S1: Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from
S1: June 27th, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you
S1: with us wherever you're listening, perhaps through Virgin Australia radio
S1: associated Stations of Australia or maybe the Community Radio Network,
S1: there's also the podcast. If you haven't caught up with
S1: that yet, all you need to do is search for
S1: the two words. Talking tech and DNA can all come
S1: usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced.
S1: Another option is to ask your Siri device or smart
S1: speaker to play Vision Australia Radio Talking Tech Podcast. Vision
S1: Australia Radio Talking Tech podcast. With me someone who can
S1: explain all this tech stuff really well. Vision Australia's National
S1: Advisor on Access Technology, David Woodbridge. David, perhaps we might
S1: start by talking about something that's been around for a
S1: long time, but maybe some people haven't even heard of
S1: it yet. The Apple Card.
S2: No. And this is one of these things that starts
S2: off in the US and doesn't go anywhere. So the
S2: Apple Card is, in effect, a credit card that's issued
S2: by Apple. And besides being a general credit card, which
S2: has got all the benefits of a general credit card,
S2: you can also save money. Of course, when you buy
S2: Apple stuff, you get points which you can cash back
S2: and get more benefits and so on. So it came
S2: out in the US in 2019 and of course being
S2: from Apple, everybody loved it because it was a titanium
S2: physical credit card, which looked really, really cool. So the
S2: geek factor was very high. And of course everybody wants
S2: to know right around the world, well, when are we
S2: getting it? And part of the problem is the regulations
S2: for financial institutions in the US are different to the
S2: rest of the world. And what Apple's finding is that
S2: it's not as easy to get this credit card out
S2: to the rest of the world. So even simple things
S2: like the way they display the information on the card
S2: in some countries is not enough. You're supposed to have,
S2: you know, the name of the name of the user
S2: or the actual number of the credit card and sorts
S2: of other things as well. So I think they're currently
S2: having chats with India to see if they can get
S2: it in there. But I don't know if it's really
S2: going to end up going anywhere. I mean, four years
S2: later to me is a fairly long time. And I mean,
S2: fingers crossed we might get it one day, but I
S2: wouldn't be surprised if it gets replaced by something else
S2: because for years in India, industry is getting a little
S2: bit too long.
S1: Let's not worry about it. Coming soon, I think, is
S1: what you're saying, correct? Yeah. A couple of iPhone hygiene
S1: matters now. Perhaps the best way to describe them. Firstly,
S1: the latest iPhone, the iPhone 14 range. They are waterproof,
S1: aren't they?
S2: Yeah. So what they say in the documentation, I'm probably
S2: not going to quote this exactly correctly, but if your
S2: phone gets dropped into I think it's up to a
S2: meter of water for 30 minutes, it should be perfectly fine.
S2: And what the article I'm referring to suggests that if
S2: you do drop it in water, you can get this
S2: eject water function via Siri shortcuts, which is in the
S2: article that you can download and install on your iPhone.
S2: And what it does, it plays a series of tones
S2: which generates a lot of air movement to get the
S2: water off the speaker in the iPhone. Now, of course,
S2: us Apple Watch users have already got this function. It's
S2: called the eject water function, which is exactly the same thing.
S2: So this is a way of doing it in your
S2: iPhone because you might have noticed if your Apple Watch
S2: gets wet, it's not going to damage it. But you'll
S2: notice the actual speaker sounds really, really tinny until it
S2: dries out. And this is the same thing for the iPhone.
S2: You could leave your iPhone to dry out. Or by
S2: running this eject water shortcut, you just decrease the time
S2: that you have to wait for the speaker to completely
S2: dry out.
S1: Okay. Also, there's been talk lately I actually do do
S1: it quite regularly that you should turn the iPhone off
S1: and it's recommended maybe once a day for five minutes
S1: to clean itself up a bit.
S2: Yep. So this is all about the cyber security threat
S2: that keeps getting worse and worse in the world these days.
S2: And one of the suggestions is that when you when
S2: your phone gets exposed to malware and viruses and back
S2: end attacks and all that sort of stuff, that if
S2: you completely shut down. Now, this article says iPhone, but
S2: I think it goes for any smartphone, including Android and
S2: then you restart. There's probably some code that's running in
S2: memory that has got into your smartphone in a particular way.
S2: And of course, when you restart your phone, one hopes that.
S2: Some of the things that it's got past have been
S2: reset back to their default settings, if you like, and
S2: that malware virus, whatever else it might be, then has
S2: to actually try and get a new way of getting
S2: into your system on your iPhone or your Android phone.
S2: So it's from one point of view, it does make sense.
S2: I actually do it as a matter of course, anyway,
S2: because some things on my phone get a bit slow
S2: sometimes and if I restart, it seems to actually pick
S2: up again and start functioning as well.
S1: I do the same with my Apple Watch and I
S1: do notice a difference in its performance when you have
S1: switched it off for a little while, maybe not five minutes,
S1: but restart it. It just seems snappier and response to
S1: the gestures better and all that sort of things. Well, exactly. Yeah.
S1: The Mac is still pretty important to Apple, even though
S1: there are lots of other devices like the iPhone. Tell
S1: us about all that.
S2: So people just think, you know, because the iPhone is
S2: sort of the what's it called, the umbrella of the
S2: whole Apple ecosystem? Well, it might be to a certain extent,
S2: but the thing that makes the iPhone, the Apple Watch,
S2: the Apple TV, the HomePod and everything else work is
S2: the Mac. Because the thing that makes all that happen
S2: is coding for all those things. And it's called Xcode.
S2: So when people want to write software for all the
S2: Apple stuff, it's done on the Mac. So it will
S2: not be replaced by the iPad because you can write Swift,
S2: what's called Swift Playground apps, but they don't have all
S2: the extra libraries and so on that Xcode has on
S2: the Mac and even the new, you know, the goggles
S2: coming out, you know, next year, the vision goggles, that's
S2: also not going to make any difference either because all
S2: the coding for Vision iOS is again going to be
S2: done on the Mac. So whilst people may not use
S2: the Macs in general too much, certainly for coding in
S2: the huge Apple environment is always done on the Mac.
S1: So we're going to be around for a while here
S1: to stay. Yep. Text based games. They've been around for
S1: 50 years.
S2: Yeah. This was a publication put out and it was
S2: looking at the development of text based games. Now to
S2: remind people that are not used to this because it's
S2: a bit of, you know, old fashioned type stuff. These
S2: are the games where you see things like, say, go north,
S2: go west. You know, one of the most famous games
S2: called Zork was one of the opening paragraphs was you're
S2: standing in front of a little White House. You have
S2: a forest to the south, the doors in front of you.
S2: You're standing in front of a mailbox. What do you
S2: do now? So it's all written by typing in keyboard commands.
S2: And they were just saying that from what they could do,
S2: from a very little sort of programming point of view
S2: in the 70s as it went through in the 80s
S2: 90s 2000 and so on, they got really clever with
S2: the way they can manipulate the code. And they even
S2: said the development of the stories, the hierarchy of things
S2: you could do in the game in some ways outdid
S2: console and other games because they were just much more
S2: clever at creating stories about creating characters and other stuff
S2: as well. So I just thought it was a fascinating thing.
S2: I don't know how accessible the book is from an
S2: epub point of view, but I just thought, you know,
S2: the fact that text adventure games have been around for
S2: 50 years, it was just a really interesting thing. I'm
S2: trying to get a hold of the book, so next
S2: time hopefully we come on here, I'll have a chance
S2: to hear a bit of a read the book.
S1: You've been telling me of an article that says that
S1: smart homes are only as good as the brand behind them.
S1: Is smart home technology coming to a bit of a crisis?
S2: Well, I think it is in some ways because there's
S2: supposed to be well, there is this new standard called
S2: matter which allows smart home devices to talk to each
S2: other across platforms. And it's getting to a point now
S2: where it's still not really working Now. Smart Homes stuff
S2: has been around for a while. I'm getting to the
S2: point now where I think I'm just going to use
S2: the app that comes with my device and I'm just
S2: going to use it that way. I don't really care
S2: if it's not going to work across all the different platforms.
S2: I'm just going to get or stick with one brand name.
S2: So let's say I stick with Amazon or I stick
S2: of Google or I stick with Apple because struggling to
S2: still find something that works across absolutely everything in some
S2: ways is just getting harder and harder. So I think
S2: it's almost got to the stage now where I really
S2: think stick to one brand and then and go for that.
S2: Don't try and sort of be a holistic, smart home
S2: because I honestly don't think we're going to get there until,
S2: you know, a few more years in the future.
S1: There's another Beatle song that's been released that's more than.
S1: 40 years after the passing of John Lennon and many
S1: years after the passing of George Harrison, it's said that
S1: it's using AI. Paul McCartney says it's not artificial. I
S1: wonder where all this discussions going about artificial intelligence. Is
S1: it being used a bit loosely?
S2: Well, I would think so in this case, because what
S2: they've done with this song off a tape in the
S2: late 60s is that they took his voice and, you know,
S2: cleaned it up besides all the background sound and the
S2: noise of the tape and everything else. And they've obviously
S2: generated new music track with putting his voice singing that
S2: on top of that track. Now, to me, that stuff
S2: that's been around for donkey's ages being able to do that.
S2: So I don't know whether that's artificial intelligence because it's
S2: artificial in the sense that, you know, this has come
S2: from a tape, but audio studio is in general, they
S2: do that all the time. I mean, they take somebody's singing,
S2: they alter it, and they do all sorts of wonderful
S2: things with it. So I just think this word artificial
S2: intelligence sometimes gets a bit waved around a few times
S2: just to I don't know, it's almost like we're going
S2: to incriminate you by saying it's AI and it's not.
S2: It's just a process that's been done before. And I
S2: just think it's a bit of a what do they
S2: call it, clickbait? Sometimes.
S1: What's NASA doing with voice communication up there in space?
S2: Yeah. So this is so this is not now this
S2: is looking towards the future. And when I may have
S2: been by the future, I mean for the next five
S2: years or so. So what they're wanting is space ships
S2: or space stations to talk to their human people, for
S2: want of a better word, the human partners, so that
S2: when you rather than saying, you know, do this and
S2: do that to, you know, a Google type or an
S2: Amazon type device, which is not a conversational system, what
S2: they're talking about is having a large language model. And yes,
S2: I'm talking about things like chat GPT to have a
S2: conversation between both the human and the AI. So what
S2: I mean by that is, let's say one of the
S2: astronauts wants to go for an Ava, so they want
S2: to go for a walk outside the space station or
S2: the ship. They could say to the AI, you know, Charlie,
S2: for example, can you run through the process of getting
S2: ready for an Eva and now the ship or the
S2: space station could come back and say, okay, here are
S2: the following steps. Now it could get I don't know
S2: how many steps are involved in an Eva, but let's
S2: say in step 20, they I could say, Well, hang
S2: on a minute, James, you forgot the check. The pressure
S2: in your oxygen supply. Can you please do that? And
S2: once you've done that, let me know and then we'll
S2: go on to the next step. So it's going from
S2: that large, you know, let's go for an Eva outside
S2: the ship or the space station to very specific conversational
S2: points during that whole thing. So I just think it's
S2: a really great way because that system can actually access
S2: lots and lots of data points, lots of information, and
S2: maybe even bring things up that the human being themselves
S2: hasn't actually thought about. So, you know, I nobody's scared about,
S2: you know, the old thing of 2001 Space Odyssey with
S2: Hal 9000. Hopefully it won't get that bad. But I
S2: just think relying on this huge knowledge base to prompt
S2: you in cases where you might have not forgotten something,
S2: but not taking note of something properly is really quite
S2: amazing and would be quite safe and secure for people
S2: to interact with.
S1: Just before we go, a reminder of where people can
S1: find details of what we've been talking about in this
S1: and previous editions of the programme.
S2: So you can check out my blog site, which is
S2: David would be.podbean.com.
S1: David would be dot podbean podbean.com. To write to the program.
S2: You can write to me at Vision Australia where I work.
S2: David Dot Woodbridge It sounds at Vision australia.org.
S1: David Dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia. Org This has been
S1: talking tech with me has been Vision Australia's National Advisor
S1: on Access Technology, David Woodbridge. I'm Stephen Jolley. Take care.
S1: We'll talk more tech next week. See you.