I recently discovered a game-changing feature in iOS 14.5 that allows me to change the rotation lock of my iPhone screen directly from within the Shortcuts app. This has been a huge time-saver for me, as I was previously stuck with a rotation lock that would turn on every time I opened the Photos app, which was just annoying.

I created an automation using the Shortcuts app where every time I open the Photos app, it turns off the rotation lock, allowing me to easily turn my phone sideways without having to manually adjust the screen. Conversely, whenever I close the Photos app, the shortcut kicks in and locks the rotation back on. It's been a lifesaver for taking photos or videos with my phone.

However, before I could fully appreciate this automation, I realized that I was getting notifications from the Shortcuts app itself every time it ran, which was not ideal. That's when I stumbled upon an article that revealed a hidden setting in Screen Time that allows you to turn off notifications for specific apps, including Shortcuts.

To access this feature, I went to Settings > Screen Time, and then tapped on "See All Activity" to view the detailed activity report for my phone. From there, I was able to see how many notifications each app had sent me in a given day or week. When I scrolled down to the Notifications section, I saw that Shortcuts was listed with an arrow next to it, indicating that I could tap on it to view more options.

However, when I tapped on the arrow, I didn't see the option to turn off notifications like I expected. Instead, I had to go back a day or forward a day and then tap on the arrow again, which revealed the notification options for Shortcuts. With that, I was able to toggle off all notifications for the app, ensuring that I don't receive any further distractions.

This feature has been a revelation for me, as it's allowed me to completely eliminate notifications from my Shortcuts automations. It's now possible for me to run multiple automations without being interrupted by notifications, which is a huge improvement in terms of productivity and focus.

I've also discovered the value of Homebridge in integrating smart home devices with Siri, including my Roomba vacuum cleaner. While Homebridge does require some setup and configuration, it has allowed me to seamlessly integrate my Roomba with other smart home devices using the "if this then that" concept from Shortcuts.

As a Mac user, I've found that running Homebridge on my Mac Mini has been incredibly smooth and reliable. The app works in the background without any issues, allowing me to control my smart home devices hands-free using Siri or the Shortcuts app.

I would recommend Homebridge to anyone looking to integrate their smart home devices with Apple's ecosystem. While it may require some technical know-how, the benefits of seamless integration and automation far outweigh the costs.

Finally, I want to encourage our listeners to share their own experiences with the new M1 iMac or iPad Pro, as well as any other Apple products they've recently received. We'd love to hear about your thoughts and impressions in the comments section or on social media using our Twitter handle @appppinssider.

Additionally, we invite you to check out Homekit Insider, a weekly podcast that delves into the world of smart home devices and Apple's ecosystem. From new product reviews to expert interviews with industry insiders, Homekit Insider is your go-to resource for all things smart home related.

If you'd like to support our show and get an ad-free version of every episode, we invite you to visit Patreon.com/appppinssider. Your support means the world to us, and we're grateful for your continued interest in the show. Don't forget to leave a five-star review and rating on Apple Podcasts, as this helps us reach a wider audience and bring more valuable content to our listeners.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this episode is brought to you by every plates molecule nebia and start mail don't forget if you'd like to get an adree episode you can support the show at patreon.com Insider joining me this week my friend Neil Hughes how's it going Neil doing okay how about you Stephen doing well William could not join us I know many listeners love to hear Williams Antics on the show but he'll be back soon so worry not listeners so first off I just want to side of the way up front Neil apple is printing money over there in copertino they had their Quarter Two earnings this past week and they have taken $ 89.6 billion in Revenue that is a 54% year-over-year growth there's a bunch of numbers and interesting facts I'll put the articles in show notes you can read exactly what Apple earned and where the two most interesting piece of information I thought obviously iPhone kills it everywhere the services saw a big increase but the back last year this time it was at $5.3 billion Revenue it almost doubled to $9.1 billion this is the March quarter so it's got to be those m1s are really I think doing well and then the other interesting part was that Apple announced that they have 660 million paid subscriptions I don't really break that out I mean I guess you know one it just might be apple music one might be the Apple One Services bundle but their push for services revenue is really doing well yeah and the interesting thing is Services were up but compared to everything else they were actually the the quote unquote disappointment I guess of the quarter only 25% or whatever it was right right uh you know the real blowouts this quarter I mean it's kind of funny we take the iPhone for granted because it's always a blowout and and yet again here it was but the the big surprises were as you said the Mac but also the iPad yeah um and you got to remember that you know these numbers came before uh the announcement of the new iMac before the new iPad Pros I mean Apple's just cleaning up right now with people working from home and and people uh and children doing school from home and all that uh but yeah the iPad and Mac numbers were absolutely outstanding and it's a real Testament to the power of Apple moving away from Intel and the buzz that they've gotten from putting out their own chip because you can tell that people are responding to it you can tell that that this is going to be a very big deal and it's going to be a huge wave in the months and years to come for the Mac yeah absolutely and thinking about their launch strategy for these m1s I mean it's amaz they have an incredible quarter right now for Max Jason Snell actually tweeted this is a record setting this is the best quarter of all time in revenue for the Mac up 70% it beat the record set two quarters ago so just amazing and then if they dribble out these M1 Maxs you know you got the iMac M1 coming out this month in May and then who knows whatever the high-end Mac's coming soon I they could really ride this Mac Revenue line up for the next year or two so Apple knows how to do strategy I mean Tim Cook's an operations guy so well you know I I'll give you a preview here because I'm going to be writing an editorial in the next few days about there's always the naysayers of Tim Cook which is hilarious he can't innovate he he he can't do this he's just all about revenue or all that well here they are innovating they they've moved all their products over to a single chip architecture right um he's released airpods the Apple watch new product segments that are hugely successful the entire migration of the Mac over to Apple silicon I mean like you think about the things that have been done under Tim Cook's tenure and the fact that they're making more money than ever he's taking big and bold risks and he's succeeding and they're making more money than ever and they're in a a environmentally conscious socially conscious company uh they are you know employees are happy shareholders are happy consumers are happy it's just like you know anybody who has any issues with Tim Cook at this point needs to get their head checked because it's it's insane like the things that this guy has been able to accomplish are beyond the wildest dreams of anybody and people who think that he's not the right fit for CEO are are are absolutely wrong yeah I agree and a lot of people have been commenting on colors coming back to the iMac and that might not sound like a big deal but there were many years in between basically now and back when the emac and those colored Macs were coming you know we really didn't have like colors or I don't know if fun is a better word but yeah no fun is the perfect word fun that's the word that it should be fun these products are fun you want to interact with them you want to use them people like that and I mean we could all use a little bit of fun in our lives right now let's get real like you know these launching right now are the right product for the right time I would love to buy one of these new iMacs I just I I I need you know I I need Target display mode if I'm going to use it otherwise it's not really for me uh so I'm waiting for them I'm hoping that when they do the 24 in uh display that they're evely do with the same display they're using on the iMac that they do it in colors cuz I would love to buy a colorful monitor I think that they're great and I think that more colors across all the products will be a good thing absolutely and you know I've been trying to Branch into more colorful I usually go space gray or black on everything no colors but this is this is a small step Neil but I got a pistachio Green Apple watch band it's pretty nice I'm I'm down with the colors for this I I saw you tweeted that it looked the color pretty good it does look pretty good so you know branched in there but you know that fun aspect is something that Apple really captured early on you know when other computer makers were were definitely not fun and so to bring that back I listen to an interview on the upgrade podcast with Mike Hurley and Jason snail they had actually two Apple employees I think in the product marketing talking about the iMac colors and all that kind of stuff and it's in crazy amount of skews for the new iMac because you have multiple models one with two USBC Thunderbolt ports one with four you have the seven different colors plus you have all the magic keyboards the magic mice the power cables like all of those are color match it's a ton of operational products basically that they have to keep track of and produce all these different colors keep them in stock in the stores but they obviously feel like it's worth it to be able to have that kind of playful product again and you know add that back to Apple I I hope they knock it out of the park because I mean you look at some other stuff in the PC industry I think of the gaming space Oh My Goodness the stuff that you see there with like you know these like everything has to light up and like you know has like skulls on it and stuff like that you know it's very much targeted for like this like young aggressive male demographic I love that apple is the antithesis of that and I love that it's fun because even that gaming stuff you know it's fun in its own way right like everything in inside you know your RAM needs to light up in your desktop or some some crap like that why I don't know why they do that yeah and like people like will be like I'm not buying it it doesn't have LED lights whoa I'm the guy who puts tape over all the LED lights okay I don't want LED lights on anything right I don't need that stuff I don't want it I don't have time for it but having a colorful device that is a nice centerpiece of your office or your home or something that you hold in your hand I think that's great and and I I wish that the colors were on the new iPad too for sure well talking about the iPad and the iMac as you listen to this if you listen to it on release date pre-orders are now open for the new M1 iPad Pro the new M1 iMac that we were just talking about and the Apple TV 4K and some other details have come out about these products that we'll get to in a minute but Neil I'm curious what if anything did you buy on the morning of pre-orders so I am picking up uh air tag tomorrow I have to say singular but for air tag tomorrow I think you could say tags when it's four because Apple I don't know Apple's very serious about making it singular so I'm trying to follow in their style yeah air tag units how about that air tag air tag what do you call them discs pucks whatever air yeah yeah something like that I'm getting a four pack tomorrow and I'm I'm actually flying to Florida next week first time now that I'm fully vaccinated I'm going to take a trip to go see my family so I'm excited to test them out um on an airplane I'm going to have a checked bag I'm going to put an air tag in there um see how it all works see if I can you know see when it's coming around the carousel we'll see so I'll have a I'll have a feature on that in a few weeks when I travel and what it's like to travel with an air tag so I'm getting that and I'm getting the Apple TV 4K the new model with the a12 bionic chip I was 99.9999% sure the last time you and I spoke that I was going to get one of the new IP ads and I'm not getting one of the new iPads I I can't do it okay and we're going to talk about why in a second cuz I know you you were you're pretty upset on Twitter when this news came out but I will say I'm getting the new Apple TV 4K new seror remote I'm going to wait on the iMac you know I have an M1 MacBook Pro like you I'm waiting to see where that second generation of M chips m1x M2 whatever it is when that comes to the iMac maybe larger screen and the more powerful MacBook Pro Models but I am definitely buying hard that new M1 iPad Pro the 12.9 in I'm coming from the 11 in so I was going to have to buy a new magic keyboard anyway which we'll talk about the magic keyboard in a second y but I'm going to get that one tab so I get the 16 gigs of RAM the 12.9 in so I have the the liquid retina xdr display that is a name it's a mouthful that is a name it's better than it's better than promotion we'll say that promotion is yeah it's a terrible name what is the the xdr is the pro display xdr and then the iPad now is the liquid retina xdr what do you think xdr stands for well you know they talked about when the xdr was launched the display they were like it it's HDR but like way better at HDR but extreme extreme HDR so I guess it's that you'd almost think it's a gaming PC it's going to it's going to have a bunch of LED lights on it you would think but I guess the difference is they extreme extreme they use Liquid retina for like handheld devices because I don't think liquid retina has ever been in a Mac it's either the pro display xdr they have Retina displays on the Macs like MacBook Pro and when it comes to the mobile devices like iPad and iPhone you have liquid retina or just retina I don't know I I feel like it's a little little too much naming I don't really care about The Branding the screens are gorgeous screen's going to be amazing screen's going be amazing so I'm very excited to try it out and again I should have some air tag air air tag pucks I'll have some uh air tag quantities coming to my house delivering I got a pack of four and I got one engraved I wasn't sure if that was going to be delayed but turns out it's all going to come the same day and there were some reviews out of the air tag units this is miserable the air tag units you know MKBHD had a review The Verge Austine they all had reviews and so I'll put a couple of those YouTube links in the show notes watching the reviews it's really compelling especially using that precise location tracking so if you're within MKBHD said it was like 50 ft was the maximum but if you're within that 50ft range of the air tag on your iPhone if it has an ultra wide band chip which is iPhone 11 or iPhone 12 that it will have that Arrow pop up on the screen and point in the direction of the air tag and that just looks sweet I mean especially if it's just in your house yeah it's really cool a lot of times it's not like the things are far away that you have lost it's either in the house or in your place of work and you just can't remember you know did you leave them on your desk you put them in a drawer and so having that Arrow pop up and then the sound also it's incredible that these little discs like POG things can actually make a sound you don't even see the speaker holes on it right but that it can make it sound and that you get that Ultra wideband location tracking I'm pretty excited about this yeah I'm excited about him too I I am slightly disappointed by by one thing and I'm hoping that it changes and it's the security features of it I understand why Apple did it you don't want to be able to stick an air tag on somebody else's car and track it but for my hyp specific use case which again this is something that applies to very few people but myself being one of them so I used to use you remember automatic the um yeah I had one in my car yeah so I had one as well and one of the things that I use it for is I live in Brooklyn and I have to park on the street and so I don't park in the same place every time I have to find parking wherever I can and I share a car with my wife and we have to find the car and so sometimes if I need to go get it and she's the one who parked it then I got to ask her where was it and she' be like oh it's on this street this lets me know where the car is at all times and it just makes it easier when you're parking it so one of my thoughts was I would love to put an air tag in my car the problem is I drive it once every maybe 3 4 days at most right and apparently with the air tag if it hasn't been within range of your phone within 3 days it starts beeping and sending off an alarm so that you don't track somebody which I get it like I totally understand that I wish that there was I don't know how you get around this because we need to be privacy conscious and we can't allow people to creepily track people or whatever but yeah that's a use case for me where I like the automatic I would love to be able to do that with the air tag and I probably won't be able to so we'll see apparently from some of the stuff I've read Apple can change it on their end and if they find that it's little too aggressive every 3 days to be in range that they might make it a little bit longer okay if I could do like seven days it would probably work cuz I got to move my car once a week but yeah we'll see but that that's a use case for me that's slightly disappointing but I'm still excited to test them out yeah and I saw on Twitter some people are really hammering in this privacy and security thing and thinking that like domestic abuse and stalking is going to be an increased problem and it's like we've had location trackers for a long long time right you know tile has been around chipo is coming out but also just the location of devices not just fine my but Android has these features as well Y and Apple watch built-in GPS and apple took I think all the right steps and preventing any kind of you know malfant and this kind of thing so I I think this is a kind of bizarre argument it's a little overblown and I wish that there was a little bit more granular control but I appreciate that Apple's looking out for security so like I said it's a minor gripe and it's something that's just specific to me and and I think at the end of the day airing on the side of caution is the right way to go with this stuff so I think it was the right move by Apple but we'll see how it works when it's in the wild and everybody can use them yeah absolutely and of course the huge benefit of the Apple Air tag apart from something like tile is if you do lose lose something like you left it on a subway train or whatever that all Apple devices the iPhones and things like that can see this air tag they can't see who it belongs to readily but it can ping the location using all the Apple devices around then if someone actually does find the specific air tag they can scan it and get the phone number that you have attached to that air tag so they can call you to retrieve it one thing I thought was interesting is it works on Android and iPhone right so if someone finds an air tag and they have an Android phone they can scan it with NFC and they get a nice little website with a phone number and they can call you right then if an iPhone user finds an air tag it doesn't have the same cool NFC scanning feature the person actually has to go to the find my app and then hold their iPhone close to the air tag and then they can see the phone number number information that you have left with it so a little bit of a weird difference there I wish you could just hold your iPhone close to an air tag and the information pops up in a website right away but cool feature nonetheless what is it with NFC on iPhones it seems like it's just not the same like right like I I bought a few years ago they they opened up NFC to series shortcuts so I said oh I'm excited and I bought um a bunch of little NFC stickers and they just don't work like you know like I was like oh I'll do this I'll do that I had all these ideas and then I'll hold my phone next to it and it works maybe 50% of the time it's like really bad I don't know why I wonder if it's like a power saving measure or what a lot of times I did a lot of those short cut automations with NFC tags I found like if you get too close it doesn't work so you can't like touch the top of your phone to an NFC tag there has to be some space and then I also found it works better if you've just unlocked your iPhone and hold it to an NFC tag right away which seems strange like if you're using your iPhone you should just be able to hold it to an NFC tag and it scans it quickly but for some reason if I lock my phone unlock it and then hold it quickly to that NFC tag it works so it is strange but then other things like link Linq they make business cards and Apple watch bands now that have NFC in them where you can scan the thing and it's like a virtual business card but you need to use either the app or you know do some kind of like weird shortcut thing it doesn't just work you can't just like hold your iPhone close to it and then the information just pops up in a website so I do wish that Apple could open that up and also use NFC on the Apple watch in the same way because right now you can do an NFC Automation and shortcuts from the Apple watch it's only the phone right but the Apple watch has NFC too so it it's just weird differences there and and this is why I'm a little disappointed that we don't have the U1 chip on everything at this point right because like even airdrop how long has air drop been around like 10 years now on my back it doesn't work that well like right like it'll work well on my iPhone but like if I'm trying to air drop to a Mac or from a Mac it's like I'll tell my wife I'll send it to you it's not sending it it cancels out she can't find it got to open air drop and find her to get it to trigger change it so it's open to everybody not just your contacts change it back like it seems like a lot of times we're just messing around with it to try to get it to work and it's not working it seems like it works a lot better on my iPhone than it does on my Mac and I attribute that probably to the fact that they have you know more advanced you know Wireless stuff in the newer iPhones than my 2018 Mac or whatever but it's like I do see with my homepod mini and my iPhone 12 Pro when I put it within range it immediately starts working so it's like give me the U1 chip in everything like I want all these devices exactly it's not in the new iPads right it's not on the new iPads which is really unfortunate it's not in the new it's not in the new remote for the Apple TV the Siri remote I know missed opportunity you were actually close to being right airdrop came out N9 years ago in 2011 with iOS 7 so good call on that yeah it's been around for a long time and it still doesn't work that well and I attribute it mostly to the Reliance on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi which is why Apple has to do the the E1 chip but it's this weird thing where it's only some iPhones have it not all iPhones have it the SE doesn't have it and it's like we we saw it with 3D touch and all this stuff it's like you need to have Universal adoption across all devices for it to really work and if we don't get there then it might Peter out so I'm hopeful that they continue to invest in it right so my son he thinks he's an expert on all Apple devices now and he was trying to airdrop something to me he has an iPod Touch pretty recent model iPod Touch to my iPhone and we were had a place where I was connected to the Wi-Fi network of the place but he was not but airdrop is supposed to work either way you know airdrop was supposed to work like you could be in the desert right and you and another person can airdrop something to each other you need no internet access exactly and so he wasn't on the Wi-Fi network but his Wi-Fi was on and so I told him you know airdrop Works without it you don't have to connect to the Wi-Fi network and he was like okay but I don't think it's going to work and I was like yeah he said no I think I need to be on the Wi-Fi network you know I need to have internet to air drop and I was like no you don't but okay and so we tried to air drop first and it didn't work and then to prove his point I put his iPod Touch on the Wi-Fi network and then airdrop worked and I was Furious because now it looks like he got a the upper hand on this Apple device for me so yes I would love air drop to work better wait he he thinks he knows everything about Apple products it sounds like he's well on his way to becoming a apple Insider commenter he might be he thinks he could do it at 12 years old so I kid because I love I kid because I love yeah yeah so Apple has not announced the official availability date of the new M1 iPad Pro iMac and Apple TV but but they have said second half of May but then friend of the show Jason A10 actually found in the HTML code of The Newsroom press release that May 21st was in one of the description dates so again not for sure because Apple did not officially say May 21st but it looks like May 21 might be when these products deliver if you order it on launch dat or available in the store so you have about 3 weeks we have to wait before these products are available so May 21 I don't buy it you buy I don't buy it remember a few years ago when they announced the trash can Mac Pro and they were like it's shipping before the end of the year and they shipped like one unit at 11:59 p.m. on December 31st and like we shipped at C and it's like come on that doesn't count that doesn't count so you're saying if I get my order in at 8:01 a.m. that you don't think I'm going to get on May 21st you'll be lucky if you get yours on the 21st I would say more likely if they go on a Friday it'll be the 28th but they do have until Memorial Day Monday the 31st but since it's a holiday in the US it'll probably be the 28th would be my guess if I if I was betting that would be the most likely Neil I just think you're mad about the magic keyboard I think that's why you're downplaying all this this episode is brought to you by every plate every plate is a meal delivery service that makes it easy and affordable to cook hearty delicious family pleasing meals I'll be honest I've checked out those other meal delivery services and a lot of them are kind of expensive but every plate one meal is basically the price of a cup of coffee and not only that but these meals are feeling and taste great you get more bang for your 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initial reviews to come out cuz I really want someone to try it because there's been people on Twitter like shoving pieces of paper to make up the thickness difference and people say like it fits just fine it closes all the way I don't know why it wouldn't work so but Apple did say it does not work if you have the old 12.9 in magic keyboard the first generation one that would not work with the new one and that uh made you not buy it Neil what's up you know and there's some people out there that are holding out hope that maybe it's just because of Apple's you know meticulous attention to detail that half millimeter they're saying it's not compatible but in reality when you get it in your hands maybe it will work and maybe it will I I don't know we won't find out until somebody's tested it and tried it and all that but I mean let's be real I I wrote an editorial about this saying that Apple should offer a tradein program because I'm not an idiot and I don't think that Apple should give everybody a free keyboard because they bought one a year ago I'm not stupid but they do do trade-ins for other devices and it would make sense because accessories on the market they don't sell nobody cares you know how many times they sold an iPad and said well I'll sell it to you with the official Apple doc back when they made docs and they're like well I don't care about the doc like I'll with the with the Smart Cover I don't care about that they just want the iPad you know nobody cares about these accessories and stuff they're not worth as much on the resale market so it's hard to sell them a lot of times people like I just don't want it so it would be nice if Apple even just offered like $100 toward the tradein of a new keyboard it's overpriced like $350 for this keyboard I love the keyboard I use it all the time I love my iPad it's a great product $350 for a keyboard and trackpad is a lot of money that is just it's a fact like there's no debating on this one a year ago they launched it it was compatible with the previous generation iPad from 2018 which is what I have and it was also compatible with the iPad that was launching at that point but the keyboard arrived a month later after the iPad so it wasn't even like this was like a tandem this is for this year's model it was kind of implicit in what the way they released it that okay you know this will be compatible and so people bought it thinking oh okay this will be you know it'll work for a few years until they changed the form factor whatever yeah and and let's be clear they didn't change the form factor they didn't change the keyboard it's the same thing it it it it has all the same functionality they didn't add a new set of function keys on it to to control stuff they didn't you know add a a a a data port to it it's just power right everything about the keyboard is identical to last year's except for the fact that it accommodates for a half a millimeter now maybe this is all for nothing and it will end up working fine and Apple's just being very you know stubborn about you know things fitting right or whatever but it turns out that the other model will fit fine I don't know it may have something to do with the can delever design because it's a counterweight and all that sort of stuff we will see but yeah if it truly doesn't work the right thing to do for a $350 keyboard is to offer people some sort of an upgrade path because it only launched a year ago and you know a lot of people in the comments or whatever are saying oh who buys a new iPad every year or whatever well it doesn't it's not just applicable to last year's iPad it's applicable to one from three years ago the 2018 iPad so you're talking about people who are spending a lot of money on iPads and it's in Apple's best interest to not nickel and dime them over something so small you know this is a an expensive accessory so I went from as I said thinking I was at 99.999% sure I was going to get a new iPad because I figure oh $1,000 for the iPad uh my keyboard will still work I get this new display that's great okay new iPad starts at 1100 that's fine I don't care uh now you have a choice because they put the M1 chip in there between 8 and 16 gigs right well now it's getting a little bit more difficult right do I need 16 gigs in my iPad not right now but what are they going to announce at WWDC right because if at WWDC they surprise us all and say oh you can run Mac OS on an iPad which I don't think is going to happen but if they do that well now I want a 16 gig iPad that starts at 18 $0000 right and then I got to buy a new keyboard which is $350 so I thought I was going to spend about a th000 bucks get a new iPad and get this great display now I'm looking at about $2,200 before taxes so yeah that's that's a big price jump and so now i' I've decided to take a waitand see approach I'm going to see what they do with iPad OS at WWDC I'm going to see if the keyboard works and if the new keyboard uh works you know if the old keyboard works the new iPad and they do something exciting at wwc then I'll get a 16 G iPad and I'll be ready to go if iPad OS is doing the same stuff then maybe I'll just get a 8 gig uh uh uh RAM iPad so we'll see but I I can't make that Financial commitment right now because it's just not worth it there's no there's no incentive for me to get that new display that badly not not for that kind of money so first of all yeah I do think it's it's just a little crazy that a product that's barely a year old is now obsolete if you want to get the newest iPad it's weird and I agree there should be some kind of trade-in program or whatever I'm in the fortunate position where I had the 11 in before so if I want to go 12.9 I have to buy a new magic keyboard either way my hardest decision is white or black and I think I'm going to try the white to all yeah it looks good warning signs it looks good but you're going to get dirt all over it but it looks good it's going to get dirt all over it but I'm going to try it Apple expert is going to get his fingerprints all over it oh they they can't touch anything this just terrible and the kids just everything's dirty but anyway and what's difficult too about the iPad Pro is as excited as I am about the M1 chip 16 gigs of RAM it has blurred line so much between the mac and the iPad because you can get the same specs in this new iPad Pro as you can in the MacBook Air the MacBook Pro the new iMac and the Mac Mini like this iPad can spec be spec just as high and I guess I understand why they called the chip they put in the iPad Pro the M1 maybe for marketing maybe it's because everybody just loves it and they were like well everybody loves a chip let's just put it in there but it just blurs the line so much when it's the exact same chip it's not an a14x it's not some other chip for the iPad Pro it is the exact same M1 and if you look on Apple's website and you spec up a MacBook Air it's going to be cheaper than this new 12.9 in iPad Pro if you get the keyboard with it for some people I had people emailing me and tweeting you know if I want to get a device and I'm going to spend $22,000 what should I get and this was a question that we had to wrestle with for a long time prior to M1 because certain devices like the iPad Pro when the only Macs were Intel Max was a faster and better experience in certain price ranges and so when people asked what should my one device be it was a tough decision but it was like if you if your needs are X Y and Z email web and you just look at photos get the iPad pro magic keyboard it's going to be a better experience and faster yep and then when the M1 MacBook Air came out the answer was everyone just get an M1 MacBook Air it's amazing it's super fast it's going to last forever and unless you're doing some kind of super video editing or development like this is the computer for you but now people are having the same question do I get an M1 iPad Pro 12.9 in 16 gigs of RAM 1 TB for $2,200 or do I get an M1 MacBook Air with the same specs and save some money plus I have Mac OS and if it's the person's only device I'm still hardpressed to say iPad because they might run into something whether it's a website you know I still run into websites even though Apple says the iPad browser is now desktop Safari there's still websites that don't function on the iPad like you just can't tap certain dropdowns or you can't you know check a box you know for some Medical website or whatever and so if it's a person's only device it still can't be iPad OS unless they make some significant change at dubdub yeah no I I have uh my MacBook Pro here docked my iPad Pro is connected to it um as a second Monitor and I have an LG ultra fine display as my main display and with this new iPad and USB 4 Thunderbolt I could literally replace my Mac with my iPad if it ran Mac OS like and I would I I honestly probably would because the thing I like most about the iPad is it's the computer you need in the moment right right so if you were to undock it take it with you run it as an iPad that's fine and then if I could dock it and have it turn into a Mac that would be great I don't think Apple's going to do that but I mean the the horsepower is there there's no technical reason that they couldn't do it at this point when they're running the M1 chip is the same as the latest Max I could do the entire same setup connect it to my Cal digit dock connect it to my monitor it would all work it would all work with that Hardware it's in there it's capable we'll see what they do at as you call it dubdub because you know I don't really I don't know where they're going to go with the iPad at this point there's so much horsepower in there and the design is so great and the the the OS is so limited you can't multitask with it in the way that you something exciting cuz this new iPad is amazing yeah and I want it very badly and you know this this keyboard situation I tell you people in the comments I you know I joke about people in the comments but they're saying you know they're rushing to defend a trillion dollar Corporation that's making money hand over fist saying oh Apple isn't afraid to innovate and that's why it's okay that they released a new $350 keyboard a year later it's a millimeter difference half a millimeter s half a millim half a millimeter difference same keyboard same functionality same everything yeah so you're going to bend over backwards to defend the giant corporation that is going to charge you $350 for a new keyboard because of a half millimeter difference yeah like you know like listen I understand that people you know are very big fans of apple and this corporate stuff and all that corporations are not your friend at the end of the day you need to look out yourself with your own dollars too so keep that in mind yeah and just to be clear the MacBook Air same specs is $1,650 yep whereas a 12.9 in same specs 1 tab 16 gigs of RAM is $1,800 plus magic keyboard 350 so you're at $2,150 so and you get one less Port you get one less port and you don't get Mac OS and you know actually some someone commented on the YouTube video that I put up about why I'm upgrading to the iPad Pro I'll put a link to that YouTube video in show Notes too so you can see it but they were are like a network engineer and there are certain applications that they need running in the background all the time and they love the iPad and would love to use it for their work but because whatever app can't stay persistently running in the background to monitor Network the iPad is just not an option and those are the kind of unique use cases that I think are more prevalent than maybe we realize just a lot of people have that that one specific app or that one specific task that their job is that just needs to do for their job and you can't do that because of just the nature of the OS like there's no more Hardware limitations like nothing about the new iPad Pro is physically a barricade it is just the OS and you know I I don't care if it's Mac OS on the iPad but you do need to bring some of that utility power those settings ability to manage certain peripherals and then people can make the iPad Pro their main device yep exactly I I don't care what they do whether it's Mac OS or iPad OS gets blown up and turned into something else yeah what it's doing right now just isn't working and and it needs to have more power user features and I don't I don't know what that is but what I what I want to know though is who are the people out there who are going to use a Mac Mini with the new iPad as its primary display with sidecar because they don't want to spend $5,000 on a on an xdr Pro display I saw a few people tweet that they were like that's my plan I want to use this amazing display but I want to run Mac OS so they were they said that that was what they were going to do and it's like I don't know I mean for sidecar you need to be able to initiate it though from the Mac I mean it doesn't just the iPad won't just wake from sleep and be in sidecar mode but I don't know I'm I'm more Curious now that Apple has straight up marketed that the new iPad Pro can run the pro display xdr I want to see the person who has the setup with an iPad Pro and a pro display xdr and that's it what are you doing with that and are there big black bars on the left and right on that Pro display xdr because I you know I mentioned it before I use my iPad with my um LG ultrafine display when I use apple Fitness I plug it in directly right so I have my uh Magic trackpad and keyboard running through my uh the the USB hub on my display right and when I connect it I can use my iPad like a computer like the the the mouse and keyboard work perfectly fine with the iPad it goes through the port so it's like why is it in this 43 aspect ratio it just it's oh man it's it's crazy they need to they need to fix it yeah so hopefully WWDC this year June 7th is the keynote for that event hopefully we'll see big changes in iPad OS I am prepared to have my heartbroken yeah I don't know I still have some hope I mean the biggest changes that I think what Mark Gman leaked was like the home screen will be way better it's like no we don't need a better home screen by the way one thing I have to add is because Mark Gman was the one that said that they might have the uh iPad with an arm that would follow you around the room and what was the thing I said a few weeks ago I said no they have an intelligent algorithm that follows your face they can just use an ultrawide camera and then it'll digitally zoom in and follow you around and guess what that's the feature on the new iPad so I was right again boom I rest my case you called it all right very good I'm not always right but I was right on that one so let me take the Victory lap that's all listen the day Apple car is released William will have a parade say he was right did it he did it all right well also iOS 14.5 and all these subsequent operating systems watchos 7.4 Macos 11.3 that all launched this past week on Monday and so if you haven't updated yet you can do it although I don't know if you should just yet cuz there are a number of bugs we'll talk about it in a second but the standof features were mask unlock so if you have an iPhone 10 or newer with face ID and you have an Apple Watch series 3 or newer you can turn on that unlock with Apple watch feature so if you're wearing a mask your iPhone will see that you're wearing a mask and then unlock if you have your Apple watch on and that's unlocked do you think people why watch is just for that feature I don't know now that you know the CDC said people can be outside without masks that they're vaccinated you know we're finally maybe coming to the decline of mask wearing I don't know it's a great feature I mean I did not try it during the beta season because I like to wait till the public releases and I have to say it works extremely well right I used it with grocery shopping this past week after it came out publicly and it works super fast and it unlocks I feel a little tap on my wrist to let me know that it was my watch that unlocked it so it's an amazing feature if people haven't tried it I highly recommend it but maybe I mean you can get an Apple watch Series 3 although I don't get a series 3 you know if you don't have an Apple Watch get at least a five and it'll future proof you a little bit there's good sales on right now even like $200 series sixes but but maybe but it's a great feature have you used it in the beta time or now yeah it's Hit or Miss for me I I I've been running the beta um I think uh it was a missed opportunity for Apple that they this was in beta for so long as you say you know the latest CDC recommendations I think that maske wearing is probably going to stick with us I think a lot of people are just going to wear them in public just you know because it makes you know people who say well I haven't had a c in the last year so maybe I should keeping this I think that maybe habits will change and it'll be a valuable feature I know that it's obviously very common across Asia to just wear a mask in public so that could be an appealing uh thing in that market as well but yeah I mean it's a great feature it doesn't work reliably enough for me to say that I love it uh but I'm happy that it's there and I think it's well implemented I just I just wish that it was a little bit more reliable so you have the mask unlock that's available to you the color balancing on Apple TV if you have an Apple TV HD with TV o or newer and an iPhone you can do the color balancing thing I did that Miner change to my TV but you know I'll go with it it wouldn't let me do it it said because I have an HDR TV uh with Dolby Vision it said that it's already perfectly calibrated so it wouldn't let me do it I was kind of disappointed like I wanted to use it I was like o let me try this feature and then it it said no you're good that's strange so I have an HDR TV it's an LG but I guess Dolby vision is like another level HDR yeah it's like Dolby has a standard for HDR you know whatever the calibration thing is you need to have you know okay whatever so yeah I went to turn on it was like I almost wish that they would just let me do it anyhow like not even change anything but like let me feel cool hold my phone up to my TV and have it work but now they said it said it wasn't necessary or something so okay it was pretty interesting you know it's a fun little animation it does on the screen you hold your iPhone up and it says here's the difference and you can toggle between the balanced color from Apple or the way it was before and choose which one you want to go with so did it on the 1 TV was pretty cool it does like disconnect for a second sometimes now like if I start watching something if I click play on a movie or TV show it'll actually lose the input connection for a second and then come back when the show starts I don't know if that's my TV or if the Apple TV is like recalibrating quickly for the content so I don't know might be a bug one of many in all these os's maybe so I I finally the other day went and played um the NBA 2K1 or whatever that was on Apple arcade yeah and I don't know if it was a cuz I have the latest Apple TV not the new new one but Apple TV 4K and I don't know if this was like a bug I got to try to launch it again but I connected a controller I went to play it the resolution on the players jerseys was so low it was like sub N64 graphics and I don't know I don't know if it was a bug or what but I was everything else looked kind of okay but for some like you could even read the names on the jerseys really and it was like yeah it was like what is this like PlayStation 1 or something it's weird I I I got to go play it again but like I'm kind of disappointed that the new Apple TVs limited the a12 chip I wish that they had gone with something newer um because there are some great games like you can play the pathless on your PS5 and you can also play it on your Apple TV but it looks a lot worse on your Apple TV because it doesn't have as much horsepower right so I I don't know if that was a limitation or what but I got to go back and look but I am a little disappointed by the a12 chip I will be getting it because I do play games on my Apple TV and uh maybe maybe I'll be able to read the names on the players jerseys with a new one all right so you have that you have incident reporting in maps now so when you're navigating in maps you can say there's an accident and you'll see different accident information I feel like you were able to see accidents before but I guess now you can be proactively in reporting that this episode is brought to you by the nebia by Moen Spa Sher guys you know of nebia I've talked about them on this podcast before still using their shower and my entire family loves the shower experience and knowing that we save water every 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into a mini rant please I love podcasts I think you all listeners would know that because I do this podcast every week but I have long used pocketcasts as my podcast player of choice I love it still do I still think it's one of the best I know many people like overcast but pocast is great and so I had not tried to use the Apple podcast app personally in years I just have not done it not even really open the app unless I'm getting the link to share the show but now that I'm trying it again because with these new subscriptions that are coming you're not going to be able to do it in another podcast app you have to do it in apple podcast and because we'll be participating in that program I would like to know how it works now there's been a whole mess on the back end in the Apple podcast connect and maybe we'll have time to get to that but just in the actual podcast app the app right now in 14.5 is buggy as heck it is a dumpster fire of an app and if you have not seen it yet or maybe you haven't updated to iOS 14.5 I I don't know I don't know recommend if you do it or not but if you do it all links are broken so any episode show notes if you go and look and you know I put all the links and I put a ton of stuff in show notes for the listeners you can't click any links unless you actually put Doom in the text of the link like you can't do an HTML link or anything like that so that's broken the up next I don't know if it always worked this way but I feel like there's three up next screens if you're currently listening to an episode you can swipe up and it'll tell you what's going to play next but then if you go to the listen now tab on the left bottom left there's also a up next but those are not necessarily the episodes that we'll play next it's just episodes you have waiting I guess and then there's also in the library you have latest episodes as well and so just in general I don't know those most of you use the Apple podcast app like we said before I think it's like 70% of the Apple Insider listeners use the stock podcast app but I would love to hear here those of you who used it regularly if you updated to iOS 14.5 let me know if you have experienced some of these bugs if you actually feel like it's better or worse and I also feel like the podcast Pages because this was Apple's big thing is like redesigned show pages and so if you go to the Apple Insider podcast show page you have that it looks a little different looks nice that's fine episodes underneath but then if you go to an actual episode it looks the same as the show page and so a lot of times I'm not sure if I'm looking at an individual episode page or if I'm looking at the main podcast page and then like what do I do from there and also like managing that up next cue or what's playing next so if you're actually listening to a podcast and you swipe up and you see the list of shows that are literally going to play next managing that list I don't even know how you do it in pocketcasts you can swipe on an upcoming episode and you can say no don't play this and it'll go away and you can reorder the episodes that are going to be playing as well but as far as I can tell in the Apple podcast app you really have no choice of what's in that playing next thing like I can't delete episodes that are coming next I've seen users also reporting that they're getting notifications of like 99 new episodes available from the Apple Insider it's like well I didn't upload 99 episodes last week I uploaded one and some I mean I know you worked hard but yeah but yeah can't do 99 episodes in a week and I've gotten actually those notifications for several shows because I've never had notifications on before for Apple podcast is the first time and it's like 99 episodes available from this and other shows so whatever is going on in apple podcast it is really broken and so I'm hoping that bug fixes come soon but do you use the actual official Apple podcast app or you use the third party I do so um I have a rule of thumb when it comes to Native uh apps on my devices versus third party apps and it needs to be crossplatform and it needs to specifically work on the Apple watch cuz I like to leave my Apple watch at home or my phone at home a lot and just bring my Apple watch so I use any list instead of reminders uh it's great it has a native watch it works with Siri um I love any list I use it with my homep pod it's great I love it um I use carrot weather um I use spark for email uh but I use the uh the native podcast app because I can use it with my watch pocketcast has an Apple Watch app by the way and it works great just saying automatically downloads episodes so I I've never used pocketcast I converted William too but have so you're on 14.5 or or are you on the beta on your iPhone as well I'm on I'm on beta okay so how's the Apple podcast app for you like this past week you know I so I don't I basically just play a podcast and that's it I don't dig into the show notes or anything like that I realize that's sacrilegious to say since I know you spend so much time putting all the stuff together in the background nobody's perfect but no I just I just listen to the podcast and so I I don't really have any problems um and I don't have notifications turned on for episodes I just kind of pull it up and see what's new and do it do it that way okay all right my my podcast listening habits have changed dramatically since don't have a commute anymore for work right so it used to be I would listen to audio books from iBooks or Apple Books now I guess um and I would listen to podcasts a lot and so I would have you know I would use the the watch apps for those uh to interact with uh but now I'm mostly just sitting at my desk and like I wear my watch when I go out to run you know to exercise or do groceries or whatever um but that's not usually like podcast listening like I don't listen to a podcast while I go for a run so right right well there's a website transistor.fm and Dan on Twitter actually sent me this link and I'll put it in show notes but transistor is like keeping a running tally of all the things that are broken in the Apple podcast app and in the Apple podcast connect Creator side or you can visit that link if you want to know all the things that are broken with it but did you get all your connect stuff worked out I just got access to the Apple Insider shows like two days ago and so it was it was a solid week where you had to sign up for the new like podcast connect like there were agreements to sign you had to put in the technical contact so we did all that and then and it was like nothing I would log in podcast to connect and it would say oh we're getting your shows ready it'll be a few hours and a few hours turned into basically a week I had no access to the shows I wasn't able to you know make any RSS changes or see anything in podcast connect but I finally got access to it and it's a little broken as well sometimes it'll just log me out randomly so that's always fun there's also no way to refresh your RSS feed anymore like you used to be able to go into podcast connect and do a manual refresh once every 24 hours to kind of kick Apple podcast to seeing your episode and they've taken that option away so hopefully I mean if you're listening to this episode you got it in the app but those of you who are not hearing it I don't know what to tell you it's an apple podcast thing and then there's also some new features like I I actually looked in there today and Apple has added a place to add subscriber content to an episode I tweeted this out I'll put the link in show notes but you can basically add another audio file that would be available to paid subscribers for the podcast I mean you can't subscribe yet that option is not available yet Apple has not released that feature it's like bonus content yeah and so I can upload an MP3 file for that like right now apparently but it would go nowhere and that's fine I mean they're getting it all ready but it's just in a weird place right now before this stuff officially launches I just hope all the bugs get fixed that's all could be worse could be iTunes ping ping ping that was that was a thing that was a thing it was a thing but it's also you know on the heels of Apple making this big deal of the subscriptions it's kind of UNT that all these bugs are so prevalent and also Spotify announced this past week that oh yeah we're going to do this too they're offering paid subscriptions and they are not taking a cut for the first few years unlike Apple so we talked about this last week Apple's taking 30% of podcast subscriptions in the first year if a subscriber continues then it turns to 15% but that 30% cut pretty big for podcast supporters Spotify is saying we're not going to take anything and in 2023 three podcast subscriptions will pay 5% Spotify will take 5% and the podcast Creator takes the other 95 so better deal for podcast creators but they also have a very convoluted way that users are going to be able to subscribe to Spotify Premium podcast content using ankor which they recently bought ankor which was the free podcasting service so if you want to support a podcast in Spotify it'll shoot you over to Anker and that's where you pay for it and then it'll add this I don't know it seems very convoluted even worse what's going on with apple podcast so they did announce it was available I'm I'm glad that Apple podcast doesn't lock you in at least but I will say that when the when the saints over at Spotify who have built their empire based on ripping off artists are making you look like the the stingy greedy company maybe it's not a good look but I realized that you know Apple's business model has just always been 30% at all their digital storefronts and they're just kind of following that way yeah but you know most podcasters that would be doing this you know the vast majority of them are going to be smalltime folks you know just doing something for a small community as opposed to you know these big stars that are exclusive to platforms and stuff so yeah and they might want to rethink that business model yeah and I mean just do what you do with the app store which they recently changed that to 15% if you make less than a million dollars a year yeah and I feel comfortable telling you listener we don't make a million dollars a year on this podcast in case you didn't realize we do not so we would fall healthily in that 15% cut and I don't know I think that would be a good change if they could make it yeah I like that it's not exclusive you know they could lock you in and all that I think that it's a step in the Direction it's good it's a good thing to offer and and to give podcasters a way to make some money is a good thing they'll they'll earn Out The Kinks it it's just frustrating when you're an early adopter like this and you're just running into so many problems so I feel your pain all right you had an interesting device that you tweeted about it's the Apple watch Cam and this is something that people have actually thought about before because the Apple watch you know if you want to go for a run you want to go to grocery store you can do it with just an Apple watch now if you have cellular you can get texts make calls use apps like any list for for groceries but if you wanted to snap a picture of something you can do that with your watch and this accessory is trying to solve that issue so tell me about the Apple watch cam yeah it's it's called the rist cam and I'm in a weird place where I guess the VIN diagram of of people who use their Apple watch a lot and who like wearable cameras I'm I'm that guy I'm like the one person that this product applies to the very small sliver of that I realized there's not a huge market for this thing but they they did a Kickstarter a few years ago it was called something else then and like every Kickstarter R into some trouble but they saw it through to the end they rebranded now it's out so they sent me a review unit I can't review it yet we have a embargo until the end of the month uh but uh because I guess there's some new features coming for it uh but I can talk about it um and I did tweet about it and I I got it out and you know there's a million things going against it it's a chunky thing uh it's got a proprietary charger it's not as good as your iPhone camera like there's a there's so many caveats to this product that and I I took it out of the box and I took a photo it like in a low light situation inside my apartment and I was like oo man but then I took it outside and I took some photos with it and you can see the ones that I tweeted I'm sure you'll put it in the showes not bad like it's not as good as my iPhone 12 Pro Camera which I would expect but it's an 8 megapixel camera and it took an okay photo and I think you know for me A lot of times like like I said I go out for a run or do groceries or whatever and sometimes you just want to take a photo of something like it's there and it's very nice to have your phone on you but I don't like carrying my phone my phone is a distraction I end up doing something stupid like checking Twitter and I don't want to I like just having a watch so that people can text me or call me if they need me I can listen to music if I want but beyond that I don't feel a need to like stare at it obsessively and and buy into this stuff but having a camera is nice so I've looked over the years at wearable cameras small cameras that sort of stuff a GoPro you don't want to carry in your pocket it's thicker than a phone I would say as a as a watch band it's terrible um sure but as a as a wearable camera not that bad I'm actually kind of surprised how much I I don't mind it yeah the picture is not bad and you know it's one of those things where if you're going on a run and you know you see like I don't know Sasquatch or Sasquatch you know you see you see something ridiculous it want have a photo I was actually going for a walk the other day I didn't have my iPhone I was just doing airpods and Apple watch listening to a podcast and it was like some weird Beaver looking thing and people were like gawking at it and taking pictures and I would have taken a picture if I had my phone but I didn't and so something like this I'd be down with that is it water resistant it is cool you can use it like up to a meter for 30 minutes or something the the charger that comes with it uh is magnetic um and it's not bad you know the charger is fine it it's a pain that you have to have a a different Cable in addition to everything else um I I took it out to the Brooklyn botanic garden a few days ago and that was one of the photos that I took and you know I I used it for about an hour snapping photos and video the battery went down to about 60% so you could probably get a day out of it CU I was heavily using it for that hour um so you could probably get about a day out of it you know for stuff like that it has its own uh uh watch Apple Watch app so you can use that as a viewfinder or if you just want to snap a photo not use the viewfinder it has a dedicated shutter button on it I find that using the viewfinder is better when I press the shutter button I guess I'm moving my wrist so the photos tend to be blurry whereas if I use the the uh the viewfinder on my watch and the watch app you can just tap the top of the watch and I don't have to move my wrist it also has a selfie camera which I don't know that I'll ever use um I don't love myself that much I guess and the selfie camera also takes photos only in portrait mode uh which I find to be kind of weird I take all my photos in landscape mode so I don't know how much I would use the selfie cam but the outward facing cam yeah I mean if you really want to have a a a camera on your Apple watch uh this is it's not a bad accessory the problem is it's 300 bucks wow that's more than a that's more than a uh than a watch yeah that's true you know like you can get a watch for 270 or whatever like you said 200 some of them are on on sale this one you know it's it's a cool accessory if you really want a camera that's fine I don't know how big the market is for it but you could do worse well it's an interesting product is it on sale yet or it's not available yet yeah yeah no you can buy it now okay very cool very cool yeah they're shipping them um but yeah I'm I'm surprised by how much I I I enjoy it okay very cool well we'll put the pictures and show notes and the links to to Neil's tweets as well and before we go I wanted to add this one amazing tip someone sent me on Twitter Ben on Twitter send me this article from a mobile Gadget site but it is instructions to turn off notifications from the shortcuts app for all notifications and this is one of the things where if you have automations that run on your iPhone in shortcuts whether they're time-based automations NFC tags whatever automations they send you a notification every single time and I really wanted to turn this off because I just added another shortcut automation with iOS 14.5 you can now change the rotation lock of your iPhone screen in shortcuts and so I created an automation where every time I open the photos app it turns off rotation lock so I can turn my phone sideways and the picture orients correctly and whenever I close the photo app it will lock rotation back it's an amazing Automation and I love it because that's the only time I really want to change the rotation lock but every time I open the photos app and close the photos app it was sending me a notification because it was a shortcut automation running in addition to many other automations I have running my Apple watch face changes certain times of day I have some home automations that run in shortcuts so I really do not care to get these notifications and if you go to the settings app on your iPhone notifications tab shortcuts is not there apple does not let you turn the notifications off in that notifications tab but now the article that I read said if you have screen time enabled on your phone most people do but if you don't you can go to settings go to screen time turn screen time on you know you don't have to set any restrictions or anything like that it just tells you how much time you've been on your phone or you tap see all activity and you can see all the different apps or whatever and how most used and all that and if you go down there's an area called notifications and it tells you you how many notifications every app has sent you in that day or in that week depending on The View and here you will see shortcuts as one of the things as how many notifications it has sent you that day now all the other apps have this little arrow next to the app but sometimes shortcuts does not if you don't see the arrow just go back a day or go forward a day and then that Arrow will appear and if you tap that in next to the shortcuts app you will get a notification options and you can turn off all notifications you can turn off banners you can customize the notification if you go to that the screen time settings to the notifications and tap shortcuts and I turned off all shortcut notifications so now all my automations run and I don't see a single notification and my life is way better and it's incredible and I'll put a link to that tweet in show notes and that article because I know a lot of people get bothered by this I highly recommend you try it it's pretty amazing that's a great tip you know I use the shortcuts app a lot but I most use it with my homepod cuz I have it using so like for example I have a Roomba and uh it doesn't integrate with homekit but I can create a shortcut that uses if this than that to trigger my my vacuum but you don't get a notification when you do with the homepod so that's nice right but I do have homebridge running and I can connect my Roomba via homebridge to homekit so I actually see my Roomba in my home thing and it has its own tile do you run uh homebridge on a Mac or on a Raspberry Pi I run it on a Mac Mini okay so you just have it running all the time yeah and it works really well in that Mac Mini it's like a base model Mac Mini I got a while ago to run a Plex server and I installed homebridge on it and hridge works amazingly on it I know with some raspberry pies and the hoobs PC there's kind of like varying like it worked kind of doesn't but I found it on Mac Mini works yeah I I used to run home bridge on a Raspberry Pi and it crashed too much and that was why I went with shortcuts series shortcuts and and if this and that um for my needs so and if this and that is great I mean it has worked consistently I've used that for things too but uh hbd on a Mac Mini I recommend well listeners let us know did you get an M1 iMac or iPad Pro did you get up that new Apple TV or did you get some air tags in the mail and have you tried those yet we'd love to hear from you you can tweet at myself or Neil our Twitter handles are in the show notes you can also email me there don't forget you can support the show and get an AdFree version of every episode at patreon.com apppp inssider that link is in the show notes as well if the show note links are actually working in your podcast app I hope they are and we would greatly appreciate a five star rating and review in apple podcast don't forget to check out homekit Insider that comes out every Monday where we talk about homekit and smart home devices and apple Insider daily get the Top Apple news headlines in just a few minutes thanks for tuning in we'll catch you next timewelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this episode is brought to you by every plates molecule nebia and start mail don't forget if you'd like to get an adree episode you can support the show at patreon.com Insider joining me this week my friend Neil Hughes how's it going Neil doing okay how about you Stephen doing well William could not join us I know many listeners love to hear Williams Antics on the show but he'll be back soon so worry not listeners so first off I just want to side of the way up front Neil apple is printing money over there in copertino they had their Quarter Two earnings this past week and they have taken $ 89.6 billion in Revenue that is a 54% year-over-year growth there's a bunch of numbers and interesting facts I'll put the articles in show notes you can read exactly what Apple earned and where the two most interesting piece of information I thought obviously iPhone kills it everywhere the services saw a big increase but the back last year this time it was at $5.3 billion Revenue it almost doubled to $9.1 billion this is the March quarter so it's got to be those m1s are really I think doing well and then the other interesting part was that Apple announced that they have 660 million paid subscriptions I don't really break that out I mean I guess you know one it just might be apple music one might be the Apple One Services bundle but their push for services revenue is really doing well yeah and the interesting thing is Services were up but compared to everything else they were actually the the quote unquote disappointment I guess of the quarter only 25% or whatever it was right right uh you know the real blowouts this quarter I mean it's kind of funny we take the iPhone for granted because it's always a blowout and and yet again here it was but the the big surprises were as you said the Mac but also the iPad yeah um and you got to remember that you know these numbers came before uh the announcement of the new iMac before the new iPad Pros I mean Apple's just cleaning up right now with people working from home and and people uh and children doing school from home and all that uh but yeah the iPad and Mac numbers were absolutely outstanding and it's a real Testament to the power of Apple moving away from Intel and the buzz that they've gotten from putting out their own chip because you can tell that people are responding to it you can tell that that this is going to be a very big deal and it's going to be a huge wave in the months and years to come for the Mac yeah absolutely and thinking about their launch strategy for these m1s I mean it's amaz they have an incredible quarter right now for Max Jason Snell actually tweeted this is a record setting this is the best quarter of all time in revenue for the Mac up 70% it beat the record set two quarters ago so just amazing and then if they dribble out these M1 Maxs you know you got the iMac M1 coming out this month in May and then who knows whatever the high-end Mac's coming soon I they could really ride this Mac Revenue line up for the next year or two so Apple knows how to do strategy I mean Tim Cook's an operations guy so well you know I I'll give you a preview here because I'm going to be writing an editorial in the next few days about there's always the naysayers of Tim Cook which is hilarious he can't innovate he he he can't do this he's just all about revenue or all that well here they are innovating they they've moved all their products over to a single chip architecture right um he's released airpods the Apple watch new product segments that are hugely successful the entire migration of the Mac over to Apple silicon I mean like you think about the things that have been done under Tim Cook's tenure and the fact that they're making more money than ever he's taking big and bold risks and he's succeeding and they're making more money than ever and they're in a a environmentally conscious socially conscious company uh they are you know employees are happy shareholders are happy consumers are happy it's just like you know anybody who has any issues with Tim Cook at this point needs to get their head checked because it's it's insane like the things that this guy has been able to accomplish are beyond the wildest dreams of anybody and people who think that he's not the right fit for CEO are are are absolutely wrong yeah I agree and a lot of people have been commenting on colors coming back to the iMac and that might not sound like a big deal but there were many years in between basically now and back when the emac and those colored Macs were coming you know we really didn't have like colors or I don't know if fun is a better word but yeah no fun is the perfect word fun that's the word that it should be fun these products are fun you want to interact with them you want to use them people like that and I mean we could all use a little bit of fun in our lives right now let's get real like you know these launching right now are the right product for the right time I would love to buy one of these new iMacs I just I I I need you know I I need Target display mode if I'm going to use it otherwise it's not really for me uh so I'm waiting for them I'm hoping that when they do the 24 in uh display that they're evely do with the same display they're using on the iMac that they do it in colors cuz I would love to buy a colorful monitor I think that they're great and I think that more colors across all the products will be a good thing absolutely and you know I've been trying to Branch into more colorful I usually go space gray or black on everything no colors but this is this is a small step Neil but I got a pistachio Green Apple watch band it's pretty nice I'm I'm down with the colors for this I I saw you tweeted that it looked the color pretty good it does look pretty good so you know branched in there but you know that fun aspect is something that Apple really captured early on you know when other computer makers were were definitely not fun and so to bring that back I listen to an interview on the upgrade podcast with Mike Hurley and Jason snail they had actually two Apple employees I think in the product marketing talking about the iMac colors and all that kind of stuff and it's in crazy amount of skews for the new iMac because you have multiple models one with two USBC Thunderbolt ports one with four you have the seven different colors plus you have all the magic keyboards the magic mice the power cables like all of those are color match it's a ton of operational products basically that they have to keep track of and produce all these different colors keep them in stock in the stores but they obviously feel like it's worth it to be able to have that kind of playful product again and you know add that back to Apple I I hope they knock it out of the park because I mean you look at some other stuff in the PC industry I think of the gaming space Oh My Goodness the stuff that you see there with like you know these like everything has to light up and like you know has like skulls on it and stuff like that you know it's very much targeted for like this like young aggressive male demographic I love that apple is the antithesis of that and I love that it's fun because even that gaming stuff you know it's fun in its own way right like everything in inside you know your RAM needs to light up in your desktop or some some crap like that why I don't know why they do that yeah and like people like will be like I'm not buying it it doesn't have LED lights whoa I'm the guy who puts tape over all the LED lights okay I don't want LED lights on anything right I don't need that stuff I don't want it I don't have time for it but having a colorful device that is a nice centerpiece of your office or your home or something that you hold in your hand I think that's great and and I I wish that the colors were on the new iPad too for sure well talking about the iPad and the iMac as you listen to this if you listen to it on release date pre-orders are now open for the new M1 iPad Pro the new M1 iMac that we were just talking about and the Apple TV 4K and some other details have come out about these products that we'll get to in a minute but Neil I'm curious what if anything did you buy on the morning of pre-orders so I am picking up uh air tag tomorrow I have to say singular but for air tag tomorrow I think you could say tags when it's four because Apple I don't know Apple's very serious about making it singular so I'm trying to follow in their style yeah air tag units how about that air tag air tag what do you call them discs pucks whatever air yeah yeah something like that I'm getting a four pack tomorrow and I'm I'm actually flying to Florida next week first time now that I'm fully vaccinated I'm going to take a trip to go see my family so I'm excited to test them out um on an airplane I'm going to have a checked bag I'm going to put an air tag in there um see how it all works see if I can you know see when it's coming around the carousel we'll see so I'll have a I'll have a feature on that in a few weeks when I travel and what it's like to travel with an air tag so I'm getting that and I'm getting the Apple TV 4K the new model with the a12 bionic chip I was 99.9999% sure the last time you and I spoke that I was going to get one of the new IP ads and I'm not getting one of the new iPads I I can't do it okay and we're going to talk about why in a second cuz I know you you were you're pretty upset on Twitter when this news came out but I will say I'm getting the new Apple TV 4K new seror remote I'm going to wait on the iMac you know I have an M1 MacBook Pro like you I'm waiting to see where that second generation of M chips m1x M2 whatever it is when that comes to the iMac maybe larger screen and the more powerful MacBook Pro Models but I am definitely buying hard that new M1 iPad Pro the 12.9 in I'm coming from the 11 in so I was going to have to buy a new magic keyboard anyway which we'll talk about the magic keyboard in a second y but I'm going to get that one tab so I get the 16 gigs of RAM the 12.9 in so I have the the liquid retina xdr display that is a name it's a mouthful that is a name it's better than it's better than promotion we'll say that promotion is yeah it's a terrible name what is the the xdr is the pro display xdr and then the iPad now is the liquid retina xdr what do you think xdr stands for well you know they talked about when the xdr was launched the display they were like it it's HDR but like way better at HDR but extreme extreme HDR so I guess it's that you'd almost think it's a gaming PC it's going to it's going to have a bunch of LED lights on it you would think but I guess the difference is they extreme extreme they use Liquid retina for like handheld devices because I don't think liquid retina has ever been in a Mac it's either the pro display xdr they have Retina displays on the Macs like MacBook Pro and when it comes to the mobile devices like iPad and iPhone you have liquid retina or just retina I don't know I I feel like it's a little little too much naming I don't really care about The Branding the screens are gorgeous screen's going to be amazing screen's going be amazing so I'm very excited to try it out and again I should have some air tag air air tag pucks I'll have some uh air tag quantities coming to my house delivering I got a pack of four and I got one engraved I wasn't sure if that was going to be delayed but turns out it's all going to come the same day and there were some reviews out of the air tag units this is miserable the air tag units you know MKBHD had a review The Verge Austine they all had reviews and so I'll put a couple of those YouTube links in the show notes watching the reviews it's really compelling especially using that precise location tracking so if you're within MKBHD said it was like 50 ft was the maximum but if you're within that 50ft range of the air tag on your iPhone if it has an ultra wide band chip which is iPhone 11 or iPhone 12 that it will have that Arrow pop up on the screen and point in the direction of the air tag and that just looks sweet I mean especially if it's just in your house yeah it's really cool a lot of times it's not like the things are far away that you have lost it's either in the house or in your place of work and you just can't remember you know did you leave them on your desk you put them in a drawer and so having that Arrow pop up and then the sound also it's incredible that these little discs like POG things can actually make a sound you don't even see the speaker holes on it right but that it can make it sound and that you get that Ultra wideband location tracking I'm pretty excited about this yeah I'm excited about him too I I am slightly disappointed by by one thing and I'm hoping that it changes and it's the security features of it I understand why Apple did it you don't want to be able to stick an air tag on somebody else's car and track it but for my hyp specific use case which again this is something that applies to very few people but myself being one of them so I used to use you remember automatic the um yeah I had one in my car yeah so I had one as well and one of the things that I use it for is I live in Brooklyn and I have to park on the street and so I don't park in the same place every time I have to find parking wherever I can and I share a car with my wife and we have to find the car and so sometimes if I need to go get it and she's the one who parked it then I got to ask her where was it and she' be like oh it's on this street this lets me know where the car is at all times and it just makes it easier when you're parking it so one of my thoughts was I would love to put an air tag in my car the problem is I drive it once every maybe 3 4 days at most right and apparently with the air tag if it hasn't been within range of your phone within 3 days it starts beeping and sending off an alarm so that you don't track somebody which I get it like I totally understand that I wish that there was I don't know how you get around this because we need to be privacy conscious and we can't allow people to creepily track people or whatever but yeah that's a use case for me where I like the automatic I would love to be able to do that with the air tag and I probably won't be able to so we'll see apparently from some of the stuff I've read Apple can change it on their end and if they find that it's little too aggressive every 3 days to be in range that they might make it a little bit longer okay if I could do like seven days it would probably work cuz I got to move my car once a week but yeah we'll see but that that's a use case for me that's slightly disappointing but I'm still excited to test them out yeah and I saw on Twitter some people are really hammering in this privacy and security thing and thinking that like domestic abuse and stalking is going to be an increased problem and it's like we've had location trackers for a long long time right you know tile has been around chipo is coming out but also just the location of devices not just fine my but Android has these features as well Y and Apple watch built-in GPS and apple took I think all the right steps and preventing any kind of you know malfant and this kind of thing so I I think this is a kind of bizarre argument it's a little overblown and I wish that there was a little bit more granular control but I appreciate that Apple's looking out for security so like I said it's a minor gripe and it's something that's just specific to me and and I think at the end of the day airing on the side of caution is the right way to go with this stuff so I think it was the right move by Apple but we'll see how it works when it's in the wild and everybody can use them yeah absolutely and of course the huge benefit of the Apple Air tag apart from something like tile is if you do lose lose something like you left it on a subway train or whatever that all Apple devices the iPhones and things like that can see this air tag they can't see who it belongs to readily but it can ping the location using all the Apple devices around then if someone actually does find the specific air tag they can scan it and get the phone number that you have attached to that air tag so they can call you to retrieve it one thing I thought was interesting is it works on Android and iPhone right so if someone finds an air tag and they have an Android phone they can scan it with NFC and they get a nice little website with a phone number and they can call you right then if an iPhone user finds an air tag it doesn't have the same cool NFC scanning feature the person actually has to go to the find my app and then hold their iPhone close to the air tag and then they can see the phone number number information that you have left with it so a little bit of a weird difference there I wish you could just hold your iPhone close to an air tag and the information pops up in a website right away but cool feature nonetheless what is it with NFC on iPhones it seems like it's just not the same like right like I I bought a few years ago they they opened up NFC to series shortcuts so I said oh I'm excited and I bought um a bunch of little NFC stickers and they just don't work like you know like I was like oh I'll do this I'll do that I had all these ideas and then I'll hold my phone next to it and it works maybe 50% of the time it's like really bad I don't know why I wonder if it's like a power saving measure or what a lot of times I did a lot of those short cut automations with NFC tags I found like if you get too close it doesn't work so you can't like touch the top of your phone to an NFC tag there has to be some space and then I also found it works better if you've just unlocked your iPhone and hold it to an NFC tag right away which seems strange like if you're using your iPhone you should just be able to hold it to an NFC tag and it scans it quickly but for some reason if I lock my phone unlock it and then hold it quickly to that NFC tag it works so it is strange but then other things like link Linq they make business cards and Apple watch bands now that have NFC in them where you can scan the thing and it's like a virtual business card but you need to use either the app or you know do some kind of like weird shortcut thing it doesn't just work you can't just like hold your iPhone close to it and then the information just pops up in a website so I do wish that Apple could open that up and also use NFC on the Apple watch in the same way because right now you can do an NFC Automation and shortcuts from the Apple watch it's only the phone right but the Apple watch has NFC too so it it's just weird differences there and and this is why I'm a little disappointed that we don't have the U1 chip on everything at this point right because like even airdrop how long has air drop been around like 10 years now on my back it doesn't work that well like right like it'll work well on my iPhone but like if I'm trying to air drop to a Mac or from a Mac it's like I'll tell my wife I'll send it to you it's not sending it it cancels out she can't find it got to open air drop and find her to get it to trigger change it so it's open to everybody not just your contacts change it back like it seems like a lot of times we're just messing around with it to try to get it to work and it's not working it seems like it works a lot better on my iPhone than it does on my Mac and I attribute that probably to the fact that they have you know more advanced you know Wireless stuff in the newer iPhones than my 2018 Mac or whatever but it's like I do see with my homepod mini and my iPhone 12 Pro when I put it within range it immediately starts working so it's like give me the U1 chip in everything like I want all these devices exactly it's not in the new iPads right it's not on the new iPads which is really unfortunate it's not in the new it's not in the new remote for the Apple TV the Siri remote I know missed opportunity you were actually close to being right airdrop came out N9 years ago in 2011 with iOS 7 so good call on that yeah it's been around for a long time and it still doesn't work that well and I attribute it mostly to the Reliance on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi which is why Apple has to do the the E1 chip but it's this weird thing where it's only some iPhones have it not all iPhones have it the SE doesn't have it and it's like we we saw it with 3D touch and all this stuff it's like you need to have Universal adoption across all devices for it to really work and if we don't get there then it might Peter out so I'm hopeful that they continue to invest in it right so my son he thinks he's an expert on all Apple devices now and he was trying to airdrop something to me he has an iPod Touch pretty recent model iPod Touch to my iPhone and we were had a place where I was connected to the Wi-Fi network of the place but he was not but airdrop is supposed to work either way you know airdrop was supposed to work like you could be in the desert right and you and another person can airdrop something to each other you need no internet access exactly and so he wasn't on the Wi-Fi network but his Wi-Fi was on and so I told him you know airdrop Works without it you don't have to connect to the Wi-Fi network and he was like okay but I don't think it's going to work and I was like yeah he said no I think I need to be on the Wi-Fi network you know I need to have internet to air drop and I was like no you don't but okay and so we tried to air drop first and it didn't work and then to prove his point I put his iPod Touch on the Wi-Fi network and then airdrop worked and I was Furious because now it looks like he got a the upper hand on this Apple device for me so yes I would love air drop to work better wait he he thinks he knows everything about Apple products it sounds like he's well on his way to becoming a apple Insider commenter he might be he thinks he could do it at 12 years old so I kid because I love I kid because I love yeah yeah so Apple has not announced the official availability date of the new M1 iPad Pro iMac and Apple TV but but they have said second half of May but then friend of the show Jason A10 actually found in the HTML code of The Newsroom press release that May 21st was in one of the description dates so again not for sure because Apple did not officially say May 21st but it looks like May 21 might be when these products deliver if you order it on launch dat or available in the store so you have about 3 weeks we have to wait before these products are available so May 21 I don't buy it you buy I don't buy it remember a few years ago when they announced the trash can Mac Pro and they were like it's shipping before the end of the year and they shipped like one unit at 11:59 p.m. on December 31st and like we shipped at C and it's like come on that doesn't count that doesn't count so you're saying if I get my order in at 8:01 a.m. that you don't think I'm going to get on May 21st you'll be lucky if you get yours on the 21st I would say more likely if they go on a Friday it'll be the 28th but they do have until Memorial Day Monday the 31st but since it's a holiday in the US it'll probably be the 28th would be my guess if I if I was betting that would be the most likely Neil I just think you're mad about the magic keyboard I think that's why you're downplaying all this this episode is brought to you by every plate every plate is a meal delivery service that makes it easy and affordable to cook hearty delicious family pleasing meals I'll be honest I've checked out those other meal delivery services and a lot of them are kind of expensive but every plate one meal is basically the price of a cup of coffee and not only that but these meals are feeling and taste great you get more bang for your book every plate dinners are less expensive and more fulfilling and it's a great alternative to takeout or delivery maybe struggle to meal plan or get recipes together we think of every plate as doing the grocery shopping for you the meal planning for you and sending you the recipe every plate provides easy to follow recipe cards 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code Apple Insider all one word at mcu.com molecule with a k.com our thanks to molecule for sponsoring this episode so the news came out and an apple rep actually confirmed it to Wes hilard here at Apple Insider but the 12.9 in iPad Pro the new one the magic keyboard it was not available at first and now Apple says it is available but the new model magic keyboard for the 12.9 in only for the new model and the implication is if you bought the 12.9 in magic keyboard last year when it was launched this thing's only a year old that it will not fit the new model 12.9 in iPad Pro because it's half a millimeter thicker now Apple confirmed this I'm still waiting for the initial reviews to come out cuz I really want someone to try it because there's been people on Twitter like shoving pieces of paper to make up the thickness difference and people say like it fits just fine it closes all the way I don't know why it wouldn't work so but Apple did say it does not work if you have the old 12.9 in magic keyboard the first generation one that would not work with the new one and that uh made you not buy it Neil what's up you know and there's some people out there that are holding out hope that maybe it's just because of Apple's you know meticulous attention to detail that half millimeter they're saying it's not compatible but in reality when you get it in your hands maybe it will work and maybe it will I I don't know we won't find out until somebody's tested it and tried it and all that but I mean let's be real I I wrote an editorial about this saying that Apple should offer a tradein program because I'm not an idiot and I don't think that Apple should give everybody a free keyboard because they bought one a year ago I'm not stupid but they do do trade-ins for other devices and it would make sense because accessories on the market they don't sell nobody cares you know how many times they sold an iPad and said well I'll sell it to you with the official Apple doc back when they made docs and they're like well I don't care about the doc like I'll with the with the Smart Cover I don't care about that they just want the iPad you know nobody cares about these accessories and stuff they're not worth as much on the resale market so it's hard to sell them a lot of times people like I just don't want it so it would be nice if Apple even just offered like $100 toward the tradein of a new keyboard it's overpriced like $350 for this keyboard I love the keyboard I use it all the time I love my iPad it's a great product $350 for a keyboard and trackpad is a lot of money that is just it's a fact like there's no debating on this one a year ago they launched it it was compatible with the previous generation iPad from 2018 which is what I have and it was also compatible with the iPad that was launching at that point but the keyboard arrived a month later after the iPad so it wasn't even like this was like a tandem this is for this year's model it was kind of implicit in what the way they released it that okay you know this will be compatible and so people bought it thinking oh okay this will be you know it'll work for a few years until they changed the form factor whatever yeah and and let's be clear they didn't change the form factor they didn't change the keyboard it's the same thing it it it it has all the same functionality they didn't add a new set of function keys on it to to control stuff they didn't you know add a a a a data port to it it's just power right everything about the keyboard is identical to last year's except for the fact that it accommodates for a half a millimeter now maybe this is all for nothing and it will end up working fine and Apple's just being very you know stubborn about you know things fitting right or whatever but it turns out that the other model will fit fine I don't know it may have something to do with the can delever design because it's a counterweight and all that sort of stuff we will see but yeah if it truly doesn't work the right thing to do for a $350 keyboard is to offer people some sort of an upgrade path because it only launched a year ago and you know a lot of people in the comments or whatever are saying oh who buys a new iPad every year or whatever well it doesn't it's not just applicable to last year's iPad it's applicable to one from three years ago the 2018 iPad so you're talking about people who are spending a lot of money on iPads and it's in Apple's best interest to not nickel and dime them over something so small you know this is a an expensive accessory so I went from as I said thinking I was at 99.999% sure I was going to get a new iPad because I figure oh $1,000 for the iPad uh my keyboard will still work I get this new display that's great okay new iPad starts at 1100 that's fine I don't care uh now you have a choice because they put the M1 chip in there between 8 and 16 gigs right well now it's getting a little bit more difficult right do I need 16 gigs in my iPad not right now but what are they going to announce at WWDC right because if at WWDC they surprise us all and say oh you can run Mac OS on an iPad which I don't think is going to happen but if they do that well now I want a 16 gig iPad that starts at 18 $0000 right and then I got to buy a new keyboard which is $350 so I thought I was going to spend about a th000 bucks get a new iPad and get this great display now I'm looking at about $2,200 before taxes so yeah that's that's a big price jump and so now i' I've decided to take a waitand see approach I'm going to see what they do with iPad OS at WWDC I'm going to see if the keyboard works and if the new keyboard uh works you know if the old keyboard works the new iPad and they do something exciting at wwc then I'll get a 16 G iPad and I'll be ready to go if iPad OS is doing the same stuff then maybe I'll just get a 8 gig uh uh uh RAM iPad so we'll see but I I can't make that Financial commitment right now because it's just not worth it there's no there's no incentive for me to get that new display that badly not not for that kind of money so first of all yeah I do think it's it's just a little crazy that a product that's barely a year old is now obsolete if you want to get the newest iPad it's weird and I agree there should be some kind of trade-in program or whatever I'm in the fortunate position where I had the 11 in before so if I want to go 12.9 I have to buy a new magic keyboard either way my hardest decision is white or black and I think I'm going to try the white to all yeah it looks good warning signs it looks good but you're going to get dirt all over it but it looks good it's going to get dirt all over it but I'm going to try it Apple expert is going to get his fingerprints all over it oh they they can't touch anything this just terrible and the kids just everything's dirty but anyway and what's difficult too about the iPad Pro is as excited as I am about the M1 chip 16 gigs of RAM it has blurred line so much between the mac and the iPad because you can get the same specs in this new iPad Pro as you can in the MacBook Air the MacBook Pro the new iMac and the Mac Mini like this iPad can spec be spec just as high and I guess I understand why they called the chip they put in the iPad Pro the M1 maybe for marketing maybe it's because everybody just loves it and they were like well everybody loves a chip let's just put it in there but it just blurs the line so much when it's the exact same chip it's not an a14x it's not some other chip for the iPad Pro it is the exact same M1 and if you look on Apple's website and you spec up a MacBook Air it's going to be cheaper than this new 12.9 in iPad Pro if you get the keyboard with it for some people I had people emailing me and tweeting you know if I want to get a device and I'm going to spend $22,000 what should I get and this was a question that we had to wrestle with for a long time prior to M1 because certain devices like the iPad Pro when the only Macs were Intel Max was a faster and better experience in certain price ranges and so when people asked what should my one device be it was a tough decision but it was like if you if your needs are X Y and Z email web and you just look at photos get the iPad pro magic keyboard it's going to be a better experience and faster yep and then when the M1 MacBook Air came out the answer was everyone just get an M1 MacBook Air it's amazing it's super fast it's going to last forever and unless you're doing some kind of super video editing or development like this is the computer for you but now people are having the same question do I get an M1 iPad Pro 12.9 in 16 gigs of RAM 1 TB for $2,200 or do I get an M1 MacBook Air with the same specs and save some money plus I have Mac OS and if it's the person's only device I'm still hardpressed to say iPad because they might run into something whether it's a website you know I still run into websites even though Apple says the iPad browser is now desktop Safari there's still websites that don't function on the iPad like you just can't tap certain dropdowns or you can't you know check a box you know for some Medical website or whatever and so if it's a person's only device it still can't be iPad OS unless they make some significant change at dubdub yeah no I I have uh my MacBook Pro here docked my iPad Pro is connected to it um as a second Monitor and I have an LG ultra fine display as my main display and with this new iPad and USB 4 Thunderbolt I could literally replace my Mac with my iPad if it ran Mac OS like and I would I I honestly probably would because the thing I like most about the iPad is it's the computer you need in the moment right right so if you were to undock it take it with you run it as an iPad that's fine and then if I could dock it and have it turn into a Mac that would be great I don't think Apple's going to do that but I mean the the horsepower is there there's no technical reason that they couldn't do it at this point when they're running the M1 chip is the same as the latest Max I could do the entire same setup connect it to my Cal digit dock connect it to my monitor it would all work it would all work with that Hardware it's in there it's capable we'll see what they do at as you call it dubdub because you know I don't really I don't know where they're going to go with the iPad at this point there's so much horsepower in there and the design is so great and the the the OS is so limited you can't multitask with it in the way that you something exciting cuz this new iPad is amazing yeah and I want it very badly and you know this this keyboard situation I tell you people in the comments I you know I joke about people in the comments but they're saying you know they're rushing to defend a trillion dollar Corporation that's making money hand over fist saying oh Apple isn't afraid to innovate and that's why it's okay that they released a new $350 keyboard a year later it's a millimeter difference half a millimeter s half a millim half a millimeter difference same keyboard same functionality same everything yeah so you're going to bend over backwards to defend the giant corporation that is going to charge you $350 for a new keyboard because of a half millimeter difference yeah like you know like listen I understand that people you know are very big fans of apple and this corporate stuff and all that corporations are not your friend at the end of the day you need to look out yourself with your own dollars too so keep that in mind yeah and just to be clear the MacBook Air same specs is $1,650 yep whereas a 12.9 in same specs 1 tab 16 gigs of RAM is $1,800 plus magic keyboard 350 so you're at $2,150 so and you get one less Port you get one less port and you don't get Mac OS and you know actually some someone commented on the YouTube video that I put up about why I'm upgrading to the iPad Pro I'll put a link to that YouTube video in show Notes too so you can see it but they were are like a network engineer and there are certain applications that they need running in the background all the time and they love the iPad and would love to use it for their work but because whatever app can't stay persistently running in the background to monitor Network the iPad is just not an option and those are the kind of unique use cases that I think are more prevalent than maybe we realize just a lot of people have that that one specific app or that one specific task that their job is that just needs to do for their job and you can't do that because of just the nature of the OS like there's no more Hardware limitations like nothing about the new iPad Pro is physically a barricade it is just the OS and you know I I don't care if it's Mac OS on the iPad but you do need to bring some of that utility power those settings ability to manage certain peripherals and then people can make the iPad Pro their main device yep exactly I I don't care what they do whether it's Mac OS or iPad OS gets blown up and turned into something else yeah what it's doing right now just isn't working and and it needs to have more power user features and I don't I don't know what that is but what I what I want to know though is who are the people out there who are going to use a Mac Mini with the new iPad as its primary display with sidecar because they don't want to spend $5,000 on a on an xdr Pro display I saw a few people tweet that they were like that's my plan I want to use this amazing display but I want to run Mac OS so they were they said that that was what they were going to do and it's like I don't know I mean for sidecar you need to be able to initiate it though from the Mac I mean it doesn't just the iPad won't just wake from sleep and be in sidecar mode but I don't know I'm I'm more Curious now that Apple has straight up marketed that the new iPad Pro can run the pro display xdr I want to see the person who has the setup with an iPad Pro and a pro display xdr and that's it what are you doing with that and are there big black bars on the left and right on that Pro display xdr because I you know I mentioned it before I use my iPad with my um LG ultrafine display when I use apple Fitness I plug it in directly right so I have my uh Magic trackpad and keyboard running through my uh the the USB hub on my display right and when I connect it I can use my iPad like a computer like the the the mouse and keyboard work perfectly fine with the iPad it goes through the port so it's like why is it in this 43 aspect ratio it just it's oh man it's it's crazy they need to they need to fix it yeah so hopefully WWDC this year June 7th is the keynote for that event hopefully we'll see big changes in iPad OS I am prepared to have my heartbroken yeah I don't know I still have some hope I mean the biggest changes that I think what Mark Gman leaked was like the home screen will be way better it's like no we don't need a better home screen by the way one thing I have to add is because Mark Gman was the one that said that they might have the uh iPad with an arm that would follow you around the room and what was the thing I said a few weeks ago I said no they have an intelligent algorithm that follows your face they can just use an ultrawide camera and then it'll digitally zoom in and follow you around and guess what that's the feature on the new iPad so I was right again boom I rest my case you called it all right very good I'm not always right but I was right on that one so let me take the Victory lap that's all listen the day Apple car is released William will have a parade say he was right did it he did it all right well also iOS 14.5 and all these subsequent operating systems watchos 7.4 Macos 11.3 that all launched this past week on Monday and so if you haven't updated yet you can do it although I don't know if you should just yet cuz there are a number of bugs we'll talk about it in a second but the standof features were mask unlock so if you have an iPhone 10 or newer with face ID and you have an Apple Watch series 3 or newer you can turn on that unlock with Apple watch feature so if you're wearing a mask your iPhone will see that you're wearing a mask and then unlock if you have your Apple watch on and that's unlocked do you think people why watch is just for that feature I don't know now that you know the CDC said people can be outside without masks that they're vaccinated you know we're finally maybe coming to the decline of mask wearing I don't know it's a great feature I mean I did not try it during the beta season because I like to wait till the public releases and I have to say it works extremely well right I used it with grocery shopping this past week after it came out publicly and it works super fast and it unlocks I feel a little tap on my wrist to let me know that it was my watch that unlocked it so it's an amazing feature if people haven't tried it I highly recommend it but maybe I mean you can get an Apple watch Series 3 although I don't get a series 3 you know if you don't have an Apple Watch get at least a five and it'll future proof you a little bit there's good sales on right now even like $200 series sixes but but maybe but it's a great feature have you used it in the beta time or now yeah it's Hit or Miss for me I I I've been running the beta um I think uh it was a missed opportunity for Apple that they this was in beta for so long as you say you know the latest CDC recommendations I think that maske wearing is probably going to stick with us I think a lot of people are just going to wear them in public just you know because it makes you know people who say well I haven't had a c in the last year so maybe I should keeping this I think that maybe habits will change and it'll be a valuable feature I know that it's obviously very common across Asia to just wear a mask in public so that could be an appealing uh thing in that market as well but yeah I mean it's a great feature it doesn't work reliably enough for me to say that I love it uh but I'm happy that it's there and I think it's well implemented I just I just wish that it was a little bit more reliable so you have the mask unlock that's available to you the color balancing on Apple TV if you have an Apple TV HD with TV o or newer and an iPhone you can do the color balancing thing I did that Miner change to my TV but you know I'll go with it it wouldn't let me do it it said because I have an HDR TV uh with Dolby Vision it said that it's already perfectly calibrated so it wouldn't let me do it I was kind of disappointed like I wanted to use it I was like o let me try this feature and then it it said no you're good that's strange so I have an HDR TV it's an LG but I guess Dolby vision is like another level HDR yeah it's like Dolby has a standard for HDR you know whatever the calibration thing is you need to have you know okay whatever so yeah I went to turn on it was like I almost wish that they would just let me do it anyhow like not even change anything but like let me feel cool hold my phone up to my TV and have it work but now they said it said it wasn't necessary or something so okay it was pretty interesting you know it's a fun little animation it does on the screen you hold your iPhone up and it says here's the difference and you can toggle between the balanced color from Apple or the way it was before and choose which one you want to go with so did it on the 1 TV was pretty cool it does like disconnect for a second sometimes now like if I start watching something if I click play on a movie or TV show it'll actually lose the input connection for a second and then come back when the show starts I don't know if that's my TV or if the Apple TV is like recalibrating quickly for the content so I don't know might be a bug one of many in all these os's maybe so I I finally the other day went and played um the NBA 2K1 or whatever that was on Apple arcade yeah and I don't know if it was a cuz I have the latest Apple TV not the new new one but Apple TV 4K and I don't know if this was like a bug I got to try to launch it again but I connected a controller I went to play it the resolution on the players jerseys was so low it was like sub N64 graphics and I don't know I don't know if it was a bug or what but I was everything else looked kind of okay but for some like you could even read the names on the jerseys really and it was like yeah it was like what is this like PlayStation 1 or something it's weird I I I got to go play it again but like I'm kind of disappointed that the new Apple TVs limited the a12 chip I wish that they had gone with something newer um because there are some great games like you can play the pathless on your PS5 and you can also play it on your Apple TV but it looks a lot worse on your Apple TV because it doesn't have as much horsepower right so I I don't know if that was a limitation or what but I got to go back and look but I am a little disappointed by the a12 chip I will be getting it because I do play games on my Apple TV and uh maybe maybe I'll be able to read the names on the players jerseys with a new one all right so you have that you have incident reporting in maps now so when you're navigating in maps you can say there's an accident and you'll see different accident information I feel like you were able to see accidents before but I guess now you can be proactively in reporting that this episode is brought to you by the nebia by Moen Spa Sher guys you know of nebia I've talked about them on this podcast before still using their shower and my entire family loves the shower experience and knowing that we save water every time we do it nebia started in Mexico City where water shortages were big problem came to Silicon Valley and none other than Tim Cook was nebba's first investor then developers from Tesla apple and NASA they all came to work for nebba to develop the nebia shower that not only saves money but gives you a superior 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use the promo code Apple Insider all one word at checkout our thanks to nebia for sponsoring this episode this episode is brought to you by startmail listen free email services like Gmail and Yahoo aren't really free you pay with your privacy in fact the big tech companies Bank on exploiting your data by selling it to the highest bidder your business plan Google has it in Gmail medical records Yahoo can sell them to drug companies you know since Apple released that app tracking transparency it's been so clear how all these companies are tracking all that data and free email Services is one of the ways that these companies get your data sell those and then that's how you get those creepy ads like how could this company know that I've actually researched this or maybe you emailed someone about it and your data is just out there privacy and security does not come with these free email Services that's why I recommend start mail it can make you feel safe again start mail keeps your email 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guys and knowing it's private and secure makes all the difference take control of your privacy with start mail before it's too late start securing your email privacy with start mail sign up today and you'll get 50% off that is half off off your first year go to startmail.com that's startmail with a t s AR RT mail.com slthe letters AI for 50% off your first year startmail.com slai our thanks to startmail for sponsoring this episode one of the big things was that the podcast app in iOS 14.5 got a redesign and that's in the biggest air quotes because actually don't find it to look very different I mean what's different is the show page SL episode page and now here's where I go into a mini rant please I love podcasts I think you all listeners would know that because I do this podcast every week but I have long used pocketcasts as my podcast player of choice I love it still do I still think it's one of the best I know many people like overcast but pocast is great and so I had not tried to use the Apple podcast app personally in years I just have not done it not even really open the app unless I'm getting the link to share the show but now that I'm trying it again because with these new subscriptions that are coming you're not going to be able to do it in another podcast app you have to do it in apple podcast and because we'll be participating in that program I would like to know how it works now there's been a whole mess on the back end in the Apple podcast connect and maybe we'll have time to get to that but just in the actual podcast app the app right now in 14.5 is buggy as heck it is a dumpster fire of an app and if you have not seen it yet or maybe you haven't updated to iOS 14.5 I I don't know I don't know recommend if you do it or not but if you do it all links are broken so any episode show notes if you go and look and you know I put all the links and I put a ton of stuff in show notes for the listeners you can't click any links unless you actually put Doom in the text of the link like you can't do an HTML link or anything like that so that's broken the up next I don't know if it always worked this way but I feel like there's three up next screens if you're currently listening to an episode you can swipe up and it'll tell you what's going to play next but then if you go to the listen now tab on the left bottom left there's also a up next but those are not necessarily the episodes that we'll play next it's just episodes you have waiting I guess and then there's also in the library you have latest episodes as well and so just in general I don't know those most of you use the Apple podcast app like we said before I think it's like 70% of the Apple Insider listeners use the stock podcast app but I would love to hear here those of you who used it regularly if you updated to iOS 14.5 let me know if you have experienced some of these bugs if you actually feel like it's better or worse and I also feel like the podcast Pages because this was Apple's big thing is like redesigned show pages and so if you go to the Apple Insider podcast show page you have that it looks a little different looks nice that's fine episodes underneath but then if you go to an actual episode it looks the same as the show page and so a lot of times I'm not sure if I'm looking at an individual episode page or if I'm looking at the main podcast page and then like what do I do from there and also like managing that up next cue or what's playing next so if you're actually listening to a podcast and you swipe up and you see the list of shows that are literally going to play next managing that list I don't even know how you do it in pocketcasts you can swipe on an upcoming episode and you can say no don't play this and it'll go away and you can reorder the episodes that are going to be playing as well but as far as I can tell in the Apple podcast app you really have no choice of what's in that playing next thing like I can't delete episodes that are coming next I've seen users also reporting that they're getting notifications of like 99 new episodes available from the Apple Insider it's like well I didn't upload 99 episodes last week I uploaded one and some I mean I know you worked hard but yeah but yeah can't do 99 episodes in a week and I've gotten actually those notifications for several shows because I've never had notifications on before for Apple podcast is the first time and it's like 99 episodes available from this and other shows so whatever is going on in apple podcast it is really broken and so I'm hoping that bug fixes come soon but do you use the actual official Apple podcast app or you use the third party I do so um I have a rule of thumb when it comes to Native uh apps on my devices versus third party apps and it needs to be crossplatform and it needs to specifically work on the Apple watch cuz I like to leave my Apple watch at home or my phone at home a lot and just bring my Apple watch so I use any list instead of reminders uh it's great it has a native watch it works with Siri um I love any list I use it with my homep pod it's great I love it um I use carrot weather um I use spark for email uh but I use the uh the native podcast app because I can use it with my watch pocketcast has an Apple Watch app by the way and it works great just saying automatically downloads episodes so I I've never used pocketcast I converted William too but have so you're on 14.5 or or are you on the beta on your iPhone as well I'm on I'm on beta okay so how's the Apple podcast app for you like this past week you know I so I don't I basically just play a podcast and that's it I don't dig into the show notes or anything like that I realize that's sacrilegious to say since I know you spend so much time putting all the stuff together in the background nobody's perfect but no I just I just listen to the podcast and so I I don't really have any problems um and I don't have notifications turned on for episodes I just kind of pull it up and see what's new and do it do it that way okay all right my my podcast listening habits have changed dramatically since don't have a commute anymore for work right so it used to be I would listen to audio books from iBooks or Apple Books now I guess um and I would listen to podcasts a lot and so I would have you know I would use the the watch apps for those uh to interact with uh but now I'm mostly just sitting at my desk and like I wear my watch when I go out to run you know to exercise or do groceries or whatever um but that's not usually like podcast listening like I don't listen to a podcast while I go for a run so right right well there's a website transistor.fm and Dan on Twitter actually sent me this link and I'll put it in show notes but transistor is like keeping a running tally of all the things that are broken in the Apple podcast app and in the Apple podcast connect Creator side or you can visit that link if you want to know all the things that are broken with it but did you get all your connect stuff worked out I just got access to the Apple Insider shows like two days ago and so it was it was a solid week where you had to sign up for the new like podcast connect like there were agreements to sign you had to put in the technical contact so we did all that and then and it was like nothing I would log in podcast to connect and it would say oh we're getting your shows ready it'll be a few hours and a few hours turned into basically a week I had no access to the shows I wasn't able to you know make any RSS changes or see anything in podcast connect but I finally got access to it and it's a little broken as well sometimes it'll just log me out randomly so that's always fun there's also no way to refresh your RSS feed anymore like you used to be able to go into podcast connect and do a manual refresh once every 24 hours to kind of kick Apple podcast to seeing your episode and they've taken that option away so hopefully I mean if you're listening to this episode you got it in the app but those of you who are not hearing it I don't know what to tell you it's an apple podcast thing and then there's also some new features like I I actually looked in there today and Apple has added a place to add subscriber content to an episode I tweeted this out I'll put the link in show notes but you can basically add another audio file that would be available to paid subscribers for the podcast I mean you can't subscribe yet that option is not available yet Apple has not released that feature it's like bonus content yeah and so I can upload an MP3 file for that like right now apparently but it would go nowhere and that's fine I mean they're getting it all ready but it's just in a weird place right now before this stuff officially launches I just hope all the bugs get fixed that's all could be worse could be iTunes ping ping ping that was that was a thing that was a thing it was a thing but it's also you know on the heels of Apple making this big deal of the subscriptions it's kind of UNT that all these bugs are so prevalent and also Spotify announced this past week that oh yeah we're going to do this too they're offering paid subscriptions and they are not taking a cut for the first few years unlike Apple so we talked about this last week Apple's taking 30% of podcast subscriptions in the first year if a subscriber continues then it turns to 15% but that 30% cut pretty big for podcast supporters Spotify is saying we're not going to take anything and in 2023 three podcast subscriptions will pay 5% Spotify will take 5% and the podcast Creator takes the other 95 so better deal for podcast creators but they also have a very convoluted way that users are going to be able to subscribe to Spotify Premium podcast content using ankor which they recently bought ankor which was the free podcasting service so if you want to support a podcast in Spotify it'll shoot you over to Anker and that's where you pay for it and then it'll add this I don't know it seems very convoluted even worse what's going on with apple podcast so they did announce it was available I'm I'm glad that Apple podcast doesn't lock you in at least but I will say that when the when the saints over at Spotify who have built their empire based on ripping off artists are making you look like the the stingy greedy company maybe it's not a good look but I realized that you know Apple's business model has just always been 30% at all their digital storefronts and they're just kind of following that way yeah but you know most podcasters that would be doing this you know the vast majority of them are going to be smalltime folks you know just doing something for a small community as opposed to you know these big stars that are exclusive to platforms and stuff so yeah and they might want to rethink that business model yeah and I mean just do what you do with the app store which they recently changed that to 15% if you make less than a million dollars a year yeah and I feel comfortable telling you listener we don't make a million dollars a year on this podcast in case you didn't realize we do not so we would fall healthily in that 15% cut and I don't know I think that would be a good change if they could make it yeah I like that it's not exclusive you know they could lock you in and all that I think that it's a step in the Direction it's good it's a good thing to offer and and to give podcasters a way to make some money is a good thing they'll they'll earn Out The Kinks it it's just frustrating when you're an early adopter like this and you're just running into so many problems so I feel your pain all right you had an interesting device that you tweeted about it's the Apple watch Cam and this is something that people have actually thought about before because the Apple watch you know if you want to go for a run you want to go to grocery store you can do it with just an Apple watch now if you have cellular you can get texts make calls use apps like any list for for groceries but if you wanted to snap a picture of something you can do that with your watch and this accessory is trying to solve that issue so tell me about the Apple watch cam yeah it's it's called the rist cam and I'm in a weird place where I guess the VIN diagram of of people who use their Apple watch a lot and who like wearable cameras I'm I'm that guy I'm like the one person that this product applies to the very small sliver of that I realized there's not a huge market for this thing but they they did a Kickstarter a few years ago it was called something else then and like every Kickstarter R into some trouble but they saw it through to the end they rebranded now it's out so they sent me a review unit I can't review it yet we have a embargo until the end of the month uh but uh because I guess there's some new features coming for it uh but I can talk about it um and I did tweet about it and I I got it out and you know there's a million things going against it it's a chunky thing uh it's got a proprietary charger it's not as good as your iPhone camera like there's a there's so many caveats to this product that and I I took it out of the box and I took a photo it like in a low light situation inside my apartment and I was like oo man but then I took it outside and I took some photos with it and you can see the ones that I tweeted I'm sure you'll put it in the showes not bad like it's not as good as my iPhone 12 Pro Camera which I would expect but it's an 8 megapixel camera and it took an okay photo and I think you know for me A lot of times like like I said I go out for a run or do groceries or whatever and sometimes you just want to take a photo of something like it's there and it's very nice to have your phone on you but I don't like carrying my phone my phone is a distraction I end up doing something stupid like checking Twitter and I don't want to I like just having a watch so that people can text me or call me if they need me I can listen to music if I want but beyond that I don't feel a need to like stare at it obsessively and and buy into this stuff but having a camera is nice so I've looked over the years at wearable cameras small cameras that sort of stuff a GoPro you don't want to carry in your pocket it's thicker than a phone I would say as a as a watch band it's terrible um sure but as a as a wearable camera not that bad I'm actually kind of surprised how much I I don't mind it yeah the picture is not bad and you know it's one of those things where if you're going on a run and you know you see like I don't know Sasquatch or Sasquatch you know you see you see something ridiculous it want have a photo I was actually going for a walk the other day I didn't have my iPhone I was just doing airpods and Apple watch listening to a podcast and it was like some weird Beaver looking thing and people were like gawking at it and taking pictures and I would have taken a picture if I had my phone but I didn't and so something like this I'd be down with that is it water resistant it is cool you can use it like up to a meter for 30 minutes or something the the charger that comes with it uh is magnetic um and it's not bad you know the charger is fine it it's a pain that you have to have a a different Cable in addition to everything else um I I took it out to the Brooklyn botanic garden a few days ago and that was one of the photos that I took and you know I I used it for about an hour snapping photos and video the battery went down to about 60% so you could probably get a day out of it CU I was heavily using it for that hour um so you could probably get about a day out of it you know for stuff like that it has its own uh uh watch Apple Watch app so you can use that as a viewfinder or if you just want to snap a photo not use the viewfinder it has a dedicated shutter button on it I find that using the viewfinder is better when I press the shutter button I guess I'm moving my wrist so the photos tend to be blurry whereas if I use the the uh the viewfinder on my watch and the watch app you can just tap the top of the watch and I don't have to move my wrist it also has a selfie camera which I don't know that I'll ever use um I don't love myself that much I guess and the selfie camera also takes photos only in portrait mode uh which I find to be kind of weird I take all my photos in landscape mode so I don't know how much I would use the selfie cam but the outward facing cam yeah I mean if you really want to have a a a camera on your Apple watch uh this is it's not a bad accessory the problem is it's 300 bucks wow that's more than a that's more than a uh than a watch yeah that's true you know like you can get a watch for 270 or whatever like you said 200 some of them are on on sale this one you know it's it's a cool accessory if you really want a camera that's fine I don't know how big the market is for it but you could do worse well it's an interesting product is it on sale yet or it's not available yet yeah yeah no you can buy it now okay very cool very cool yeah they're shipping them um but yeah I'm I'm surprised by how much I I I enjoy it okay very cool well we'll put the pictures and show notes and the links to to Neil's tweets as well and before we go I wanted to add this one amazing tip someone sent me on Twitter Ben on Twitter send me this article from a mobile Gadget site but it is instructions to turn off notifications from the shortcuts app for all notifications and this is one of the things where if you have automations that run on your iPhone in shortcuts whether they're time-based automations NFC tags whatever automations they send you a notification every single time and I really wanted to turn this off because I just added another shortcut automation with iOS 14.5 you can now change the rotation lock of your iPhone screen in shortcuts and so I created an automation where every time I open the photos app it turns off rotation lock so I can turn my phone sideways and the picture orients correctly and whenever I close the photo app it will lock rotation back it's an amazing Automation and I love it because that's the only time I really want to change the rotation lock but every time I open the photos app and close the photos app it was sending me a notification because it was a shortcut automation running in addition to many other automations I have running my Apple watch face changes certain times of day I have some home automations that run in shortcuts so I really do not care to get these notifications and if you go to the settings app on your iPhone notifications tab shortcuts is not there apple does not let you turn the notifications off in that notifications tab but now the article that I read said if you have screen time enabled on your phone most people do but if you don't you can go to settings go to screen time turn screen time on you know you don't have to set any restrictions or anything like that it just tells you how much time you've been on your phone or you tap see all activity and you can see all the different apps or whatever and how most used and all that and if you go down there's an area called notifications and it tells you you how many notifications every app has sent you in that day or in that week depending on The View and here you will see shortcuts as one of the things as how many notifications it has sent you that day now all the other apps have this little arrow next to the app but sometimes shortcuts does not if you don't see the arrow just go back a day or go forward a day and then that Arrow will appear and if you tap that in next to the shortcuts app you will get a notification options and you can turn off all notifications you can turn off banners you can customize the notification if you go to that the screen time settings to the notifications and tap shortcuts and I turned off all shortcut notifications so now all my automations run and I don't see a single notification and my life is way better and it's incredible and I'll put a link to that tweet in show notes and that article because I know a lot of people get bothered by this I highly recommend you try it it's pretty amazing that's a great tip you know I use the shortcuts app a lot but I most use it with my homepod cuz I have it using so like for example I have a Roomba and uh it doesn't integrate with homekit but I can create a shortcut that uses if this than that to trigger my my vacuum but you don't get a notification when you do with the homepod so that's nice right but I do have homebridge running and I can connect my Roomba via homebridge to homekit so I actually see my Roomba in my home thing and it has its own tile do you run uh homebridge on a Mac or on a Raspberry Pi I run it on a Mac Mini okay so you just have it running all the time yeah and it works really well in that Mac Mini it's like a base model Mac Mini I got a while ago to run a Plex server and I installed homebridge on it and hridge works amazingly on it I know with some raspberry pies and the hoobs PC there's kind of like varying like it worked kind of doesn't but I found it on Mac Mini works yeah I I used to run home bridge on a Raspberry Pi and it crashed too much and that was why I went with shortcuts series shortcuts and and if this and that um for my needs so and if this and that is great I mean it has worked consistently I've used that for things too but uh hbd on a Mac Mini I recommend well listeners let us know did you get an M1 iMac or iPad Pro did you get up that new Apple TV or did you get some air tags in the mail and have you tried those yet we'd love to hear from you you can tweet at myself or Neil our Twitter handles are in the show notes you can also email me there don't forget you can support the show and get an AdFree version of every episode at patreon.com apppp inssider that link is in the show notes as well if the show note links are actually working in your podcast app I hope they are and we would greatly appreciate a five star rating and review in apple podcast don't forget to check out homekit Insider that comes out every Monday where we talk about homekit and smart home devices and apple Insider daily get the Top Apple news headlines in just a few minutes thanks for tuning in we'll catch you next time\n"