaic. And to show you kind of the magic, I'm going to increase the size of this.
19:41:47 As I blow it up, you will that this one image is actually made up of 5,000 images that I took throughout England.
19:41:58 As you wander around through the wander around photograph, you'll see that it's made up of thousands upon thousands of photos.
19:42:07 And it makes a mosaic. Depends and it kind of looks Very art.
19:42:15 Impressionistic. But anyway, it's huge it is how big is it?
19:42:24 I've covered it up, so I don't know.
19:42:31 It is… 134 megabytes in size.
19:42:37 So I have this 134 megabyte file and somebody wants to get a copy of it. How do they get it?
19:42:43 I go to file, I say export And it pops up with this, you know, where I went to have it located. And that's nice to know.
19:42:51 But here's the important part down here. I can save it as a high efficiency file. I can save it as a JPEG, a JPEG 2000, Don't ever say things that way. Open EXR. Don't ever save things that way.
19:43:03 I can save it as a PDF, a PNG, or a TIFF.
19:43:06 Well, it's a TIF already. We know the TIFF's too large.
19:43:09 So let's save it as high efficiency file. And I just leave the settings alone, I'm not going to change anything. And I say save And it saves it.
19:43:25 And now I open up this one and it went from 134 megabytes to If I press the right button.
19:43:36 2.12 at 12.8 megabytes so it's just a tiny fraction of the original file.
19:43:45 And I did that with preview. Some things to note, though, is that you can get a little bit different. This original JPEG that I saved over here. This is the original file that I created the image from.
19:44:00 No, that's too small. Anyway, I don't care. We're going to experiment here.
19:44:06 I'm going to say… export and I'm going to say save it JPEG.
19:44:14 And since I already have something, oh, yeah, no, I can save it. Fine.
19:44:17 I say to save it And I've saved it as a JPEG and it's going to be
19:44:28 It says it's going to be 21 megabytes. So it's not as good a format as the Apple's high efficiency, which is 12 megabytes.
19:44:36 But here's a problem with Apple's high efficiency. Even though it's an open standard, most people in the Windows world can't see it. So if you're going to send somebody something in the Windows world.
19:44:48 You're better off always sending it as a JPEG. But say you happen to know that they don't have much storage on their device and you want to save it so I would just save it for them?
19:45:00 We go up here and we say export And we're going to save it as a JPEG. If you crank this down here to about one-third you'll see that it decreases the size.
19:45:15 Quite a bit. So at the default for this, it's going to be 20 megabytes and down here it's going to be less it's going to be like Oh, 5.1.
19:45:25 So we're going to call this punce And say save.
19:45:32 And I'm going to open up this one and I'm going to open up prints two.
19:45:38 And it's going to be really hard to tell the difference between the two of them.
19:45:47 On most images, you can save about Oh, two thirds of the space simply by cranking it down.
19:45:56 Lower. And that's uh That's nice to know.
19:46:02 Because you can save a lot of space. The other thing that you can do, and I'll use my original punts photo for this.
19:46:10 This photo was 1.6 megabytes in size.
19:46:17 And it's 2000 by 3,000. Most people, when they view things in email, they don't really want something terribly big.
19:46:26 So not only can you… save it as a compressed format, but you can also make it just smaller.
19:46:33 I can adjust the size. The average size of a screen running across on a laptop is about 800 to 900 pixels. So I'm going to type in 900 pixels. I'm going to change the resolution to 72. It said it was at 300.
19:46:51 And that looks much smaller. But if I say view actual size, you'll actually see it as much larger than it really is.
19:46:57 Then I come along here and I say export I go to my JPEG thing and I crank it down here to about a third and say.
19:47:09 We're going to call this Oxford. To save.
19:47:18 This is the original. And this is the one that I just created.
19:47:23 That is much, much smaller. The original was 1.6 megabytes. And this one is… 125k.
19:47:34 So it's less than a tenth the size. But to the person you're sending it to, they look identical.
19:47:41 Just that one's 10 times bigger.
19:47:49 And… Unfortunately, for my next example, I don't actually have no revert changes, I don't care.
19:47:57 I need a picture that's got text on it.
19:48:01 You'll just have to take my word for it. If you're running one of the modern Mac operating systems. The other nice thing that you can do with preview is you can use it for scraping text off of things.
19:48:13 I like to go into when I'm going to parks and such, and it tells me that this is the painted desert and this part of the painted desert is such and such.
19:48:21 I like to take a picture of the sign So I remember what it is that I'm looking at. Well, later on when I'm making captions, I don't necessarily want to copy everything off of that sign by retyping it.
19:48:34 The Merck now has tech recognition built into preview if you're using one of the more recent operating systems.
19:48:41 You just run your cursor across the text on the picture, it'll turn it into text that you can then paste into something as a caption. And you don't have to due to any particular, you don't have to re-tape anything
19:48:56 If there are typos in the original, you'll have just the same typos.
19:49:00 It's really quite magical. There's a… If you've been to the Squim post office, if you go, as you're going through the front door, if you go over to the extreme left There's a driveway there. The gates are always shut and it's got a whole bunch of collections of signs that are just not very friendly.
19:49:19 U.s. Government property, keep out, no admittance. Just a whole collection. I think it's quite hilarious because it's also quite redundant.
19:49:29 You can go take a picture of the fence there, of the gate.
19:49:33 And then just scrape the text off of it and just you have a nice collection of ominous sounding signs and you can make your own.
19:49:42 You know, you don't have to do anything necessarily useful with this technology, but sometimes it can be fun.
19:49:48 Any questions on preview?
19:49:54 Unfortunately, the iPad doesn't have anything like preview, which is a shame.
19:49:58 I wish it did. I've tried to do some of this stuff on… the iPad and on the iPad, sometimes you have to work harder.
19:50:09 Um… I said that if I had time, I was also going to cover something else, but I don't remember what I said I was going to do.
19:50:18 So what did I say I was going to do?
19:50:24 Oh, font book screenshot and weather. I was going to talk about weather.
19:50:32 Since Noah has actually been in the news, I'm going to talk about weather.
19:50:36 For a second. And I got to show my screen again.
19:50:41 And bring up weather.
19:50:48 The weather app. You can customize it. It's got this sidebar. Normally, it'll just show you the weather wherever you happen to be.
19:50:56 And it tells you that the Weather now and it shows you into the future. So it's cloudy now. You're going to be able to see the moon around eight o'clock Then it's going to get cloudy again and sunrise is going to be at 716.
19:51:13 And then you can press this little bar and it'll show you into next.
19:51:18 The next day and it's going to rain in the afternoon and all that sort of stuff.
19:51:22 And you can click on this. It'll give you Wednesday's forecast.
19:51:26 And you can go through the day and it'll show you what's going on at the temperature.
19:51:30 And you can change this right now it's showing
19:51:36 Temperature down here is precipitation and precipitation total and all kinds of things that you can look at.
19:51:45 But the sidebar, which you can customize, you can add other places.
19:51:49 So if you go into settings you can say If you want it in Celsius or you can have it in Fahrenheit Or just use whatever your computer's already using.
19:52:00 You have it miles per hour or kilometers, inches or millimeters or whatever it is you want to know.
19:52:07 And you can say whether you want to get alerts for severe weather.
19:52:11 But you can also add where you went to different places I went to weather in swim i went to weather in Seattle, which is not necessarily the same.
19:52:25 I went rather in Salford. This is in England because that's where my daughter lives.
19:52:30 Yokosuka, which is where she was born. And because it's daylight over there, you notice it changed the screen. It's dark here, but it's daylight in Yokosuka. Alexandria, Virginia, my brother lives there.
19:52:43 Silverdale, because I go to Silverdale quite often. And then when I want to feel good about the weather, I also have Antarctica and Prudhoe Bay.
19:52:51 You'll notice that Prudho Bay is minus 11 right now and Antarctica is much colder.
19:52:56 So you can add these things to the sidebar. And… Just… learn a lot. One of the things that people have been, a lot of conspiracy theories asking where does the data come from?
19:53:13 Almost all this data comes from NOAA. But quite often he gets massaged by other places. And if you Go to the About menu in weather and click on weather. It comes up with where all kinds of information about the weather thing and
19:53:28 Severe storms forecasts and air quality and all kinds of stuff tells you that.
19:53:33 But if you click this one, the data button, it shows you the same thing.
19:53:38 It's not what I wanted for. The map data. These are all the different places that it gets map data for.
19:53:46 It's a huge, huge, huge, huge list. Because it's not getting not only from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it's also getting it from British Met and Environment Canada whoever happens to be the local weather outlet.
19:54:04 So weather is really quite cool. Weathers originally appeared on the iPhone and then they added it to the iPad and it's a recent addition to the Mac.
19:54:14 And with the new operating system, you can actually customize your desktop I have a second screen over here that the weather's on there all the time.
19:54:25 So I can just click on it to get weather. Any questions on that?
19:54:35 And I've got just a couple more minutes.
19:54:39 So I want to talk about a question that I get a lot.
19:54:44 Which is how to take a screenshot. And for that i should Go.
19:54:55 Find some documents someplace.
19:55:00 Okay. Actually, that's a good idea. I'm going to bring up messages.
19:55:06 Because there's a piece of spam. Yes.
19:55:07 Lawrence, here's a question. It says, where is the monitoring place for the swim weather?
19:55:15 That's a good question. The answer is Squim does not have a… I want to look at people.
19:55:23 Scrum does not have a National Ocean Service weather station. Weather Service Office is located at SeaTac, and it covers a very wide area.
19:55:36 They do have instruments all over the place. They've got them at the UW. They've got them at Mount Baker. They got them at Mount Rainier. They got them all over the place. They don't have one in Squim.
19:55:46 What they do is they build these huge mathematical models.
19:55:53 That model the currents and they derive data between one point and another point.
19:55:59 So if it's this temperature at one monitoring gene station and it's this temperature at another one and it's an this temperature at a third one and the wind is blowing this way they factor that in for deriving that based upon the elevation and so on and so forth, it's probably going to be
19:56:15 This temperature at your place. And you might have noticed that there were actually two different entries for Squim because there's Squim where I'm located.
19:56:23 And there's squirm as in the city of Squim. So it always, when you first set it up, it's going to say where I'm located and it's going to give you a a reading for that. And then if you add Squim as a town it's going to add it for the city of Squim.
19:56:38 And the city of Swim is always going to have different weather than I am. Why? Because I'm a mile from the straight and the squam is about three or four miles or something like that.
19:56:49 If you live up on Bell Hill, Bell Hill is 600 to 700 feet high in some places.
19:56:53 It's going to have different weather and it knows that and it's built into the weather model.
19:56:58 And the weather model derives it for the missing pieces. The US Weather Service has the United States divided up into 140,000 regions.
19:57:09 And they give a forecast for every region every 15 minutes 24 hours a day.
19:57:16 Every day of the year. That's an awful lot of forecasts.
19:57:20 The Weather Service doesn't have that many people. It's only got 5,000 people.
19:57:23 So how does it do that? Well, a lot of those weather forecasts for the indeterminate parts are done by model.
19:57:31 And then they go through and they verify how accurate the model was. So if there's a discrepancy.
19:57:38 It was down a degree or up a degree or it had more rain or whatever. They factored that into them.
19:57:43 Model, it's automatically collected and the forecasters get a scorecard on how close they were.
19:57:51 It's It's rather complicated.
19:57:55 For SWIM, they don't have a weather station here and it's mathematically derived.
19:58:00 But it's the the math medical model is quite, quite good. The accuracy in the 1960s was they had about a 60% accuracy rate And the accuracy rate today is over 95%.
19:58:17 It may not be exactly the right temperature. You might get more rain than they expected. But if they say there's a 50% chance of rain tomorrow and there's no rain at all.
19:58:27 That would be a major heads would roll. That would be unusual.
19:58:34 But they don't have a station here in Squim simply because There are 330 million Americans and 5,000 people can't give little micro forecast for everything.
19:58:48 There are micro forecasts for special events, the Super Bowl presidential inauguration.
19:58:53 For major events, the Weather Service will have a special forecast just for a special smaller region.
19:59:02 But normally it's just one of their 140,000, 120,000. Regions. And you have to remember that those regions can cover things like mountaintops and open ocean and large portions of Alaska that are nothing there but caribou so when i say
19:59:19 120,000 regions. Keep in mind that those are fairly large.
19:59:23 And the average weather reporting function in the United States. It's not by zip code. It's not by population center. It's mostly by counties.
19:59:34 So the forecast will be for the county of clallum. It'll be for the county of Howard County, where we were in maryland You could put about 60 of them inside of Clallam County.
19:59:46 Clallam County is actually really huge. There are states smaller than Powhatton County.
19:59:55 In San Bernardino County. Is the largest county in the United States and it's just massive And it goes from the Pacific ocean to Nevada. So it's got a staggering range of of climate variability.
20:00:13 San Bernardino has about six or eight forecasts. Kong gets one.
20:00:20 But then it derives it for smaller places in between. So when you go to the National Weather Service.
20:00:27 Website and you type in clallum county and you say it probably knows that you're in swim, but if it doesn't say you're in swim, you'll notice that it'll draw an area around there and the forecast is for the stuff in that area and that's done mathematically.
20:00:43 It knows what's above you, what's below you, which way the wind's blowing, what the temperature is, what the humidity is. And from that, it comes up with that.
20:00:50 Forecast. Was that a too complicated answer to… what might have been a simple question.
20:00:55 Good.
20:00:59 That's good. Thank you.
20:01:02 Other questions? I know way too much about the weather.
20:01:09 I work for National Ocean Service, which doesn't do weather forecasts.
20:01:13 But about 60% of the mathematical model for the world comes from ocean data so had a lot to do with it, even if it really wasn't really my job.
20:01:26 Bye-bye.
20:01:27 I was going to say there's a lot of interest in the ambient leather network that is local people who have their own little weather stations And if you go to that, it's an app.
20:01:52 Yes.
20:01:42 On the phone, you can see what other people's temperatures are in your most immediate region. And it's amazing how many people are signed for that and are doing some reporting. I don't believe that it's it's very powerful in terms of
20:01:58 But in terms of the temperature at the moment or what's happening at the moment.
20:02:04 It seems to be fairly accurate.
20:02:09 Something about the… the crowdsourced weather you should know.
20:02:15 Is that that's It's only as good as its data. And I'll give you an example. The Weather Channel or I don't remember who it was.
20:02:24 They used to sell these kits called Weather Bug. And they sold them to schools and the the weather bug reporting network would they would collect this information and they would distribute it so if you wanted to know what the weather was in your area, it would find the locus
20:02:40 Closest place that had a weather bug. And when my daughter was in elementary school and she's now in her late 30s, so this was a while ago She wanted to know what the weather was right outside.
20:02:54 And I said, well, I don't know. We'll look at what weather bugs said and so typed in to weather bug and it found my local station and it said the outside temperature was 192 degrees.
20:03:07 Which now the East Coast does get really hot and even with humidity, it might felt like it's 192, but that did seem a little high.
20:03:14 And so I just thought it was some screw up. But then the next day in the Washington Post.
20:03:20 I was reading this article about this fire at an elementary school. Somebody had set fire to the weather bug the rack.
20:03:29 It was outside of the science room and somebody had set fire to it. So it was an accurate temperature because at that particular point.
20:03:36 Before it melted down and completely stopped functioning, it did reach 192 and then it just froze forever because that was the last anyone ever heard of it.
20:03:45 And that's one of the problems with a lot of the crowdsourced weather.
20:03:51 There was a… Another example where a university said that that they had their own little independent. A lot of the weathering stations are automatic, even with the weather service Weather Service has this thing called AWIPS, which stands for Automated Weather Forecasting Information
20:04:12 Processing system. I don't remember what it stands for. Something like that. And an AWIP station is they take an acre and they fence it off and it's got this little robot in the dead center that's not near anybody, not near any trees. And it collects rainfall and
20:04:27 Do and temperature and so on and so forth. Well, this university, they decided they were going to do it cheaper than the Weather Service. Instead of having an acre, they just stuck it in this courtyard.
20:04:38 And they had it set up there. And during the night, it said that they'd had four and a half feet of rain.
20:04:45 Which seemed excessive because it had rained a lot, but not four and a half feet.
20:04:49 During the night, one of the gutters came off of one of the buildings landed on top of this and it was pouring all the water off of the roof onto the top of their weather monitoring station. So they ended up with four and a half feet of water.
20:05:04 The Weather Service checks their data for things like that, but the crowdsource places They don't have that.
20:05:13 The means to do that. I'm not bad-mouthing the crowdsourced data because it is useful, but That's not what the Weather Service uses for their forecasts.
20:05:26 And for their reporting. One more C story about this.
20:05:33 The… Down at the bottom when you're watching the weather, they used to have these things called a crayon. A cron is that running text that runs across the bottom.
20:05:44 And the… TV stations bought this technology from this company that would read the weather service stuff off of the Weather Service website and they translated and then process it as crions for local weather stations.
20:05:59 Local weather station would have this weather stuff that was scrolling across the bottom and nobody at the station actually had to do anything.
20:06:06 The Weather Service changed the formatting of their website and people were on their TV stations We're broadcasting things that like say tomorrow it's going to be minus 17 And Oklahoma in the summertime, which it wasn't And that's because the Weather Service had changed their site
20:06:26 Format and the cryon reader didn't realize that it was just sending garbage data out.
20:06:33 It was inventing towns and all kinds of strange things and strange things and the weather stations yelled at the weather service. It had nothing to do with that. It had to do with this box that the TV stations bot that was trying to read the website and turn it into data.
20:06:50 And that's not a good practice. But I do remember all kinds of interesting discussions of that.
20:07:01 Any other questions?
20:07:08 Why don't you think about what you want to do for April and send me an email.
20:07:15 There's still other utilities that we could talk about for example talking about there was suggested font book and taking screenshots and Things like that. Screenshots are definitely something that a lot of people want to know about.
20:07:32 And font book, it's definitely nice to know how that works and why you why you should care. But if you have other suggestions please send them.
20:07:42 Lawrence, I have a quick question. I had a phone call.
20:07:45 Yes.
20:07:47 And so I'm not sure if I missed it or not, but when you were showing the different sizes of files that could be open with or that was like a JPEG or with a PDF or what have you. So when you scan that document originally through the scanner.
20:08:04 Did you tell it what kind of a file you wanted it to be to save to the desktop or how did you make the different
20:08:15 I originally scanned it as a TIFF image because the scanner that I had, that's the only way that it saved things.
20:08:23 And it was a fragile piece of rice paper. And so I wasn't going to take it anywhere else. I was going to use this scanner that I had. And when it scanned it, it scanned as a TIFF image and a tiff image
20:08:35 Is an uncompressed video image and I could explain what that means, but not right now.
20:08:41 But anyway, that was the only choice I had. My original document was the TIF image, and that's because that's the only thing the scanner supported at that point. More modern scanners have They can scan things in a variety of different formats.
20:08:57 If I was scanning that today on my printer, it would have been a considerably smaller document, but this was, I don't know, 10 years ago.
20:09:09 And TIFF was the original format for scanning things.
20:09:16 I don't know if that answered the question.
20:09:19 Well, I'm just not sure how you got it as a PDF or as a JPEG or as a PG.
20:09:30 Oh, I see. Oh, okay.
20:09:26 Png. I use preview and I exported it. I loaded up the TIFF image and then I exported it as one thing, then another thing, then another thing.
20:09:37 It's the missing link. Okay, it was all through preview.
20:09:36 So I can show you the difference.
20:09:41 It's all through preview. Preview is really, really, really clever and well worth understanding.
20:09:42 Got it.
20:09:49 Okay, sounds good. Well. Then we will send you in our Questions, sure.
20:09:55 Suggestions.
20:09:58 I have a question that might be quick, might not. If it's quick, maybe you could answer it. If it isn't, then maybe not.
20:10:06 But I'm wondering about file association. On Windows, that's an easy thing to do.
20:10:13 On Mac, it doesn't seem so easy to do. I mean, you can say open width and then it'll go up and it'll open that particular file. There even is a checkbox that you can say always open with.
20:10:27 But it appears to be only that one document and it doesn't do that with all the same file extenders.
20:10:37 Actually, that's how I set up preview to open up TIFF.
20:10:37 I like it.
20:10:42 Because the Mac If you install Photoshop in your machine.
20:10:49 Photoshop will assume that it wants to open up every TIFF image.
20:10:58 Right.
20:10:52 And I did not want to open up Photoshop, which takes forever to load Every time I clicked on a TIFF image. So I went through and I did a get info on a TIFF image and I said, set as default to preview.
20:11:06 And that's how it opens now. If I click on a TIFF image, it's going to open in preview.
20:11:11 That's how you set it and it should work. I will tell you, though.
20:11:17 A lot of people on the mac at our last meeting, someone said that they changed an HEIC file to a JPEG just by going and changing the extension.
20:11:30 That's not what changes the format. And I have seen people who've done that and they think they were setting it to a default to open a particular file.
20:11:39 But no, they were setting it to a file that had been mangled in some way. And in that case it won't it won't do that trick. But as far as I know.
20:11:49 Setting it to be the default application should say from that point on, if you click on it.
20:11:55 It'll open with that application. Ancient work.
20:11:59 Very good. I'll give that a go.
20:12:02 Yeah. Any other quick questions?
20:12:08 If not, then good night.
20:12:11 Good night. Thank you.
20:12:11 Thank you very much.

A toy, and more books

A toy, and more books

Townscaper

Some games are a game (there is a goal, you win, etc.), and some games are toys (no plot, no goal, but fun). Townscaper is a toy: you build buildings, islands, bridges, cathedrals, castles, apartment complexes — whatever strikes your fancy.

You can play Townscaper on the web for free. Just point your browser at the website,

https://www.townscapergame.com

and start clicking around. Fun. Addictive. It is also one of the few video games I can play just as well as my seven-year-old grandchild. For almost everything else, she reigns supreme.

The web version requires an Internet connection, but there is a version for the iPad that works without access to the Internet, perfect for keeping your brain alive in a clinic waiting room or waiting for a significant other to do whatever it is that they want to do and you don’t. The iPad version costs something like $4.95 (it costs a developer money to put something on the Apple store, and the trivial cost reimburses them for the effort), but if you like the web version and have an iPad, it is a modest purchase.

Townscaper on iPad:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/townscaper/id1549531491

Screenshot of Townscaper on an iPad. It includes bridges, balconies, open-frame buildings, and seagulls, among other things.
Screenshot of Townscaper on an iPad. I was experimenting with building bridges, creating buildings with open frames, building ridiculous balconies, and other fun things while sitting in a clinic waiting room. While it isn’t obvious from the still image, you can rotate your creation, zoom in and out, and generally have great fun building fantasy structures. There are seagulls, too, but you have no more control over them than non-digital seagulls.

Townscaper has its own Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Townscaper

The developer also has a more limited, but somewhat richer game that is web-only, Brick Block,

https://oskarstalberg.com/game/house/index.html

Books

On a more serious front, Take Control Books has updates to titles of interest. Take Control of Untangling Connections, 3rd edition, covers USB, Thunderbolt, HDMI, Displayport, Ethernet, and audio connections, cables, compatibilities, and other things. If you have a tangle of cables around your computer, this book will tell you what the cables do, how to use them, why they are not interchangeable, which ones you can do without, etc.

Take Control of Untangling Connections book cover

Take Control of Apple Media Apps covers Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, Apple TV, Apple Books, and the various complexities of consuming books, music, audio, and video on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. As someone who has a couple thousand books in Apple Books and over a thousand albums in Apple Music, take my word for it: you can organize things and make life easier.

Take Control of Apple Media Apps book cover

Keep Safe Using Mobile Tech is a new book aimed at a growing problem: keeping your private information safe on your iPhone, iPad, laptop, etc. You have a wealth of health information on your Apple Watch and iPhone, a wealth of private information on almost every Apple device, and a vast trove of financial information spread across apps, passwords, and documents on all your devices. Knowing how to maintain access, how to keep your information secure, and how to prevent accidentally sharing what you don’t want to share — these are not simple tasks. But they also are not beyond your abilities, if you know how, and this book aims to teach you how to take control.

Keep Safe Using Mobile Tech book cover

Take Control Books has also released updates to Take Control of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, as well as Take Control of Sequoia. As these are updates, not new editions, you can download a free update quickly through their website. The update, among other things, talks about new capabilities via Apple Intelligence and some feature updates to various applications.

Take Control of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 book cover
Take Control of Sequoia book cover

Remember that SMUG members can get a 30% discount on Take Control books by using the discount code published on our website: https://strait-mac.org/discussion-topics/take-control-books-discount-for-smug-members/