In the first of what is planned to be a monthly series, Thomas Domville, Randy Rusnakk and Mike Malarsie get together to talk about recent Apple news and topics of interest.
Topics featured in this podcast include:
The release of iOS 11.2.5
Apple AirPods
The release of Apple's HomePod smart speaker
What Is Apple ‘Text Bomb’ Bug? This Simple Message Crashes iPhones and Macs
Let Siri play you the latest news
Everything to Know About Apple Slowing iPhones Because of Old Batteries
Apple’s No Good Very Bad Security Quarter
Apple says Meltdown and Spectre flaws affect all Mac and iOS devices
Significant Apple investors put pressure on Apple to add better parental control features to iPhones and iPads
Apple made a section of the App Store to highlight apps that offer free trials
Swapping words for emoji using the VoiceOver rotor
Full Braille Display Support Comes To Blindfold Wildcard
new Huboodle app released by developers of Dice World
Listener questions
You can contact the Unleashed Team with feedback or questions at unleashed@applevis.com.
Comments
Parental control
First off, I completely agree that parents these days dont seem to put as much time and attention into their children as they should. That being said, I don’t understand your viewpoint on parental control.
We are talking about Apple including more parental controls in their products, and you do not feel they should, or should not have to. I think it’s a great idea. First and foremost as optional support and well control. As an example:
You are a single mother/father with a latchkey kid; home for a few hours before you are each night. These controls might allow for say music playing (say while doing homework), or making a call to the mother, but not allow watching of youTube or Netflix.
I think as long as they are used to enhance or supplement parental guidance they are great. They should not be designed or used as a replacement to parenting.
You have the first podcast under your belt. Congratulations and well done. I honestly enjoyed that more than expected. I look forward to next months.
Other quick comments:
I give my AirPods 10 out of 10. Best purchase right after my iPhone.
I will continue to listen to ‘cheap’ music I guess. I cannot justify the $349 price tag. I do have a Google mini and Echo Dot.
Going to go download the games and try them out. I play DiceWorld, I’m Morzorak, look me up.
I use my 6s+ as a sort of iPod. I will have the battery swapped out at the end of the year.
What were those podcasts again?
Intervention and Education
Hey Dave,
Thanks for the feedback and of your thoughts on the parental controls. I totally agree with you that Apple can certainly push more features that as a parent can use to help our children on our devices.
Essentially, the main story that we were talking about was the fact there was a research that the investor was using that showed that kids were spending way too much time on the devices. There was a spike of children being exposed to much time that would cause unnecessary stress, anxiety, depression, and sadly an increase of suicide.
I think our thoughts and expressions were that. That it comes down to intervention and education that are needed for our children to understand what happens when they spend too much time on various social platforms that are causing this problem. We need more intervention of reading those text and Facebook status to ensure that our child is not showing any signs of very serious problems. Not so much what they are talking about but mostly their mental status.
I think that Apple can certainly implement more features to help us as a parent but can't be too complicated to configure. Though, sadly I've seen and read articles that for example on the Android. There are apps that will limit the time and disable certain apps at certain time, but these kids ware so smart these days they will find another way around it. So, we need to be careful not to play these cate and mouse games and Apple can only do so much. Can you imagine how complicated it would be if we were to try to clamp down say on Facebook? Sure, we set a time for Facebook but keep this in mind this would be for the Facebook app. What about Safari and they can then now access it from that direction. So, we lock that down. Now that child may use another app that can then access the web internally inside of that app. It gets a bit messy! Where there is a will there will always be a way. That is why those articles are saying that apps to restrict kids on the Android were design to do will flail. Not only messy but that would mean that every parent would be that informed to know about all of this. I know I am not. My kids teach me things all the time. We can all admit to that.
So, we totally agree that Apple can do more when it comes to features for the parental controls but no much when it comes to causing duress and depression on our children without interventions.
Regards,
Thomas
It wasn’t clear
It didn’t seem very clear to me. I will see if I can find the article(s). There seemed to be a disconnect; I must have missed something.
Regardless, good job on the first episode.
Clarification
Dave,
Firstly, it is quite possible that we were simply unclear and caused some misunderstanding. Something we will work on for all future cast to ensure clarity! So, thank you for point this out to us.
Here are a few articles that I was using for the cast. Hope you will find them useful.
Significant AAPL investors put pressure on Apple to add better parental control features to iPhones and iPads
https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/08/parental-control-features-iphone-ipad/
Apple responds to investor criticism over heavy smartphone use by children, says parental controls already in place
http://appleinsider.com/articles/18/01/08/apple-responds-to-investor-criticism-over-heavy-smartphone-use-by-children-says-parental-controls-already-in-place
Thanks and we certainly have some things to wrinkle out! But thank you for the kind words.
Emojify?
I'm a bit surprised you covered Emojify considering it was well-publicized on AppleVis when it was introduced in iOS 10.
Loved the first edition of
Loved the first edition of this podcast. Having just upgraded to the iPhone X a couple days ago, I don't have to worry about the battery issues for a long while, lol! But anyway, glad you guys brought up that battery thing, because there was a video and article published by apple insider that talked exclusively about this exact thing. It's good for apple that they've got there battery replacements down to $29, so for older devices running on old batteries, this is very helpful. Apple insider says that once you replace the battery, the throttling back of older iPhones will stop, so that's great to know if you do go that route.
Great Job!
Hi Thomas, I just finished listening to the first podcast and must say to you guys, great job.
With regards to the parental control, although I haven't read the articles yet, which I will do shortly, I do agree that Apple can add more parental controls, but agree with the general thought that at the end of the day, it's up to the parents to monitor their kids usage online, on devices and social networks. It's not up to the companies to parent our kids. Parents need to teach their kids on how to use technology responsibly and to not use them every waking minute, they need to unplug and be part of the real world.
On another note, I've also gotten myself a pair of AirPods, and although they are a little pricey here in Canada, I am finding myself using them pretty much everyday.
Further to your discussion regarding easily inserting emogies, I did want to point out that this trick seems to only work in iMessages. I've tried this on Facebook and it didn't work. Perhaps this is a feature that app developpers have to enable or maybe it's something that Apple hasn't shared yet, who knows. I just wanted to make sure you guys were aware that this was limited to iMessages for now
Great job guys on a successful first podcast and I definitely look forward to hearing more.
Follow Ups and Thanks
Thanks Justin and Blinken223!
Justin, great point! Yes, once the battery has been replaced your phone will stop throttling at this point. I think there has been some misunderstanding with the public thinking their phone is always throttling simply because it's an older device and that Apple is intentionally doing that to force you buy a new phone. So, I'm glad you brought that up! I just almost talked about an article where somebody had bit in to a battery in wanting to make sure he had an official Apple battery replacement when then caused the battery to short out and explode. So please refrain from biting your battery people!
Blinken223, that is a very good point! That the trick mentioned about using the emogies only works in certain areas and not like Facebook. So, it will be a hit and miss where this will apply. You may be correct it may only work with in iMessage, but I am not 100% sure. So, thanks for making that mentioned here.
TJT 2001, you probably are right but it's always great to have a reminder about little things like this that I may have simply forgotten! But, it's always great to teach others that may know of this little trick! So, thank you for that tip!
Thanks for listening!
Hey everyone! I just wanted to drop by really quick and thank you all for listening to the show! I'm really excited to be a part of this and and I appreciate you for the support!
Y'all rock!
Office Lens
Hello all,
Nice job on the podcast. I wanted to mention that office lens by microsoft is an OCR app that is free and it can scan multiple page documents. The last time I checked it was fully accessible as well.
Regards,
Greg Wocher
Apple Unleashed
I loved this new podcast. It helps us learn about new apple features and plans that we might not have found out about. I enjoyed the podcast because I don't get up there much unless I'm looking for something dealing with accessibility or unless I'm looking to find out about new products.
Thanks for the Podcast
Hey guys. I just listened to the inaugural episode of AppleVis Unleashed, and really enjoyed it. Welcome back Mike, and welcome to the team Randy. I believe this is the first I've heard you on AppleVis. Anyways, I am in the process of getting my first iPhone and these are some great tips. One of my main reasons for wanting an iPhone is independent travel. I won't bore everyone with my whole sob story, lol! But suffice it to say I am most often stuck here in my apartment. But anywho, I wanted to say something about that lady device from Amazon. I recently obtained Reverb for Mac, the free app that connects to this service. I've tried it out a few times and really like it. I've used Siri as well. I don't know at this time which one I prefer, but I will say that it is kinda fun going back and forth between the two. Thanks again guys, and keep up the excellent work.