In the 87th episode, discover the best apps and gear for summertime, from a mini waterproof Bluetooth speaker to the American Red Cross apps that will help keep you safe during your outdoor adventures. Also, David shares how to set up your Nest thermostat to save the most money on utilities during summer, Donna teaches you how to create an Apple ID (and when you really shouldn't), and Sarah explains how to make the best use of your iPhone's Home screen real estate.
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This episode is brought to you by Jamf. Your company’s devices are invaluable. But you’re probably spending too much time or money configuring and maintaining those devices. Trade in the hassle and get Jamf Now. Jamf Now is a cloud-based mobile device management system that allows you to configure settings, add email accounts, download apps, and set up security measures for all of the devices in the company.
Question of the week:
Did you install the iOS 12 Beta? If so, let us know how it's going! Email podcasts@iphonelife.com to let us know.
Articles referred to in this episode:
Apps & gear referred to in this episode:
- United Airlines (free) It has the best airport maps with turn-by-turn directions!
- Tornado: American Red Cross (free)
- First Aid: America Red Cross (free)
- NYT Cooking (subscription required)
- Ultimate Ears Bluetooth speakers: Wonderboom ($99.99), Boom 2 ($179.99), and Megaboom ($249.99)
Useful links:
- Join the iPhone Life Facebook Group
- Become an iPhone Life Insider
- Sign up for the free Tip of the Day Newsletter
- Email the Podcast
- Subscribe to iPhone Life magazine
Episode 87 Transcript:
Donna Cleveland: Hi and welcome to episode 87 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: Each week we bring to you the best apps, great gear and top tips in the iOS world. This week we have some special apps and gear themed for the summertime, because right now it's mid-June and we've got a tubing trip coming up. I recently went to Miami and had some gear on the beach, so we'll tell you all about that too, so stay tuned. First we want to tell you about our sponsor, Jamf.
David Averbach: Jamf is a software that allows small to midsize companies to manage their iPhone. So if you are a company that provides your employees with iPhones, you have all sorts of special needs to manage that process in terms of easily setting up the phone, loading custom apps in, managing security. There's a whole range of things that you're going to need to handle and Jamf makes that process really easy to hand with their software. It's free for, I think it's ...
Donna Cleveland: Three devices.
David Averbach: Three devices. Thanks. I don't like to overpromise. Check it out. It's J-A-M-F.com. We'll link to it in the show notes, if you go to iphonelife.com/podcast. Sarah will link to it for us.
Donna Cleveland: So, this week we have a daily tip that we want to share with you that's super simple. If you're not already a subscriber to our daily tips newsletter, go to iPhonelife.com/dailytips and here, once you sign up, you'll get a tip each day that teaches you something cool you can do with your iPhone in just a minute, so it's super easy and simple.
Donna Cleveland: Sometimes we find more cool obscure tips, things you didn't know about, but we also cover the basics, and that's something that's super important because things like Apple IDs and iCloud tend to confuse people.
David Averbach: I'd say like 90% of my personal tech supports. Whenever anybody finds out that you work for iPhone Life Magazine, they ask you for personal tech support and like 90% of it is Apple ID and iCloud got messed up.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, exactly. This tip is just how to create an Apple ID. This is only something you want to do if you don't already have one, because a lot of people don't realize you can reset your password if you forget it.
David Averbach: Or you can change your email address associated with.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, which is something you used to not be able to do. First, you want to make sure if you go iCloud.com you can go and sign in. Or is it appleid.com or something? I'm forgetting now. You want to go through the process. We can link in the show notes to the post that teaches you how to reset your forgotten Apple ID password, but basically you do it the way you do for most other accounts, which is you want to know the email address and from there you can go through a process in your email address, which is your Apple ID. From there you can through a process of setting a new password.
Donna Cleveland: But if you don't have one, you can easily do it from your iPhone. You just go to the settings app and at the top, you'll see a bar that says sign in to your iPhone. If you are already signed in with an Apple ID, there you'll see your profile icon and your information. That's how you get to your Apple ID. If you're not logged in to anything there, you'll see that. From there, you can go through the process of creating a new Apple ID.
Sarah Kingsbury: It's interesting. I never would have though that this tip would really be necessary because the Apple ID is the key to using so much of your iPhone and it seems like that's the first thing you would do, but I've actually met longtime iPhone users who don't have an Apple ID and they don't get books and they don't download apps and I don't know what they're doing with their phones. They're just making phone calls.
David Averbach: Doesn't Apple require you to have an Apple ID?
Donna Cleveland: No.
David Averbach: It doesn't. Okay, so you can have an iPhone and not have an Apple ID.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, because you're already using your iPhone and you're having-
David Averbach: You're right, yeah.
Donna Cleveland: Basically your Apple ID is your account with Apple, so that allows you to do things like download apps. That Apple ID then also ends up being what you use for your iCloud account as well. That allows you to back up all of your data and storage and all of that. Really you're limited to making calls and using Apple stock apps, but not having any of that synced to any other devices, or be backed up in any kind of way. You can use your phone, but it's way more limited, like Sarah said.
David Averbach: I'm guessing the majority of you listening to this do in fact have an Apple ID, so I think the most important part of this tip is how not to set-up an Apple ID. If you have a new email address, go change your email address. If you can't remember your email address, I'm pretty sure there's ways to figure that out. I can't remember off the top of my head how to do it, sorry. If you can't remember your password, find your password.
Donna Cleveland: Or you can reset it.
David Averbach: Yeah, you can reset your password, that's what I mean. Most of the problems that people encounter around Apple ID and iCloud is they'll end up having several different accounts. Then some of the apps will be downloaded on one account, some will be downloaded on another account. It's really hard to unravel it once you end up with multiple accounts.
Donna Cleveland: And some photos you've taken in the past will be, if you're using iCloud with one account and then another, it will be stored in different accounts.
David Averbach: Really bad.
Sarah Kingsbury: You can't merge them. You basically have to choose the account that has the purchases that mean the most to you, download onto a computer any photos associated with those other accounts and then just abandon your purchases from those other ones.
David Averbach: Unless it's a really special use case, you should have a goal of only having one Apple ID. Don't create one if you already have one. Spend the time to figure out what your email address is that's associated with it, what your password is, reset your password if you have to, but you can get yourself into real trouble if you abuse this tip.
Donna Cleveland: Use with caution.
David Averbach: Yes.
Donna Cleveland: Next we're going to move on to iPhone Life Insider. This is our premium subscription that's more of an educational service for your iPhone. You can get complete video guides for all of Apple's different devices and different cool features, from iPhone photography to how to use iCloud like we just talked about. You also get a digital subscription to our magazine and a full access to our archive and you get daily video tips that go along with our daily tips newsletter. You'll get a video walkthrough of how to do things. Last but not least, we have a feature called Ask An Expert, so if you're having any specific tech problem, you can send your questions to Sarah and she'll help you find a solution. Sarah's going to share that an insider sent her and how she helped them out.
Sarah Kingsbury: Alright, so this insider wrote, “I have an iPhone X that has 453 apps. All the app slots on the 15 screens are filled. I just added a new app. Where is it? The only way I can get to it is to type the app name in the search bar. I would like to add the new app to a folder, but I can't find it to move it into a folder. When I search bar the app, it appears in the application view. I can on it to run the app, but I can't move it into a folder. What am I doing wrong?”
Sarah Kingsbury: Basically, you can't move an app into a folder unless it's on your home screen. It's not showing up on your home screen, because there's no place for it because you have 15 home screens and each one can fit 24 apps.
David Averbach: Just to clarify, when she's saying home screens, she means any one of your multiple home screens. Not your first home screen.
Sarah Kingsbury: All 15 of them.
David Averbach: If you have an app in a different home screen, you can still do it. Sorry, go ahead.
Sarah Kingsbury: So basically you have those 15 home screens, each one can fit 24 apps and then you can have up to four apps in the dock, and that's 364 apps. If you're gonna have more than say 363 apps, you gotta start using folders, and it sounds like he does but the problem is there's no space for a new app to show up on a home screen. What this insider needs to do is move more apps from his home screen into folders and that will create space for this missing app plus any other apps that maybe he downloaded and haven't shown up. If you always make sure to leave at least one empty space for an app icon on one of your home screens then any time you download an app it will show up there and you can just put it in whatever folder you want.
Donna Cleveland: You know I actually had no idea that you had limited amounts of screens.
Sarah Kingsbury: Yup, there's 15.
Donna Cleveland: Oh.
David Averbach: We have an article, I think we've rolled it out yet, the spring cleaning article?
Donna Cleveland: Yeah.
David Averbach: Is it, when's that coming out?
Donna Cleveland: Yeah that's coming out in this upcoming issue that just went to print yesterday so in the next few weeks if you're a subscriber you'll be receiving your issue.
David Averbach: And it talks about ideas of how to do sort of a digital cleaning and this is one of the things that I think is one of the most important digital cleaning things of every once in a while, it can be every few years even, it's a good idea to go look through your apps, A) sort them into folders; but B) clear out the apps you don't use. 'Cause I can imagine that you're, on a daily basis, using more than 300 apps. But I could be wrong.
Donna Cleveland: No I think the average person uses like nine apps in regular rotation.
David Averbach: Yeah, so I think it's worth, I mean it clears up storage, then you don't have to worry about a lot of these little things like filling up your 15 screens. But it's something that I should, I need to do it to. I just checked, I have 212 apps of which I probably use 9, but it's worth investing a little bit of time everyone, to organizing your phone.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah cause also when you delete apps that were paid apps that you just haven't used in years, you can always re-download it.
David Averbach: Yeah.
Donna Cleveland: You don't lose that money so that's a nice thing as well.
Donna Cleveland: So go to iPhoneLife.com/insider to send questions like that to Sarah and to get access to all of our video guides and video tips.
Donna Cleveland: We don't have any comments to share from this issue but we want to go right ahead into our Apple Complaints and Learning section 'cause after that we'll get into our summer apps and gear.
Donna Cleveland: So who has things that they've learned or complaints?
David Averbach: I have a summer-themed learning.
Donna Cleveland: Oh, let's hear it!
David Averbach: I have been having trouble with my AC and I had some people come and look at it, and I have a Nest Thermostat. I have my Nest Thermostat set up to when I'm gone turn my AC to 84 degrees, so that it's not running AC while I'm gone and I'm not paying for that. What I learned was that for heat that's a good practice. In the winter, turning your heating down when your gone saves you money. But for AC, he said it actually used just as much, it cost just as much if not more to try to re-cool your house after coming home than if you just kept it cool throughout the day. And part of what I had him come is I was having a really hard time cooling the house back down from 84 degrees and it was still hot in the evenings.
David Averbach: So that was an interesting thing I learned is if you have a Nest Thermostat what you can do is there's an eco mode and you can set where the limit is. Instead of having 84, I just went and adjusted it 76, I think, so that it still can save me a little bit in money 'cause that's a little bit hotter than I normally keep it but then it will cool off in time and it doesn't tax my AC as much.
David Averbach: The other thing that's cool that you can do that I've learned is I have an upstairs that gets a lot hotter than the downstairs, 'cause I don't have a great ventilation system setup. What you can do is, if you have a Nest Thermostat and I'm assuming most smart thermostats have a similar function, you can set it up to run the fan regularly even if it's not running the AC. So what that does is it pushes the air through the house, 'cause what happens is at night I'm upstairs in my bedroom but the thermostat's downstairs, so it says it's cool for I'm hot upstairs, this keeps the air cycling which, A) brings the cool air from downstairs up to me without having to run my AC as much; and B) it equalizes the air which means my thermostat's gonna be more accurate.
David Averbach: I thought that was a lot of interesting AC learning.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, that is.
Sarah Kingsbury: There's another advantage to that as well is if you have an outdoor intake then that means you're not just recycling the same old [crosstalk 00:13:01], that you're actually getting like new fresh air which is important because we live in the part of the country that has radon so you want that fresh air.
David Averbach: That's true.
Donna Cleveland: Alright, my complaint and learning is actually not summer-related but that's all right, and that's something that's happened, I think it's iOS 11 related, but that's people that you have saved in your contacts suddenly not showing up anymore like whenever they call or text you just see the phone number which is very annoying. I looked up how to solve this problem 'cause I found this starting to happen to me and it can be as simple as just restarting your phone. David, you're the one who told me that worked for you.
David Averbach: Yeah, I've had that happen several times to me where all of a sudden all my contacts have just turned to just phone numbers, and when I restart my phone it fixes itself.
Donna Cleveland: Okay yeah so it's never happened to me than it's been for everyone but it was happening just periodically-
David Averbach: Which is almost even weirder.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, it's super weird. But so yeah, restarting your phone and then there were some different contact settings that you can mess with on, now I'm failing to remember what they were, but I went through a couple of different steps and I'm not having the problem anymore. But I think restarting was the one that they said that has been commonly know to solve the problem like most reliably which is great that it's that easy.
David Averbach: I have a couple, 'cause this has happened a few times, I have a couple of extra points on in this. First of all, if you switch sim cards you can run into problems and so that's why it happened to me frequently, when I travel internationally, I'll get an international sim card. And for whatever reason, even though I have my contacts backed-up in iCloud, they seem to somehow still be linked to my sim card and not show up as contacts when I switch my sim card. And then even when I switch it back I had problems with it. So that's one area that people can can have problems with. Restarting tends to fix that for me in over a week or two of switching back, it tends to just be okay.
David Averbach: I also, and this was years ago and it might not still be a problem, I had this happen to me and when I googled it, it was Verizon issue, but you had to call a weird Verizon-800 number. You literally just call the number and like put in your phone number and it'd be, "Okay, your contacts are reset now," and then they are reset.
Donna Cleveland: Weird.
David Averbach: This was like, I don't know, like 2010.
Donna Cleveland: Oh okay.
David Averbach: Hopefully they fixed this, but just to throw that out there in case that's still a weird Verizon quirk, I don't know.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, another thing they suggest is if you go to Settings, Accounts and Passwords, and then tap on Each Account, you can toggle on and off contacts and sometimes that would reset the syncing. That's something to try as well. But basically it's one of those annoying things, I think it happens to a lot of people but there are some of like easy things like this that you can do to fix this. It was both of a complaint and a learning.
David Averbach: If you're ever having problems with your phone, step 1: restart it.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah.
David Averbach: I had a problem yesterday where when I went to the search function my recently used apps didn't show up which I use a lot because in order to keep myself from going on Facebook too much I have really buried in my phone, and so I just made way to get to it. It was like a weird bug but I just restarted my phone and it was fine.
Donna Cleveland: Cool.
Sarah Kingsbury: So actually, this is going to, I had a complaint which is it's just so annoying when I disconnect my music from my speaker and then connects some headphones and then like two minutes later my speaker takes it back because I forgot to turn it off. I swear it turn it off but apparently I didn't. What I wanted to talk at but actually as you reminded me of something I learned last night which is how to close apps on the Apple TV and how to restart because I was watching Netflix and it just got hang up.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah.
Sarah Kingsbury: And so you know I went out of the app and went back in and it was like nope. So then I figured out it's very similar to back when you had a home button on your phone you double press the home button, which is the one with the TV icon. It brings up basically like an app switcher and then on the little swipe bar on your Apple TV remote, now this is for the fourth generation Apple TV I'm not sure how you do it for the older ones, you swipe up on that app, you know you swipe through them and find that app and then swipe up on that app and that would close it up completely.
Donna Cleveland: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Sarah Kingsbury: So that works for me, actually no that didn't work for me, I ended up having to restart my... like do a reset. What you do is you hold the menu button and the home button on your Apple TV remote until the little light on your Apple TV starts blinking and then you let go and your Apple TV restarts. And then I could watch all the Netflix I wanted!
Donna Cleveland: Oh that makes sense.
David Averbach: I literally just... I wanna restart my Apple TV, I walked to the back, unplugged it and plugged it back in!
Donna Cleveland: It's two ways.
Sarah Kingsbury: That's kind of like restarting your computer that way, it's like not really recommended.
David Averbach: Never had any problems.
Donna Cleveland: So Sarah I do have a question for you about the Bluetooth though before we move in to Apps and Gear. Actually I've been confused about this, if you were connected, you said you had your speaker connected then you switched to your headphones and it switches back, is that decision made by your device like which one gets priority? I've been wondering about that.
Sarah Kingsbury: I don't know because I went into my settings and disconnect it from the speaker in Bluetooth and then connected it and turned on my headphones and connected it. And then I mean it was five minutes later like I put the headphones on, 'cause I was leaving the house, and as I'm about to leave the house all of a sudden my music stops-
David Averbach: My experience, I don't have an answer, I think it's like ... My experience is, Bluetooth devices are constantly trying to pair with your phone if they're unpaired. And so inevitably what happens is it just literally just ends up switching back and forth and it's really obnoxious.
Donna Cleveland: But then what's the point of pairing mode on Bluetooth 'cause if it's not on pairing mode shouldn't it not be searching?
Sarah Kingsbury: But the thing is once it's paired to the device 'cause connected is different than paired.
Donna Cleveland: That's true, you're right, good distinction.
David Averbach: So what you have to do if you have several Bluetooth devices in your home or around you that are all paired with your phone is you have to forget the Bluetooth device as opposed to ... is it called forget?
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, it is.
David Averbach: You have to forget the Bluetooth device as opposed to disconnect and then when you wanna use it again you have to re-pair it.
Sarah Kingsbury: I think I'd rather just turn the Bluetooth device off.
David Averbach: Yeah, or turn your Bluetooth device off or get AirPlay speakers like I have.
Donna Cleveland: Yes so you can turn off, this came up recently and because I was having a picnic at the park with a friend who has an Android phone, I had disconnected from the speaker that I'm just about to talk about and to let him put a playlist on and then it kept switching back to my phone and so I did do the forget stuff but it was annoying 'cause I had disconnected. And I think it's just one of those things that Bluetooth hasn't been completely perfected that way.
Sarah Kingsbury: Right, so-
Donna Cleveland: So Apple gives you both of those options to disconnect or forget, but forget is more reliable in this instance.
Sarah Kingsbury: What I do is I just turn my Bluetooth off momentarily.
David Averbach: Yeah that works.
Sarah Kingsbury: While the person connects. And I also like the forget thing if you're in a house with multiple people and you share some of those Bluetooth devices like speakers, then that can cause problems like if you're disconnected and they're using it, then all of a sudden you connect and who know what audio might be playing on your phone or on their phone that maybe you don't want blasting through the house. In that case, I tend to forget devices that I don't use as frequently, there's a speaker my daughter mostly uses, and there's a speaker I mostly use but we use both of them. I re-pair with the speaker she uses the most.
Donna Cleveland: Mm-hmm (affirmative) if you ever have to use it right.
Sarah Kingsbury: That's right.
David Averbach: I would say I use AirPlay 2 for the first time and I really enjoyed it. I had the music playing from my upstairs HomePod and my downstairs Apple TV, and it's all synced up and it worked. That being said, there aren't very many any AirPlay 2 compatible third-party speakers right now.
Donna Cleveland: Right, tricky, interesting. Well that's helpful, you just have to forget the device it sounds like. So moving into our Apps and Gear for the summer, I guess I will start first. I brought out this Ultimate Ears Wonderboom, we talked about UE, Ultimate Ears, a lot before 'cause they just create really great waterproof Bluetooth speakers. I know it's my personal favorite company for Bluetooth speakers.
David Averbach: I travel everywhere with, what's it called? The Boom-
Sarah Kingsbury: The BoomBottle?
David Averbach: BoomBottle.
Donna Cleveland: The BoomBottle, yeah that's like a slimmer, taller one.
David Averbach: Yeah.
Donna Cleveland: You have the large one right, the Megaboom and that one has awesome sound. So this one I recently... it's $99 and I recently got this one, they came out with a line with fun colors and so this is the Wonderboom, you can get it in more like classic solid colors or now they came out with different designs. I thought this was a fun color for summer. But those of you listening, it's sort of a water color purple and pink and green inspired design.
Donna Cleveland: I brought this on a couple of trips, it's easy to pack in your suitcase. It's not very heavy. It's waterproof so I brought it to the beach as recently in Miami for my friend's 30th birthday and so we brought this to South Beach and listened to music all day while we were on the beach.
Sarah Kingsbury: You can literally take these speakers and run them under the water.
David Averbach: Yeah.
Donna Cleveland: I've never tried like really testing out the waterproof capabilities but that's awesome to know.
Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah, do make sure the ports are sealed before you do that?
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, like here you can open up, like here's the charging, micro-USB port.
David Averbach: We do a company float trip where we'll go in Iowa, the rivers through Iowa, see get on a raft or two and just float down the river for a while. What we did, it was two years ago, we loaded a bunch of music on the Apple watch, I brought the UE Boom and we just played music the whole way down the river and it's waterproof.
Donna Cleveland: But you do have to keep-
Sarah Kingsbury: It was awesome.
Donna Cleveland: ... the wrists out of the water, our watch that's connected to the Bluetooth speaker-
David Averbach: Yeah but that would no longer be the... oh you're right, 'cause then it was a little bit dicey 'cause it was water-resistant not waterproof, the Apple watches. The new Apple watches are waterproof-
Donna Cleveland: But Bluetooth doesn't work under water.
David Averbach: Bluetooth doesn't work under water, fun fact.
Sarah Kingsbury: I didn't know that!
David Averbach: It's just like everything wrong with Bluetooth.
Sarah Kingsbury: That is a fun fact!
Donna Cleveland: I know for real, yeah, the flaws of that. But in general, I find that Bluetooth connection to be really good with this. I did have that issue with my friend where we were like battling over which device was connected but in general besides that which is gonna be an issue with any Bluetooth device it never is like coming in and out of connection and the sound is just really good.
Sarah Kingsbury: It is.
Donna Cleveland: I've tried a lot of Bluetooth speakers' sound, this is so good.
David Averbach: I've really thoroughly tested Bluetooth speakers and just had like three or four lined up in to switch back and forth and I haven't tested this one but the UE Boom, the sound quality is excellent.
Sarah Kingsbury: And they really get some serious volume in very small speakers.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. That's my summer gear.
Sarah Kingsbury: So I just went all apps.
Donna Cleveland: It's alright.
Sarah Kingsbury: Well first, I recently took a trip and I flew in United so I downloaded their app and used it. I had kind of a nightmare connection in Chicago where my plane was delayed and I had to switch terminals. I opened up GateGuru and it was like, it didn't even show my gate. It just basically was like, 'your gate doesn't exists'.
David Averbach: Oh my god.
Sarah Kingsbury: And so I was kinda like I don't know what to do, I have to know exactly where this is 'cause I'm gonna be running. I opened up the United one and it had like little arrows and really clearly marked things.
David Averbach: Oh that's cool.
Sarah Kingsbury: I'm not sure if it was like turn by turn, like on my Apple watch, it probably was but I was running so I just looked and then I ran. It told me how long it would take walking, I assume, because it was a 21-minute walk and I'm pretty sure I made it in under 15 minutes.
David Averbach: Nice.
Donna Cleveland: Nice.
Sarah Kingsbury: All of that [crosstalk 00:25:31] training is chaos.
David Averbach: All the Apple watch workouts. Now O'Hare is like a United hub, how many airports did they have on, did you see?
Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah they had like all of them, I didn't look at the maps 'cause I was focused.
David Averbach: Yes, okay.
Sarah Kingsbury: So there's that, I highly recommend it even if you're not flying United, that it's the best airport map I've ever seen on any airline app or a third-party app like GateGuru.
David Averbach: That's awesome.
Sarah Kingsbury: And then also I wanted to talk about American Red Cross has a whole suite of apps that I highly recommend, I have the Tornado App on my phone which sends me alerts when there's a tornado 'cause like-
Donna Cleveland: It's tornado season in Iowa.
David Averbach: Yeah.
Sarah Kingsbury: We do actually have like local siren, you don't always hear it so that's really great. I get that alert, I tend to be a little blasé about tornadoes at this point, but you know what they can actually be really serious and so I'm trying to force myself to taking it a bit more seriously. I have found when we have a tornado a year or two ago that actually was within a couple of miles of our field and I was really happy to know.
David Averbach: My parents' house had damaged by tornado, they are a couple miles outside of our hometown.
Sarah Kingsbury: Right it was great to know like okay go hide under a desk and okay it's safe to come out. It was great.
Donna Cleveland: Oh yeah, I remember us all hiding under desks.
Sarah Kingsbury: There's picture of me I think-
David Averbach: Except me. I was on a sales call so I was just standing in the hallway, it will be like guys let me know if it gets closer.
Donna Cleveland: That would be a like an interesting way to go like honestly [crosstalk 00:27:05], taken out by a tornado.
Sarah Kingsbury: But in addition to that, they have like a first aid app so if you're out like camping and something happens you can just quickly look it up and find things to do for your particular situation. There's a pet's first aid one which I had a dog die and it was really sad but we've used this app to perform CPR. It's great to have that 'cause it's not like you wouldn't necessarily know how to do that and it's hard to think clear in the kind of emergency.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah we need that. David and I had lunch with our COO who choked and need the Heimlich maneuver and so having this would be really helpful.
David Averbach: So our COO is literally a boy scout out of camp, he was choking and demonstrating to me how to perform the Heimlich maneuver while choking.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah he basically guided you through it.
David Averbach: And I saved his life. The point is I saved his life.
Donna Cleveland: The point is we needed that.
Sarah Kingsbury: So yeah, there's first aid and there's pet first aid.
David Averbach: Okay. Just to be clear, we don't wanna do pet first aid.
Sarah Kingsbury: Well the Heimlich is different. The Heimlich and CPR is kinda different on people and pets.
Donna Cleveland: And also Heimlich you might wanna learn how to time 'cause I think there's like what, a 15 second window, or something? Or it's like a small window.
David Averbach: And not everyone's a boy scout.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah.
Sarah Kingsbury: And then also there's one for like hurricane alerts if you live near coast, and there's one for flood alerts if you live near floods. There's a whole suite of them, I recommend checking out all of them and seeing which ones work for you there. Summer is great but it can also bring some terrible weather and going out on adventures can sometimes lead to boo-boo so get the apps.
Donna Cleveland: Awesome Sarah, that's really good to know.
David Averbach: Mine is sort of tinge actually of summer so sorry. I've been really enjoying New York Times' cooking app. Have you guys tried it?
Donna Cleveland: No but I want to especially what was the thing you're making this week? The poutine or something?
David Averbach: It's a poutine, yeah, it's a vegetable poutine which is kinda like a frittata but has rice in it. [crosstalk 00:29:15] This weekend it was Father's Day and last minute we like showed up and they're like, make a salad and so I just like went up, opened it up, found a salad, we made a watermelon Greek salad and it was really good.
Donna Cleveland: Feta?
David Averbach: It had feta, tomatoes and red onions and all sorts of things, mint, a lot of mint. Anyway, but I've been trying to kind of eat at home more and put more attention on trying new dishes and it's just really fun 'cause you can just browse whenever you see a dish you like, you can just hit save and it saves it to your recipe list. It also has a lot of different cool features. I haven't tested a lot of them out. It can do kinda walk you through step-by-step with timers and things like that. You can send all the ingredients to your grocery's list which is cool, I haven't tested that.
David Averbach: My biggest complaint for it though is that it's behind the paywall so you have to have a New York Times subscription-
Donna Cleveland: That would've been my question.
David Averbach: ... which you know, I have one although I actually funnily enough, time on the show, just cancel my New York Times subscription. But what is particularly annoying is my girl friend doesn't have it so if we're cooking a meal, if I wanna send her, "Hey what do you think of this recipe?" I can't. So that's a tricky one.
Donna Cleveland: Can you get New York Times cooking separate from like an entire New York Times subscription?
David Averbach: I actually don't know I had the entire New York Times subscription, I'm not sure, I think so. But I've been really enjoying it despite the fact that I just canceled it-
Donna Cleveland: So why'd you cancel, not [crosstalk 00:30:51]?
David Averbach: You know, I'm kinda regretting it actually, I might re-subscribe. It was not [inaudible 00:30:58], it was just that I have Washington Post and New York Times, and I ended up paying a lot for news and the Washington Post is cheaper, I mean that's what it came down to for me.
Donna Cleveland: Got it, okay, cool. Well, I just want to mention one last app before we wrap this up. And that's just an app that I've been really enjoying lately, it's also just sort of tangentially summer-related, it's more that I started using it this summer and that's Marco Polo.
Donna Cleveland: I feel like there are a lot of apps when it comes to social stuff that do similar things so it's not a 100% unique but if it can do it in a, even just slightly more user-friendly way than another one, that's like enough of an edge to me if you wanna use it.
Donna Cleveland: So with Marco Polo, it's video chat app and it's something you get a notification when one of your friends is live, but you can watch it later, or kinda chat back and forth live. That's really nice for me because I really miss lot of my friends that live in different places but I also don't like talking on the phone very much. This allows me to, just on my own time, talk to people and I've created different groups of, like I have group of four friends that we were close in high school, and then I have like another friend who lived somewhere else and sort of created different groups. It's kind of a fun way to feel like you're hanging out, but it's also like really low-pressure, low-commitment. It's free, Marco Polo. Check it out, for what it's worth.
Donna Cleveland: And this wraps up episode 87 of the iPhone Life podcast, thanks so much for joining us.
David Averbach: Thanks everyone.
Sarah Kingsbury: Thanks everyone.
Donna Cleveland: And we'll see you in a couple of weeks.
