Transcript

NC_2024_01_14

[0:00] Music.

[0:10] Sunday, January 14th, 2024, and this is show number 975.

My View of CES 2024

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/01/ces-2024/

[0:16] Well, Steve and I are back from a fun-filled week at CES in Las Vegas, the Consumer Electronics Show.
I'm sure you've heard the huge announcements from the show, you know, things like transparent television screens, but Steve and I will be bringing you the smaller and often much more practical and useful innovations we saw at CES.
If you haven't followed our coverage before, let me tell you a little bit about how we experience the show.

[0:39] CES usually starts midweek, but we get into town the weekend before because the press events start before the show ever starts.
There are three press events we attend, CES Unveiled, Pepcom, and Showstoppers.
These press events aren't held in the giant convention center halls.
Rather, they're held in little hotel, well, not really little, but big hotel ballrooms with a curated group of vendors.
This gives the press an efficient way to go booth to booth and learn about the products and the event holders that the event holders think might be of interest to us.
Some of the press events are better than others, but each helped us find interesting products.
People often ask me after CES, what's the biggest wow you saw at CES?
I can't really answer that question because it's not about the big wow for me.
It's about interesting solutions to real challenges, whether it's an inventive charging station, a way to protect your back when lifting heavy objects, or a better way to navigate walking if you're blind.
Since we were in Vegas, we did take in one show. It was called Postcards from Earth and it was at the new Sphere Theater. The Sphere is crazy.
The entire outside is a 366 foot tall spherical dome that's also a display on the outside.

[1:51] Throughout the day and night, it displays all kinds of imagery, which is really quite distracting when you're driving by it.
I got a shot of it when it it was a giant, furry, pink, playful-looking monster that I put in the show notes.

[2:03] The theater itself is incredible. Think IMAX, but on steroids.
The entire inside of the sphere is a giant screen, the sound system is phenomenal, and you also feel vibrations and even wind during the show.
I know I'm not really doing it justice, and we decided to just enjoy the experience rather than to try to capture it.
I put a link in the show notes to a video explaining all about the engineering behind the sphere.
It's called The Insane Engineering Behind MSG Sphere Las Vegas.
I really recommend going and looking at that. That's what got us excited about going to see it.
Now, from a social aspect, CES is a real joy.
You've heard Sandy Foster on the podcast many times, and the live show audience knows her as my wingwoman.
What you may not know is that the reason my blog posts are mostly typo-free thanks Sandy as she's the one who proofreads every single one of them.
Sandy happens to live in the Las Vegas area, so every year that we attend CES, we manage to work out a way to have breakfast with her.
After breakfast this year, a fun coincidence happened. Our daughter Lindsay and her husband Nolan just happened to be staying at the same hotel as us, so they came to breakfast just to meet Sandy, which was super fun.
You know, they all know each other from the live chat room, so it was really fun for them to get to meet in real life.
We ended up going back to Sandy's house to see her crazy cool sewing machine that she uses for her amazing quilts, and she even did some instruction for us on how she makes some of the quilts, which was really cool.
We also got to play with her lovely dog, Shushu.

[3:31] I often talk about what I didn't realize I would gain in my life when I picked up a microphone nearly 19 years ago.
And our close friendship with Sandy is a perfect example of the kind of things that have happened to us over these years.
The other fun thing from a social aspect is that we get to meet up with other fellow Apple podcasters.
This year, we hung out with Dave Hamilton and Pete Harmon of the Mac Geek Gab, as well as Chuck Joyner and Norbert Frassa of Mac Voices.
Norbert runs the cameras, while Chuck is the on-air talent.
It was great fun to meet for breakfast each day, then go our separate ways during the day and come back with tales of adventure for the evening sessions.

[4:08] We even one night got to have dinner with Victor Cajiao. If you've been an Apple podcast listeners for a long time, you'll remember he used to host the typical Mac user podcast.
And it was so great to see him after so many years.
We also got to hang out with Tom Merritt of the Daily Tech News Show.
Tom interviewed me after the CES Unveiled event, which you'll hear about in this show, and that was really fun.
Another night after a press event, Tom, Chuck, Norbert, and Steve and I hung out in a bar and spoke philosophically on subjects of great import.
Another great personal and professional connection that we enjoy at CES is with Steve Ewell, Executive Director of the CTA Foundation.
The CTA Foundation is affiliated with the Consumer Technology Association, the folks who run CES.
The CTA Foundation has grants that strategically improve the lives of seniors and people with disabilities.
You may actually remember hearing Steve on Chit Chat Across the Pond back in 2017 when he told us all about the CTA Foundation. You can look that up on episode number 479, and of course, there's a link in the show notes.

[5:13] This year, when we connected with Steve before the show, he invited us to go on a tour with a few other folks where he would highlight some of the more interesting tech in the disability space.
The CTA Foundation held a contest, and the top five of the submissions were given a free booth at CES, and those are the companies we learned about on the tour. Steve and I circled back and did in-depth interviews with two of those companies, Glidance and VisionAid.
I'll leave you with that teaser for a future episode when you'll get to hear those interviews.

[5:43] Now, Steve and I actually did go to the real show floor, and while it's pretty cool to see the crazy big booths with amazing new TV technology and crazy concept cars like the Honda Saloon and the Space Hub, I still like the smaller press events better.
Speaking of Honda, I have to say I'm disappointed in their utter lack of progress in coming out with an electric vehicle.
I bought my first Honda in 1978, and we stayed exclusively in the Honda Motor Company family of cars until we sold our last Acura to buy our Teslas.
I felt like they showed off the Saloon, a really cool-looking, racy, futuristic car, and the Space Hub, a dorky-looking, futuristic van, just as a way to say, Hey, look over here!
Don't notice it's 2024 and we still don't have a shipping electric vehicle!

[6:30] They're still promising the Honda Prologue SUV, but it says early 2024 on their website, so it's still a dream.
They even made a big deal at the show that they changed the H of the Honda logo.
Wow, that's exciting. All right, enough ranting about Honda.
Well, the convention was in the north, west, and central halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center, as well as the Venetian Convention Center.
Believe it or not, we went through all of those halls. halls.
One of the weird things about the booths at the convention halls is that nearly every booth was filled with people who were not authorized to be on camera with the media.
It's kind of baffling, really. In an interview you'll hear in this week's show, you'll hear me talking about the cars from a Vietnamese car company called VinFast.
I'll tell you about two of their shipping vehicles, then one coming early this year, and I'll finish with a concept truck from VinFast.
But what you won't hear is anyone from VinFast talking. They agreed to let me talk to them and get a bunch of details like range and price and probable delivery times, and then I had to remember those stats and regurgitate them all alone on the mic.

[7:35] You know I script my show, and there's a reason for that. It's because I find it difficult to keep a lot of details like that in my head.
At one point, Steve had recorded me talking about one of the cars, and the woman feeding me the info told me to do it again because I'd made too many mistakes. steaks.
Can you imagine the gall? Well, I did do it again because it was a bit clumsy, but afterward, she tried to get me to do it a third time.
She had some suggestions on ways to make it sound better from a marketing perspective.
I looked at her and I said, oh, sweetie, I don't work for you, and I'm not in marketing. She backed off after that.
Now, while it took us nearly an hour to find the two folks who were allowed to at least feed me information and do the video and audio for the show, what happened after that I was done recording was even more interesting.
I was approached by a gentleman from Vingroup, the parent company of VinFast.
He asked me if it would be okay if he could interview me.
I couldn't think why he'd want to do that, but I agreed.

[8:32] It turned out he wanted to get my viewpoint on how a Vietnamese company could better penetrate the U.S. market.
He asked questions about what the most important things were to U.S.
Customers, and he questioned me on the priority of those different features of the car.
He also asked about pricing, and I explained that they'll have an uphill battle because their cars won't be eligible for any of the federal tax credit incentives that U.S. car manufacturers enjoy.
Right now, you can get up to $7,500 off an electric vehicle if enough of the car's parts its materials and battery are from the U.S.
If not enough of that is from the U.S., and there's math about how to know what enough is, the credit drops to $3,750 or maybe even zero.
Like I said, the math is really pretty hard to follow. For example, the cars made by Tesla have enough different components and material technology that only the performance level Model Y and Model 3 are eligible for the $7,500 credit, and the two lower models only get the $3,750 credit. Like I said, it's pretty weird stuff.

[9:34] In any case, it was pretty fun to have my brain picked by the gentleman from the VIN group, and I told him I'd connect him with Bodhi Grimm of the Kilowatt Podcast because he'd probably have a lot more insight than I do on the subject.
Overall, the show was exciting, fun, and exhausting. We even got to drive or be driven in the Tesla, I don't know, it's the boring company.
They have this hole that they've dug between the different convention center halls.
And we got to just jump in a Tesla and be transported from one of these halls to the other. They're huge. So being driven was pretty cool.
We learned a lot. We made some good contacts and we had a great deal of fun with our friends.
Most importantly, we got 34 interviews and we'll be playing these over the coming months. And we think that's going going to bring you a lot of cool things to learn about.

CES Unveiled in 5 Minutes with Tom Merritt

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/01/ces-unveiled-in-5-minutes-with-tom-merritt/

[10:24] CES Unveiled is like a mini CES, right? It's like where they take a bunch of the vendors from the big show floor that no one could possibly walk in a day, and they give us a chance to maybe possibly walk them. You've just been walking.
How tired are you? Well, I'm tired already because I'm easily tired.
It's odd how many of the booths here have people with absolutely nothing explaining what they're standing there about to tell you about. Right, because they want to tell you.
Well, but it's like they didn't even bring a sign with the name of the...
Maybe it got caught in the Gulf.
Yeah, that's probably it. There was the storms. They couldn't bring their stuff.
But I would say two-thirds of the companies, I can't even figure out why I would walk up and talk to them.
I noticed a lot of haptic hand things, a lot of headsets, a lot of health tech. What did you notice?
So I did notice a lot of people talking about things like there was an Android Wear watch that was all about mental health.
Which was that one was a little bit weird but i but i i got kind of a smattering i like to to go into the weird booths can i do a a snap decision on each one so there's a company called wisp w-h-i-s-p-p it's for people who have uh voice loss so maybe they've got uh throat cancer and they can whisper into this app and it comes out sounding like a real voice and it can be your real voice If you have your real voice already recorded, right, right, right, so that was fun Let's see.
There was a company called slim design which makes a body cam they started they make components for like.

[11:53] Police departments for body cams, but they wanted to make their own inexpensive little wearable body cam this thing's $69 It's a little tiny camera and it uses the power of your phone mostly.
So it's just a That's the process.
Right, right, right. So it can be really tiny and really cheap and has some proprietary way of talking to the phone. That was kind of interesting.

[12:14] Kahe was interesting. K-A-H-E. This was the first electric...
Propeller and motor for a motorboat. So you could hook it up to a motorboat and it would go about an hour on like maybe a four or five person boat, but it can also be converted into a snorkeling device.
So it's got handles on it and, and you could just go snorkeling.
So you could ride the motor? You ride the motor for like three hours.
It was really cool. I told them to send me one and they, and they're like, Oh, we should talk. Okay.
I was just messing with them, but they said, Yes.

[12:48] How about an electric ski? These people from, what's the company's name?
Where is it? Squeal. S-K-W-H-E-E-L.
They've got skis, but it's actually kind of like rollerblades.
So it's got two wheels, wheels in front and back, and you're standing on the battery itself, and the battery packs just pop out.
And then you've got a little hand control that you set the speed, and you can go 50 miles an hour.
Now, this guy had a thick accent, a French accent, And I said, 5.0 miles per hour. He said, yes.
And that's wrong. I should never be allowed to do that. But then you can go on sand with him.
But he was talking about like being able to swish and, you know, go back and forth with your knees and really do the angles and everything.
Make it feel like skiing.
Wow. So that is like those old hoverboards, but on skis. I guess so.
Yeah, yeah. But your center of gravity is below the wheels, so it's not like being up on a roller blade.
How about Y-Brush? This was fun. We spend too much time brushing our teeth already.
We don't have the two minutes that it takes this brushes your teeth in 20 20 second 40 seconds.

[13:52] 20 seconds, 20 seconds, 10 seconds on one side, 10 seconds on the other.
It's a little Y thing. You stick in your mouth and you chew down on it, and then you flip it upside down and it does the other side.
That 30,000 little microfiber, something like that. You can buy this today on Amazon.
That's a wide variety. So instead of moving around, it makes it efficient by just brushing your mouth. You just chew.
You just go, like that. I don't have that kind of time, Tom.
I don't have two minutes. I've got to speed that up. Yep.

[14:19] Air Eyewear. A-I-R-I-W-E-A-R. It is a personal air purifier.
Puts out seven liters per minute, I think it was, of purified air through UV-protected air.
Is it a mask, though, or just... It's around your neck. So it's two little things.
It was not bad. It was not very heavy. I was pretty surprised.
And let's see, what was the last one? Oh, the last one. Here we go.
To come in in the last 20 seconds.
ExoBrew. This is a home brewing kit and it's a pretty big unit.
Think a Keurig that's way too big for your counter and you order the supplies.
You can do it on specific things you want or you can get kits.
So they give you recipes and you can mix and match. You can come up with your own recipes and order through them or you can order yourself.
For beer? For beer. Yeah, you're brewing beer.
But you're brewing it, not just putting it out. No, no, no.
You're putting the hops in and the yeast and the whole thing.
I mean, real beer brewers are going to hate this, but I like it.
Yeah, but no, people love home brewing, right? He says it doesn't smell that bad and it doesn't make a big mess. Then how do you know you're brewing?

[15:24] Exactly, if it doesn't smell bad. But that's called XO Brew.
And the guy gave me a peanut butter porter.
I've got it in my backpack here, but I haven't tried it yet.
So that is my five-minute assessment of everything. That is perfect.
Thank you so much. Now, you are going to have interviews with a lot of these people on your own show, right?
Yes, that's right. We put them out pretty slowly. We put out like two or three a week.
So it's going to be like October before this poor ExoBrew guy gets his interview up.
This is like a whole season of NoCillaCast teases right here. Yes, this is it.
This is it. And we're going to keep doing them at all the different parts of the show. So it should be fun. Thank you so much, Allison.
Always good to be here. Podfeet.com. Everything good starts with Podfeet.com, right, Tom?
Exactly. Go to Podfeet.com. You'll find Allison and Steve Sheridan, who's operating the camera for me right now. Thank you to him as well.

[16:14] Well, that was a lot of fun, but let's start with our first review from CES.
Now, while I am the on-air talent for all of the reviews that you're going to hear, Steve is the one working his little fingers to the bone, creating all of the video versions of these reviews, links in the show notes, and all of the audio content that you're going to hear in the podcast.
I definitely couldn't do any of this without him.

CES 2024: VinFast Electric Vehicles

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/01/ces-2024-vinfast/

[16:37] I'm in the VinFast booth, which is a Vietnamese company, and I'm representing the Kilowatt podcast, but I also do the NoCellicast podcast over at podfeet.com.
This is the VF8, which is a full-size SUV.
It's a five-seater and it's got a range of 250 to 280 miles.
It's available in the U.S. today. It came out in March of 2023.
This comes in two trims. It comes in the Eco and the Plus.
The Plus is the fully loaded version and it starts at a price point of $46,000 on the Eco and the Plus is $51,800.
So this is a vehicle that you might want to take a look at that's available today, all-electric, so it's our kind of car.

[17:19] Now, if you'd like a bigger SUV, this is the seven-seater VF9.
This is going to be coming to the United States in the first quarter of 2024, so just around the corner.
This also comes in an Eco and a Plus version, and the Eco starts at $79,800, approximately, that's when they're looking for and the uh plus comes in at 85 000.
The range is above 300 miles which so that's a good healthy range again it's a seven-seater full-size suv coming to the united states first quarter of 2024 from vinfast.

[17:55] I'm sitting inside the VF9 right now, but the display and the controls that you see here will are the same in the VF8 as well.
It has lane assist and speed control, as you can see on this display right here.
And you get to it with this little button I'm pointing at right there.
But I can also go into drive mode and show you that it's got driving styles of eco, normal, and sport mode.
It's got that awful creep mode that I don't know why anybody wants to turn on, but if you're used to a gas vehicle, maybe you'd like it.
And we also have an option of low or high regenerative braking.
Like I said, this is available on both of the models that we've looked at today.
And this is a giant, beautiful screen. I'm really, really happy with how this looks.
So if you're looking for full self-driving, it's not here yet. This does work.
The driving modes, lane assist works on the freeway only.
It won't change lanes for you and it won't navigate, but it will keep you safely in the lane and keep you from hitting the car in front of you.
In theory, we all hope that works.
Thank you very much for the rest of the VF9.
All right, now if we want to look to the future for VinFast, we have the VF3 behind me, and this is a very small, compact, four-seater vehicle that's targeted for 2025.
They're looking to bring this in at around $20,000 US.
If they can hit that price point, that is an incredible price, and it's going to be just a small commuter car, so it's 125 miles that you could go on, for, like I said, for just the commuter vehicle.
Again, we're looking at 2025 for the VF3.

[19:24] Now, it wouldn't be CES if it wasn't a chance to look at a purely concept car.
This is the VinFast WILD, the Wild, which is a big truck with its four-seater, and I've got displays all over the place.
Got a beautiful display in front for me, but there's displays in the back seat, and we've got a full glass roof kind of going up over here and this is like I said it's a concept car maybe we're looking at 2025 to see the VinFast Wild come to fruition.

Support the Show

https://podfeet.com/patreon

[19:57] Our hero of the week is the lovely Linda Gouchet. Not only has she been a patron of the Podfeet podcast for six and a half years, but she recently increased her pledge to per show.
Now, you may have heard Linda on Bart Bouchat's Let's Talk Apple show when he goes over quarterly numbers for Apple.
She's insightful on that topic and I have a lot of admiration for her knowledge.
As I told her in my email thank you that I wrote, I'm flattered that she listens to the show at all and that she contributes financially.
If you'd like to be lovely like Linda, please go to podfee.com slash Patreon and pledge your support.

Mirror iPhone and iPad to Mac with Bezel

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/01/bezel/

[20:32] Let's take a little bit of a break from the CES interviews, and I'm going to give you an actual review of my own.
In my work creating screencasts for Screencasts Online, if I'm demonstrating an app on iOS or iPadOS, I have to have a way to record the screen of the iPhone or iPad.
We use ScreenFlow to record the Mac screen, and in more recent versions, it's been possible to record the iOS device as well.
However, we ran into quality problems with this method.
My fellow screencasters and I started to use QuickTime instead to record the iOS screen, but that comes with its own host of problems.
In QuickTime, if the moon is full and Jupiter's aligned with Mars, one of the options for what to record with new movie recording will be the iPhone itself.
It worked maybe 80% of the time, but then other times the iPhone simply wouldn't show up in the list at all.

[21:22] I tested it in preparation for this article, and now it seems to only want to record what the iPhone's camera can see, not the iPhone screen itself.

[21:30] Continuity Camera is an awesome feature in macOS, but unless there's a workaround of which I'm not aware, I don't think we can record the screen with QuickTime any longer.
More recently, we've started to use the iPhone's built-in screen recording functionality.
This works reliably, but it's still not ideal.
The recordings get stored in your Photos library, and then they have to be moved to the Mac and deleted from Photos.
All of these solutions come with one more problem. The recordings are of just the screen.
They don't have a bezel on them, so they don't convey very well that the recording is an iPhone or an iPad. It's just a simple rectangle.
The editors at ScreenCastsOnline have to painstakingly add a static layer of a bezel and layer the video of the phone over this.
This introduces even more problems because the recording of the screen is a rectangle while the visible area on the bezel has rounded corners. It's a hot mess.
Well, this is the problem to be solved for me, but the solution I've come up with might be of value to you even if you never need to do screen recordings of iOS devices.
I know a lot of NoCillaCastaways do presentations to their Apple user groups demonstrating how to do things in iOS.
Maybe you have friends or family that you help remotely and you'd like to be able to show them how to do things on their devices.
All of these situations are crying out for an easier and prettier way to share iPhone and iPad screens onto a Mac.
If you use Zoom to share your screen to others, you can share your iPhone screen too, but like all of these other solutions I've described, that's fiddly too.

[22:57] Three months ago, a terrific new app hit the market called Bezel from getbezel.app.
It's a Dutch company called Nonstrict, and it might be the answer to all of these problems, and it might solve problems I haven't even described yet.
Bezel is a one-time cost of $29 US for one Mac license.
I wish I could use it on more than one Mac at a time, but you could at least deactivate on one and activate on another if you need to move it back and forth.

[23:24] Now there's a little bit of a catch to the one-time cost with Bezel.
While it's true you can use it forever for $29, you're only guaranteed updates for one year.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in a year since it's such a new product.
I think possibly the developers are just kind of hedging their bets right now. We'll see.

[23:43] Bezel has a free trial which is fully functional but puts a watermark over the area where the dynamic island or notch would be on on your iPhone, and it says getbezel.app.
They also have a 30-day money-back guarantee, so it's pretty much worth trying out.
Let's walk through the initial setup first, which you have to only do once.
When you launch Bezel for the first time, you'll see a screen that invites you to get started doing plug-and-play iPhone mirroring.
Now, the one mistake I made when I did this was I didn't check for accessibility as I ran through this process, and you only go through through this process once, so I wasn't able to find out whether this app was accessible.

[24:21] All right, when you get this plug and play mirroring thing up, you tap the get started button and you'll see a screen that says connect and unlock.
It shows a graphic of a cable connecting to an iPhone if it's not obvious enough, and the smaller text tells you to connect an iPhone or iPad using a cable, and then it tells you to make sure you unlock the device.
As soon as you connect the iPhone or iPad to your Mac, you'll get a request to trust this computer on the iOS device's screen.
The instructions tell you to select trust and enter your passcode or password on your iOS device.
The one odd step is next. You're told to unplug the cable and then plug it right back in for Bezel to get started mirroring your screen.
It's weird, but it does work.
And finally, you should see a pop-up on macOS telling you that Bezel would like to have camera position, sorry, camera permission so that it can capture the screen of the iOS device.
This is a very reasonable And I said, yes.

[25:15] Bezel will show you your iPhone or iPad on your Mac screen, complete with the exact bezel of the physical device you plugged in.
The Bezel developers must be able to sense from the device exactly which model you have so it even knows whether you've got blue or black or white or natural titanium on your iPhone 15 Pro, for example.
According to the webpage, they have the bezels for every single iPhone, iPad, and even iPod Touch that has ever been made.
Though I do enjoy being thorough, I did not test this claim.
I set my iPhone 15 Pro up with Bezel, and now as soon as I plug it in, Bezel automatically starts sharing the screen onto my Mac.
I set up a second phone, an iPhone 12 Pro with Bezel, and I also forgot to test for accessibility with that one, and it was a little bit harder to connect than the iPhone 15 Pro.
I'm not sure if it was because I had to go USB-C to lightning instead of straight USB-C, or whether the older hardware doesn't respond the same, but it was a little bit fiddly.
I would plug it in and follow the steps to trust the computer and put in my passcode, but Bezel wouldn't come back with the screen telling me to unplug it and plug it back in.
After a restart of the phone and Bezel, I finally got it to work, but I was just kind of surprised that that one was fiddly.
I also set up my 12.9-inch iPad Pro via USB-C to USB-C and forgot to test for accessibility, and it went through the setup a process without any issues at all.

[26:41] Bezel sets itself to launch and log in automatically. I know macOS sends us a lot of notifications these days, but I appreciate that it told me that Bezel had done this.
If you're only an occasional user of Bezel, you can go into System Settings, Login Items, and remove Bezel from the Open at Login list if you don't need it.
If you find that you're using Bezel a lot though, having it already running and available in a menu bar item is pretty handy.
The Bezel interface is pretty simple, but it does have a few cool tricks up its sleeves.
By default, you'll see a floating toolbar above the bezeled iPhone screen.
In the top center, it'll show you the name you've given your phone, and below that it will tell you the model number and the color of the phone.
In my case, it says blue titanium.
To the right of that is a little icon of a phone with a drop-down.
In this drop-down, you'll see an option to match the hardware, or you can choose from all of the finishes for the bezels that are available for your device.
Since mine is an iPhone 15 Pro, I can change it to black, white, or natural titanium as options.

[27:40] My iPhone 12 Pro is silver, but I can change the representation in bezel to graphite gold or blue.
This isn't a killer feature, but it's fun to play with and it might be helpful to change the color depending on the color or pattern of your wallpaper so that the iPhone bezel clearly stands out.
The next option in the toolbar really surprised me. It's a speaker icon that you can mute.
Finding this icon is what made me realize that Bezel will pass through audio from your device to your Mac speakers.
Now, how cool is that? I played an episode of the Daily Tech News show from Downcast on my iPad with it hooked up via Bezel to my Mac, and Tom Merritt's dulcet tones came booming out of my computer speakers hooked up to my Mac.

[28:23] Now the final icon in the toolbar is a pin. I really like apps that allow me to pin a window to the screen, which not only locks it in place, but also makes the window stay on top so no other windows can obscure it.
If you move the bezel window to the top of your screen, the toolbar automatically jumps to the bottom of the bezel window, so there's room for it.
I thought that was pretty slick.
The toolbar doesn't show when you switch to another application, and you can could also hide it entirely using the bezel menu, view, hide toolbar, or by using the keystroke option command T.
Now, let's say you're teaching a class on how to use an iOS app, and the interface is just enough different on an iPad versus an iPhone.
With bezel, you can actually connect and display two devices at the same time on your Mac.
I don't know what the limit is on how many different devices you can display at the same time, because I ran out of USB-C ports on my MacBook Pro, but I was able to view my iPad Pro and the two iPhones all at the same time. It's absolutely crazy.

[29:24] And for reasons I can't explain, under the file menu, you can duplicate a device.
I duplicated the iPhone five times, and again, I don't know the limit, as I said, or why on earth you'd want to do this, but you can with Bezel.
One thing I want to address here is that there are limitations on what you can mirror from iOS to your Mac.
While video podcasts mirrored beautifully from Downcast, don't think you can mirror any copyright copy protected content.
This isn't a limitation of bezel. It's a limit imposed by those who don't want us to be able to enjoy our content the way we want to.
Examples of things you can't mirror include TV apps like Netflix, Paramount Plus, and Apple TV Plus, and you can't even mirror Fitness Plus to your Mac.

[30:07] I launched the Wallet app to my Apple Card on my iPhone while mirroring via Bezel, just out of curiosity.
And while it showed my transaction history, when I tapped the little icon to show me my card number, it was simply blank in the mirrored version.
This is obviously a good thing.
I was very surprised that when I opened 1Password while mirrored, it did display my passwords when I chose to reveal them. I kind of assumed it wouldn't, but it did.
In any case, whatever you see or don't see mirrored via Bezel, the lack of content won't be because of anything bezel caused.

[30:40] Now bezel has just a few settings of interest. When you're not focused on a bezel mirrored device window, the toolbar automatically disappears, like I said before.
But you can actually disable that auto hide feature in settings.
We talked earlier about how just connecting a device caused the mirrored window to pop up.
In device settings, you can set a default for what happens when a device connects, and you can set the behavior by device as well.
So let's say you charge your phone from your Mac all the time, you might want to set the behavior on connect to be do nothing.
But your iPad is only connected when you want a mirror, so you could set it up to connect the connect behavior to always open the window when the iPad was connected. Really nice flexibility there.
With bezel, you can resize the device's window with the normal corner size controls.
But using Using the window menu, you'll find four interesting options.
You can set it to the physical size of the device, or change it to point accurate or pixel accurate, and finally there's an option to fit screen.
I expected that last option to make the iPhone hit the top and bottom of my display, but it doesn't do that.
It does something better. It sizes the mirrored iPhone window to leave a comfortable area above and below the phone and it centers it vertically.
I would describe it as just right.

[31:56] On their front page, the developers have a tagline that says, Bezel is the easiest way to view, present, and record an iPhone.
The press kit even mentions recording several times. The only problem is, Bezel does not provide a way to record the iPhone.
I watched a walkthrough video they produced, and someone asked in the comments about recording.
The developer answered, Recording your iPhone is currently in beta and is under active development.
No exact timeline yet, but we hope to release this soon.
The bottom line is I'm thrilled to have a great way to represent my iOS device on my Mac screen while helping others to learn, and it'll be even more useful when we can record natively using Bezel instead of needing to use a third-party app like ScreenFlow.
Check out Bezel at getbezel.app.

CES 2024: Withings BeamO At-Home Health Checkup Device

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/01/ces-2024-withings-beamo/

[32:43] At home, we have a Withings scale that continuously tells me I'm too fat and my body mass percentage. No, I'm kidding.
But we also have a Withings blood pressure cuff, but I'm here with Paul Buckley who's going to show us yet another Withings device that we simply must get.
Why don't you tell us about it? Well I think you're being too hard on yourself with the Withings products.
I think you're looking great.
So every year we introduce a new product at Withings at CES and we choose Unveiled as our launch pad.
So this year we're announcing BMO. Now BMO is an upgrade from our Thermo which is our thermometer, a temporal thermometer. thermometer.
And so BMO is going to do exactly what Thermo does, but three other things that Thermo doesn't do.
The first one is you essentially touch the two contacts here on BMO.
We're going to be able to do an ECG and an SBO2 in 30 seconds.
So that's going to give you an electrocardiogram and also let you know your blood sugar, blood oxygen level, excuse me. Don't say blood sugar.
That's the holy grail. We don't have that one yet. No, no, that's right.
It's blood oxygen. Thank you.

[33:48] Blood oxygen level. And then also, the new thing we added is a digital stethoscope.
So that's number three. So if you're not feeling well and you want to record your lung sounds or your heart sounds, you can do that like any other Withings product.
It will be captured in the Withings app, and you can share that information with a doctor.
Let me hold you up for a second because this is audio too. So the device is maybe six inches long and maybe three quarters of an inch thick.
It's got two contacts on one side and then a button here on the other side.
Yeah, it looks like a candy bar, kind of. It's the size of a candy bar and it's about.

[34:26] A pound. It's not even that heavy. And back to the stethoscope, because it's a big deal here.
So you can send those sounds to your doctor. How are you capturing the sounds with this device, though?
So what you're doing, you just put it on the stethoscope reading, and then you just put it to your lungs, and you capture a recording.
Seriously? Oh, that's cool. But here's where it gets really good, Allison, right?
If you do a telehealth visit, the doctor can then listen to your lungs in real time and tell you to put it in the upper respiratory area or a lower respiratory area and then listen to your heart.
And then at that juncture there, make a better diagnosis of what's going on with your state of illness.
And it's not only good for you and your husband, but it's also good for your children and also for aging parents or whatnot, however phase you are in your life.
A lot of people lately because of the pandemic have been having lung issues.
So this is another, I mean, this is the right time for this product.
They say also, due to climate change, that there's more activity in the atmosphere, and that activity is actually kicking up more particles, breaking down particles that are actually more infectious to your lungs.
Yeah, the particulate problems we're having in Central California is a big mess.
Wildfires and any of a lot of rain events that happen right before the rain, the humidity is kicking up a lot of particles. I'm going to ask a dumb question.

[35:49] No such thing as a dumb question. When you when you hold it up to your to your chest and it's listening to your lungs Is there like a readout on your phone showing what it looks like?
Yeah, the readout here I'm not sure if I'll be able to show it to you.
But the readout looks like a sine wave Turn it around and show it to Steve there.

[36:06] The screen you're looking at so it's got different modes.
He's popping through he was on stethoscope. That's the readout.
It will be right there. Oh, So let's see. Oh, okay. So it's a sine wave. Okay.

[36:20] So we wouldn't be able to interpret whether that was a good sine wave or a bad sine wave, but giving it to your doctor, they would.
It would be an audio wave that they'd be able to listen.
And they would know right away whether there's something going, whether you're not having long breaths or short breaths or whatnot, and where it's peaking in its valleys.
Okay. So BMO is going to do my temperature.
It's going to do my blood oxygen. It's going to do your ECG, it's going to do your heart rate as well, and it's going to be able to listen to your lungs and heart.
Wow, this is amazing. So when is this product, BMO, going to be available? You'd never ask.
This will be available at the back half of the year, as we say, fall. So it'll be in time for Christmas, and it'll be $250.
That's an amazing piece of equipment for $250, and we've been big fans of your products for a long time, so we got a chance to talk to you. This is great, Paul.
Thank you very much. Allison, you're the best. Thank you. All right.
And we would go to Withings.com, correct? Withings.com to get all the information on all our products, especially BMO.
Okay. Very good. Thank you. Oh, one more thing. Oh, wait. If they sign up, if they go to Withings.com right now, you can sign up and give us your email and you'll be the first people to be able to buy it.
So we treat everyone who signs up on that list first to get first crack at it.
Oh, very cool. This sounds fantastic. Thank you so much. You got it. Thank you.

AISPEX Mobile EV Fast Chargers

https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2024/01/aispex/

[37:43] I'm here again on behalf of the Kilowatt podcast as well as the NoSilicast podcast.
We are in the A-Specs booth, and we've got some really interesting large mobile chargers that are going to save us from maybe problems on the road and getting to places that maybe don't have a built-out infrastructure. Is that correct?
Exactly. And what's your name, sir? My name is Paul. I'm the founder and CEO of A-Specs.
Okay, great. So tell us what we're standing in front of. We've got two giant units here that are almost as tall as you and I are.
Yes. Yes, these are two different types of mobile chargers.
This one is 50 kilowatt hours. That one is 184 kilowatt hours. So that's the capacity.
Both of these, you know, can power a car in a DC faster charger.
So it's not like the home charger or AC charger.
These are DC, the faster charger. Okay, so what's the speed in kilowatts?

[38:39] This one can charge a regular Tesla.

[38:43] In like 40-50 minutes. That one is like 30-40 minutes.
So it says DC 20 kilowatts, so that would be about 70 mile range in an hour. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, and then the bigger one to the other side would be?
That's a 50 kilowatt. 50 kilowatt, okay, all right.
So is the idea that maybe a AAA has one of these on their truck and they bring it to me or is it for a different environment than that?
There will be many, many different applications, AAA, emergency, and also this can be also backup power besides the charging functions.
So for all the convenience store, for all the hospitality buildings, big and large facilities, if they don't have the existing infrastructure, they can use this, move this to the destination to charge the cars over there.
So you don't have to start any new infrastructure for the place that you want to charge your car.
So I didn't even mention these things are on wheels, which is the mobile part of it, right? Exactly.
So are these out in the market today or have you got a predicted date when they're going to be coming out?
Yeah, I think we're going to get this certified in next few months.
So then we will start putting this on the market. This is the working prototype.
Okay. Okay, okay, so we're looking, and when you say this year, is that going to be in the United States? Yes, yes. Then you'll get UL certified.

[40:11] Great, great. Yeah, that would be important. We would like that UL certification.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great idea. Anything else you want to tell us about iSPEX?
Yeah, I think iSPEX is a company that started from combining energy storage with charging functions. functions.
So we come from the energy storage business and now we also have a very wide range of the charging products from AC charger to DC faster charger and also to the large display for the commercials.
So we have a very large product lines.
I see. And I noticed that these also have CCS chargers and NACS chargers on them. Yes, both CCS and NX. Okay. Very, very good.
If people want to learn more about iSpex, where would they go?
They can go to our website. That's the easiest way to find the person that get in touch.
And also we are setting up distribution channels in the entire North America.
All right. And that's AISPEX.com?
Yes.
AISPEX.com. Very good. Thank you, Paul. And good luck to you.
I like this idea. Thank you. Thank you so much.

[41:20] Well, that is 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 like a lot of people have been doing lately, which is super fun.
On Mastodon, I'm at podfeet at chaos.social.
Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com. If you want to join the fun of the conversation, you can join our Slack community.

[41:43] Music.

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And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com slash live.

[42:00] Music.