NC_2023_11_19
[0:00] Music.
[0:11] 19, 2023, and this is show number 967.
Well, we will have a live show next week on Thanksgiving weekend. It'll be Sunday.
We might be still down at Lindsay and Nolan's house, so, you know, a good chance of seeing the grandkids, because I know how you love that on the live show.
But it'll be a lot of listener content that's already been contributed, and I'm really excited to get to take most of the week off to play with the kiddos.
Apps for Noteworthy Events – DTNS 4644
[0:35] Last week, I forgot to tell you that I got to be on the Daily Tech News show again with Tom Merritt and Roger Chang this time, and I had a total blast.
We talked about prognostications from Mark Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo about Apple's, future stuff, we analyzed Sony's Portal, and then I shared the perfect note-taking app.
Spoiler, I use eight of them. Anyway, you can find a link in the show notes to the episode entitled Apps for Noteworthy Events or you can search in your podcatcher of choice for Daily Tech News Show and subscribe.
Online Security — Staying Ahead of the Baddies by Bart Busschots
[1:05] Just recently, Bart did a presentation to the MacInAwe Mac Users Group.
They call themselves MayaMug.
His talk was entitled, Staying Ahead of the Baddies, and he was talking about security and what we could do about it.
Luckily, they posted his awesome talk on YouTube so we can all enjoy it.
And of course, I put a link in the show notes to that video.
CCATP #778 — Bart Busschots on PBS 155 – Introducing JSON Processing from the Shell with jq
[1:25] After our annual break from programming by stealth, that seems to happen at an unknown time for an unknown length of time every single year, Bart and I are back with a new episode of Programming by Stealth.
Bart introduces us to a language called jq and a terminal command called jq, which together are used to help us query JSON files.
We can see pretty versions of them, and we can also manipulate them.
Now, we don't learn a lot of commands in this episode, but Bart walks us through a few examples to help illustrate why we care, or shall I say, the problem to be solved.
I'm sold on the idea having just mucked about in a config file for Homebridge just this week that was in JSON, on, so I'm really excited to learn the rest of this.
You can find this episode of Programming by Stealth in either the Chitchat Across the Pond feed or the Programming by Stealth feed in your podcatcher of choice.
AirTable to Replace Pedias and Other Inventory Needs
[2:16] Last week I told you how DVDpedia, the DVD cataloging database, was being sunset by the developer at broogy.com.
[2:23] I explained how I exported all of my data in a CSV file plus the images and then I imported them into Under My Roof from Binary Formations, the app I to catalog everything in my home.
When I finished the article, Sandy Foster in the live chat room said she was sure glad to learn about this because she uses another one of the pedias. She uses Bookpedia.
She's cataloged all of her quilting books and would now need to look for a new solution.
She's not really interested in maintaining a database of everything in her home, so Under My Roof would be overkill for her.
When I posted my article about the process, Brian Blankenship on Mastodon thought Under My Roof sounded like a great tool, but he's a Windows user, and wondered if I knew of an equivalent for him.
In response to Brian, I explained that I haven't personally used any tools like this on Windows.
But whenever I'm asked about alternatives for Windows users, I usually start at a site called Alternative2.
You enter the software for which you want an alternative, and then you can filter the results by things like what platform you want the tool to run on, whether it's open source, and the pricing model. The results are kind of hit or miss, but if there is a good alternative, it might just show up on this site.
[3:32] I filtered Alternative 2's results for Brian down to just Windows Inventory Programs and I wished him the best of luck. But then I got to thinking.
Here's Brian and Sandy both looking for a way to catalog some stuff, and for which Under My Roof might not be the right answer.
What if Sandy and Brian could just use a normal database program to import their data?
Now, I knew Sandy had cataloged books, and I went back to Brian on Mastodon and asked him what kind of items he was hoping to track in a database and how he had his data now.
He answered, I have two goals, one to catalog my CD and DVD collection, and two to have a household inventory.
I've ripped my CD collection and most of my DVDs and Blu-rays so I can create an import file if that's possible with your solution, and I have a few different yet incomplete spreadsheets with lists of household goods.
Well, this was going to be perfect.
I know how I could help both Sandy and Brian, and maybe some of you.
My favorite freemium database program is Airtable from Airtable.com.
[4:32] Back in 2018, I wrote an article entitled, I Finally Understand Databases Because of the Free Airtable App, and I've actually been using it ever since.
Steve and I use it to manage what shows we're watching on TV, and we also use it to manage all of our interviews from trade shows like CES and the CSUN Assistive Tech Conference.
Now, Bart always says follow the money to make sure a free tool isn't a creepy tool, or as he likes to call it, a freepy tool.
I'm glad to say that Airtable does have fee-based plans for teams and businesses at, $20 and $45 per month per seat, respectively, but they still have it for free for an individual or very small teams like me and Steve, and with that you can get unlimited bases, a thousand records per base with up to five editors, one gigabyte of attachments per base, and a few more features.
I asked Sandy to export a CSV file from her Bookpedia database so I could test to see if Airtable might work for her.
Sandy's always up for a good experiment and was even more enthusiastic since this might solve her immediate problem.
It sounded like Brian could make his data available in the same way.
Airtable is available as a standalone app for macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android, or you can just log in with your free account at airtable.com.
[5:47] Before I dig in, though, if you're a VoiceOver user, I hate to tell you that not enough of the interface is accessible to make it usable with a screen reader.
It's close, but then you just hit a brick wall.
I started by trying to import the CSV file, and it pops up an overlay window that isn't accessible by VoiceOver.
I tested it on the macOS app and via the web.
I tried with VoiceOver on iPadOS, and hardly any of the buttons were even labeled.
Big fish shake to the people at Airtable.
Now, my testing with iPadOS with VoiceOver was also informative because I discovered that there is no way to import data from the iOS version of Airtable.
Luckily, you can run Airtable via the web and the import functions work even on iOS.
So if you're blessed with the gift of sight and you have a desktop or web version of Airtable, we can get started.
I promise it's easy and awesome from here on out.
When Airtable starts, you can create various workspaces on the left and then using the button in the bottom left, you can add a new base or database.
Once you create a new base, there may be two different ways to import the CSV file.
I saw a sidebar on the right showing a bunch of nifty options, but you can also see in the default grid view, a button that says plus add or import.
It kind of looks like a new tab, but when selected, you'll see that with a free account, you can import a CSV file like we want, but you can also do it from Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.
There's a pop over to see even more sources, including Apple Numbers, Calendar, Contacts, XML, and more.
[7:14] Now this is good news for Brian because he already has his spreadsheet started on his home inventory, so he can just start from there without needing to go through the intermediate step with a CSV file.
[7:25] After selecting CSV, we get the overlay I mentioned earlier asking us to drag and drop or copy and paste files.
We can also select import from several of the typical cloud storage providers.
In this case, I'll just drag Sandy's Bookpedia CSV from my desktop and I select it upload.
One important point about Airtable that I should probably should mention.
Airtable syncs through their cloud. So as soon as you hit upload, you've put your data onto their servers. Now, in Sandy and my case, with our DVD and book collections, that's not really a concern.
But when I saw the option to upload my contacts, it gave me a little hitch in my giddy-up, if you know what I mean.
I'll leave it up to you to read, understand, and make your own decision of whether you trust Airtable's privacy policy.
Okay, back to the fun part. The next question will be whether you want to create a new table or import it into the default table that you started with.
I chose new table because that default table had fields I wasn't interested in and I didn't want to clean it up if they get all mushed together.
[8:24] Now Airtable then pops up a little mockup of what the data will look like when it's imported with a note at the top that says, check to make sure it's right or let us know if something looks wrong.
Below the mockup is an option to adjust the import and a button that says all fields.
This button pops up a list of the fields that will be imported and all can be unchecked except for that first sacred field that I talked about last week.
Sandy's Bookpedia export included the number of pages in each book, and she didn't give a hoot about that.
On doing this import, she could simply uncheck that field, and her new database would be cleaner right off the bat.
[8:59] One of my favorite things about Airtable is how easy it is to create different field types.
By that, I mean you can define a field type as text, number, date, checkboxes, multiple selects, single selects, phone numbers, emails, and more.
In this import mockup, Airtable auto-selected field types for Sandy's data.
For example, since she has several books by the same author, it chose single select as the field type.
That means that when she adds a new book, she can go to the author field and just tap on these little single selects. It's really a cool way of doing it.
Airtable delightfully color codes the different options in the select fields in these nice pastels so it's very easy to see the distinctive options in addition to reading the text.
[9:41] So, I hit import, and in about 7 seconds, I had a beautiful grid view of all of Sandy's quilting books.
While this grid view is nice enough, the real fun in Airtable will come when we create new views. But first, we have to eat our vegetables.
Remember, we still need to get the book cover images into Sandy's database.
As you may recall, CSV files can't contain images, so we're going to have to drag them in one by one from the separate export images made by Bookpedia.
Last week, when I talked about importing my DVDs into a database, I explained that the images for the cover art were in numerical order by when I had added them to the database.
I happened to get into a conversation with Connor, the developer from Brugie, and he explained there's a UID field that you can reveal, and that's that little number that I see in the order of the DVD images.
Anyway, if I had had that, I would have been able to reorder and sort things in under my roof in order to make it faster and easier to import my images.
That's something important to know.
All right. Anyway, now we're back to Sandy and her Bookpedia database.
The first thing I needed to do was create a new field to hold her book cover images.
[10:56] If you scroll to the right of your existing fields, you'll see a plus button.
From there, you can name your field and you have to select the field type.
In this case, we want attachment. If you hover over attachment, you'll even see a tooltips telling you that this field is for images, but also for documents or other file types.
You can add a description to the field, but I figured book covers as a field title would be sufficient.
[11:19] The book covers will be the showy part of this grid view, so I think dragging this field as far as possible to the left would look good.
Remember though, the title field is sacred, so it's going to stay on the far left and the images can go into the second column over.
[11:33] Now, attachment fields, when selected, show a little message that says, Drop files here!
Inviting Sandy to drag in her book cover images exported by Bookpedia.
There's to be no magic here. She still has to drag each book cover image in one by one, just like I did in Under My Roof.
The other thing of note is that it takes a few seconds for the image to show up in Airtable as you drag it in.
I assume that time is because Airtable is sending the image up to the cloud.
The good news is she doesn't need to sit there and wait for it.
She can start finding the next image while it's still working.
[12:04] Once the tedium of importing the images is complete, the fun can begin.
The main reason to keep an inventory in a database instead of a simple spreadsheet is the ability to create completely different views of the data depending on what you want to see.
The main view is called the grid view and it's just as boring as any spreadsheet except in this case it's like in color and it's got some images in it.
At the bottom of the Airtable window, there's a section that says Create, and it lists several views you can add with the free version of Airtable, along with a few that require a team account.
One of the ones that might be fun for Sandy is the Kanban view.
Kanban is a Japanese term for signboard, and it's often used in manufacturing or in coding to develop a visual way of looking at data.
The key thing about Kanban is that it's really pretty and yet it organizes the data in useful ways.
In Airtable, the first thing to do with a Kanban is to choose a grouping field.
In Sandy's case, a good grouping might be by author.
The resulting Kanban view shows the book stacked vertically by author with their pretty book covers.
I've only dragged in some of the book covers for the screenshot and show notes, but it still looks really cool.
[13:13] We don't get much information beyond the title and the pretty cover in this default Kanban view.
If Sandy wants to see more information in each card, she can go to Customize Cards and toggle on other fields such as the publisher, genre, and location.
But let's say Sandy wants to see the books by their location.
She could create a new Kanban view and stack it by location, or she can select stacked by author and just change the current one to location.
I played around with that and very quickly I could see that Sandy has a little bit of data cleanup to do because of tiny typos in the locations.
It'll be a matter of seconds for her to use the single select field in the grid view to choose the correct locations, and then her Kanban view will be beautiful.
[13:53] I think the gallery view in Airtable might be a great option as well.
If Sandy's a very visual person, she might like the gallery view which makes little cards for each record with a pretty book cover showing prominently.
She can turn on and off info about the books, like maybe she wants to show the location she's entered so she can find the book on the right bookshelf.
They look much like the Kanban view, but they're simply in alphabetical order.
Of course, Airtable provides sorting on all of the fields in a simple drop down at the top of the table.
With over 200 books cataloged, Sandy might like to take advantage of the filter option at the top.
Sandy's tagged the books with genre, so she could filter to find just the type of book she's looking for.
I could go on and on and on about how much fun you can have with Airtable in setting up views for your data, but I think you get the picture.
I think for Sandy and Brian, Airtable might be a great free alternative to buying a dedicated application for doing inventories. Now I would be remiss if I didn't explain why I would still choose Under My Roof for me.
It's the difference between building your own structure and having a tool tailored to this specific task.
Under My Roof already has separate areas expecting photos, receipts, and warranty information.
It notifies me when my items go out of warranty. It has a special area for my insurance information.
When I got my Apple Watch repaired, there was already a place for that information to be recorded. It even knows my devices are going to have serial numbers.
[15:16] But I also understand that not everyone will do the work to maintain this level of information, so Airtable might be a much easier place for the Bryans and Sandys of this world to get a better handle on the things they do want to inventory.
Taking and Transferring Live Portrait Photos
[15:29] Every once in a while, I start working on a topic for the show and as I dig in, I realize it's way more complex than I first realized.
More rational people would back away and just move on to another subject.
But, if I don't hit a roadblock, I just keep digging.
And sometimes I descend into madness.
And this is one of those times.
I really recommend that you just skip this entire subject rather than descend with me. But if you continue to listen, just blame yourself, okay?
I told you this is going to get deep.
[16:00] Alright, let's start with a history lesson. Way back in 2015, Apple introduced live photos. A photo taken in Live on the iPhone captures like a second and a half before and after the photo is taken.
Then in software, the phone chooses what it considers the best key photo, but you can go into the editor in Photos and adjust the key photo to get that perfect moment in time.
In my opinion, it's the only way to take photos of children and pets.
The other feature of Live Photos is that you can use some fun effects like bounce and long exposure to create interesting images and videos.
A year later, in 2016, Apple introduced Portrait mode, which allowed us to take shallow depth of field photos mimicking what we can do with a big girl camera.
Over the years, the quality of portrait images has gotten better and better and can create very compelling photos of people and pets.
[16:49] If you choose to take a portrait photo, it's not a live photo.
You had to choose between the cool, shallow depth of field or the ability to capture just the right frame.
If you captured that perfect smile in portrait photo, that was awesome.
But if you missed it, the photo was useless.
The problem at this point in the story is that we had to choose between live and portrait photos.
Before you took the shot, you had to decide if you wanted to be able to select the best photo in a live photo or risk it and try to get a fabulous portrait photo of a person or pet.
With the advent of the iPhone 15 models of the entire line and with iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma, Apple gave us almost the best of all worlds.
If you take a photo of a person, a dog or a cat, sorry bird and reptile people, but you take it even in live, it can become a portrait photo.
I know, it sounds too good to be true, right?
This very cool feature has some tricks to it.
We're going to go through how to know you're taking a live portrait photo, limitations on live vs portrait in these photos, how to edit the depth of field, and how to share these images so the recipient can also edit the depth of field. And thar be dragons.
[18:02] I took two photos to demonstrate the first item on our list, how to know you're taking a live photo. photo.
The first photo I took was of my laptop, which no matter how much I love it, is not a person, dog, or cat.
The second photo I took was of my cat Ada, and of course she's named after the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace.
In the upper right of the camera app, while taking each of these images, I made sure that the live photo indicator did not have a line through it, so I knew I was taking a live photo.
Down below, just above the shutter button, I made certain I had selected a regular photo.
As I pointed my camera at the two different subjects, there was one subtle difference in the on-screen information.
[18:46] When I pointed at my cat, the camera showed a little F in a circle as an overlay on top of the image in the bottom left.
When I looked at my laptop with the camera app, there was no little F showing.
This F is the indicator to let you know that you'll be able to change the depth of field on the photo you're about to take. Now, if you don't see the F when you point your iPhone 15 at a person, dog, or cat, you may have to toggle on this feature.
It should be on by default, but if you don't see it, open Settings, Camera, and then scroll down till you see Portraits in Photo Mode.
The text below the toggle says, Automatically capture depth information if a person, dog, or cat is prominent in the frame in photo mode so you can apply portrait effects later.
In traditional photography with big girl cameras, you have a dial that changes what's called the f-stop.
As the f-stop number gets smaller, the lens opens up more, which creates the, shallower depth of field.
Think about how it's harder to focus driving at night? That's because your pupil's dilate's super big and then you have a shallower depth of field.
Anyway, Apple have chosen the f-symbol to indicate that you'll be able to change the effective f-stop inside the Photos app.
What's interesting here, beyond learning a wee bit about traditional photography, is that the iPhone 15 has been instructed to take a live photo, but it's still going to let us change the depth of field.
[20:07] After you take the photo in Live, but not portrait of a person, cat or dog, the indicator in the upper left will have an F in a circle and the word Live next to it.
The drop-down will be there to play around with effects like bounce and long exposure. But hold that thought.
When you edit the image, across the bottom, along with the normal editing options, you'll see both Portrait, with an F in a circle, and Live, side by side, if you're looking on the iPhone.
Now if you select Live, you can drag the slider to choose a different key photo.
But there's something new on the slider.
Above the initial key photo, there's a little F in a circle again.
[20:44] Now remember when I started this story, I said Apple gave us almost the best of all worlds? There's a limitation.
The depth information is only on that initial key photo.
If you didn't capture what you wanted and you need to change to a different key photo, then you won't be able to adjust the depth of field.
Now, I didn't want you to be confused, because if you start changing the key photo, and then you change over to portrait to adjust the depth, suddenly the photo changes back to the original key photo.
But hey, you got a better photo because you did take it in live.
Now I look at it as the live photo is there just in case you missed the perfect moment, But you get all the benefits of portrait mode if you did capture the perfect moment.
So still in the editor, when you select the portrait option, again with the F on the bottom, you'll see the word Depth, and on the left, a dial across the bottom, but it'll default by saying Off.
At this point, pretty much everything in your image should look in focus.
But if you start to slide your finger along the dial, you'll see little numbers popping up like F16 down to F1.4.
[21:47] We could go through why they're numbered this way, but that's a whole how cameras work explanation, so let's stick with what I said before.
The smaller the number, the shallower the depth of field.
If you want to understand all that, go back and listen to the very beginning episodes of Let's Talk Photography by Bart Bouchat.
Alright, as you drag your finger across this little dial, you're going to see the background of your photo go out of focus.
If you drag all the way to f1.4, you might see part of your subject go out of focus.
Say a dog with a long nose, they might end up with their ears out of focus.
You probably don't want that, so drag it up until you see your subject in focus, but distractions in the background are blurred out.
[22:27] But that's not all. You'll see an orange square on the screen showing you where the camera's original focus point was.
You can simply tap anywhere on the image to change what's in focus.
In 2014, you might remember a company called Litro.
They came out with a specialized camera, it was real expensive, and it allowed you to change what was in focus like this, and now we have this capability in our pockets.
If you've ever taken a picture, say, of two people in front of maybe some pretty scenery like there's a canyon behind them or something and then the camera focused on the scenery between them instead and the photos was useless.
Now with this camera in the iPhone's 15 you'll be able to fix that image and focus on the people.
In the upper left next to yet another F in a circle you'll see a hexagon icon with two circles in it.
Looks kind of like the metal nut on the end of a screw to me.
Tap that icon and you'll be taken into the Studio Lighting options.
Perhaps you're feeling a bit fancy and you want to choose a fabulous stage lighting effect for your cat photo.
When you're in Lighting mode with the Nuts selected, the F icon changes to say the f-stop you've chosen, so in my case it's at f 2.8.
[23:38] Not sure why you need that information while you're playing with the lighting, but it's there for you if you need it.
If you do give Studio Lighting a play, be sure to go back and forth with the Depth of field, because it can dramatically change how your studio lighting effect looks.
Also, if you apply Studio Lighting, this turns off Live. When you flip to the Live slider control, it's going to be completely grayed out.
At the top, you'll see the word Live and a box with a line through the Live icon, and tapping on that will make it live again, but that will also turn off any Studio Lighting effects you might have applied.
After you save your changes to the Depth of Field and or the Studio Lighting effects, I think the on-screen information gets confusing.
[24:19] In the upper left, it will still say Live, even though it's no longer live, and the F icon has a line running behind it, not across it but behind it.
That would imply to me though that this isn't a portrait image any longer and that it's still live, but it's actually the opposite.
[24:36] Under the chevron that drops down where you used to sync loop, bounce, and long exposure, you now have Live, Live Off, Portrait, and Portrait Off.
I played with these options for a bit, and if anything, I was more confused as I toggled them on and off, especially when I had studio lighting applied.
I was gonna try to explain it to you, but I'm pretty sure it's not acting exactly as they intended it because it was very confusing, so we're just gonna abandon that whole path and move on.
Now, my interest in this entire topic came up because I had a problem to be solved.
Pat Dingler joined our family at a brewery nearby, and we used Pat's new iPhone 15 Pro to take a family portrait.
Pat is family, so of course she was in it, and she had set her camera to regular portrait mode when the photo was taken.
That's cool, but when we looked at the photos, we realized that the depth of field was too shallow and some of us, including Pat and me, were way out of focus.
Now, understandably, Pat didn't want to be responsible for choosing the right photo from all the ones that we took to adjust the depth of field.
So she said, I'm just going to give them all to you and you find the best one and then I could fix them.
It turns out to be much trickier to transfer editable depth photos than I ever would have imagined.
And this is where the real madness began.
[25:55] Now, in our family, we normally just create a shared album in Apple Photos for family events. But when Pat added these portrait photos to our shared album, we could not edit the depth of field.
I knew shared albums weren't full resolution, but I didn't realize they would lose some of the editing functionality.
It was time to go on a quest to find a way to move these photos from her library to mine and let me do the depth of field editing.
It's very mean of me to do it this way, but I'm going to start by telling you all the methods that failed first, and then I'll tell you what does work.
The next most likely way to succeed at sharing a photo with an Apple-centric, person is to send the image via iMessage.
If you drag an image from Photos into Messages, or use the Share icon at the top of the Photos app and share to Messages, the image loses the depth data when it arrives at the other end.
That really surprised me because iMessage is usually my go-to when other methods fail.
I tried iCloud sharing next, but it also failed me. You have to log into iCloud.com, to share files, you can't right-click to share a photo, and then when you choose to share a photo, it gives you the option to copy a link and send it to someone.
But when you send that link to someone, you can clearly see it's a photo with depth information because it has our little F symbol, but the edit button is grayed out when they receive it.
I think it makes sense though, because iCloud sharing is kind of just letting someone look at your photos. It's not a collaboration method.
[27:17] Then I got to thinking, maybe we need to export the image first.
If you do a simple export from photos in macOS using File, Export, Export 1 Photo, or Shift Command E, you can set the export to be HEIC, JPEG, PNG, or TIFF.
But this is not the full original photo format, even if you export to HEIC.
To export the original in all its glory with its precious depth information, you need to select File, Export, Export, Unmodified Original, Option, Shift, E.
Okay, if you're on iOS, you can do it too. Select the Share Sheet icon in the bottom left, you know, the little box with the up arrow in it.
Then you'll choose Unmodified Original.
We're going to have to circle back to where to export the file to in a bit, because that gets confusing too, but that Unmodified Original part is what you need to remember.
[28:10] The exported original is going to break into two files.
If the photo was taken as a live photo, you're going to get the original photo, either a JPEG or an HEIC, depending on how you took it, and an MOV file, and that's that little 2 or 3 second video taken for the live photo.
Now if it wasn't a live photo, you'll still get two files, but it'll either be a JPEG or HEIC, and the second file is an AAE file.
I had to look this one up. The AAE file contains any adjustments you may have made to the original photo so those changes could be reapplied if you ever wanted them back.
Alright, so now we know how to export unmodified originals. Great!
I exported an unmodified original and I dragged it into iMessage and sadly, bringing that image into photos on another user account did not allow me to edit the depth of field.
[28:59] Okay, so iMessage is definitely out as a transfer mechanism if you want the recipient to be able to edit the depth of field.
But this unmodified original method is still crucial for what will work.
I did finally find a couple of ways you can transfer the file, but the format in which you took the original photo matters.
[29:17] I think. I'm not entirely sure though. I'm an engineer by training and it's in my DNA.
I know how to do controlled experiments where you change just one thing at a time. That's the only way to know for sure what affects the outcome of an experiment.
But in all of my testing with Pat, some with Jill, and later extensively with Sandy, even while I was watching her screen, I've seen some methods not work and then start working for no apparent reason.
Sandy is my witness on this. Now, I'm going to have to give you the best advice I can, but don't be surprised if at some point you get inconsistent results.
One of the things Pat and I discovered that we think caused Janky results was that the The format in which he took our family photo was a JPEG, not HEIC.
The HE and HEIC stands for High Efficiency, but it's also a newer format that allows more options.
To increase your chance of success in transferring photos so they can have their depth edited, I suggest you ensure you're using an HEIC for your photos.
On the iPhone, in System Settings, scroll down and open Camera, select Formats, and under Camera Capture, ensure that High Efficiency is selected.
The other option is called Most Compatible, and that's the option that creates a JPEG.
Pat had set her camera while back to take JPEGs because she had trouble sending photos to some Android friends.
Keep that in mind if you choose to make the change to HEIC.
[30:43] Now, I know this feels like we're fixing to make a plan to maybe start transferring some photos someday, but there's one more thing that matters.
The person receiving the image must be on iOS 17 or macOS Sonoma.
That little fact reared its head when Steve was unable to edit the depth on a photo I'd sent to him, and yet Sandy could see the depth slider on the same photo.
We'd gone back and forth, we couldn't figure out what was going on.
Now, I had done tons of experiments using Steve's MacBook Pro to test whether photos were editable, and they were working.
But when I sent him this one photo, he happened to be on his Mac Studio, and it didn't work because it was still on macOS Ventura and his laptop had already been on macOS Sonoma.
So the recipient has to be on iOS 17 or macOS Sonoma.
[31:29] Okay, I think we finally have enough caveats here to get to be able to finally transfer the photo.
The first way I found that allows you to successfully send a portrait photo to someone and have them be able to edit the depth information was to use Apple Mail.
Dragging right from photos into mail had the same problem as iMessage.
So, the way you do it is first export an unmodified original as I described earlier and then drag it from the finder into mail.
It works, but there's one more thing you have to do. I told you this is madness, right?
Alright, you've probably noticed that in Apple Mail when you attach an image, there's a little drop down in the upper right that lets you change the size of the image you're sending. You get to choose between small, medium, large, and actual size.
However, if you've dragged in an unmodified original, you get one more option.
It says choose original image.
You must select this for the photo to be transported to its recipient without any of the data being stripped away.
Remember, that recipient's got to be on Sonoma or Iowa 17 in order to make the edits to the portrait photo that you've taken them.
[32:34] Now Sandy and I tested the idea of putting the unmodified originals into Dropbox, and then I would just send links to them.
She had total success if I sent a link to a single image, or if I compressed a group of them into a zip file.
In all cases, she was able to modify the depth data.
Now, Dropbox with unmodified originals for the win.
Earlier, I said that sharing via iCloud.com didn't work because it is not a collaboration tool. It's all about just showing them a photo.
But what about sharing from iCloud Drive?
I exported an unmodified original to my iCloud Drive in the Finder so that it was a file, not part of photos.
I right-clicked on the file, and I chose Share, and I selected iMessage.
[33:16] I sent a photo of our cat, Grace, to Sandy. I sent the same image in the same way to another phone that I have and I was able to open it.
And while it looked like it worked, because the upper left clearly said portrait and had the little f, I didn't get the depth slider when I went to edit.
I backed out of edit and I tapped on the word portrait with the little f and I saw something very curious.
Under portrait, it had two options, portrait with a little f next to it and portrait off with the f having a line through it.
But get Look at this, the portrait off option was selected.
Why would the photo say it was portrait, but have portrait off?
But it gets even weirder.
You cannot change the selection, so I'm unable to change it to a portrait photo.
Sandy and I are in agreement that this must be a bug because she saw that on her version as well.
Why would they let you send a portrait photo, tell you it's portrait, give you a drop-down to enable the portrait photo, but disable the option?
[34:15] Undaunted, I went back into the share sheet on iOS, and there's a button for options before you export.
You can set the format from automatic to current or most compatible.
We would want current to ensure we still have the HEIC on export.
At the bottom, there's a toggle that says All Photos Data, and this is off by default every time you go to export a photo from the iPhone.
Below the toggle, Apple explain, Original quality files will include edit history and metadata like location, depth information, and captions.
The recipient can view the current version and modify any edits.
Well, that sounds like exactly what we want.
Above the title, the heading says that this toggle affects AirDrop and iCloud links only.
All right, so I set the photo to current format. I chose send as iCloud link.
I turned on all photos data and I texted the iCloud link to the image to Steve.
And believe it or not, But it worked on his iPhone running iOS 17.
[35:15] Okay, we have a success there. Next, I found another method on iOS that worked with iCloud.
If you export as original from photos using the share sheet, you can email it as an attachment.
When you start the email, tap in the blank area of the screen.
So you haven't typed anything yet.
You'll first see paste, select, and all when you do that tap.
But there's a chevron to the right.
If you tap that, you'll see add link, auto fill, and format.
Tap the chevron to the right again. Now, you'll see Quote Level and Insert Photo or Video.
Do NOT select Photo or Video because it won't work.
Instead, tap that darn right chevron a fourth time, or third time, anyway, tap it again and now you'll see Attach File.
Select that option and it'll let you navigate to where you saved the file.
When you select Send in the email, you'll be asked whether you want to send as full size and you need to say yes.
Now, this one sounds a lot harder than it is, except for the option that you might fat finger the chevron button, which I did the first few times, but it does get the job done.
So remember, you want to attach a file, not add a photo or video, because that's going to ask you to get it out of photos and then it won't do the right image, it won't be the unmodified original.
You need to attach a file and find it out in the Finder.
[36:33] All right, to be complete, I wanted to try another cloud file sharing option, so I abused my friendship with Sandy one last time by sending her a link to an unmodified original in Google Drive.
I created the link by opening my Google Drive in Finder and right-clicking on the file and choosing Copy Link to Clipboard. Easy peasy.
But when she opened the link, she didn't have permissions.
So she had to request permission. This triggered an email to me that I had to open.
Then in the email, I had to click a link to log into Google Drive on the web and give her editor permissions.
As soon as I granted her permission, she was then able to import the image into photos and she was able to change the depth of field.
So while it was incredibly annoying compared to just using a Dropbox link, technically you can use Google Drive to share an unmodified original portrait photo that the other person can edit.
At this point, I told her I refused to install OneDrive to test that option because I'm even I'm weary of this entire investigation.
[37:30] All right, let's go to bottom line here. I explained at the beginning that I descended into madness and dragged Sandy with me and now you understand what I meant. At least I warned you.
All right, let's see if I can summarize my findings. To take a live portrait photo, you have to have one of the iPhones 15 running iOS 17.
I recommend setting your image format to high efficiency, but I'll confess that I did find scenarios where JPEGs actually worked, so your mileage may vary.
For the person receiving your image to be able to change the depth of field, They must be on macOS Sonoma or on iOS 17, but they do not need to own an iPhone 15.
To transfer the photos successfully, so they can edit the depth of field, your choices are from macOS, export an unmodified original, and then you can save locally and attach to an email in Apple Mail, but be sure to change the size to original image, or you can save it to Dropbox.
If you want to make it harder, save it to Google Drive and send them the link.
This may work in other non-iCloud services, but I haven't tested elsewhere.
If you're on iOS, you can use the share sheet and use options to set the format to current, send as iCloud link, and turn on all photos data.
Then you can send the iCloud link through any service you like.
You can text it, you can email it, whatever you want.
On iOS, you can also airdrop the photo if you toggle on all photos data in options first.
Finally, in iOS, you can export unmodified original using the share sheet from photos save to iCloud or another cloud service, then you create an email and add the image as an attachment.
[38:58] Now, I have a suspicion that much of what I've explained would work with regular portrait photos, but early on in the process I got overwhelmed with all of the options and I focused my efforts on just the new live portrait photos.
I welcome you to try any or all of these methods and find out if they work for your regular portrait photos.
As you can imagine, this has consumed my daily life for several days, taken up Pat's time, Jill's time, and especially Sandy's time to do all of these experiments.
I thank them for all of their efforts and I'm just gonna go take a nap now.
Support the Show
[39:32] Do you wish that right now the show would be interrupted by an ad? No?
Well then how about becoming one of the fine folks who support the show financially by going to podfee.com slash PayPal and making a one-time donation so we never go to ads.
You could be cool like John Murray and put a reminder in your calendar to make a donation once a quarter. I hope you'll consider helping keep the show going.
Going Phablet with iPhone 15 Pro Max — Bart Busschots
[39:54] Well, hey Bart, last time we talked, we chatted about you going with a bigger watch.
You went from the 44 or 45 millimeter Apple Watch up to the Ultra 2, but you embiggened something else in your digital life, right?
I did. I've had a year of tech inflation where it wasn't about the price.
All of my tech just got bigger.
So but it also was about the price.
[40:21] Actually, technically speaking, the price stayed the same, didn't it?
Well, no, of course I paid more because I got a bigger model.
Yeah. Right. Fair point.
[40:30] I am famously anti-big phone.
But I now own a 15 Pro Max iPhone. Ah, the giant.
Which, the gigantic phone. Now you get to have an I told you so moment here to start us off.
Because when the iPhone 10 came out, I was very, very, very worried that it was way too big and I wouldn't be able to use it and it would be terrible and awful, but I bought it anyway because gosh darn it, was it ever cool. Which it was.
And you told me not to be so silly, it's absolutely not too big, it'll be just fine. And you were completely correct.
The iPhone X was absolutely fine. So I got over myself very quickly because I could still use it one handed and it still fit in all of my pockets.
[41:16] So this time around I don't think I've been quite as lucky and I knew I wouldn't be.
So this is only the second time that Apple have made us have this difficult choice.
Because in recent years, it's been the same camera in the big and the not so big pro.
And there's only one other time in history they made us choose, which was all the way back in the iPhone 6 Plus.
And that's when I bought an iPhone 6 Plus, because I wanted the new cameras.
What was it? Was it just having two cameras, I think, back then?
Was the big? No, it was motion.
It had the image stabilization so the video was way better.
That's the only difference, huh? And I remember you really liking that.
Okay. I'm going to bring it up in MacTracker and look at that, because I thought it was also it had two lenses or something, because I don't do video much.
Back then I thought you did, because it was also one of the first waterproof ones. You could have fun in the pool with it.
Hmm. It's a long time ago. iPhone six is so many so so many years ago.
By the way, I didn't go big and then for obvious reasons, because I disagree with big phones, but you didn't stay big, which is interesting.
[42:29] Right. After a while, I did really like it.
I liked the phone and and I actually came to the conclusion that big phones are for girls because we have purses And by and large, obviously not all women carry purses.
Pat Dengler's famous for not carrying a purse. But we tend to carry purses more often than not.
And being thin but longer is, I mean, an iPhone 6 Plus would have fit in the fanciest little clutch kind of a purse.
But if you've got pockets or a jacket pocket or something, maybe it would be harder.
So I sort of came to the conclusion it was good for girls. But when I downsized to the next year, oh, I was so happy. I was so happy to go back down.
I didn't realize how much it was bothering me until I went smaller.
Yeah, and I know Adam Christensen also went big once and swears he'll never do it again. So it's my turn to have a go.
[43:29] And I mean, this year, the reason I like I wasn't into iPhone photography with the iPhone 6 plus, so it didn't really that wasn't my thing.
But now I'm all in like my DSLR literally, I checked the timestamp on the last image on the memory card. It's before COVID.
[43:46] Oh my gosh, it's summer 2019. You haven't taken a picture since COVID.
It on the DSLR. It has not taken a shot since.
Everything's been iPhone, every single shot. So when Apple made me choose between the big phone with the 5X tetraprism or the not as big phone without the 5X tetraprism, I kind of knew where I was going.
So I went, but I knew it was going to be a trade off.
And it is, it is an absolutely amazing device. And I feel like I've made trade-offs and I haven't felt like that in a very, very long time.
[44:21] So I want to end on good stuff because trade-offs have pros and cons, right? That's always the thing with the trade-off.
So I'm going to start being mildly cranky and then I'll get happier and happier as we go through. Because I know you prefer it that way, right?
So I literally actually pulled a muscle trying to use the phone one handed.
I had to get the Arnica gel out and it was, I didn't know there was a muscle between your thumb and the other finger, sort of in the V of your hand.
But you do have a muscle there and it can really bloody well hurt.
Oh, that's terrible. Yeah. So I've given up on using it one handed.
Well, sort of. I've discovered the accessibility features and figured out how they work and they work well.
So I had slightly scuppered myself because a long, long time ago, and I remember doing it now with hindsight.
So we used to have to triple tap the home button to get reachability.
[45:16] And there was a reason that annoyed me. I'll be darned if I remember what it was, but I remember being delighted at discovering I could turn it off.
So I did. So long ago, I had a home button, so years ago.
And now I was like, where the hell has reachability gone? I haven't accidentally triggered that thing in years, but I know it exists.
So, reachability again is the thing that pulls the whole screen kind of slides down so you can reach the top of the screen, right?
Yeah, and on these big phones, it pulls down a lot. On the smaller phones, it pulled down like three quarters of the way, but now it pulls down halfway down the screen.
So it really comes down into reach of your thumb, like all the way down, which is cool because my thumb isn't very long and that's literally where I pull the muscles. So yeah, good.
So it's in accessibility settings along with half the planet.
So I turned it back on and you know, the gesture on the post home button phones is the reverse of the show me the home screen.
So it's basically pulled down at the bottom of the screen. Instead of pulling up.
[46:19] Yeah, which is intuitive when you think about it. I haven't forgotten it, which is helpful.
And the other accessibility thing I've gotten very fond of is this, what I call the scoochy keyboard.
So if you use Apple's official keyboard, it can exist in three modes, like normal, where it's the full width of the phone, which on the wide phones means the letters are very far apart, so you make less typos actually.
[46:40] But you can't reach all the way across with your thumb because the phone is too big.
But it exists as a scooched left for left-handed people and a scooched right for right handed people.
And I discovered that I usually actually hold my phone left handed, even though I am right handed, because usually my right hand has an umbrella in it.
And in Ireland, it's often windy. So you actually need your good hand to keep the umbrella steered at the wind.
So because you can't have it go under the umbrella because then you're in Mary Poppins land and I can't fly. So I just break umbrellas.
So the right hand has to keep control of the umbrella and the left hand has the phone, which means that if you put your thumb and press and hold on the globe icon, you can then slide up and to the left to get the Scoochie left keyboard.
And it's like one nice, easy little fluid motion.
So, and then I can reach everything with the thumb, even though it looks like the Scoochie keyboard looks terrible, but it works really well.
So, I don't care what it looks like, it works.
So I was explaining this to Steve, that you wanted to be able to type left-handed, or one-handed, because you had to hold the umbrella with the other hand, and he immediately said, why doesn't Bart just use dictation, Allison?
[47:50] Oh, because it's usually windy as well, and that's just not a good mix.
I don't know. I know that I've badgered you about this before, and I promised myself I wouldn't yet again tilt at this particular windmill.
But it's getting better and better, Bart. And separately, I told this story to Helma, and she said the same thing. Why doesn't he just use dictation?
[48:11] I will give it a go when it is... If I'm out in the crowd of people, I probably won't, because that's just weird.
But yeah, when I'm out along the canal by myself, I'll give it a go.
What's the worst it can do? Make a mess of it?
Right. Do you find that the new predictive text in iOS 17 is helping you too?
[48:30] Yes. And I often see it be very clever.
Like, yeah, like two or three words. Yeah, exactly.
It's like a whole sentence and then suddenly it realizes, oh, you didn't mean, you know, umbrella, whatever.
It's like, oh, thank you. That's just what I was going to do.
I don't mean fixing previous stuff. I'm talking about where it shows you in grey the words it thinks you're going to type.
Well, that's like an autocomplete, but it's no longer you have to look down and tap it, it's just right in line. and if you just hit a space, it accepts it.
Yeah, so that's good. It's also very good at correcting the word you just mistyped.
And I've noticed it correct a word or two back.
And that works really well with dictation, surprisingly enough.
If you watch every word it says in dictation and you pedantically say each word, it'll be a disaster.
If you stop every time you see anything wrong, just talk. Just talk to it and let it figure it out.
And you'll see words be wrong. And then most of the time, you'll see it go back and fix it.
Every once in a while, it was right, it changes it to the wrong word, but most of the time, I see it changing it the right way.
I've been surprised with how much better it is each time.
[49:39] Yeah, definitely. I mean, I know they're using a large language model, which seems like a good thing for autocorrect.
That's the language model. Yeah, that's kind of what they're for, right?
Using a large language model to try to tell you truth? Terrible.
Using a large language model to type language? That's a good use for a large-language model.
Yeah, yeah, that's the perfect reason for it. I mean, it's literally predictive text.
Okay, let me use it for predictive text. Yeah, exactly.
[50:07] The other thing that slightly made me a little bit… Cranky's too strong a word. Mildly disappointed.
I sort of thought that a bonus for getting a much bigger phone would be an extra row or column of icons.
I figured, there's so much more screen here, surely they'll give me bigger widgets or something extra on my home screen or lock screen. Nope.
Oh, they're just bigger. Yeah, everything just a little bigger and or further apart depending on what it is.
So on the keyboard, the keys are the same size, but the gap is bigger, which I guess does aid accuracy if there's a bit more of a gap.
So when you're using two thumbs, it's actually quite nice because it's there's a little bit more room between the Q and the W and the E and all that.
You know, so it's a little nicer that way.
It gives you more room for the squishy keyboard.
That's probably as big as my keyboard, right?
Well, you know, the squishy one is very squishy, but no, but I'm saying if you scoosh yours, it's probably the size of mine on the 15 pro.
[51:09] I think it's even more scooshed. I think it's actually even smaller.
I like this name. We're going to keep this squishy, squishy. Yeah.
So that's, uh, that's me done to be honest, being cranky because other than that, it's kind of all the trade offs are on either side.
So if you want to watch a video or something, it's so much nicer to watch a YouTube video on this iPhone than any other iPhone I've ever owned.
If you want to enjoy flicking through Flickr, it's so much nicer looking at people's photos on this iPhone than any phone I've ever owned.
And the added bonus, of course, is that if I want to edit my photos in the camera app, all of the controls are a little bit easier to use.
And the view I get of my photo is that little bit better because it's all that bit bigger and as well as being my primary camera, it's also my primary editing suite.
So it's really nice to be easier, you know, for it to be just better editing photos.
And of course. About that.
Yeah. And the other thing, of course, is that the five X telephoto is.
Yeah. OK. That was why I went big. And I'm really glad I did, because it is without a shadow of a doubt It is at least as good.
I can say with 100% confidence is at least as good as a 3x telephoto.
There is no loss in quality and I'm convinced it's slightly better.
[52:34] But I will say for sure, it's the same, but I think it's a little bit better, which for going from three to five is impressive, and in particular, it doesn't get noisy even in low light because I was doing things like moonrise and stuff at 5x because I figured let's stress this thing.
[52:54] I had a very plain landscape with very little detail, so the noise should have jumped out.
Doesn't go on trees where the edges should have got all crunchy with noise reduction, they were fine, it wasn't all crunchy.
So this thing holds up, the 5x holds up really well.
So I'm surprised you say it's at least as good as the 3.
I was hoping it would be a lot better than the 3 because the 3 is kind of kind of muddy to me on the on the 14 pro and the 15 pro. Well that's why I think it's better.
I think the reason I say I think it's better is because I haven't noticed it be muddy.
So with the 3x telephoto, sometimes it would be amazing and sometimes it would be awful. It seems to be light-based.
[53:42] Yeah, and so I don't know if I've had this phone long enough to be sure it's never awful, but so far it feels better.
Okay. Now I did one experiment. Helma was here this week and she has an iPhone 15 Pro Max and I did a test that I wanted to do, that I've been wanting to do for a while.
I took the 15 Pro Max and used the little rotat-y dial thing and dialed it down to 3x, which my understanding is that's now a digital zoom.
It's not the optical zoom.
It's now a composite image where it's taking some information from two lenses and mushing it together and it's digital photography thing.
So yeah. Right, and I compared that and I took this 3x shot of the exact same thing with my 14 Pro, a 15 Pro and the 3x on the 15 Pro was better than this modified mutated 3x on the 15 Pro.
So if you want to take a photo that's 3x, take it at 2x and zoom in and crop in on it, I would suggest.
Don't take it, don't try to make it 3x, take it at 2x and crop.
Yeah, and that was something I was a little bit worried about.
So would I miss? So I shoot an awful, I still shoot most of my photos at 0.5.
[55:03] That is my look. I don't know, that's just, whether it's that the Irish landscape likes it, or whether it's me who likes it, I don't know.
But the two of us together, that 0.5 works well.
You seem to be very, very close on flowers and bugs and such, or your 0.5.
[55:21] Exactly, and I was a little bit on one. But when I want to zoom, I generally speaking want more.
And so I have not found myself wanting anything less than the full 5x.
It's like, yeah, give it to me, give it to me. This is better.
I'm cropping less, I'm cropping less. Yay.
So I was afraid of what... Yeah, that's a good point. When you want to zoom, you want to zoom.
Yeah, exactly. And so I thought kind of between one and five, that's a big leap. No, it's fine. It's absolutely fine. So phew.
So again, not being cranky. The other thing I got very lucky on, right?
So the time I go big is the time Apple changed the material from heavy stainless steel to light titanium.
So my phone is physically much bigger. It feels no heavier.
In fact, I think it feels a little bit lighter, but it may just be because the edges are so much nicer.
It may just be nicer rather than lighter, but there is no way that this phone feels heavier than my old phone, even though it is bigger.
[56:16] Which again, phew! There's a lot of discussion about why it feels that way and things about moments of inertia and where the you know, where the the weight is around the edge versus the frame and all that.
I don't know, it does feel lighter just going from 14 pro to 15 pro.
I'm trying to remember if we just looked at the 15 pro versus say a 14 pro.
I wonder if you're doing statsy work, what I'd be very curious on is the difference in real grams between the 15 Pro Max and the 14 Pro not max.
Right. I'm just checking just 15 Pro to 14 Pro first, and it's.
[57:00] Wait a minute, 206 was the 14 Pro and 187 is the 15 Pro.
And that's in grams. Okay. Yeah, grams. OK, so your phone is your 15 Pro Max is 221.
The 14 Pro was 206. So it's only 15 grams more.
[57:21] Which is spectacularly little. Right, right, right. And if it's distributed and all that. Yeah.
Yeah, and definitely because the stainless steel was the heaviest part of the old phone and it was around the edge.
And now we have the lightest material around the edge of this one.
So my physics brain does tell me that should make it feel lighter because it as you move it around, it doesn't feel as heavy.
So either way, it feels nice in the hand, apart from the fact that there's too much of it, like, but imagine if I'd gone with the stainless steel, really big one, I think I'd be cranky about the weight as well as everything else. So I think I'd feel more traded off.
So I just, I think I got very lucky that I went big when they went light and it's such a nice material.
I really, really can't say how much I enjoy the titanium. Like, it's a gorgeous, gorgeous material.
Now, you're faceless, right?
I am caseless. Yeah, always will be. The other thing is that this thing continues to surprise me with its battery life.
I haven't changed what I do. And every time I look at the phone to see, should I pop it on a charge pad, I go, oh, 80%. Why? How?
[58:29] It's like almost all the way through today. How are you still?
Oh, yeah, you're a new phone. You're bigger.
It always, always surprises me that it has way more juice than it should.
And I used to pop this thing on a little charge stand three or four times a day.
Basically, whenever I would be at my desk, it would get popped on the stand.
And whenever I'd be in the kitchen, I'd pop it on the stand.
I had the Belkin ones everywhere.
[58:52] And I just don't need to. It's just like I said, it's constantly surprising me that it still has like not just enough charge, but like way enough.
Comfortably enough. Don't worry your little head about it enough.
And that's really unusual. With the exception of certain software updates that seem to cause things to go poorly, like towards the end of iOS 16, I was losing battery right and left.
[59:16] I don't tend to charge mine midday with a smaller phone, but I was looking at the specs and you should be getting 25% more battery.
So that is certainly noticeable. That is noticeable.
And the other thing, of course, is my phone was a year old and so its battery wouldn't have been at full oomph.
So I'm probably getting more than 25%. Yeah, yeah, and maybe that was part of what was going on with me too. Well, that's good.
And the other thing that I thought was hilarious. So, um, I, I was talking to Dad the weekend before, a week ago, basically over the weekend, and he was saying, I'm thinking of getting a new phone.
Don't quite know what to do. I think he's on a, he's on an 11.
So he's an 11 pro, mind you.
So he's a fair bit back. Wow. And he was like, you know, so what this very latest one, I hear titanium, I hear it's very nice, you know, thinking of going to the really big one. And it's like, well, as it happens, I bought it.
It really is very big. And he only had one question.
Battery life. That was all he cared about. Battery life. How big is battery life?
And I said, well, look, honestly, it is very big, but I'll show you when I come home on Wednesday and you can have a look at it. And I came home.
He picked the phone up. He did that thing you do where you juggle it in your hand.
He stuck it in his shirt pocket and he went, so you said the battery life is longer. And I said, yes. He went, great. That's my next phone.
[1:00:33] That was it. Does it fit in my breast pocket and does it feel OK in the hand?
Yeah, fine. Yeah, that's it. That's the phone I want.
He could have also gotten a 14 plus or a 14 and got better battery life than his 11.
His 11 is probably pretty bad battery life these days. It is at this stage. Yeah.
Yeah. But yeah, so he's a bit like sort of I would be if I wasn't quite such a nerd.
He tends to buy nice and then keep for a long time. Yeah. OK. OK.
So that's good. I just thought it was hilarious. He didn't care about the camera.
I didn't didn't care about the screen.
Didn't care. I think it's like, does it have a longer battery life and does it still fit in my shirt pocket? That's it.
[1:01:12] You know, Helma loves hers, too, and she could care less about the camera.
We're standing on the edge of a cliff with the sun setting over Lunada Bay, which is this beautiful we're on the cliffs and and, you know, the waves are coming in and this gorgeous view.
And I was like, Helma, take a picture here. stand there, I'll take a picture of you." And I kept saying, send this to your husband, send this to your husband.
I kept making her take pictures, and it was like I had to force her to do it. It was pretty funny.
Oh dear. Yeah, it's close to sure, right? Because I'm only going with this phone because of the camera and other people couldn't care less about the camera.
And the screen, like the screen is gorgeous. Of course, being an always on screen, I think it probably has more nits as well.
It's just a very, very pleasing screen.
Of course, the bezels have shrunk as well, which definitely helps.
That's a good question. Does it have more nits? I thought Apple were throwing nits at everything this year.
I kept on hearing them say that in Nope, it's the same as the 14 Pro and the 15 Pro.
1,000 nits, 1,600 HDR. Okay, so there's just more pixels.
Yeah, more of them blurring at you. Yeah, and you had Always On before with the 14 Pro, right? I did, yes.
Now that my phone has been handed down, my darling beloved has Always On for the first time, and he's now going through that phase of, why is my phone not…oh no, it's supposed to do that.
[1:02:31] One thing I heard about that you can do is you can get the benefit of always on, which is you look down and you can see the time, but you have the option of actually turning off your wallpaper.
So what you have is a black screen with just the time. So it's very, very low battery drain.
So if it bothers you that you're getting a battery drain with it, you can turn that off. So I like my pictures, so I keep mine on. Yeah, so do I.
Picture stays up. And actually, to be honest, widgets. Although if you go to black screen you still get your widgets.
I don't know. I don't use any widgets that would cover up the picture of my grandson looking at me with a big grin on his face.
You can move the widgets around so that it's covered. No you can't.
No. They're up at the top right underneath the time and they obliterate the subject of the image. If I could move them I would.
I thought there were a couple of different... Maybe I'm misremembering.
Either way, yeah, yeah. If you stack enough of them, they go down.
But I could be wrong. I only gave them one try and went, nope.
[1:03:28] You're obviously not as obsessed with knowing the probability of rain.
I'm actually... Yeah, I almost hate to say it, but my watch has done it again.
I've lost all weather again. I'm just... I'm done.
So now I'm using complications on my lock screen on my phone to take over from my watch. Oh, that's sad. Oh, that's terrible.
Well, you know, while you've been going bigger, I've been on a going smaller thing.
You know, I went, I had a 15-inch MacBook Pro, then I went up to the 16-inch, MacBook Pro, then I went down to a 14, and oh boy, howdy, was I happy.
I was so delighted that I got to have a smaller laptop.
Couldn't believe how light that was.
And I don't know if it's, I've mentioned this, but I've had this little tiny problem with battery life on my MacBook Pro.
So I bought a MacBook Air just to be able to have a machine to use when I was running all these tests.
And I love it. I love the form factor. I love how light it is.
Excuse me. And I've always had a 12.9 inch iPad Pro and I'm considering going down to the 11. I think I might go down. Huh.
[1:04:34] That's, that's interesting because I have to say, actually, no, maybe I've always, I'm the old guy with the 17 inch MacBook Pro years ago.
So maybe I'm the wrong person to ask.
But I adore because I use it as my kitchen utensil.
I like my giant big iPad. I think you could pry it out of my cold, dead hands, my giganto iPad.
That's what I always used to say, because I use it as a TV.
I watch video podcasts on it and the occasional TV show. But.
I don't know, I'm not that far away from it. So I don't have it across the room in the kitchen like you do, where you sit at the kitchen table and watch it as a TV, right?
Well, no, so I'm using it while I'm cooking as my recipe thing.
So I'm basically glancing over at it while I'm trying to stir the whatever and do the whatever, 20 million things at once.
So I use the split screen thing. So I have two thirds of the screen on the paprika app you put me onto all those years ago, which is the best cooking app ever.
And one third with my multi-timer app, which has lots and lots of kitchen timers.
[1:05:35] Oh, did you know that paprika can do the timers for you? If it says simmer for 15 minutes, if you tap it, it'll start the timer and it'll be that one thing will have the timer and then you can send as many as you want.
And it's directly related into the recipe.
Yeah, but the thing is, I usually have about six recipes going. Oh, OK.
Whereas the multi-timer app lets me have a grid of timers. The multi-timer app's amazing for timers.
[1:06:06] Actually, that might be good for Thanksgiving. We've got that where we're going, OK, we've got the turkey to go in, we've got the ham, we've got the green beans, we've got the mashed potatoes, all the timing of all the things that have to go on.
Yeah, you can give them icons. So not just can you give them a name, you can give them an icon.
So if you have a turkey icon and a potato icon, And that is when you're frantically trying to make it all work, just having a grid with like giant big countdown, sort of pie chart-y style, big countdowns telling you what's going on. It's very powerful.
And you can also put intermediates. So if you have to stir something every 10 minutes, you can have it make a different bong on the intermediate than on the final.
So I have like, you've got to stir this as a gentle little beep.
And it's done is it beep beep beep beep beep beep.
[1:06:54] So, you know, it all has meaning. It's very, very powerful.
And if you're into these weird things like Pomodoro and all these kinds of things, it has all of those built in as well. So it can do almost anything.
And you can basically assemble your grid of timers.
And then it's just one giant big tap at the start. Tap it again to pause it.
Very powerful app. Oh, that sounds good. Well, I learned something on that, if not everything I learned about the phone.
I'm kind of glad I was really tempted to go with that big phone, Bert, for the same reason, for the 5X, because I, I spend most of my time zoomed in.
I like to use it to zoom in on flowers to get that, get a little more real bokeh if I can.
But I've been I've been pretty disappointed with the 3X camera.
So I was thinking, oh, maybe the 5X would be this much better.
But I am really glad I did get a bigger phone and I can wait another year till they bring it down to my size phone.
But I want I want 10X. I want a lot. Yeah.
Yeah. How many more sides can you put on this tetraprism? Like, can you make it an octoprism?
[1:07:53] Yeah, why not? It looks like I'm still going to be carrying my micro four thirds camera when we go to Africa next year, because that's the time I use it is when we go on these big trips.
So to take pictures of the penguins in Antarctica and the puffin up in Iceland, having that camera with me was really good.
But other than that, everything else is the iPhone, that's for sure.
Yeah. So actually, just to go back to your iPad question, does anyone else in the house have that smaller size iPad, even if it isn't a pro?
No, no, but I have played with other people's. I played with Helma's for a while, and I was really excited because she's got the smart keyboard on it, the whatever it's called, the Magic Keyboard, and I thought, okay, great, I can get a chance to type on it and see what it feels like.
But the her keyboard was different than a US version of it. It wasn't super weird. Oh, of course.
But just enough move that like the size of the return key and the location of the tab key were just enough move that I kept making typos. So I couldn't quite tell, but it seemed like it would probably be fine. Because typing on it is really important to me.
Right, and that's one of the things I adore, is that Apple keyboard with the built-in trackpad is such a nice experience.
[1:09:02] Yeah, yeah, interestingly enough, Helma has that. She never uses the trackpad.
She uses her finger all the time.
And I thought that was fascinating. I just immediately took to the trackpad.
Yeah, so if I have it sitting on the kitchen table when I'm, you know, really catching up on my RSS after dinner or whatever, triaging email, it's either the trackpad or the stylus. But I would never put my big grubby finger blocking my entire view.
It's either scroll at a distance with the Apple Pencil or use the trackpad with the two finger swipe gesture, which is very much like sitting on a Mac, right?
I would only use the pencil to scroll if I had it in my hand because I was doing something else. No, I still would use my fingers.
I would hold that up and use two fingers to scroll. That's funny.
Yeah, elbow on the table like a slob and just gently scroll with the pencil. It works.
[1:09:52] I like it. I like it. Well, this was fun. This has been interesting hearing your perspective and we'll be curious to see what more you learn about the camera and what you what you like and see what it does over time.
Yeah, exactly. I'm waiting to do a Let's Talk Photography on it, which I will when the time comes.
Oh, but you're not supposed to talk gear in Let's Talk Photography.
But let's give a plug for that.
If you go to let's-talk.ie or look in your podcatcher of choice for Let's Talk photography.
It's a fantastic podcast. I love that you're doing so many solar shows.
I really like learning directly from you. I'm just selfish. I only want to hear from you.
[1:10:30] I actually find them fun to do. So I was feeling I was always apologizing for them, but I've stopped apologizing because actually I just kind of like him. So there we are.
Okay. I can't remember how I'm supposed to end this one, but how's about some happy computing?
That sounds good. Talk to you later, Mark. Bye.
Well, that's going to wind us up for this week. Did you know you can email me at allison at podfeet.com anytime you like?
If you have a question or suggestion, just send it on over.
You can follow me on Mastodon at podfeet at chaos.social.
Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com. If you want to join the conversation, you can join our Slack community at podfeet.com slash slack, where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely Nocilla castaways.
You can support the show at podfeet.com slash Patreon or with a one-time donation, at podfeet.com slash PayPal, like John Murray.
And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com, slash live on Sunday nights at 5 p.m.
Pacific time, even this weekend on Thanksgiving weekend, and join the friendly and enthusiastic Nocilla Castaways. Thanks for listening.
[1:11:30] Music.