Dan Morin (1:57)

I'm sure everybody is going to be

Micah Sargent (1:59)

really nice to me, very kind and very thoughtful. Okay, let's. Let's get into the show today. I thought it'd be a good time to talk about some of the. Some of the indie apps that we use. So by my definition of indie, I just mean one or a few developers that are not part of a large company making apps. So that accounts for quite a few of the apps. The App Store, frankly. But these are some of our favorite. And Dan, I will let you kick things off with your first pick.

Dan Morin (2:39)

Yeah, my first pick is actually an app I use every day, and that is Ivory by the fine folks at TapBots. Ivory is a client for the Mastodon social media network. TapBots is the same company that made the very popular Tweetbot app for before Twitter. Before Twitter fell into the sea. That's all I've heard about it anyways. And Ivory is their attempt to adapt the Tweetbot ethos and aesthetic to Mastodon, and I think it is incredibly successful. It's an app that runs not only on iOS and iPad s, but Mac OS as well. It's got a really clean, nice interface. It's got an adorable elephant mascot, and it works great. I really love it. You know, for me, it meant that the change of social media networks from Twitter Slash X to Mastodon was kind of seamless because Tweetbot had always been the way I used Twitter. And so when I switched to Ivory, it was kind of like, well, I'm using the same app. It's just a different, you know, service on the other side of it. But it feels, I feel, at home here. It's customizable in terms of you can, like, change the color gradients. You can, you know, customize your toolbars. So got a lot of great features for, like, stats and, you know, filtering different types of notifications or filtering specific types of content, mute filters, all this stuff, all the stuff that you expect from being able to do. And Mastodon, the web interface, you can pretty much do in Ivory as well. It has a, I believe, a yearly subscription fee option, which I really like, which I think is, I want to say is like $25 a month. And that gets you the iOS, iPadOS and MacBooks versions, but they're also monthly and yearly versions for just the Mac or just the iOS and iPad OS, you know, versions as well. So whatever you want or whatever platforms you use it on, there is a pretty simple option for you there. And, yeah, I'm a big fan of TapBots. They have also, you know, they have other apps as well, and they've reputedly been working on a Blue sky kind of equivalent, although it's still not out yet. But, yeah, if you're a Mastodon user, honestly, I cannot recommend Ivory highly enough.

Micah Sargent (4:48)

Yeah, I also use Ivory, and I think it is sort of the choice. I know there have in the past been some accessibility issues with Ivory. I have heard that some of those have been worked out. But if you are someone who makes use of the accessibility features within apps, I'd love to hear where your experience currently is. As far as Ivory goes. The next app, the one that I want to talk about today, is a recent addition to the App Store. I've been following along with it for quite some time because it is an app that lets you make wallet passes from basically any PDF that you upload into it. So it's an app called NeatPass. And the idea is that sometimes different events, different venues will use ticketing services that do not have Apple Wallet additions. So you are probably used to getting an email and it says, you know, tap here to add tickets and then you go there and then it says add to Apple Wallet. And that's handy dandy, right? But not everything works that way. Some services are very expensive and so a venue might not use that. Here in Portland there are lots of different places to go and quite a few of them use pretty cheap ticketing services and therefore don't have that added functionality. So I have found this even more useful where I live now. But essentially all you do is you import a PDF and then it locally on device uses Apple's AI technology to parse the PDF that you upload to it and create a pass for you. And I'm trying to figure out how I can show you this, this pass without actually giving away. So I think I'll change the ticket code here and I will remove the barcode in order to adjust it. And so let me show you. I will hit this. So I had a PDF sent to me via email for a show at the Crocodile in Seattle and I needed to. I didn't have an add to wallet thing and so what I did was I from the email there was a webpage that it took me to. I just, I think I actually just hit the share sheet button and shared this into NeatPass and it made that this, this little pass here for me. You can edit passes so you can change like their type so they could be an event ticket, a boarding pass, a coupon and you can change the name, the date, the location where it. You can even add information like the seat that you have. So section A, let's go section A row two, seat one and we'll go floor two and there's no access code so we will hit enter and then you can see that information is added as well. You can make changes to the pass like adding a photo for the logo, you can put a banner on the pass, you can change the barcode and again at any time all you have to do is simply import via PDF your specific pass. Now it is available for you to create one pass for free. Afterward you will need to pay. It's just 4.99 one time purchase to be able to create passes. Now I have covered other apps before that do similar things make. Pass is the very well known one. It's one that I currently even have. I have it installed on my Mac And Make Pass is also a way to customize and create Apple Wallet passes. But the difference here is that with, with NeatPass you're doing this all on device. And so knowing that, you know, the, the AI processing that's happening is happening locally can be a relief for, for some as for sure. So that is NeatPass, an indie app that just hit the App Store recently. All right, tell us about your next pick, Dan.

Dan Morin (9:52)

My next pick is one of my personal favorite categories of apps. I don't know why, but it's always fascinated me, the ability to view one device from another device. And so it's Screens from Adobe, which is a VNC client. I really, I've used Screens for years. So if you use your phone or your iPad and you're like, oh, I need to get to something that's on my Mac or on a PC or something like that, you might be sitting there going, oh no, how am I going to do that? I'm just on my phone. Well, using Screens, you can screen share into your home computer and just use it. You know, it's not like I'm going to be sitting there typing long emails on it or whatever. But like I have used this from very far away to get access to something, a file I left open or file I needed to move into cloud storage so it'll be available on my device that I've taken with me. Screens works really well. It's very user friendly. One of the things I really like about the latest version is that it actually also integrates directly with tailscale. So if you're somebody who use tailscale to create your own little private and network, screens can show you other clients that are on your tailscale network that you can log into and view the screen of. It also has a very handy little utility called Screens Connect, which you run on your home computer. That simplifies the process of dealing with firewalls and port forwarding and all of that. And also I've, that's been absolutely critical for me in times when it's like, oh yeah, I don't, don't even remember how to get into it. What, how am I going to find the IP address and hope. No, you don't have to worry about it. Screens Connect makes that a breeze. Um, it's just, you know, there are plenty of other screen sharing apps, but what I really like about Screens is that it, it tends to be extremely reliable for me. Like I said, the design is really nice. It works across all of Apple's platforms and it's you know, made by a really small company that is, you know, just a couple guys. I think there's a yearly subscription for $25. There are monthly subscriptions and there's also a lifetime plan if you want to get that. That's like $140, which is, you know, not cheap necessarily. But this is like a professional level tool. Most people probably don't need, you know, a screen sharing tool all the time, but if you're somebody who, you know does, it's well worth it. So I highly, highly recommend screens, which again, I've been using for many, many, many years.

Micah Sargent (12:23)

I also use screens. I don't think I do as much as you do, but when I do, I don't think I do as much as you do in terms of I

Dan Morin (12:35)

just log in all the time with the screen sharing sometimes just for fun.

Micah Sargent (12:39)

Yeah, but what I do screens is just especially what you're talking about there. You know, there's so much behind the scenes garbage that has to happen when it comes to this kind of network attachment. And so just having it do what it needs to do is so good. It makes it a lot easier to not have to worry about what's going going on.

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Dan Morin (13:26)

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Micah Sargent (13:56)

My next app Pick is a favorite for sure. And here's the thing. When you're thinking about dice, you're probably thinking first you're doing all the time.

Dan Morin (14:10)

Micah.

Micah Sargent (14:11)

Yeah, which you should be doing regularly most of the time. People are probably thinking about some sort of tabletop role playing game or they're thinking about needing to roll dice for a board game. Right? Here's the good thing. An app that can roll dice is basically just a random number generator. And so you can use your, the app that I'm about to mention for more than just playing D and D. Although that's a great thing, it can be used for, you know, generating all sorts of random numbers. The app that I am mentioning next, made by friend of the show, friend of the network, James Thompson. It's called Dice by pcalc. And this app is a dice roller that lets you flip a coin, roll a four sided die, roll a six sided die, roll a 12 sided die.

Dan Morin (15:12)

Coward.

Micah Sargent (15:13)

The only one I'm not going to roll. Son of a. I'm sorry. And also you can roll a custom coin that has my dog Henry on one side and my dog Mizzy on the other side. And so I got Missy this time. Don't know which one's heads or tails. You don't call that, you call Henry or Mizzy. In any case, this is a really fun app that has all sorts of customization options built in. You can create custom roles, you can do things like advantage and disadvantage. If you are trying to go for that. You can see the history of previous roles. You can see different totals. You can also head into the settings and you again here can go through so many different options of styles and tints and the lighting in the room, whether it speaks the results. But if you go into the help screen. Wait, this is still where it is, right? If you go into the help screen. I haven't been in this in a long time. Dan.

Dan Morin (16:18)

Yes.

Micah Sargent (16:19)

Is it still around if you roll

Dan Morin (16:21)

a, a critical or what?

Micah Sargent (16:25)

There was all. There was the game within the hell.

Dan Morin (16:27)

Oh no, that's in. That's a. So that was originally in Peak halc.

Micah Sargent (16:31)

Oh okay.

Dan Morin (16:33)

And then it's now, I think it's also available as a separate app now called like About Screen by Peak Alc

Micah Sargent (16:38)

or something like that. That's right. Okay. For some. Okay, I am, yeah, I'm combining the two. Well, that's the other good news is that you are able to also download here. Hold on, let's see.

Dan Morin (16:52)

Because while you're talking about that, I'll tell you this most important feature of Dice by Peak Alc which is if you roll, if you're using it for D and D and you're rolling a 20 sided die and you roll a 20 or you roll a one, you will get an audio message telling you that you got a critical hit or a critical fail. And let's just say it's by a particularly well known person. It's me. I did it. I did the audio for that. So if you ever get a critical hit in Dice by Peak Alc, you can hear me telling you you got a critical hit. So there's a little Easter egg for you.

Micah Sargent (17:28)

Yes, and I have found that if you go into the help section and you scroll all the way down and choose about Dice by Peak Alc, there is a fun little Easter egg in here which is a set of of cool visualizations of different dice. So there's something, but not what I thought.

Dan Morin (17:53)

Aha.

Micah Sargent (17:53)

Bananas. There we go. And so very fun. Good stuff. Love James and the work that James does. And love Dice by Peak Alc. All of the apps we've mentioned thus far free with in app purchases. So easy to go and try them out. All right, Dan, tell us about the last of your favorite indie apps.

Dan Morin (18:17)

Well, this one is one that I find particularly useful to me because I'm a bit of a television junkie. I like watching lots of television shows, both older shows that maybe I'm working my way through, or newer shows that are dropping episodes or new seasons. But the problem is when you do that, I know I make it sound like I'm the laziest person in the world. No, I just really enjoy TV as a medium. But if you're anything like me and you're like, I'm following all these TV shows, but it's hard to remember when a new episode or a new season comes out, or maybe even when it arrives on a streaming service or maybe even what streaming service is on. Well, one of the things that can help with that is Television Time, which is an app I really like by an independent developer whose name I definitely should have looked up, but I didn't because that is the kind of amazing person that I am. And I'm doing it right now as I vamp. Maximilian Litteral is the developer of Television Time. I enjoy this a lot. I use it for all of my TV watching, tracking. If you use a service like Tracked T R A K T, it can integrate with that. I don't bother. I just have it all on my device because I want to know, you know, like, oh, where did I leave off in that season? Or what show? When is the next episode of this show coming out? Or when is the next season of this show drop? And I find it a great way to keep in track of that. So you can, you know, put all the shows you want to watch in it. It also has great support for things like you can have it hide episode synopses for episodes you haven't watched yet so that it doesn't spoil you on anything. You can rate episodes if you're into that. It's not really what I use it for. I really just want it for sort of my keeping track of where I am. But yeah, it does even give you like cast and crew information. It can give you where to watch information. You know, it has widgets that you can use on your home screen if you want. All that stuff. Looks great. Really easy to use. Yeah. I mean, and again, as a bit of a TV junkie, I do end up using it quite a bit.

Micah Sargent (20:24)

Nice. Well, that folks is the list of some of our favorite indie apps. Would love to hear about yours. If you have indie apps that you think we should have mentioned on the show, you can email us iOS today at TWiT TV is how you get in touch. Moving along, Dan, can you tell us I heard that Apple has a special event planned for March 4th. Do you know anything about this? What are your thoughts? What's your speculation?

Dan Morin (20:53)

An event, but they have said it is a special Apple experience. I don't even know what that means. It's happening on March 4th at 9am Eastern, but it's also happening in three places, New York, London and Shanghai, which is interesting. Not a lot known about this right now. The the graphic that they sent out, which, you know, people love to dissect and try to find hidden meaning in, shows kind of like this various like liquid glass, stacks of of, you know, circles that make up the Apple logo in a variety of colors, yellow, green and blue. There's several things that are expected around this time so we could see any subset of that. I mean this goes all the way from the iPhone 17e, which is the, you know, successor to the 16e, which we expected to see at some point this spring. Updates to iPads, a new MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, maybe even a new studio display. There's any number of things. We're also expecting to hear more at some point about some of these smarter Siri features that Apple has promised, though recent reports suggest those may be delayed. And of course the thing that people have seized on with these different colors is this introduction of a low cost MacBook built around one of the A series chips that powers the iPhone. So that's expected to potentially come in a variety of colors. Harkening back to maybe some of those Classic ibooks that Apple released way back in the 2000s and you know, bringing some color to the, the MacBook line basically in the first time since forever. I mean, I'm not counting the midnight blue and the champagne gold one. Sorry, it's not that much color. So yeah, I mean, unclear exactly what this is going to involve. Sounds a little bit different than sort of what they tend to do at Apple park with a big live streamed event. It could be anything from, you know, press being briefed and press releases being issued to potentially some sort of, some sort of video. The spring event that Apple typically holds is often one of the places they play a little bit with format and you know how they handle these things and they kind of experiment a little bit and try some different stuff. So it doesn't surprise me that we're seeing this. We've also seen them do these in the east coast a bunch as well as I think they did one before that was in London as well. So yeah, lots of possibilities. We don't know a ton. But obviously we're expecting a lot of announcements from Apple soon. So we'll have to tune in on March 4th and see what they have for us. And also March 4th, it's a, it's a great day for issuing commands. March 4th, Micah.

Micah Sargent (23:39)

March 4th. 4th and commence battle and I will. Moving along now to our feedback segment. We've got some feedback coming up.

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Micah Sargent (25:18)

Doug in Minneapolis has written in to say the following oh, and by the way, this is just feedback, it's not a question. And we love this as well. Doug says Love the show and watch it on YouTube when I can I'm excited for the Creator Studio model. I've avoided using Final Cut and Logic Pro due to the cost and the learning curve. I've become really proficient with GarageBand and iMovie, but I want to learn more. Since my iPad is on its last legs. I now know I can wait and get the three month free subscription to everything and find out if it will be cost effective for me to switch. What I really like about the subscription is that includes the apps for both iPad and Mac, which basically means that one would only see a $30 per year increase in their subscription. I also use Freeform a lot for online presentations when working on projects. Works great for mind maps. Keep up the great show. I've watched it since it started in the cottage. Doug, thank you so much for writing in. Yeah, Creator Studio. For people who make use of these tools, I think it's going to be a great deal. I have reminded everyone in the past if you do currently have a subscription to the iPad version of Final Cut Pro and you get Creator Studio, you do need to go and cancel your Final Cut Pro subscription for iPad so that you're not charged for both because this subscription will include access to that app. There's supposed to be a lot more with this as we continue to see Apple add to Creator Studio and roll out the changes and add the AI stuff. So we'll continue to see the value here hopefully increase over time, but in its current state it's been fun. Kind of. I've been playing around with Creator Studio a little bit and trying out the functionality that's currently available. Dan, have you since we last talked, have you had the opportunity to mess around in Creator Studio anymore?

Dan Morin (27:13)

I actually have not really spent any time with it. It's intriguing to me, but I don't have a project right now that requires me to use Final Cut Pro or something which would probably be the real driver. You know, I own Logic on my Mac and I use it on my Mac and The logic version for iPadOS and iOS is not good for what I want to do with it, and I haven't. I do have all the new versions of the iWork apps, but I've yet be enticed by whatever mysterious and magical AI features they possess to decide to spend the amount of money I would need just to find that out. I should I will sign up for the trial at some point here and and try to give them a more thorough investigation, but so far there's nothing yet that really has made me feel like, oh, I need to go get this right this very moment and try all this out other than my curiosity and you know, usual work as somebody who writes and talks about these things.

Micah Sargent (28:09)

So yeah, I again have been playing around with it and kind of just going in and checking. Okay, is it still the same? Has anything been added? Where are we currently with the rollout of iOS 26.4 in beta, I felt like it would be a good time to check in and see if there were subtle changes yet or not. But we'll of course again keep an eye on how things proceed going forward. And especially with this Apple event coming up, I wouldn't be surprised if we see Creator Studio at least mentioned at the event. All right, we are near the end of the show. Let's head into the app capped segments. These are the apps or gadgets we're using now or have been using for some time that we think are great and want to share with all of you. My pick this week is actually something that I've mentioned before, but I I wanted to do a deep clean of my AirPods and so I made use of the Belkin AirPods cleaning kit which you can get from Apple. It is basically a kind of like, I believe it's kind of a micellar water situation and the cleaning liquid is what they call it, but it's I'm pretty sure it's just micellar water and that helps to break up fats and make them a little bit more soluble. You put the little cleaning fluid onto your AirPods and then you use the little brush to brush it away and then you use the deionized water afterward to kind of clear things away. And then you repeat the process a couple of times and it does a very good job of cleaning out the grills. It is something that can be used multiple times. It comes with a little microfiber cloth as well and all the instructions that you need. And because it's sold by Apple, it's feels like it is, you know, at Least sanctioned as a method for cleaning your. Your AirPods. And so I have. I've used it twice since I got it last year, and it does a great job every time. So that's Belkin. Oh, good.

Dan Morin (30:26)

You kept saying micellar water, and I thought that was just water that came from your cellar.

Micah Sargent (30:30)

Oh, yes.

Dan Morin (30:32)

And I was like, you know, it's just repackaged cellar water.

Micah Sargent (30:36)

That's so funny.

Dan Morin (30:37)

It's like that. Micah, that's gross. Don't put that in your AirPods. That's super. That's not covered.

Micah Sargent (30:42)

I collect the rain from the hole in my cellar. No. Yes. My. My cellar water with my cells. That is it $13 from. From Apple. All right, Dan, tell us about your pick.

Dan Morin (30:57)

Yeah, mine's a more recent addition, but it was one that I stumbled across and I really like it. It's an app called. Called Zephie. You've probably seen the feature where you can ask. I don't know if it's still in Siri, but it used to be you could ask what flights are overhead and it would tell you about flights overhead. But I realized one day when my kid, we were in the car and he enjoyed pointing out airplanes that were flying through the sky and be like, oh, what plane is that? And I'd be like. And I found, like, a really terrible website where you could look at what planes were going overhead. But then I stumbled across Zeffy, which is an app that can also do the same thing. And it does it in a really nice and kind of very simple interface where it can tell you, like, you get a little radar view, and as you move your phone around on, like, it's got like a little compass. And so it tells you what flights you might be looking at, tells you how far away things are, what direction you're looking. And then when you tap on any of them, it brings up the. The, you know, all the information you need. What's the, like, code number of this flight? What's the airline? And it even has like a little arrow that again, like, points you towards the plane and even gives you a nice little, like, haptics at certain points when you're, like, looking at. It tells you the destination, that where it left, how far away it was, all that stuff. And it's just really. It's really simple. It's got a couple, like, little, like, different color schemes and stuff. But, like, yeah, it does one thing, but it does it really well. You can do random flight tracks as well, or you can filter based on certain details or things like, okay, things I can see how high the planes are up or how far away they are. Like, you know, again, really straightforward, really simple, really easy. But it, you know, helps. Scratch that itch of like, hey, there's a plane up there. What plane is it? Again, anybody who's got a toddler has probably had to answer questions like this. So allow me to be the one to help you by saying go download Ze. I think it's even. I think it's even a free app. Or like you basically get all the features. I'm not even sure there's any in app purchases or anything like that. So really simple, easy.

Micah Sargent (33:02)

Check it out, check it out. Alrighty, folks, that is that. I wanted to remind you all though, before we say goodbye about Club Twit at Twit tv. Club Twit. When you go there to sign up, you can join the club. $10 a month, $120 a year. And in doing so, you gain access to some awesome benefits. You get several different feeds that I'll talk about in a moment, but you also get ad free content. That's right, all of the content, none of the ads. All of our shows without the ads. When it comes to those feeds that I mentioned, you're first and foremost going to get a feed that has our Club Twit bits and clips. By that, I mean the kind of behind the scenes, before the show, after the show, during the recording day. You also gain access to a feed that has our coverage of live tech news events. So you get the commentary that goes along with that and access to our feed that has our special club shows like my Crafting Corner, the recent D and D adventure that I ran, Stacey's Book Club, plus so much more, all available to you via the club. And if that's not enough, well, I also want to tell you that you can join our Discord. Yes, it's a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club Twitters and those of us here at TWiT. So be sure to check out our Club TWiT TV Club TWiT. We've got specials running all the time. You can kick it off with a free trial and we hope to see you there. Dan Morin, I want to thank you so much for being here this week. If people would like to keep up to date with the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?

Dan Morin (34:41)

Well, I do a lot of podcasts, including Clockwise with Micah every week over on Relay fm. It's just Relay now. I don't know why I said Relay fm, but it's now it's just Relay. I write about all apple stuff@6colors.com you can find there. And for everything else I do, including my science fiction and fantasy books, which you should go buy because. Thank you. It helps. Go to dmorn.com and you get links to all of that great stuff.

Micah Sargent (35:03)

Awesome. Yes. Go buy the book immediately.

Dan Morin (35:07)

All of them.

Micah Sargent (35:08)

If you're looking for me online, if you're looking to follow me online, I'm at Micah Sargent on many a social media network. Or you can add to Chihuahua Coffee, that's C H I H U A hoa Coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Thank you so much for being here. I'll be back next week. Perhaps Rosemary will be back with us. But until then, I will say goodbye to all of you. Thank you.

Dan Morin (35:30)

Bye.

Micah Sargent (35:32)

If you're looking for more Apple coverage, can I invite you to check out MacBreak weekly every Tuesday? They dig into everything happening with the iPhone, with iPad, with Mac and Son, much more.