Apple Crunch June 2025: Who's the Mystery Person?

In this episode of Apple Crunch, Thomas Domville, John Gassman, Marty Sobo, and Desiree Renae discuss recent Apple news and other topics of interest.

Chapters:

• Opening
• After thoughts of the Apple WWDC Keynote
• Hands-on and Thoughts of iOS 26
• Closing

Resources:

• WWDC 2025 Keynote: The AppleVis Recap
• Apple Previews New Accessibility Features Coming Later This Year: Accessibility Nutrition Labels, Magnifier for Mac, Braille Access Mode, and More

If you have feedback or questions for the Apple Crunch team, you can reach them at [email protected]

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Thomas:hello and welcome to apple crunch for June 2025 my name is thomas domville also go by the name of AnonyMouse yes we are back once again guys and here we are with the gang and we got a special new voice for you so a mystery voice i'll introduce that new voice to you in a moment so let's say hello to mr john gassman how are you mr john i'm doing good how are you

John: Great, great.

Thomas: You've been enjoying yourself the past couple months?

John:Oh, yeah. Yeah, always stuff going on. I did a nice cruise, and we have a convention coming up shortly before you hear this. And then another cruise in September. So lots of stuff going on this summer.

Thomas:Two cruises in a year. You know, I am jealous because you get to go on a Hawaii cruise. That is amazing. Maybe I'll have to join you in a cruise one of these days. That would be fun. We have to go on a Disney cruise. We should do a Disney, yeah, we should do a Disney cruise someday. Exactly. I'm all on board. And then over here, we got Mr. Marty Sobo. How are you, Mr. Marty?

Marty:Doing good, doing good. Thank you very much. Glad to be here again.

Thomas:Are you busy?

Marty:Oh, yeah, always busy.

Thomas:Always busy, too?

Marty:Yeah.

Thomas:Keeping yourself busy with the unmute?

Marty: Oh, yeah.

Thomas: Excellent. Well, speaking of the unmute, you got a new voiceover on unmute and she is going to be joining us on Apple Crunch from here now. So I am so happy to introduce you to all of you to Desiree Renee. How are you, Desiree?

Desiree:I'm good. How are you?

Thomas: Wonderful.

Desiree: Oh, it's been good. We're finally getting some warmer weather, so that's always nice in Oregon. And although in Texas, when I used to live there, I dreaded the warmer weather, but now I look forward to it.

Thomas:Yeah, Texas gets really hot.

Desiree:Oh, yeah. Yeah, it does. Early in, like, March, April. Yeah. Uh, no, not, not too bad. No, I mean, I enjoy it when it comes out here. I think I appreciate it more.

Thomas:Well, okay. Now, how long have you been in Oregon then?

Desiree:Almost two years. My husband lived here. And so we got married two years ago on Monday, actually, and then moved here.

Thomas:Well, happy anniversary to you.

Desiree:Thank you.

Thomas:You're welcome. Yeah. So those are the new people that we got on. So we got the guys and gals going on. All right. So now we got Desiree to keep me on track now. We have been gone for a couple months, and it's pretty much been a technical issue, guys, and I apologize for this, but for some reason it got to the point we were unable to upload any podcast to AppleViz for a couple months, and it was like, oh, my gosh. And that's probably why you guys saw so many podcasts just get bombed during May. I think there was up to about 18 podcasts we published, and that was because it kept piling up, piling up. But we finally got that fixed and we're up and running. And so we are back on track. Now let's go ahead and talk about the kind of the afterthoughts and what we thought of the WWDC and probably the announcement what they had for the GAD from Apple's when it comes to what's going to be new for accessibility. So really, I thought... Since we all pretty much know what was mentioned in WWDC, I thought maybe we can discuss about what are the two or three things that you really love about what you heard and probably are looking forward to. And I thought maybe we could start with that. John, were you able to kind of catch up and see all the new things that are coming out?

John:Yeah, there are a couple of things. Although, unfortunately, most of the stuff that Apple sends out when they do these announcements is visually oriented. And so it doesn't really pertain to me as a blind person that much. I know how it could pertain to people who are partially sighted. But for most of us, you know, nice to hear, but... Okay, so what? I can't use it. But, you know, they're making progress on things. And there were a couple of items, and now I'm trying to remember what they are, that I wanted to mention. One of you guys will probably mention them as we move along, but it was interesting, and it's always good to keep up with what's coming up in the near future, some of which we can use, some of which we can't, but that's the way it goes. They're really aiming for the market of people who are sighted and can use a lot of that stuff, and so you just have to deal with the fact that we're not going to be able to use everything, and that's the way it goes.

Thomas:You know, you're right, John. There's two big things came out of this was visually this liquid glass and that you've all been hearing about. And that's not going to really pertain to those that are blind, but will create havoc on those with low vision, which is very unfortunate from what I've heard early initial reports. However, it's early days in betas, so I know that low vision folks aren't the only one that's having this trouble because with the new latest beta, they were doing some tweak to some of the liquid glass that normal people could see were having difficulty seeing in control panel, or I'm sorry, the control center. I'm not on Windows here. And that is kind of an issue, but you're right. Liquid glass was kind of a big discussion, wasn't it? Fortunately, I haven't seen anything like that. kind of sidetracking myself, so there's no anything like that. And the second thing, Apple intelligence is really starting to push, as in you're starting to see the separation between the people that now don't have the Apple intelligence. Last year, some of the new Apple intelligence were so small, it's like, nobody's gonna really care. But this year, it seems like there's a little bit more, it's going to affect some people more than they had last year, and I think this is gonna get worse. How about you, Des? Were there any couple things that you saw or heard that you were pretty excited to kind of check out for yourself?

Desiree:For me, I really like the idea of being able to share accessibility settings with other people. I typically do a lot of tech support for family members that are sighted. And so I have to turn on voiceover and then, oh, it's not on touch type or it's, you know, it's all these default settings. So being able to kind of, you know, transfer my accessibility settings to their device directly, I think is a really cool thing. I can't wait to see how that goes. And then, you know, some of the podcasting, I don't have an iPad. It might make me buy one at some point. I used to have one and my daughter inherited it from me. But the podcasting things, you know, on the iPad are exciting to me as well.

Thomas:You know, that is, I'm glad you pointed that out. And that is a really cool feature, Desiree. I was going to ask you because you still do training for people and things like that, right?

Desiree:Yes. Well, my actual job is testing. I test websites and different things for Pearson. And so I, you know, I have to know how to use all of these different tools. operating systems and devices in different scenarios. But I do offer some training, just very basic training for people if they are interested in that, not just in Apple and iOS, but also Windows and JAWS and NVDA and all that stuff.

Thomas:I was thinking that this could be really beneficial for trainers out there, assisted trainers out there that do. And this would have been a godsend because you're absolutely right. And I will show you where you can find that in a little bit. I thought I showed you some cool stuff on the iPhone. I'll show you where that's at.

Desiree:Oh, do you have the beta?

Thomas:Yes, I am.

Desiree:Oh, I'm so tempted, but I... I don't want to break my phone, so I'm a little nervous about it.

John:I don't have a backup. Yeah, if you don't have a backup, it's really tough. I don't either.

Desiree:Yeah, I mean, I have a 13 that's my work phone, but that's not really a backup.

Thomas:Right, right. Yeah. That is a really cool feature because once you tap on that item, then you just get close to the other phone, and they'll sense that you want to share it, and they'll say, okay.

Desiree:Now, does it work on phones that don't have that same iOS?

Thomas:It's got to have the same iOS.

Desiree:Okay. So, okay.

Thomas:So it's no good right now until everybody gets it.

Desiree:Until everybody's on it. Yeah. So me and one of my kids have it grounded from their phone, and I'll use theirs and do the beta. Yeah.

Thomas:Here you go. Here you go. That's so funny. What about you, Marty? Is there anything cool that stands out to you?

Marty:I got to agree with Desiree. I think probably the iPad is the biggest update in terms of the capability of what the device can actually do. A lot of people were really frustrated with the iPad because it's so overpowered. And what do you use it for? I mean, it just seems such overkill in the hardware compared to for what it can do. Um, but now they're bringing, you know, a lot of things that people have been asking for for a long time, specifically one of the biggest, most requested things, which Desiree was talking about is being able to capture. video and audio, you know, from multiple sources. So what that means is before you can only be in one app at a time and you couldn't record or do anything else because it would time out or you couldn't run two apps at the same time and it wouldn't have the capacity to be able to record video or audio, um, You know, at the same time. So now you can be in Zoom or Teams or whatever it is, and you can record there as well as record locally video and audio to the device, depending on what your needs are going to be. So I really think that's game changing. And I think it's going to take huge steps forward in what the iPad can do. I'm curious to see how far they actually push the envelope.

Thomas:That's really interesting now that you put it in that perspective. I hadn't really thought of that, and that is huge. But I was thinking at the same time, since it's becoming like a hybrid between a Mac and an iPad, which I think was needed, but the tiling, I'm thinking... The training on that, now you get to have two things. So if you can have one thing up on the right side, there's going to be a lot more touch explore going on there is my thought is that all this tiling as well. I thought that was kind of could be useful for some people.

Marty:Yeah, I would say probably more if you're sighted because regardless of how much you can multitask for somebody who's got to use voiceover, you can only read in one thing at a time. So we'll have to see how that goes.

Thomas:I mean, obviously we all have multiple windows at the same time, so I'm always like alt-tabbing on my windows just to go from screen to screen to check something, copy over here, and then come back over here and do this. So I'm always multitasking. I wonder if the iPads would be something similar if I could do on the keyboard, if there's easy to just say alt-tab or some equivalent key that will allow me to just go back and forth like that and then just the app switcher. I guess Pose is going to be like an app switcher, but... I don't know.

Marty:If you have a keyboard, from what I was told, you're able to do command tab and it will go through the different apps like it would on a Mac. If you have five different apps open and you're using your keyboard, you can command tab and it will bring you through. All your open apps and then you just land on the one that would open it up. My sort of thing with that is if you're a voiceover user, you really only can be doing something in one app at a time still because you can only get audio feedback and understand what it's saying from voiceover from one app at a time.

Thomas:That makes sense. That makes sense. Maybe what I'll do is I'll kind of go through a few things that kind of popped out to me, and you guys chime in if you want. I was really interested in this hold assist. I mean, the hold assist, if you're not familiar with this, is a new feature within the phone app that allows you to put those people on hold. So like the other day, I was trying to call my doctors, and I got this music tone that comes up. And basically how this works is that somehow the phone app will recognize that music is Muzak that is on hold. So it pops up this little box that says, hey, would you like to use hold assist? And you double tap to say yes. And then it's just like, boop, you don't hear the music anymore, and you're back on your home screen, and I can go do about what I want. And then when you detect a voice, then it will pop up to say they're ready for you, and do you want to connect to that? And you say yes, and then it just connects you. Now, I was disappointed because I'm thinking to myself, hmm, this is going to be a problem. So, for example, my doctor, when I was old, it does do music, but you guys know that when it stops, it says, hey, did you know you can go dub, dub, dub? Well, it recognized it as a person talking, so it would just tell me the person's talking. So when I moved over, I heard them talking about what website. So it doesn't really technically work like I wanted to, but maybe it's because it's early beta, but I don't know how they would be able to differentiate that.

Marty:Well, here's the thing I kind of am thinking is it'll be great for the user to But if you're talking about the other side, people who are answering the phones and, you know, doing whatever it is they're doing while you're waiting, you know, unless there's training on, you know, that side, they're not going to know that they're going to come back and no one's going to be there and they're just going to hang up and you won't be able to get back to them fast enough and you just waited on hold for an hour and a half, you know.

Desiree:You know, it's like the reverse of the dial that when the telemarketers or whatever call you or the collectors, right? They're on a dialing system. And so, you know, that you get a call and if you answer it, which, you know, I don't recommend answering it anyway, but if you do, sometimes there's a lag and you're like, hello, hello. And the people don't get notified that you answered. And, you know, there's like a five or six second lag. So it's kind of the reverse of that, I guess.

Thomas:Well, just to put both of your mind to ease, it does tell them. It tells them that, please hold until I get the connector on for you. So it does tell them. It'll be on in a few moments. I think that's hilarious because they're always doing that to us.

Desiree:Yeah.

Thomas:What's going to happen to them when they hear that? They'll be like, huh? But it almost makes me wonder if that's going to be a problem because, you know, they don't have the time to sit there and wait for you. So I wonder if they'll just disconnect on you because.

Desiree:Does it tie up your phone line so like you can't get other calls?

Marty:Well, you know, but I mean, if it would be like call waiting, you know, so somebody chimes in and you click over to whoever's chiming in on the other line, it'll disconnect you probably. Yeah.

Desiree:Right. Yeah.

Marty:You have to let the other line go.

Thomas:Exactly. So it does happen on that. Now, before I proceed, I am really curious what you guys think of this new app store for accessibility, Nutritional Label. I love that name. I'm like, seriously, Nutritional Label. And I had a discussion with Sarah Herlinger about that. I said, that is a weird naming convention you guys came up with because that's going to confuse so many people. But essentially in the app store now, the developers – now will see this. When they submit their app to the store, they will now see this accessibility option where it's not required you to fill in, but it's right there in front. It says, is this voiceover accessible? Is this support dark mode and things like that, where they can select it and say yes. And so if they do select that, then within the Apple store, When you open up a certain app and you're looking at it, When you open up a certain app and you're looking at it, and if they do choose it, you'll be able to see, yes, this supports voiceover. I'm curious what you guys, what your stance is on that. What do you think of that, Marty?

Marty:I think it's a good idea. but I think they're overthinking it a lot. If you're looking in the app store, if you scroll down a little bit, usually it's the first thing past the comments or the people who give ratings. Uh, there is a thing that says like compatibility and it will say compatibility works with this device. You know, those things, they should just put a box there. And if it, you know, works with voiceover, that's all they got to do. You know, I mean, the whole purpose of it is that so somebody would know, does this app work or, with VoiceOver or does it not? It's the same thing as, is this app compatible with this device or not? Because that's really all it is down there. It just tells you what this app is compatible with in terms of the device you're on, and it says yes or no. So just to add a box to say it works with VoiceOver, yes or no, I mean, I think that's fine. I don't really think you need anything else. And that's good enough for people to not buy something that's going to ultimately turn out to not work with VoiceOver. I wonder if it puts it...

Desiree:If it knows, you know, sometimes when you go to a website and it knows you're using a screen reader and it's, you know, it says, okay, this is going to be optimized for that. If it knows you're using voiceover, if that would rank certain apps higher than others for the accessibility and they could use the nutrition labels for that purpose or to maybe give the app a better rating or ranking on the, you know, how fast it shows up on the search or whatever if it's accessible.

Thomas:Hmm, that is an awesome suggestion and thought. I bet it doesn't now, but that's something I would definitely forward to Apple. That is a fantastic idea because I would want to know if there's a way I can use a filter or some sort of app to show me what has been selected. But that's not an option, but they're always there to listen to new um thoughts that's i would love that if they give it a higher ranking if they just sense a voiceover that would be beautiful john what's your thought on that buddy

John:i like it i think it's a good idea uh the more information we can gain the better off we all are and as long as we're going to make every effort to make all of that accessible i say great Yeah, it's just, hmm, I don't know, guys.

Thomas:I just don't know what I think about it because developers are going to have to go and do it. And I just don't have faith that developers are going to take the time to check that box. We'll see.

Desiree:And is it going to be user tested? Is it going to be like, okay, we think it works with voiceover. When we turn voiceover on, it talks. But we don't use voiceover. I would think it would have to go through some native user type testing before they could say it's accessible.

Thomas:You know what, Des? That's the sucky part. It doesn't.

Desiree:No.

Thomas:No, it is by the honors system. You believe that?

Desiree:Yeah, I believe it, sadly.

Marty:If you're a follow-up developer, though, you should design your app for everyone in mind. You shouldn't just... You should. You know what I mean? Like, it shouldn't even be a thing. All, you know, there's these services in there so that anyone could use the app. You know, a good developer, and there's a lot of them out there, they just... do it because that's how you make an app that works for everyone. So if they don't want to do that,

Marty:And now we have to go to whatever special label or whatever thing that, you know, to try and push developers into doing it. You know, I don't know. I mean, personally, in my opinion, I think that if you're going to make an app or software, whatever you want to say, that, you know, the developers should make it so that it works for everyone. That should just be right out of the box. You shouldn't even have to worry about asking a question. Does this work with voiceover or does it not? Or whatever accessibility feature that you need. So...

Desiree:It's the same for websites, but they don't sadly follow that rule.

John:Well, it's the same for Windows, too. And then look at work experiences. Some companies are really good about that. Other companies are okay, and some are just terrible. Awful. Yeah.

Thomas:You know, this is a good first step. I told Sarah this is a great first step, but we got a lot more to work on, and she realized that. And I even told her out on that. I said... I mean, seriously, an honor system. I mean, she kind of just kind of just said that that us is the one that's going to say that's going to reach out to developers that this isn't right. And we are supposed to reach out to Apple to let them know that they did this wrong. And I'm thinking that should be the case.

Desiree:We should put the burden on us.

Thomas:Right.

Desiree:Yeah.

Thomas:We shouldn't have to do that responsibility. And it takes a lot of time of our time. I mean, can you imagine? But Nonetheless, I thought that that was a really, really cool new feature, and I think they can enhance on that. All right. Now, moving on, I am curious if you guys, are you, would you guys like to see a little show of 26 if I show you a few things and try to get your idea or your thoughts on it? Yes. All right. Sure. Here's a brand new one that just came out yesterday, and it's only for voiceover, and nobody's heard about this until a really good eye out there on our Apple website. Somebody found this, and I was like, oh, my gosh, and I'm pretty excited about it. And that is, you know, your rotor, that's where we go and change your speech, characters, words, and things like that. However, there's a new thing called copy text. And this copy text now lives in your rotor. That is your new VoiceOver clipboard history. Whoa, this is way overdue. It will remember the past 10 items that you copied to the clipboard. And let me show you. Let me bring up my device here. So when I activate my rotor... So that's my last item that I copied. You heard that copy speech? Now if I swipe down on that... That's the previous item I clipped to the clipboard. Is that not cool? So if you want to use that and make that the active clip... So you just double tap on that item, and then when you go to paste it, it will remember that. That's going to be huge for me because I do a lot of cut and paste on a lot of different things, and usually it's more than one thing. So that's going to become very handy for me.

Marty:Do you know if that's cloud-based? If you're signed into iCloud, will that, you know, say like you're on your phone and you copy something, will it go to the computer if you get back on your Mac or your iPad or if you have multiple devices?

Thomas:That's a great question. I don't know yet. That's something I'll have to find out for you since it's so brand new that we're just now finding these things. I will find out for you, Marty. That's a great idea.

Marty:They have it on the Mac already, so it's a keyboard shortcut, but it's just local only.

John:Just to balance things out, here's a so-so question for you, Thomas. There are two or three different ways to copy things to the clipboard. Is it reacting to any particular way of copying it? Or is it just the result that it's grabbing? That's a great question. No, it's also a question.

Thomas:That's a great question because I start to notice it. And because it's beta, it doesn't mean it's not common. It only works when I do a three-finger quadruple tap. So anytime I use that approach... Because if I were to go to, like, text selection and grab a selected set of text, right, and then I use the row to go to edit and then hit copy, that doesn't remember that. You have to select it first. Then you can copy. Correct. But if I select it and then copy it, but it doesn't show up in the clipboard, the copy speech feature.

Marty:Oh, yeah, because one's actually copying physical text and one's actually copying what voiceover is saying. So they're two different functions.

Thomas:Hmm. Maybe. Maybe you're right. Maybe if I hit edit and then copy, then VoiceOver repeats that.

Marty:Maybe then I can do a three-finger quadruple tap and go – On the Mac platform, you can select, say, text, a paragraph of text, and do Command-C, and it will copy it. And you can go paste that text that you copied into another editor, notes, whatever you want to do. But if you do Command-Shift-C, then it will copy the last thing VoiceOver actually said.

Thomas:What do you think, Des? Is that going to be something useful for you or not?

Desiree:I don't know. I use that edit, select all, copy thing a lot. I always forget about the quadruple three-finger thing. And then I end up, like, turning my screen on and off.

Marty:Yeah. So here, look at it in this kind of a workflow. Let's say you're in ChatGPT and you're happy with the last set of things that it gave you in terms of, you know, the results of whatever you're looking for. Then you can do Command-Shift-C and it will copy it because that's what the last thing VoiceOver said. And then you can go paste that text into a text editor.

Desiree:But what if you're doing chat GPT through Siri and you're not necessarily... That's a different thing. Yeah, like I can, if I hold down on what, you know, the result, sometimes I can get that context menu to come up and then I copy it that way. I wonder if that saves to the clipboard.

Marty:Well, if you're able to copy something and then it does... But Siri is different than VoiceOver. Right. So I don't think there's any way to copy Siri, but there is a way to copy VoiceOver.

Thomas:Interesting. You know, the best part is that it's only beta 2. So definitely I can send some feedback saying, hey, I do want that copy to occur into the clipboard that we do from the edit. I'm with Des. I use that more often than I do with my copy to clipboard gesture feature. um but nonetheless coming to ios this is kind of a i don't know to me it's kind of a big deal this is like my new thing that i my newfound love that um a actual feature that i will be able to use every day so that is one thing i wanted to show you now let me demonstrate this new phone app now i've gotten a lot of mixed results on this so at first don't So don't go crazy because you are able to go back to the old classic view, but the new default view. So let me show you what the phone app looks like.

Thomas/VoiceOver: Phone, edit, button. So now when you come into phone, calls, heading, filter, button.

VoiceOver:Net bar, edit, button. Calls, heading, filter, button. Of course. Call Mary, button.

Thomas/VoiceOver:Call Christina button. The first. So what you see now or here is they combine your favorites with your calls to other things. So it's all in one screen. So the first thing that it jumps you to is towards the top. And these are your favorites. So this is where I have all my favorites. It says called Mary. Call Sharon, button. Call Carol, button. And those are your calls. So you can double-tap that, and I'll call. So it's kind of like your favorite.

Thomas:Now, it is broken down by heading, which is useful. So if I go by heading, go to the next item.

Marty:Is this supposed to be from your contacts you're doing this?

Desiree:No, this is just the phone app.

Marty:Right. I mean, contacts is in the phone app on the phone. So I was wondering if you were just doing that. On the computer the same way. If you open up the phone app on your iPhone, at the bottom, you've got recents, you've got keypad, you've got all of those.

Thomas:Let me show you that. Okay, yeah, I'll get back to that in a moment. I'll show you that. So you've got your recents. So these are the people that just recently called you.

VoiceOver:Two missed calls from Michael Hansen. Incoming verified work. Two, three, 31.

Thomas/VoiceOver:So it tells you all the people that called you, and that is where that shows up. So it's all on one page. Now, to answer Marty's question, if I go to the bottom left... Tab bar. Selected. Calls. Tab. You have your calls, and then if you go to the right... Contacts. Tab. Two or four. Contact.

Marty:Oh, there you go. See the contacts over there.

Thomas/VoiceOver:Keypad. Search. Tab. And search. So you notice that the... Favorites is gone, and you notice that the voice message or voicemail is gone.

Marty:It would be on a phone, if you open up the app, the voicemail would be the bottom to the farthest to the right, which now sounds like it's replaced with a search box.

Thomas:That's correct. So you, on your very first tab, which is your call, you have your favorites, recent, voicemail. All in that first area. So that's how that looks. Now, what's weird is that if I go back to the call tab, so there's a filter button I'll have to find, but there's a button that says filter.

Desiree:It was at the top, I think. Yeah, after the edit that had edit when you went through. I think it might have been at the top.

VoiceOver:Edit button. Pause.

Thomas/VoiceOver:Edit button. No. Keep going. Filter button. There you go. You heard it before. So they moved it to the top there, Desiree. Very good keen ears, guys. That's why we've got her on the show. Exactly, because I couldn't depend on you guys.

Desiree:It's my trainer's head, like, oh, yep, it said that.

Marty:I think there's something else here with this phone app that's really important for everyone to know, though. And I'm pretty sure this works the same way. But you have to go into the phone settings on your actual phone itself and turn on calls everywhere because there's a feature in there or a setting where you can turn on, you know, calling everywhere or whatever they want to call it, where if your phone rings, it will also ring on your iPad and ring on your smartphone. you know, computer and all the places. If you turn that off, then it will only ring on your phone only. So in all of these things to work, I believe you have to have that setting turned on, on your phone.

Thomas:I don't know about that. I almost want to say no, uh, for work. I would make an outgoing call though, just from your computer.

Marty:True, true. Um, I think it uses the phone to generate the phone number in some way or another.

Thomas:You know, as a generic users that only use the iPhone, this is what the view that you're going to see automatically when you get 26 on your device. And the filter button is the only place where you can go and which in that filter button. Filter, classic, button. You got the classic view. So that's the only place you're going to be able to go. And so you double tap on classic and it goes back to the classic view. However, there are more things you can filter down and which is kind of nice. You can customize how you want that screen to look.

Desiree:I was just going to ask that.

Thomas:Right.

Desiree:And so order that like if I don't want my favorites to come up first, can you change the order that those things show up?

Thomas/VoiceOver:Not that I'm aware of. You just get a cookie samples and it puts it together. So let's take a look here. Selected. Calls. Button. So you got the option to turn on or off, but it doesn't really say you can move. Let me try swiping up. Speech on. Selected. Calls. Button. Nope. So you can either turn that on and off. So if you don't want to see calls, you can turn that option off. Missed. Button. So it has the miss. So my miss is not selected. That means it doesn't show up. But if I tap that, I'll get the miss along with that. Voicemail. Button. Spam. Button. Manage filtering. Button. So you can kind of sort of customize it.

Desiree:What does the edit do? Does that give you the ability to reorder things?

Thomas:Let's go look. I'm going to assume it only allows you to delete things. So let's go to edit. Edit. Button.

VoiceOver:Setup name. Dismiss contacts menu. Button. Dismiss contacts menu. Button. Select. Button. Dismiss contacts menu. Dismiss contacts. Edit favorites. Button. Set up name and photo. Button. Set up name and photo. Button. Edit favorites.

Thomas/VoiceOver:Button. Select. Button. And just let you select because that select is in messages. So if you tap that, then you can go down to your miss and I can select. If I want to do multiple batch deletion instead of just swiping up and hit delete, that's what the edit is for. So you can only edit one thing at a time. So that is the new phone app. I thought you guys would be interested in seeing that. Yeah, that sounds cool. There is one thing I do not like, and a lot of people are starting to agree with me on this.

Thomas:The search bar that we come to love is always at the top. So in other words, if you're in mail, search is at the top. If you're in message, search is at the top. If you're in Safari, search is at the top. Not anymore. They're all at the very bottom. They're making it the same as iOS then. It drove me bananas, and there is no way to change that, unfortunately. So from now on, so for example, here's one I really hate. So let me go back out. Doc, phone, settings. Go into settings. Settings.

Thomas/VoiceOver:And I always go to the bottom, go to the app. Thomas Donville, Apple account, iCloud Plus, and more. Button. toolbar, dictate, button. You come right down to the dictate, and so if I go left, search field, there's your search, and then go left, apps, button, there's your apps. And it's like that Anywhere that you have searched. So I'm not a big fan of that. I guess it's just something I'm just going to have to get used to because I've gotten so used to knowing I can just do four finger tap the bottom or top real quick to do something. And so it's just more of a memory muscle, I suppose. But I'm curious what you guys think of that because that is system wide.

Desiree:Hmm. I think it's just, yeah, it's something you have to get used to.

John:Yeah, I agree. I mean, it might take a while, but once you get used to it, you adjust pretty quickly.

Thomas:Easy said and done. I got a funny feeling. I know my AppleVis listeners out there. I know some of them are going to really dislike that. And I've heard some complaints already on the beta feeds. Yeah. So I don't know. I seriously doubt they'll make a change to it just because of us, because those with vision will have the same thing.

John:You know, blonde people like to complain. That's their goal in life, to complain.

Marty:I think you'd be surprised, though, because a lot of people complained about the new Mac logo design that's in the Finder. It's the Finder icon in the dock, you know. And so many people complained about it that now you can have the option to put it back to the original. You don't have to keep it on that new one. Hmm. So if they're doing the small changes like that, maybe they are listening a little bit more.

Thomas:Well, we are pretty good complainers, too. Yeah. Yeah. Community is not known for complainers and whiners. No way. And one last thing I'll show you is within Safari. Let me show you what Safari has changed. Phone settings. Just when we got used to Safari from going from the top to the bottom, right? Well, they rearranged the bottom. Doc. Phone. Double Safari. Double. And we go in Safari now. Text field is editing. At the very bottom now, bottom right. More. Button. You have a more button. Remember that used to be your, I think it used to be your tab button.

Desiree:Tab, yeah.

Thomas/VoiceOver:Yeah, and if you go left. Refresh. Button. You have refresh. Address. Disneyworld.disney. Address. Page menu. Button. Page menu. Back. Dim. Back. And that's all in one line at the very bottom.

Marty:Wait, refresh is to the left now?

Thomas:Yes.

Marty: It's not a three-finger swipe down anymore?

Thomas: You can do that as well. It's an additional thing. So they redid the bar. So you used to have two lines and you used to have book share or book share, good gracious, bookmarks and things like that towards the bottom and share, which used to be down there, not anymore. So it's very compact. Good news, you can change that. So you can go back to the way it was at the bottom or at the top.

Thomas/VoiceOver:But the more button now is this is where I think it takes a lot more steps because I use my bookmarks a lot. So if I go to more, more button, Share. Button. Now I get to my share.

VoiceOver:Add bookmark. Button. Add bookmark to. Button. New tab. Button. New private tab. Button. Bookmarks. Button.

Thomas:Finally, I got to the bookmarks. And to me, you can already tell where I'm going with this direction. That's a lot.

Marty:It's a little bit too much.

Thomas:So the good news is that you can turn that back. But the point of the demonstration is that When people see this when this comes out, they're going to say, this is it. I hate it. Just to note, you can change that. You'll have to go under Safari, under Settings, and make it go back to the way you used to. So thankfully, under Phone and Safari, you can change that. Again, this is kind of a memory muscle kind of a thing. I've gotten a little more used to it kind of sort of. um i don't know how i feel about it at this moment but that is how the safari looks so i thought i'd concentrate on those areas where i think people are going to see immediately when they update to 26 how that is going to alter you because those are the two areas i use the most safari and my phone right yeah so with all that what do you guys think of what you've seen so far

Marty:I think there's cool features there. I mean, I'm not necessarily sure that anything is groundbreaking necessarily. But, you know, some cool new features are in there, I guess. I mean, it depends on the person, too, you know. In this day and age, a lot of people, especially the younger generations, they don't ever use the phone. They don't care about the phone. I mean, you can call them and they'll never, ever answer. But you can text them or find them on social media and they'll answer you back like in two seconds.

Thomas:True. I guess for old timers like us, I'm talking to myself, not anybody else. You're right. Messages is probably the heavily used when it comes to my kids. They never call dad. Hell no, they wouldn't call dad. They just message dad. Or they'll tell me, why are you calling me? Message me. Is there anything you guys have heard about and you want me to kind of tell you anything more or are you guys pretty much good?

Marty:I would say the one thing I'm kind of curious about is some of these new features that like the copy. I wonder if now that. Well, at least I should say on the Mac platform, you can save things through Spotlight on the clipboard. More than one thing, it will save it to the clipboard. I wonder if some of these features like that are going to sync across your devices as long as you're logged into your iCloud account. Or I should say the same iCloud account on all your devices.

Thomas:Definitely something I have to get back with you on. I can say one thing that I thought was pretty cool that does go across, and that is what Des was kind of hinting earlier about the new sharing your accessibility settings with someone else so you can use it temporarily, is that if you make any changes to your voiceover settings, so if I change a voice here, it will automatically go over to cloud and change it on my iPad or Mac.

Marty:See, that's awesome. Yeah. That's so much better.

Desiree:I would guess if you had to, like... you back up your phone and you have to restore a new phone from backup, that it would back up those things too.

Thomas:Yeah, that would be awesome.

Desiree:Yeah.

Thomas/VoiceOver:Definitely. Because it says it goes right into iCloud. So let me show you where that is real quick. So you go to settings. Settings. And from settings. Settings. You go to the right until you get to accessibility. Privacy and secure. Game center. iCloud. Wallet and Apple apps. Button. Wallet of iCloud. Button settings. Thomas. Family. Apple News. There are four. Airplane mode. Wi-Fi. Bluetooth. Cellular. Personal host. Battery. Button. VPN. General. Button. Accessibility. Button. From here. Double alert. Accessibility settings. We'd like to send you notifications. Oh. Notifications. Don't allow. Button. Allow. Button. I'd be curious what that means. Accessibility. Never. So you just go to.

Marty:Well, I think it's on the rotor, isn't it?

Thomas:Nope. It's at the very bottom of accessibility.

Thomas/VoiceOver:Share accessibility settings. Button. Ah, there you go. And double tap that. Sync to iCloud. Dim. Switch button. On. Sync to iCloud. Switch button. On. Which is double tap to toggle setting. So that explains to you, Des, if it does go to the cloud, and if you have that on, that's how it goes across to your multiple devices.

VoiceOver:When enabled, settings from this device will sync to other devices signed into your Apple account and will be available with sharing accessibility settings from those devices.

Thomas:And if you go right one more.

VoiceOver:Share accessibility settings.

Thomas:Button. There's that button that you were talking about earlier. Mm-hmm. And that is, if you double tap that, then it'll say go near to another phone and then it will pick it up from there. So it's kind of out of the way. I'll be curious if I can assign a gesture if that's something I want to use often. So that's where that's at.

Desiree:So when you share across your own devices, do you, does that include like your voice setting? Like if I put Alex or whatever, is that going to mean that every device I have is going to use the same voice?

Marty:So, I mean, you would think it would just copy all your settings from whatever.

Desiree:Yeah. But I use different, like my Mac, I use a different voice than I use on my phone.

Marty:You probably would have to turn the syncing off then. So it doesn't change on your other devices if they're different.

Desiree:Interesting.

Thomas:That's a good question, Des. I will have to experiment and get that back with you. So like you said, just say I have Alex's default on my Mac, but I use Tom on my iPhone. Right. If I change it on, will that change to that on the Mac and get rid of my Alex?

Desiree:And the watch, does the watch get affected?

Marty:Yes, it does. Well, here's the thing, though. If you have multiple devices and they're not all signed into the same iCloud account, then...

Desiree:Right, but all mine are. They're all on the same, but for my watch, I prefer one voice. I don't know. There's just certain times when I want one over the other. That's interesting. I use my personal voice on my phone, and I can't use it on my watch right now. It doesn't work. I wonder if If I use that, is it going to go across all of my, if I buy an iPad?

Thomas:Wow. Personal voice, that's a whole different thing. I don't know, Des. I almost want to say no, that's not going to go over. But I could be wrong. I definitely have to test that because that's not kind of a standard voiceover voice but that personal voice is a different thing entirely so i’ll definitely test that and get back to you and see what happens now uh what else did i want to talk about okay so the next thing i wanted to show you guys is something a little bit more fun uh it's a game that apple has now integrated into voiceover for ios and ipad os and this is a game called voiceover island and the idea behind this is for new voiceover users or those who want to learn more about voiceover gestures and shortcuts it teaches you how to navigate ios with voiceover and it's interactive and you can earn rewards by completing levels

Marty:Oh that sounds really cool. That’s a neat idea.

Desiree:Yeah, I wish I had that when I started using voiceover. It’s kind of like a tutorial but more engaging and gamified.

Thomas:Exactly and it's really nicely done it has some voice feedback and some sound effects and it walks you through how to do basic gestures and advanced gestures and it even has a practice mode so you can try out the gestures without affecting anything on your device so it's pretty cool for new users or even for trainers to recommend

John:That sounds like a great tool especially for people who might be overwhelmed at first or not sure how to get started with voiceover. Having it broken down into levels and interactive makes it less intimidating.

Thomas:Absolutely and I plan to spend some time with it myself and I think it could be a great resource. I’ll share a link or how to find it later if you want.

Desiree:Please do. I’d love to check that out.

Thomas:Now, before we wrap up, any final thoughts or things you guys are really excited about from this WWDC or the new features in ios 17?

Marty:I think the improvements in the accessibility area are really encouraging especially when you think about how Apple has grown in that space over the years. It feels like each year there's something new that helps make technology more inclusive.

Desiree:Yeah, I agree. It's exciting to see the company continue to put resources into accessibility. I just hope the execution keeps getting better and that users like us can really benefit.

John:And as always, it’s a journey. Some things will be hits and some misses but overall it’s moving in the right direction.

Thomas:Perfectly said. Well, thank you all for joining today and sharing your thoughts. And to everyone listening, we appreciate you. Keep an eye out for more episodes and updates. Until next time, take care!