Episode 114 - Should You Download the iOS 13 Public Beta?

In the 114th episode of the Insider Podcast, David and Donna share their experiences after a week of using iOS 13 and iPadOS. Learn all the best new features the software has to offer and decide whether you want to become a beta tester. The team also unpacks the news that Apple's chief designer Jony Ive is leaving after nearly 30 years with the tech giant. In the Insider-only section of the podcast, stick around to learn the team's favorite battery saving tips! 

Question of the week:

Will you be downloading the iOS 13 Beta? If yes, how do you like it? If no, why not? Email podcasts@iphonelife.com to let us know. 

Articles referred to in this episode:

Useful links:

Transcript of episode 114:

Donna Cleveland:    Hi and welcome to episode 114 of the iPhone Life Podcast. I'm Donna Cleveland, editor-in-chief at iPhone Life.

David Averbach:     I'm David Averbach, CEO and publisher at iPhone Life.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm Sarah Kingsbury, senior web editor at iPhone Life.

Donna Cleveland:    We have a special episode for you today. iOS 13 public beta just came out and so we've all downloaded that on our phones and want to tell you about all the cool new features and also help you decide whether or not you should try out the public beta for yourself or whether you should wait till September when the official shipping version arrives. We also have some news that we're going to cover. Jony Ive is leaving Apple and so that's something we'll be discussing as well. Before we get into the episode, we want to tell you about our sponsor.

David Averbach:     Today's sponsor is SOUL. I want to tell you about one of their new headphones, it's really exciting. It's the SOUL ST-XS2. What it lacks in exciting name makes up for in exciting features. First of all, it's only $99 which is super affordable for truly wireless earbuds. In addition to that, it has really amazing sound quality. They really focus on sound quality. It's waterproof. It has this really cool ergonomic fit so it has this little hook that hooks into your ear, still comfortable but stays in your ear and it's secure. One of the things I hate about wireless earbuds is they tend to block out ambient noise and then you can't hear anything. I tend to use wireless earbuds when I'm running and I'm outside and I want to hear traffic. It has a feature called transparent audio mode where you can still hear the ambient noise around you while listening to your music. Again, of course, my most favorite feature, only $99. You can go to soulelectronics.com to buy it or we'll put a link to the exact product in the show notes at iphonelife.com/podcast.

Donna Cleveland:    I also want to tell you about our daily tips newsletter. For those of you who don't know, if you go to iphonelife.com/dailytips, you can sign up to get a one-minute tip in your inbox every day that teaches you something cool you can do with your iPhone that you probably didn't know before. It's also a great time to sign up because pretty soon we'll be coming out with our iOS 13 tips so each day you'll be learning what you can do with the new version of the operating system. It's just a really easy way to learn that doesn't take much time at all.

Donna Cleveland:    Right now, we're still on the iOS 12 tips. I was going to share with you one of our favorite tips of this week and that's how to view list view in your calendar app. This is one of my favorite views. If you tap to open your calendar app and you go to the month view so that just means ... sometimes when you open your calendar, you can see the entire year there. If that's the case, tap the month you want to look at. Then you'll see this little icon along the top that is like a little square with two lines below it. If you tap that, you'll be able to see the events within the day that's selected in that month. I can see my full month view and below that I can see that there's a podcast recording today and a meeting this afternoon that I'm going to and I can see that all within one view.

Donna Cleveland:    Also, if I go into the today view which is in the bottom left corner of the calendar app and if I stay in this list view, I'll just see a scrolling list of all of the events for the month so I can just scroll through and see them all there, also all the birthdays and things like that that are in the month. This is just a handy way to see what's going on while also having a better view of your month.

David Averbach:     I feel like with the calendar app, there's so many different views for it.

Donna Cleveland:    There are.

David Averbach:     They're not intuitive like it's not intuitive to figure out how to get from one view to the other. In particular, the list view I find to be very useful and I always struggle to get to it so it's a good tip.

Donna Cleveland:    I think a lot of people just don't know that it's there at all.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Yeah. I find it really useful to see the whole month at a glance while I'm looking at the events because sometimes you need to see the whole month while you're looking at different events.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, that context is nice.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Right.

David Averbach:     As a bonus tip, because Donna gave me this tip when we were doing ... We're doing a fundamentals course right now. Spoiler, we're going to release that course as the prerecorded version of it coming soon. Donna, in that course, taught me that if you put your phone in landscape mode, it's really easy to create a new event because you can just tap on the ... it shows you a week and then you can tap on the day and the time and then it pops up as an event and you can move events really easily in that view as well.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, that's my other favorite calendar tip. If you want tips like that, go to iphonelife.com/dailytips. We also want to tell you about our premium subscription. Our daily tips is our free offering. We have our premium subscription which you pay a monthly fee for but it's really the best way to get the most out of your iPhone and have our full comprehensive services.

Donna Cleveland:    We have digital subscription to iPhone Life Magazine. You get a full archive of all of our issues plus you are among the first to get our new issues. You get video guides teaching you things like how to use iOS 13 when it's coming out soon. You also get a video version of our daily tips so you can see a visual walkthrough, you can have your phone with you and follow along which is an even easier way to learn. You also get ask an editor which is a feature where you can ask any tech questions regarding your Apple devices and we'll help you find a solution. Also, you get exclusive version of this podcast without any of the ads like we're doing now and, also, an exclusive section of content just for insiders.

David Averbach:     Today's content is going to be battery saving tips. We got a lot of awesome tips if you're an insider, make sure you stick around to the end. If you're not, go subscribe. We have a discount, $5 off. What's the URL?

Donna Cleveland:    Yes. It's iphonelife.com/podcastdiscount, we have $5 off just for our podcast listeners. Also, with the battery saving tips, it's a really good time for that because if you are interested in downloading the iOS 13 public beta, sometimes that will affect your battery life and so you want to fix all the settings you can that will help you maximize your battery life.

David Averbach:     It's definitely affecting my battery life. What about you?

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, me too.

David Averbach:     It's annoying.

Donna Cleveland:    Not hugely but probably maybe by 10% or something.

David Averbach:     Yeah. I would say I used to make it through the day. On a typical day, I'll be, at the end of the day, around 40% and now I'm ending the day at ... Yesterday, I literally ended the day at 1%. I made it through the day and that's, to me, the main thing for battery life is can you make it through the day. So far I have, we'll see if it becomes a bigger problem or a less big problem as they keep coming out with the betas.

Donna Cleveland:    Sarah wants to share with us an insider question and how she helped them find a solution recently.

Sarah Kingsbury:    An insider named Carl recently sent me an email saying, "I have an iPhone 10. I recently maxed it on storage space. I opened the option to move my photos to the cloud and the device now displays that my phone is less than half full. Despite this, I still get an alert badge that states my iPhone storage is full. Can you tell me what's up with that? Is there a way to delete this notification?" This sort of persistent settings, that badge icons are actually a fairly common problem like you'll get a notification to update to the latest version of iOS or a notification that your iCloud Backup isn't working or something like that and then you fix it and then it's still there.

David Averbach:     My personal favorite is sometimes I'll get stuck in this infinite loop of having to log in regularly like it'll continually ask me to log in to my Apple ID and then when I do it, it's like okay, thanks, now log in.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Oh God.

Donna Cleveland:    It's so annoying.

Sarah Kingsbury:    They all seem to be related to different problems but they all seem to have one solution which is that you need to sign out of iCloud and then sign back in.

David Averbach:     Oh wow.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I found signing out of iCloud a little scary because it's like turn off Find My iPhone and do you want to save all this stuff on your device or just let it be there in the cloud.

David Averbach:     I've literally never done this.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I did it just to try it out [crosstalk 00:08:31]. Here's how you do it. You go to the Settings app and you tap on your Apple ID which is your name. You scroll to the very bottom of the screen and then you tap sign out. Then you'll be ask to turn off Find My iPhone which you're going to sign back in in a minute so it's not a big deal but do remember to go back and turn it back on after this process. You do this by entering your Apple ID password and then tapping turn off. Then next, you'll be asked to choose what data you want to keep on your iPhone, the data will still be in the iCloud and it takes longer to sign out of iCloud if they have to copy all this stuff to your phone so don't turn any of those on unless you're really really worried. You tap sign out and then confirm that you want to sign out.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Then once the process is complete, you'll basically be taken back to your settings menu and you'll see the option to sign in to your iPhone at the top of the settings menu. Then you tap this, enter your Apple ID, tap next, enter your password, tap next, enter your device passcode and you'll be sign back in to iCloud and the badge should be gone.

David Averbach:     Did that solve it for him?

Sarah Kingsbury:    I haven't heard back from him yet. One thing I really want to just warn everyone about, make sure, before you start this process, that you know your iCloud password and you know your device passcode.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, that's a good point otherwise you're signing up for trouble.

David Averbach:     I have two quick thoughts. First of all, I have an alternate theory of what's happening to him so when we hear back, we'll have to see. A lot of people get confused between your local phone storage and your iCloud storage.

Sarah Kingsbury:    He sent me pictures.

David Averbach:     Okay, so maybe my theory is wrong. For those of you at home, make sure you know the difference when you're trying to clear it out because I find they often accidentally end up in iCloud storage when I'm trying to clear out my local storage so knowing the difference is important.

David Averbach:     The other thing, often for me when I get stuck in this kind of reoccurring reminders at least for the thing I was saying, when it keeps asking me to log in, if I just restart my phone, that usually takes care of it so that might be a good first thing to try to teach [crosstalk 00:10:45].

Sarah Kingsbury:    Well, I actually didn't ask him and I didn't recommend it because in the course of my research and seeing things that people have posted online in different forums, all of them almost universally had tried turning their phone off and on again and it hadn't worked. That is generally a good first step for any weird thing your phone is doing.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. I was going to say, I feel like, again, with the iOS 13 public beta, restarting my phone helped with some of the bugs that [crosstalk] too.

Sarah Kingsbury:    It helps with battery life but we can talk about that when we get to battery tips.

Donna Cleveland:    All right. I think we're ready to move into our news section. Pretty soon we're going to talk about the iOS 13 public beta but there's pretty big news, Jony Ive is leaving Apple after almost 30 years.

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Donna Cleveland:    We want just to unpack that a little bit like what ... I mean, it's kind of the ending of a long legacy and what we think that's going to do to Apple potentially.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Apple will be one of his clients, he's starting his own design company.

Donna Cleveland:    Jony Ive is starting his own design company, I think it was called LoveFrom or something.

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Donna Cleveland:    It's an interesting name.

David Averbach:     Yeah, it was. I actually don't remember what it was called but it's something like that.

Donna Cleveland:    Apple will still be working with Jony Ive's new company. He's also taking another design executive from Apple along with him, I think. I can't remember the name of the person but, yeah, what do you guys make of this?

David Averbach:     I think there's kind of two separate stories. First of all, there's the what it means for Apple and then there's also sort of the scandal around it because it turned into ... Wall Street Journal published this gossip article that it was due to the fact that him and Tim Cook weren't getting along and then Tim Cook responded. It's sort of two story but, first, let me back up and talk about Jony Ive a little bit. Because if you're not familiar with him, Jony Ive is considered one of the greatest industrial designers in the world right now. Him and Steve Jobs were incredibly close and so it's a little bit debatable because they're so close and they work so closely together, how much Steve Jobs gets credit for a lot of these devices and how much Jony Ive does but, certainly, Jony Ive deserves a lot of credit. Him and Steve Jobs in particular, they got their start together when Steve Jobs came back to Apple so the iMac was sort of their first great product they released together, that classic transparent plastic cover-

Sarah Kingsbury:    Like the colorful thing.

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury:    That was so cool in the '90s.

Donna Cleveland:    When Steve Jobs came back at that time, Apple was really struggling and so Jony Ive was a big part of turning that around with him.

David Averbach:     Exactly. Him and Steve Jobs and, of course, everyone else involved and who knows who did what. Apple clearly has been an industry leader in industrial design and Jony Ive has taken a huge role in that. Then in addition to that and, of course, every product since then ... In addition to the iMac, I've talked about iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the new MacBooks' aluminum covers like if you look at the old-school MacBooks, they were pretty ugly and Jony Ive ... first of all, he believes some that were kind of ugly but also then made the traditional one we're used to now, the kind of clam shell. In addition to that, starting with iOS 7, he took over iOS design so all of those operating systems from iOS 7 on, he's been leading that.

David Averbach:     It's a huge loss, in my opinion, to Apple and, of course, who knows how much he actually has done compared to the rest of the team and you don't want to not give credit and like Sarah is saying, he still will be working with Apple although we don't know in what capacity. To me, the knock on Tim Cook and this comes directly from Steve Jobs if you read his book is that Tim Cook is a business person, he's not a product person and that is kind of what Jony Ive was ... the role he played in Apple and him and Steve Jobs very much in line in that. Without Steve Jobs, without Jony Ive, it'll be interesting to see if Apple can maintain their high standards of product design.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. It does seem a little scary just in that already we've talked a lot about Apple losing some of its just kind of core values in recent years with Tim Cook. I mean, now with their big focus on services, it doesn't feel like the same Apple that Steve Jobs made the company and so it does seem like another move away from that.

David Averbach:     Yeah. Well, in the Wall Street Journal that Tim Cook blasted and said it was wrong but still what it was saying was that he was leaving the thing that he ... Jony Ive and Tim Cook were not getting along about was that Jony Ive felt that Tim Cook didn't care enough about product design so it's very related. Those of us who have been fans of Apple since the early days were fans of the product design first and foremost especially when you consider Jony Ive worked on software and hardware and the integration of the two. It feels like, certainly, the end of an era. Of course, it's been 30 years, an era was always going to end but it feels significant to me.

Donna Cleveland:    I was reading that Jony Ive was really involved with the design of the new Mac Pro which looks like the shiny cheese grater like one of our writers was saying, pointed that out and it's like, "Whoa, it totally does." I was actually surprised that he was behind that.

David Averbach:     Everything about Apple's iconic designs really ... he deserves a lot of credit for but he also deserves a lot of credit for some of the really ugly designs. If you remember the iPhone 5C that was really brightly colored, plastic shell and it have the matching screensaver and there's these yellow dots. He's done a lot of questionable things but part of it is he does a lot of experimental things which is really unique for a company of that scale.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, you can't win them all.

David Averbach:     You can't win them all.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm really hoping that we never have to watch any more Jony Ive product videos though. It's a silver lining.

David Averbach:     I was a little bit annoyed that every commentary about him leaving had to mention the way he pronounced aluminum.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I mean, he just pronounces it the way they do in the UK like what's the big deal.

David Averbach:     I know.

Donna Cleveland:    Can you imitate it?

David Averbach:     No.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Isn't it aluminium?

David Averbach:     It's aluminium. Yeah, I can't do with the accent, I'm not known for my accents. Yeah, and it's like I agree. We talk about those videos because it's the only front-facing thing we see for Jony Ive but he's so legendary and to talk about the little commercials he recorded seems silly to me.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I don't know, those videos were just so [crosstalk 00:17:33].

David Averbach:     They were really [crosstalk] every year. "You think we couldn't find a way to revolutionize every industry ever but we did again," and you're like, "Okay."

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. Still like I feel like it's some loss of Apple being what we're used to it being.

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury:    It's going to be a huge change and it leaves the future kind of unknown.

David Averbach:     I will say Apple is known for having a very tight-knit group of industrial designers that work largely independently in the company. Jony Ive led that team but they have a lot, a lot of people there who work on these things and have done so for the last 30 years so I'm sure they still have a lot of talent left. Also, I'm sure that Jony Ive ... It's not like he left with the iPhone 11 as his last thing he designed, it's probably, I believe, two or three years of iPhones coming out that he's been working on at least and same thing with the other products.

Donna Cleveland:    That's a good point.

David Averbach:     It'll take maybe five years before we see the true loss of Jony Ive. He may still work on everything so who knows but it'll be a while before we see the pivot in Apple without the post-Jony Ive era.

Donna Cleveland:    Shall we jump in to iOS 13 now?

David Averbach:     Let's do it.

Donna Cleveland:    Apple release the public beta of iOS 13 a few days ago. They originally said they're going to on July 1st but they actually did a few days early so that just means that we'll post a link where you can download this. You can download this beta from their website and install it on your iPhone. Anybody can do that now but it won't be until mid-September that we get the official shipping version of iOS 13 where they've worked out all of their bugs and glitches and have the full feature set of iOS 13. There are pros and cons of installing the public beta. We want to talk about that first before we get into our impressions from testing the features.

David Averbach:     Just to be clear because I know we have a lot of questions around this in the Facebook group, a lot of confusion. If right now you open your phone, you go to Settings, you go to software updates, it will not show up for you, iOS 13 will not show up for you. There's a pretty complicated process to go through to get iOS 13 beta on your phone and so we'll give you steps of how to do that. There's a lot of confusion about why is it you're talking about iOS 13 and I don't have it and it's because it's in beta and you have to go through this complicated process to get it.

Sarah Kingsbury:    It takes a long time. I started installing it with, I thought, plenty of time this morning and it was still installing when we started the podcast so ... I was on vacation and came back just recently so I hadn't installed it yet.

David Averbach:     Sarah will largely moderating because Donna and I were not on vacation last week and so we've had a week kind of hands on with it and so we have a lot of thoughts and opinions as always.

Donna Cleveland:    We'll post a link of how to download it. Yes, it does takes some time but it actually is pretty straightforward too. If you just visit the website on your phone, you can download the profile for the beta and then you go through some different steps to actually install it on your phone and it does end up taking probably a few hours all in all.

Donna Cleveland:    Let's first talk about why would you want to do this or why would you not want to do this. I think the big obvious reason to do it is if you're really excited about all the new features you heard about with the iOS 13 and you just don't want to wait till September to get your hands on them, that's really the only reason to do it, right?

David Averbach:     It's fun. If you like geeking out about this stuff, if you like ... It's fun to be sitting there and you're on dark mode and nobody else has dark mode and most people don't even know how to get it like it's fun to be ahead of the curve but being ahead of the curve means you deal with all the bugs and everything else that comes with it.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I agree. One thing I've noticed in the past with downloading the betas is that when they finally release the shipping version and everyone is like, "Oh my god, this has completely changed how I use my phone, I'm so excited," I'm like, "Wait, hasn't that always done that?" It's like that excitement, I don't have it.

David Averbach:     You get it early then you don't get to share it with masses.

Sarah Kingsbury:    In that way, I mean, yes, having all these features early is fun but then it's kind of like, also, it's way more buggy although sometimes they've released some really terrible, buggy shipping versions.

David Averbach:     Let's talk about that because there have been some bugs but I will say for the most part, it's been pretty smooth for me, I've had very few bugs. How about you, Donna?

Donna Cleveland:    It's been pretty functional. I have had a thing like for some reason my Messages app keeps on getting stuck in landscape view while I'm trying to text and that's really annoying.

David Averbach:     That's really annoying.

Donna Cleveland:    Another thing that's happening is the Notes app has been reworked with iOS 13 but it's now not syncing with the Notes app on my Mac. That's really annoying because I use that for my daily to-dos and so I have to check it on my phone now, I can't be checking it on my Mac right now.

Donna Cleveland:    The big things with the cons of downloading the beta is that there are bugs that you'll be dealing with. Also, not all third-party apps will be compatible with iOS 13 yet because during this time Apple debuts iOS 13 at the worldwide developers conference in June and shows it to all the developers and let's them, at that time, start making their apps work with iOS 13 and integrating that so a lot of apps will really act up or not work at all. So far I haven't had apps not working at all but I remember in the past, there being some issues and it hasn't been long enough for me to discover what issues there are in third-party apps yet.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Yeah. I've decided not to put iPadOS on my iPad for that reason so that certain apps like my banking apps and stuff that I use a lot and are very important to me like me not going broke or whatever, I can still access them even if they don't end up working on my phone. I have another chance to try that yet since, as we said, I just ... Those are the cons and the pros. Are there any other cons like any ...

David Averbach:     I mean, I can talk about some of the bugs that I've experienced.

Donna Cleveland:    Sure, yeah.

David Averbach:     You know, I have a whole section later but we'll just get to it now because you should know about them before you download. It's weird because Donna and I have had different bugs like I haven't had the problem with landscape mode in texting at all but a bug that I've had that I don't think you've had is when I do a Google search in Safari and for some reason it seems to be unique to just Google searches in Safari, I can't tap on the results.

Donna Cleveland:    That's annoying, that has not happen to me.

David Averbach:     It's driving me crazy. I have Chrome as a browser too so I just switch to Chrome for that which is an okay workaround but that's the sort of thing that'll happen on the beta that you just have to deal with for a couple of months.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah.

David Averbach:     Another thing and this is a very common issue and so this is, I think, similar to your Notes issue, I have a shared reminders list with my partner and we are not syncing anymore.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah.

David Averbach:     First, it disappeared for me altogether. Then I tried to create a new one and she couldn't view it because it was like a new reminders list. It was our groceries list and so now we have to text each other screenshots of our groceries list to figure out what we're getting.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm concerned for the health of your relationship now.

Donna Cleveland:    It's definitely that. Also, I remember past iOS beta updates had things like new emojis that when you send to people who don't have the beta, they won't show up or they'll show up as like a weird X or something. There's Memoji stickers with iOS 13 that I'm pretty sure you can't send to other people unless they have iOS 13.

David Averbach:     I've been curious about that.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. It's kind of one of those things that's nice if you have friends who have the beta too.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I thought maybe I could just go through some of the features that people are really excited about after WWDC and see what you're thinking of them. Of course, the one that got a lot of press was dark mode. How's it going? Do you like it?

Donna Cleveland:    I like it but, actually, it's not the feature that I've ended up liking the most out of every ... There've been other smaller features that nobody has really talked about that are more useful because dark mode, really, all it's doing is changing the color palette of Apple's built-in apps. It's a nice kind of dark muted color that I find to be a little more relaxing. It's nice for nighttime, when you don't necessarily want your whole screen lighting up a room or something. I don't find it to be ... I mean, it's not that game-changing. It's like you get used to it really fast and it's a nice feature to have but it's not ... I don't know.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Do you think-

Donna Cleveland:    It doesn't feel like that big of a deal, I guess.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Once third-party apps have been able to incorporate it into their own apps, do you think that you'll like it more because it will be more consistent across the board?

Donna Cleveland:    Maybe. I don't know, I think that ... Day One has had a dark mode for a while now which is a journaling app that I use and I do enjoy it. The nice thing about it, in your settings you go to display brightness and you can turn it on to a schedule so that it will switch modes at sunrise and sunset. I have that set up so at nighttime I have dark mode and during the day it's the regular view. Even Apple's new wallpapers will shift color with a dark mode so during the day it's brighter and at night it's darker. The Notes app, Reminders, Safari, all of Apple's built-in apps all incorporate it. I like it.

David Averbach:     Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I mean, I don't think it's a game changer at all. I, before it came out, was kind of hating on the feature because I don't particularly like the dark mode.

Donna Cleveland:    David found it depressing.

David Averbach:     I found it depressing. I force myself to use it all week and I found it grew on me. I actually did though, I still decided I like light mode better and switch it back but I did keep that feature that you had just talked about where at night it switches to dark mode. I like that because it is definitely ... Like if I'm browsing my phone in the evening especially if I'm in bed, I don't have a lot of lights on, it's really jarring to have that bright screen. With that, I do agree with you, Sarah, that once you have the dark mode set up, it's annoying when you switch to apps that don't and suddenly you're blasted with this bright light.

Donna Cleveland:    It's also nice like I feel that at night if you're in a dark room, it's disturbing to other people to have your phone out. I mean, in a movie, that's just considered not okay and all anymore but even in general, it's bright for other people also makes it hard for them to not look at what's on your screen. I feel like dark mode, at the very least it's nice for nighttime use. Also, it's something I've gotten really used to having on my Mac. When I updated to macOS Mojave, I switched to dark mode and I really like that on my computer for some reason more so than on my phone. It's nice to have that consistency now.

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Okay, so that's dark mode.

Donna Cleveland:    That's dark mode, yes.

Sarah Kingsbury:    What about the swipe keyboard? That's another thing that Apple's been really behind on that we're finally getting.

Donna Cleveland:    I know. I used to have Android and I use the swipe keyboard and I really liked it and so I'm really glad Apple's integrated that now. I'm actually really liking it.

David Averbach:     Oh really? Okay, because I was going to say I haven't been using it that much. I tried to force myself to use it. I think sometimes it's faster but the thing that I struggle with is it gets it wrong just enough that whatever time-saving I have gets enough. In particular, it just struggles with what you expect to struggle with like unusual words or pronouns. For example, we have a grocery store called Hy-Vee in our town, you can't do swipe for Hy-Vee because it's never heard of Hy-Vee. There's enough words like that, people's names and things like that that my brain just can't shift back and forth quick enough to be swiping and then typing and then swiping and so I found I'd gone back to the default of just typing.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. I guess to be fair, I've only used swipe when I was thinking, "I'm going to try the new swipe keyboard," but my default is still to not swipe but I wonder if that'll change over time. The thing that I like about it is that you swipe a word, you don't have to hit the space bar like once you've swiped a word, it'll automatically add a space and then you keep doing it. For common words, it's really really good and accurate but you're right, for any kind of long, unusual word, it can really get it wrong and then you're ... Yeah, that's annoying.

David Averbach:     I feel like, to me, it's like if I'm typing something a little bit longer like a longer text or an email, it'll regularly get at least one or two words wrong. Like you're saying, they're usually kind of longer words where it's understandable why it got it wrong but if I have to go through it every time and modify it, it doesn't save me time. I will say though, when you tap on the word like if you're using swipe and you tap on a word in the message, the predictive comes back up and you can often change it pretty quickly and easily. It's like it gives you three guesses and one of those is usually right as long as it's not a weird pronoun or proper noun. Yeah.

Donna Cleveland:    One of the big things they say the swipe keyboard is for is for one-handed typing. Do you use just one hand?

David Averbach:     I tried that but I found that I couldn't do it like I couldn't swipe with one hand very easily. I'd hold it with one hand and then use it with the other but then I might as well be texting with my thumbs anyway.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, that's very-

Sarah Kingsbury:    I have not done one-handed texting since they made the bigger iPhones.

David Averbach:     Yeah, it doesn't work for me.

Donna Cleveland:    I hold it with one hand and do it with the other but it is better. My other method I found myself, I usually type with my left thumb and my right pointer finger.

David Averbach:     Oh really? That's funny.

Donna Cleveland:    Kind of a strange system. Yeah. That's one of the features I think is nice. For a while, there have been third-party swipe keyboards that you can download but then you have to switch between keyboards to get there. This is just nice because it's integrated in, you can type the normal way or you can swipe, you don't have to press that globe icon and switch to a different keyboard and go ... you know.

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Donna Cleveland:    When I did that, I just never use it. A few years back, Apple first allowed third-party keyboards to be installed. The other thing that sucked about that is that you would have to allow the keyboards to be able to read all of your messages, there's some weird privacy concerns with that so it's nice you don't have to deal with that anymore.

David Averbach:     Yeah. I mean, part of my not that excited about the swipe is that I, at the time, went and got a third-party keyboard that had swipe and I was excited about it and then it was the exact same thing, always having to switch keyboards was annoying but also it just wasn't such a game changer to me that I thought I'd be that excited about it when Apple came out with it.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Here's one that I'm excited about, expanded share menus.

Donna Cleveland:    That's been, I think, my favorite thing.

David Averbach:     Yeah. I loved it.

Donna Cleveland:    For most Apple apps, whenever you're on a screen, there's a share icon that you tap and it brings up all your options of ways to share whatever you're looking at whether that's a photo or a URL or something like that. Now, there's ... Let's open it up and go through some of the stuff that you see now.

David Averbach:     I'll tell you, while you're doing that, my favorite thing is it guesses who you want to share it with like 99% of the time I'm just texting the same three people whatever I'm sharing and so they pop up right away and I really like that.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. You'll see icons of all the people you regularly message. It's just a way nicer view, it gives you a list of all your different options that you might ... I mean, what are some examples? AirDrop is more prominent. It's just better.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Yeah, I like that list, I'm looking over your shoulder.

David Averbach:     It uses AI to predict what sharing method you want and who you want to send it to. I find that this is one of the areas where often when Apple use an AI to predict, it annoys me but in this situation I really like it. The other thing is that I like the new screenshot view. This is going to be weird like nitpicky thing but when you take a screenshot, it gives you the option to mark up what you just took a screenshot of before you send it. Before, I found that the pencil was too thin and you couldn't see it very well. Now, they gave you like it's easier to control, it's easier to control the thickness and the color and it's like the mark ups are so much better. I know that's a really small nitpicky thing but I found myself never marking things up before whereas I actually often, when I'm taking a screenshot, I'm sending somebody something very particular in the screenshot and I want to be able to mark it up so I do like that.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Cool. Memoji stickers, I mean, you can only send them to each other, right? Like other people with the beta?

David Averbach:     Actually, I haven't tested it.

Donna Cleveland:    I tested it with my dad, we send each other messages.

David Averbach:     Oh, it didn't work?

Donna Cleveland:    It did, [crosstalk] ... Yeah. He's downloaded iPadOS also on his iPad and the beta on his phone because he's excited.

David Averbach:     I found that I think I will use these more, that I use my "Memoji".

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. It's a little bit more like Bitmoji style.

David Averbach:     Yeah. I like what they do is they put it in the keyboard. When you go to your emojis, they're right there so that they're really easy to get to.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Oh nice.

David Averbach:     They kind of replicate the emoji so instead of a generic smiley face with heart eyes, it's like your Memoji with heart eyes. They're fun.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Oh, I'm excited about this. I thought it was stupid but now I'm excited.

David Averbach:     I know I'm a little bit sheepish to admit that I kind of like Bitmoji, we talked about this in an upcoming episode, actually, coming up. Bitmoji has so many fun things that you do like holding signs and doing all of these crazy, goofy things. Memojis are very limited like they're just kind of replicating the emojis of a smiley face, heart eyes.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, starry-eyed.

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Donna Cleveland:    Laughing crying. Bitmojis, they have hundreds of options.

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury:    They're kind of hilarious.

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Donna Cleveland:    It's really easy to access though. Like David said, it'll show up when you hit your emoji icon. Also, there's the messages apps above the keyboard and there's like a special icon now for Memoji stickers that you can go to so you can do it for Memoji or also any of the Animojis like the cow, giraffe, owl, all those things. You can either drag and drop it onto a message or send it as its own message.

David Averbach:     I haven't drag and drop.

Donna Cleveland:    I don't think that I'm going to be using this a bunch, to be honest. I would not say Memoji stickers was something that I'm super-

David Averbach:     I have a weird critique of it though.

Donna Cleveland:    Okay.

David Averbach:     The thing that's fun about Bitmoji is, in general, Memoji is in, Bitmojis are cheesy. Bitmoji brings it over the top that adds like a sort of self-awareness, that you know you're being over the top cheesy. Memojis are just cheesy enough where they're like you act like you're being serious with it and you can't be serious with it because they're ridiculous.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, you're right. There's something about it that feels not cool whereas I feel with Bitmojis, it's not cool but ...

David Averbach:     But you're embracing it.

Donna Cleveland:    Yes.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I agree.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. That's Memojis. Go ahead.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Are you able to use Sign In with Apple yet? Because that's another feature I'm really excited about.

Donna Cleveland:    I haven't seen that pop up at all for me.

David Averbach:     No, and the reason why is that I'm assuming that Apple from their end has done that but it has to be something that websites and apps and other places integrate into their services.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Right.

Donna Cleveland:    They're probably working on it.

David Averbach:     A, they're working on it and, B, they don't have a lot of incentive to go fast because such a small percentage of people are using iOS 13 beta so that's something that we won't really be able to use until they come out with iOS 13 and even then I think it'll slow roll out.

Donna Cleveland:    Just an overview of what that is, by the way. Sign In with Apple, Apple is coming out with an alternative to options that create an account for you using Facebook or Google. When you're going to create an account or sign in to an existing account, Apple will now be able to sign you in and there's an option to not share any of your personal information with whatever company that is.

David Averbach:     I feel like too, I'm just, this year, starting to see Apple Pay become very prevalent on websites and apps and it came out two or three years ago, I think. It's being on the other end of it and trying to set up Apple Pay for some of our services, it's really a hassle and so it takes a while for companies to roll these things out. I think it'll be a while before we use it a lot but I'm really excited about it when it comes out.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, me too, that's one of the features I was [crosstalk 00:38:41].

Sarah Kingsbury:    I've definitely been really paying a lot more attention to my security and privacy, probably too late, I'm sure they already know everything about me but ...

David Averbach:     I love Apple Pay. It's, by far, the best, way better than PayPal.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I mean, everything is better than PayPal.

David Averbach:     People love PayPal and-

Sarah Kingsbury:    I know but that's another podcast maybe. All right. How's the revamped Notes app, the gallery view?

Donna Cleveland:    Some of the features are not available yet. I have been enjoying the gallery view. Now, when you open the Notes app, you would usually only be able to see a list of your notes just chronologically but now if you tap, there's a grid icon. If you swipe down below your search field and it'll just show them in a grid and you get a little preview of what's inside of them, I mean, I think it's nice.

David Averbach:     To be honest, I didn't even notice it had changed.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I like that view, it reminds me of when I am looking at the Google Docs app. It's nice to be able to kind of see ... Sometimes you don't remember how you named it or what's in it or you have multiple documents like drafts that are slightly different and being able to have that visual clue, let's you pick the right one.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, I agree. This is like a small thing but I love it. I'm really into checklists, checking things off my list and now-

David Averbach:     Get out, really?

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, and arrows. When you check an item off, it automatically is sorted down to the bottom of your list so it's organized by the things that have not been done and ones that have been done.

David Averbach:     It's almost like you're using a reminders list like you should be.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. There's the option to do that or not because some people might not want it to sort that way but I like that.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm very impressed with this checklist that you've got here.

Donna Cleveland:    I was going to say, it's one of those things that ... I discover with the beta every year, it's like the little things that you end up loving. Dark mode, really quickly I'm like, "Whatever." Memoji stickers, I'm not that into. Self-sorting checklists, I'm all about that.

David Averbach:     That's exactly it and that's why you really have to get hands on with this is because so many of these features that you end up loving are little things that just drove you crazy and they fixed and then like dark mode which everybody is talking about, you're like, "Meh, who cares."

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, totally.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Yeah. I feel like that happens a lot with those features. Volume and silent mode pop out like what's that?

Donna Cleveland:    That's a note I put in there because it's another really small thing. Now, when you adjust your volume or turn on silent mode, there's a new visual that pops up on your screen that is just nicer like the volume ... Now, of course, it's not working for me, it's because nothing is playing on my phone right now. A little visual will show up on your screen showing the volume levels.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Instead of blocking the entire video that you're watching to let you know that you [crosstalk 00:41:27].

Donna Cleveland:    It's like in a little corner, it's just way nicer.

David Averbach:     Okay, because Sarah just hit the nail on the head. I agree. I kept thinking this is nicer and I couldn't figure out why I liked it more and that's exactly it, it doesn't cover the entire screen while you're doing it.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Yeah. What is up with that? I mean, I'm glad they change it but why was it ever like that, it was so ridiculous.

David Averbach:     Yeah. I do like it better. It's very small. It's not like it matters that much but I do like it better. When it pops up, you can actually tap and drag it instead of having to use the button which I like.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Nice.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, so you can both control it from your touchscreen and with the physical buttons, that's really nice.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Cool. Are your AirPods telling you your messages because that's a thing, right?

Donna Cleveland:    Yes, and I hate it.

David Averbach:     I saw a note, Donna hated it, I like it.

Donna Cleveland:    Really?

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Donna Cleveland:    I was out on a jog listening to music. I was really not feeling like jogging and I was like, "Okay, the music is keeping me going," and then it's an annoying message coming in being like, "Analisa Thompson is texting you," blah blah blah, I do not feel like dealing with this right now.

David Averbach:     Well, let's hope Analisa Thompson doesn't listen to this podcast.

Sarah Kingsbury:    You don't put do not disturb on while you exercise?

Donna Cleveland:    That would solve it?

Sarah Kingsbury:    I don't know but I'm guessing because then you wouldn't get notifications.

Donna Cleveland:    Oh okay, that's what I need to do because that will be ... I was going to say it could be useful in certain circumstances but a lot of times like if I'm listening to music or a podcast on my AirPods, I don't want to be interrupted, you know.

David Averbach:     I think the reason why I liked it is, so far, they've been few and far between but definitely ... It [inaudible] on exercising so definitely at that scenario of being stuck in a group text conversation while you're exercising and not being able to access your phone if it's strapped to your arm or something will make me lose my mind. I agree, it's definitely a very flawed feature. You can turn it off, I'm assuming.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. One nice thing about it too though is if you have your phone unlocked and they're looking at it and you're playing something over your AirPods at that time, it won't announce your messages to you so it seems aware enough that if you're using your phone, you don't need that Siri feature to be happening. I actually don't know how to turn it off because something popped up when I put my AirPods in once I've updated, letting me turn it on but it just popped up, it wasn't in the settings. When I've gone into the settings, I didn't find the place yet or [crosstalk 00:43:52]. Yeah. I haven't googled it yet but I was like [crosstalk 00:43:55].

Sarah Kingsbury:    One place where you can find AirPods settings and I don't know for sure that this is true in iOS 13 or applies to this particular situation is in Bluetooth because-

David Averbach:     Yeah, it's really hidden, it's annoying.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Your AirPods have to be connected and when they're connected, then you can go and then change certain things.

Donna Cleveland:    How?

Sarah Kingsbury:    Each of your AirPods will show up and you tap on each one and you can change things like what happens when you tap on them or ...

David Averbach:     You hit the little blue info-circle [crosstalk 00:44:26].

Sarah Kingsbury:    Okay, that's what I was ... Yeah.

David Averbach:     It's really unintuitive, I don't know why. What they need is an AirPods app, to be honest or they have it in-

Donna Cleveland:    They should, yeah.

David Averbach:     Yeah, that's what they need.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Yeah, I agree, just like they need a HomePod app.

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Don't let me start on the HomePod. Okay. Yes, I will be careful when I first put my AirPods in now that I have iOS 13, watch what I'm agreeing to turn on. I use the Reminders app a lot and I know they're doing a whole revamp of that and I haven't had a chance to look at it but it wasn't clear to me during the announcement like what are they changing.

David Averbach:     I actually thought I was going to hate it because the thing I like about the Reminders app is, I'm opening it up while I'm talking, if you're watching, I won't give you my phone, is I love the simplicity of it. I feel like they kept the simplicity and added some nice new features. Basically, when you open it up, there's a little grid view up top that has four things, it has today, all, flagged and scheduled. Most of which I don't use but I could see how a lot of people would use it. They just made things a little bit easier to move things around. It's a really small thing but you can control the icon next to each list which makes it easier to find the list. Like my groceries list which, of course, doesn't work anymore but if it did work, we would both be able to see a little carrot, a red carrot.

David Averbach:     It's nice just having like a little round icon that you can control, it's nice having a visual cue. I found the changes to be unobtrusive to the simplicity of it while still being nice. Also, the counter to that is I haven't found any of them be particularly amazing, it's just been like okay, nice little features.

Donna Cleveland:    How did you get the carrot?

David Averbach:     I have no idea. [crosstalk] corner, you do list appearance, yeah, and then there. See, it gives you the color of the circle and the icon. It doesn't give you an icon option-

Donna Cleveland:    That's so weird. For me, I'm only getting the colors and no icons. This is maybe just beta testing life like people have different experiences. You can flag reminders now, I saw that you ... I haven't flagged them yet so I don't see that list.

David Averbach:     Let me see, I haven't either. I don't know but it still shows up to me. I have no idea why I would ever flag a reminder, to be honest, but I could do that if I wanted.

Donna Cleveland:    It's that you can then have a list of things that are flagged that you can go look at but, yeah, I don't know that I would necessarily want that. One thing it does make more sense to me, that now scheduled is just a view that you can see and so those are all of your time-based reminders whereas right now with the iOS 12, it's its own list which is it's not a list that you created so it doesn't make as much sense. I think it's an improvement.

David Averbach:     I'm just not particularly a power user for reminders but I think you could become more of one now like if you wanted to have three lists, one for your personal, one for work and one for random things you need to do and you were diligent about adding dates and what was reoccurring, what wasn't, then it will be nice to have a unified view of what you're suppose to do today across all your lists. I'm just not that much of a power user so therefore the unified views don't matter to me.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm excited about them. Is Face ID faster?

David Averbach:     Yes.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. That, I've noticed and really like.

David Averbach:     So much faster. It's like-

Donna Cleveland:    Apple promised it will be 30% faster and I would say ... I mean, I don't know if it's 30% faster but it seems faster.

David Averbach:     I never realized how much time I spent staring at my phone waiting for it to unlock because I felt like it was fast. It's so much faster now. It's like almost annoyingly fast where it unlocks before I realize it's unlocking. Then if somebody were next to me and I didn't want them to read my text, I would say they'll be able to which is not a big deal and I'm very happy it's faster but that's how fast it is, that it unlocks before I even know I'm looking at my phone.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, it's pretty awesome.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm excited about that because there's times when you need to use Face ID to add your password from key chain or agree to buy some app or something and then you just sit there while it ... so I'm excited.

David Averbach:     Especially when you're doing Apple Pay and you're trying to validate it on your phone and everyone is watching you and you're trying to be like, "Recognize my face so I can pay for this," and that's faster, that's nice.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Donna, you're telling me like a super cool thing about control center with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and I can't wait to try this.

Donna Cleveland:    Yes. This is one that Apple didn't talk about when they announced iOS 13 but if you open control center, you used to be able to just tap to connect or disconnect from Bluetooth and Wi-Fi but now if you press and hold, there's an expanded menu of your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth. You can also do things like turn on and off AirDrop and personal hotspot. From there, if you press and hold again, you can connect actually to different Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth devices. Before, it used to be like you could turn Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on and off but you weren't able to see what you were connecting to and to me, that was just really limited in terms of what control center could do there, I didn't find it particularly helpful. Now, it's like okay, I don't have to open the Settings app, I can control what I'm connected to right from control center so I think that's a significant improvement.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I really like that because you've always been able to change the audio output source from the now playing tile but the truth is we connect to more than just speakers or headphones with our devices using Bluetooth so I'm-

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, it's not just for music and podcasts.

David Averbach:     I will say that on iOS 12, if you hard press on the Settings app, it brings up a shortcut that includes Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It's still, in the control center, several taps away and so I don't know that it's necessarily time-saving but if you happen to be in the control center [inaudible] ... Also, I think it's a more intuitive place to put it.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Yeah. [crosstalk] don't have to unlock your phone to access control center unless you've made it so that you do.

Donna Cleveland:    That's a really good point. Also, just if you're a control center person which I use control center all the time, it's just nice that that setting is more useful now. I agree though, it's not easier to get to like opening the Settings app and going to your Bluetooth settings, it's not hard, it's just, I think, most people have more of a mental block against fiddling around with their settings.

David Averbach:     It's more intuitive especially in order to get the shortcut on time, you have to hard press on Settings, I always forget to do that and then I'll be like-

Sarah Kingsbury:    Then the 10R doesn't have those.

David Averbach:     I think with the 10R, if you long press, it'll do this but I'm actually not sure.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Some of the 3D touch things you can do just by long pressing but some of them you can't. I'm not totally familiar with which ones but ...

David Averbach:     Pardon me, one, this move and some of the other moves are actually Apple's phasing out of 3D touch because the 10R-

Sarah Kingsbury:    It is a long-standing rumor that they're going to do that.

David Averbach:     Well, the 10R and the iPad Pro does not have 3D touch so it doesn't seem like it's a high priority to say the least.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Yet, it seems unnecessary, honestly, to make that little vibration when you could just long press as an option.

David Averbach:     It's also just unintuitive, there's no visual cue and you never know when you can do it and when you can't and what's going to happen if you hard press on something. I will say, this isn't on the list and this is a really small point but they changed the, I don't even know what they call it, the Taptic Engine like the little vibrations you get as a response as you're doing things on your phone. They changed them a little bit and I like them better.

Sarah Kingsbury:    [crosstalk] about them. What's different?

David Averbach:     I don't know how to explain it, you have to just try it for yourself but they feel better, I don't know. It feels more responsive, it feels like somehow it's more intuitive when I'm getting the Taptic Engine and why or something.

Donna Cleveland:    I just feel like singing like (singing).

Sarah Kingsbury:    I know, it's so funny.

David Averbach:     It's a very dorky point but I found myself like, "Oh yeah, that was nice."

Sarah Kingsbury:    I use my Find My Friends a lot and now it's integrated into the Find My iPhone app as Find My which is ...

Donna Cleveland:    I don't love the name.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Yeah, but how's the app itself?

Donna Cleveland:    I love it.

David Averbach:     It's fine. They took two apps, they made them one app, it works fine. I will say, you'll be happy to know that the default view is Find My Friends so you don't have to do several taps. Why do you love it, Donna?

Donna Cleveland:    I just think it makes so much more sense like there's the people tab and that's your friends that you've shared location with and then there's your devices tab which shows you everything, all of your devices and there's a little menu you can swipe up to get a full list of your devices. With people, I mean, I don't even know if you could do this before but it's just if you could, it wasn't as apparent but you can name locations. I went in and the friends that I have their locations, I named their different homes so it'll just be like Rachel's home, you know, and I think that's kind of a nice thing.

David Averbach:     Because I'm peeking over your shoulder. I only share my location with my partner so I just have one person there. Did it always allow you to have pictures of people or is that new? Because I like that.

Donna Cleveland:    That was there before, yeah. One thing that was nice with devices too ... I mean, this is really the biggest thing is that with iOS 13, there's now a capability to locate devices even if they're offline.

Sarah Kingsbury:    That's exciting.

Donna Cleveland:    I don't know, it's like some Bluetooth technology that allows you to do that but that's been a huge hole in Find my iPhone is if your phone is dead or MacBook is dead or whatever, it's not going to be able to find it and now it can.

Sarah Kingsbury:    All right. One last thing I want to talk about, probably the app that all of us use the most, I'm guessing, is the Messages app. Now you can search conversations which I feel like is going to transform my life, has it transformed your life?

Donna Cleveland:    I do really like it. Wait, what were you excited about with it? Because I feel like maybe ...

Sarah Kingsbury:    I mean, the search is terrible in the Messages app and you search every single conversation. Now, Apple says you can search individual conversations. Is that ...

Donna Cleveland:    I don't know. For me, what I noticed is that, look, if I'm searching something, at the top it'll tell me ... Like I put in an M and it showed me at the top all of the contacts that I've messaged whose names begin with M and below that, conversations where I say that and then links and then photos that are relevant to that. It's just like a way nicer search view. Let's see, if I go into an individual conversation, I don't know [crosstalk 00:55:22]. Yeah. I don't know things that you can search in individual conversation.

David Averbach:     Yeah. You cannot that way, Donna, but what you can do ... Let me try it this way, if I tap ... No. Okay. I think it just better searches. First of all, like Donna is saying, it's sorted between ... Like when you search it, it'll show people first because a lot of times you're searching for someone to text and then links and then photos and then location, all of which is nice.

David Averbach:     It always sort of search within threads but not very well and now it does better. For example, I just was messing around with this today. Donna, six months ago, texted me a link to a handyman that I wanted to use and I couldn't find it before. Now with iOS 13, if I type handyman, it comes up with that thread. If I tap on it, it takes me exactly to the spot in the conversation where you had sent me the contact. Now, it was suppose to sort of do that before and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't but it was pretty bad like I found that I often couldn't even find people that I texted regularly when I searched in text search so it's better, I think.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm liking this actually because I just typed in Montreal where I just went for vacation and, first of all, it showed me multiple messages from the same conversation that had that word. Then there was the option to see all and I tap that and now I see every message so instead of just ... Like generally, there's multiple times where you say a word and you're searching for that term and before in iOS 12, it was like ...

David Averbach:     No, it's a really good point, it would only show you one point in any given conversation. For example, when I was visiting my sister, I was trying to find her address. I searched address and she texted me several addresses over the years and I couldn't find the right one. That's really useful to be able to show every time that she said the word address so I could find her address that she texted me.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I think it is going to change my life.

David Averbach:     Good.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm really happy.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. Before, we were saying we thought iOS 13 didn't have a theme but I feel like it's like the update for improved menus like I feel the search menus, the share menu, all those things, they're just so much better.

Sarah Kingsbury:    The layout of the Reminders and things like that. Organization is better.

David Averbach:     I will say, so far, they've all been well-executed. It has added a layer of polish to iOS that didn't feel like it was there which I've been very happy with.

Donna Cleveland:    Find My, you know, that's another example of its features that already existed besides the new Bluetooth feature which is awesome which locates your offline devices but, otherwise, it's just a better organization of already existing features.

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Donna Cleveland:    You know.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Those are my favorite kind of updates, the ones that take the small annoyances that you might actually just get used to and put up with or just complain about all the time on this podcast and just kind of smooths them out. Once you get used [inaudible] you don't even notice but that's kind of the best thing like to not notice.

David Averbach:     In the same vein, speeding things up like making Face ID faster. This is something I haven't really noticed but, apparently, apps open faster.

Donna Cleveland:    Oh yeah. I hadn't particularly notice but, yeah, [crosstalk 00:58:39].

Sarah Kingsbury:    That's all my questions about what you guys are liking about iOS 13. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?

Donna Cleveland:    The only thing is the Maps app, I wanted to mention quickly. For a while, I would use Google Maps specifically if I was visiting a city. It was really convenient to create all of my favorite or restaurant recommendations for that city or places to visit and have that be a saved list. Now, in the Maps app, there's a new thing called collections where you can create a collection of places. For me, how I would use that is for trips like if I'm going to go to LA and I want to know all the restaurants to go to there, I'll create an LA collection of restaurants that I want to head up because, for me, traveling is about food.

David Averbach:     That's cool.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I know, I was just thinking, "Man, I wish I had this when I went to Montreal," because that was our whole point was like which restaurant should we eat at today.

David Averbach:     That's exactly how I travel too.

Donna Cleveland:    There's also, prominently, the ability to add favorite locations so it automatically has my home and work there and then I can add new favorite locations there as well.

Sarah Kingsbury:    [crosstalk 00:59:45], that's funny.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. I tested it out last night just doing ... We live in Fairfield so it's like places in Fairfield that were my favorite and it was really easy to add them so I could do that. Yeah. I put Cafe Paradiso, my favorite place.

David Averbach:     It is good. I'm just so mad at Apple for not adding the ability to have multi-stops in a route that I didn't even look at the Maps app, I'm just annoyed at them.

Sarah Kingsbury:    What if it's there and you just didn't look? I don't think it's-

David Averbach:     It's not.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah.

David Averbach:     It's not. Maybe I'll look now but no. I want to say one thing about iOS 13 and then I want to talk about iPadOS a little bit in case unless you guys have anything else. This is a really important bug that we did not mention. We had somebody attempt to uninstall iOS 13 and roll back to iOS 12 and they couldn't do it. Now, it's a bug that I'm hopeful that Apple will fix and it's also possible that this was a user error, we haven't tested it across a lot of devices yet but it's a pretty important warning to give you guys because if you do update ... Normally, we say you can always go back, we had a hard time doing that. I haven't read about that anywhere else although it might be just us but we had a hard time doing it.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah. That's a good disclaimer. Still, when Apple shipping version of iOS 13 comes out in September, you can easily switch to that so you're not stuck on beta software forever but it seems like you can't go back to iOS 12 if, this is one of our writers here who have this experience, if that continues to be true for other people.

David Averbach:     Yes.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm wondering if I should test that before I have too much invested in iOS 13.

David Averbach:     I mean, the flip side is I've had no desire to go back, I've really enjoyed it. Okay. iPadOS, so in general, I've read pretty positive reviews about iPadOS so I may be alone in this, I hated multitasking.

Donna Cleveland:    Really?

Sarah Kingsbury:    Really?

David Averbach:     I found it to be so incredibly unintuitive. To be fair, it might be powerful if I'd just gone and read a guide about it but it was really unintuitive. It was really hard to figure out how to drag it over so that it was like a split view within an app. Then sometimes I drag it over and it will be the little, I don't know what to call it, the little slim multitasking window and sometimes it will be the big one and sometimes I'd accidentally have the slim multitasking window and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of it and I try to swipe it over and it will go away. I hated it. I was shocked at how much I hated it because I've had an iPad for a while and I'm pretty used to the multitasking there and I already find that to be unintuitive, to be fair, but this was rough. I'm sure power users will get used to it but kind of the everyday user that doesn't want to spend hours studying how to use this.

David Averbach:     I think, to me, what made me so critical is multitasking on a computer is the most intuitive. It's so easy having a mouse to click and drag things around, having windows that can overlap and un-overlap, it's so easy and intuitive. As part of my ongoing point that Apple's trying to make an iPad a computer replacement but I think unless they have a true operating system that has a mouse, that has windows that overlap, I feel like they're falling short with the way they did multitasking. Sarah, when you do it, I'll be curious to hear what you say.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm not putting iPadOS on my iPad.

David Averbach:     A couple of things I did like though because I don't want to totally hate on it. I mean, in general, as long as you don't want to use any multitasking, it's still the same kind of iOS 13 features that we liked already are added to iPad so I think it is a nice update to iPad, it's just not a leap forward in terms of productivity for power users. I like the widgets. I like being able to have widgets view on my home screen, I thought that was fun. I just updated it last night so there'll probably be more I discover but I already did discover a small, little feature that I really liked which is within ... If you have Safari open and you tap to view all of your tabs you have opened ... you know how it brings you to that view where it shows you all the tabs especially on iPad and iPhone, I find that I end up having a ton of tabs open and they're hard to navigate, there's a search button there and you can search within your tabs which I found to be really useful.

Donna Cleveland:    Yeah, that's really cool.

David Averbach:     Because what happens to me a lot is I'll be browsing the web and I'll open something either I'll do this intentionally or it'll happen to me, it'll open in a new tab and then I want to navigate back to my other tab and I'll tap that button and it will pull up like 100 tabs and I'm trying to find where it is. Now, you can search for it so I liked that. I'll update more about it probably next episode because I haven't had a lot of hands-on experience but I am pretty angry about multitasking, it was terrible.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm just going to ignore everything you just said and I'm excited once I do actually have iPadOS to spend hours learning about the multitasking.

David Averbach:     Okay, fair enough, each to their own.

Donna Cleveland:    I guess I do think this does line up with what we suspected which is that iPadOS ... There's potential in the future now that Apple is making an operating system especially for the iPad, that they'll be able to make it more of a computer replacement over time but for now it's pretty much just a name change.

David Averbach:     Yeah. A couple of quick points, first of all, while iPadOS did get better reviews than I'm giving it when other people liked it more, everyone online, all the reviews seem to agree with me that it is a step forward but it is not a laptop replacement yet. That's the first and the second thing though is one of the my main points of why it's not a laptop replacement is that it doesn't have a mouse. They actually have mouse compatibility now.

Donna Cleveland:    Oh really?

David Averbach:     It's an accessibility feature. It's not very polished. It's like a round circle that you can drag around. They did it as accessibility and maybe we're going to leave it there for that and I'm sure it serves a purpose for a specific audience that needs that.

Donna Cleveland:    It's not a physical mouse that you can use.

David Averbach:     No, it is, you can attach a mouse to it, they just buried it in accessibility settings.

Donna Cleveland:    Oh, that's cool.

David Averbach:     It might just be for people who struggle to use a touch screen but I think Apple is starting to test it because I think that's the only way to go.

Donna Cleveland:    That'll be game-changing.

David Averbach:     Yeah, it will if they do it. You can now do it but it's kind of limited.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm very excited about this feature, actually. Not for myself actually, my dad has cerebral palsy and touch screens are so hard for him even though all the buttons are huge and I've adjusted the settings for multi touches so that it's easier for him to correct the input of things but it's really hard and because of his cerebral palsy, he has a bit of a speech impediment so Siri does not understand him. I'm so excited about this for him, I think it's going to really change his ability to use a device. Clearly, we'll have to switch to iPad but ...

David Averbach:     It actually works with iPhone too.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Really?

David Averbach:     Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury:    I'm very excited now.

David Averbach:     That's really cool to hear. I'm glad that it's a very viable accessibility feature and, hopefully, it'll be a feature for power users too but that's awesome.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Yeah.

Donna Cleveland:    All right, I think this wraps up all of our takes on iOS 13 public beta and iPadOS.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Also, we didn't come up with the question of the week for our listeners.

Donna Cleveland:    Yes.

David Averbach:     I did. I don't want to do this, I post it in our Facebook group a survey of whether or not people updated to iOS 13 and most people had not. I think let's make our question of the week kind of a similar question. If you have updated, how are you liking it? We would love to hear that. If you haven't updated, tell us why.

Donna Cleveland:    Yes, email podcast@iphonelife.com. Thanks so much for joining us, we'll see you next episode.

David Averbach:     Thanks, everyone.

Sarah Kingsbury:    Thanks, everyone.

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