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Connected

382: It Does the Nib Nib

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   Hello and welcome to Connected episode 382.

00:00:13   It is made possible by our sponsors,

00:00:15   Hover, Capital One, and Trade Coffee.

00:00:18   My name is Stephen Hackett

00:00:19   and I'm joined by Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:22   - Hello, I'm here.

00:00:23   - Hello, welcome.

00:00:25   - Thank you.

00:00:26   - Hello and welcome.

00:00:27   We're also joined by Mr. Myke Hurley.

00:00:29   I wondered if you were gonna undo the sins of last week.

00:00:32   - No, I'm getting back on track.

00:00:34   - Are you though? - Back on track.

00:00:35   Yeah. - 'Cause currently,

00:00:36   it's just week after week after week, Federico constantly.

00:00:39   - It's an even episode, so it goes to Federico.

00:00:42   You'll get the odd one.

00:00:42   - What if I just like, I'm not here next week?

00:00:45   Then what are you gonna do?

00:00:46   - Then it's Federico.

00:00:47   - He's gonna call you on the phone and be like,

00:00:49   "Hey, just wanted to say hi first."

00:00:51   - Yeah, if for some reason I'm not here next week,

00:00:54   you have to call me.

00:00:55   - Are you missing the show next week?

00:00:57   - It wasn't my plan, but I am,

00:00:59   As we have been recording Connected Pro,

00:01:01   which was a wild ride, which you should sign up for,

00:01:04   getconnectedpro.co,

00:01:06   I'm realizing why I'm getting a sore throat

00:01:08   as we're talking.

00:01:09   You know when you just start to feel the decline?

00:01:11   Like that's happening to me now, so who knows, you know?

00:01:14   - It started about the time that you were sad

00:01:16   about not being introduced first.

00:01:18   - No, it started way before that, like 21 minutes ago.

00:01:22   - We have some follow-up.

00:01:25   We were talking last week

00:01:26   about Federico's Wordle bot update

00:01:29   and about alt text on Twitter images.

00:01:33   Ed Ross on Twitter commented

00:01:36   that you can use the account get_alttext

00:01:40   and basically it will reply

00:01:44   with the alt text to you, which is pretty cool.

00:01:51   - I don't understand these bots, you know.

00:01:53   I can see a lot of these on Reddit too.

00:01:56   Just these accounts that they just do one thing, you know?

00:02:00   And like it's, I don't know who sets them up.

00:02:03   I don't know why they set them up, like how it's maintained, how it works.

00:02:06   I think about that too sometimes. Like who are these people and why do they do it?

00:02:11   And I guess the answer is because it's cool and for glory? I guess?

00:02:16   I think a lot of people are just trying to sell a book, you know, but I don't really understand how we get to a book from this one.

00:02:21   No, I think sometimes you just make a cool thing and you want to make it public, because

00:02:26   it's neat. And because running this bot is relatively inexpensive these days. Some of

00:02:32   these they run on an instance of Roku or Linode somewhere, and it's super cheap. And you just

00:02:39   figure "I'm going to spend like one dollar each month running this bot, why not?" You

00:02:44   get a kick out of it and it's fine.

00:02:47   Why not bot?

00:02:48   Why not bot?

00:02:49   Why not bot?

00:02:50   Why not bot?

00:02:51   Federico, we also, the follow-up's all about you this week.

00:02:55   We had a question from Manny.

00:02:58   To be fair, Steven, if you don't mind me interrupting, the vast majority of the show is about Federico

00:03:02   this week, not just the follow-up.

00:03:03   I'm just going to read the ads and sit back the rest of the time.

00:03:07   Lots of pressure on me.

00:03:08   I know.

00:03:09   So Manny had a question about this gamepad accessory and the iPad Mini.

00:03:15   Can you weigh in on this?

00:03:16   So I mentioned this one months ago, the Shaxx GamePad.

00:03:22   It's a Bluetooth game controller, I guess originally designed for Android devices.

00:03:28   I mentioned this in the context of the Samsung Galaxy Fold 3, the Z Fold 3.

00:03:35   Oh my god, I forgot that you owned one of those.

00:03:36   I still do, it's kind of fun to play around with.

00:03:39   It's beautiful with emulators, I can tell you that.

00:03:41   Running Dolphin emulator for the Nintendo GameCube on that, it's pretty sweet.

00:03:46   I was talking about the Shux Gain Controller, because you can...

00:03:49   It's one of those controllers that is similar to the Backbone,

00:03:52   in that you have the two halves of the controller,

00:03:54   you open it up and you can slot a device in the middle.

00:03:58   And I picked this one because it worked with the form factor

00:04:02   of the Z Fold 3 when it's open.

00:04:05   But Manny wants to know if it works with the new iPad Mini.

00:04:11   Now, I don't recall exactly if there was something about it

00:04:16   that was not quite convincing to me

00:04:19   in using it with the iPad mini, but we can try right now.

00:04:23   - This is how you break an iPad mini.

00:04:26   (laughing)

00:04:27   - Just a real time follow up,

00:04:28   I cannot find the Shaxx game controller anymore.

00:04:32   - Well, that was fast.

00:04:33   That was incredible.

00:04:34   You didn't spend a lot of time looking.

00:04:36   - It was not where I thought it was gonna be.

00:04:39   - Right, so you've just immediately given up then.

00:04:41   - So either, well, now we're doing,

00:04:44   we're in the middle of a podcast, there's some decency, you know, it's not like I can

00:04:48   walk out on you guys. So it means two things. One, it's somewhere else or Sylvia stole it

00:04:56   from me. Oh, there you go. TJ's made a very good point that you never lose things, but

00:05:00   you immediately jumped to the Federico that we knew. No, not knew, you're still here.

00:05:08   That now the obvious thing is that it has been stolen from you. I said it's somewhere

00:05:13   else because I recently reorganized my bedroom so it could be... I discovered, this is totally

00:05:19   an aside, I discovered this UK based company that makes like really useful plastic boxes.

00:05:25   I think they're called like... OK... no, what do they call? Good boxes or something? And you can get them from

00:05:32   Amazon, they are amazing to organize like stuff. What are they called? Like good box, like OK box

00:05:38   or something like that. You can... I don't know what you're talking about. So I recently needed

00:05:43   to reorganize my like USB dongles, cables, Game Boy cartridges, and I was looking for like a plastic

00:05:51   box on Amazon. Like what is a good plastic box? Really useful pla... Is that the name? Really useful

00:05:57   plastic boxes? Anyway, there's this company, I think it's based in the UK, and they have a totally generic

00:06:02   name. Yeah, it's really useful plastic boxes. That's the name. From Really Useful Products?

00:06:08   Yes! dotco.uk. These boxes are incredible. They are plastic boxes and they're super solid and cheap

00:06:16   and they have this clamp mechanism that you can use to close them. Really well done. Oh, I have

00:06:21   a similar product to this. I just got it on Amazon. Maybe I'm getting it from this company. I use it to

00:06:25   put keycaps inside. Really good box. So, because I recently reorganized my drawers and my nightstand,

00:06:32   the Shaxx game controller could be in a really useful plastic box, or Sylvia stole it, because

00:06:39   I haven't lost it. So either Sylvia is suddenly and secretly into android-based gaming,

00:06:45   or it's in a box. Dude, this really useful products website is real bad. You know,

00:06:55   it's not really a website at all. Mine is from a company called City Life. I just bought something

00:07:01   I found on Amazon. Clearly I did not get the really useful kind.

00:07:05   Anyway, I can tell you many that I did try it, and either the thickness of the iPad Mini

00:07:11   was not good enough or something about it, like I wasn't feeling confident about it

00:07:16   because I didn't want to break the iPad Mini. But it's also been a few months since the iPad Mini came out,

00:07:21   so maybe now we can actually try and find some proper gain controllers made for the new iPad Mini.

00:07:27   Mini. It's something that I meant to check out a few weeks ago and then I

00:07:30   forgot so I will look again and if I find anything I will report back on the

00:07:34   show because I do miss having a proper gain controller for my iPad Mini so I

00:07:39   need to look again. And lastly Federico, speaking of gaming, you released the

00:07:46   teased Switch Frame shortcut. So talk to us about this. I want to hear more about

00:07:53   about the problems of Nintendo Switch screenshots?

00:07:58   - Switch Frame is, you can consider it like a fork

00:08:03   of Apple Frames.

00:08:05   It's based on the same techniques,

00:08:07   based on the same actions in the shortcuts app.

00:08:10   It takes screenshots that you take on a Nintendo Switch.

00:08:14   Doesn't matter if you use a Switch, a Switch Lite,

00:08:16   or a Switch OLED, those screenshots are always 720p

00:08:20   or 1080p resolution.

00:08:22   It takes those screenshots and it frames them nicely with the physical console template

00:08:27   for the original Nintendo Switch with the classic red and blue Joy-Con colors for the controllers.

00:08:35   This is a shortcut that I put together months ago, and that I never had the time to properly share on Mac Sorrys.

00:08:42   I put this one together in the summer, actually, because I wanted to have a nicer way to share Nintendo Switch screenshots,

00:08:50   Let's make them extra special when you share them on Twitter or other places, so that it

00:08:55   actually looks like a Nintendo Switch game, and it looks more professional, you know,

00:08:59   it looks nice.

00:09:00   So what I did, obviously Nintendo, unlike Apple, they do not have like a proper press

00:09:07   page where you can go in and download the product bezels, although they really should,

00:09:12   but they don't.

00:09:13   So I had this idea of like, what if I go to these websites like Dribbble or Behance, you

00:09:20   these design websites where people usually share free downloads for PSD templates. I wonder if

00:09:28   someone ever shared a Nintendo Switch PSD template file? And sure enough, someone did. So I talked to

00:09:35   Silvia and I was like "Hey, can you actually try and make this work like Apple Frames does?"

00:09:40   And yeah, she optimized. We took the PSD and we optimized it for shortcuts. She removed all of

00:09:49   of the extra background that was not needed, and we picked the default red and blue look.

00:09:55   And I put together this shortcut that takes screenshots, overlays it on the Nintendo Switch,

00:09:59   and returns the composite image that looks nicer than just a plain screenshot.

00:10:06   So this is...

00:10:08   I love using this shortcut because it makes all the screenshots look so much nicer than

00:10:13   the default JPEG that you get from a Nintendo Switch.

00:10:17   But what's also cool, I think, is that it goes in combination with a shortcut that I

00:10:22   released two years ago.

00:10:23   Well, almost...

00:10:24   Well, not two years ago.

00:10:27   What was it?

00:10:28   December 2020.

00:10:29   How long ago is that?

00:10:30   Like, 14 months ago?

00:10:32   Which is called "Short Switch."

00:10:34   And Short Switch...

00:10:35   These two shortcuts, they go together.

00:10:37   Short Switch, it speeds up the process of getting those screenshots out of a Nintendo

00:10:43   Switch.

00:10:44   in 2020, they launched this feature that makes it easier for you to take a screenshot on a Nintendo Switch and send it to an iPhone.

00:10:54   The process involves scanning a QR code and connecting to a local Wi-Fi network that your Nintendo Switch creates.

00:11:01   My shortcut cuts a bunch of steps from that process, so that it makes it easier for you to get all those screenshots and videos,

00:11:09   because you can also share videos all at once into the Photos app or into the Files app.

00:11:15   So now you can run Switch Frame on its own, it just finds any pictures that you have in the Photos app,

00:11:23   or you can run it as a step of the import process.

00:11:28   So you can keep using Short Switch, and so right there when you are importing the screenshots from your Nintendo Switch,

00:11:34   Switch, you can frame them right away while you are getting them from the console. So

00:11:40   it's cool and I like sort of these two worlds coming together. My love for Nintendo and

00:11:47   shortcuts in this little utility that makes it easier and nicer to do Nintendo Switch

00:11:54   screenshots. I like it. I like sending screenshots to you of old Animal Crossing things that

00:12:00   I find in my level. My favorite thing, though, is an unintentional thing, but it's just for

00:12:04   very funny if you have images that are in the same dimensions right it's just

00:12:08   gonna find them like what are the dimensions that it's looking for do you

00:12:12   remember 720p or 1080p so if you have other images that are in that resolution

00:12:19   of like a 1080p screen yeah you can you could put them in it and I just like

00:12:23   finding random promotional materials that I've made putting them on the

00:12:28   Nintendo switch like you know like merchandise images and stuff so like

00:12:32   Cortex merch on Nintendo Switch. It's just it's very funny to me, unintended,

00:12:37   but it works and so if you really want to make your own Nintendo Switch game

00:12:40   now you know how to do it I suppose. This episode of Connected is brought to you

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00:14:16   I found a really cool new app the other day. It was in my favorite app store on the Macintosh.

00:14:24   It's called the Federico Vittici.

00:14:26   And it was there in the app store, and I downloaded it.

00:14:30   And now I've got it.

00:14:31   I actually did download something from that page,

00:14:34   the little M4V video that they made of boom box

00:14:39   and an alarm clock flying around Federico's head.

00:14:42   I downloaded that, and I now have that, so that's mine.

00:14:45   Federico was featured in Apple's Mac App Store,

00:14:49   which is honestly the funniest place

00:14:52   for Federico to be, I think.

00:14:54   Like if I could think of anywhere,

00:14:55   what is the funniest place to put Federico?

00:14:57   What about a story on the Mac App Store?

00:14:59   Brilliant.

00:15:00   And, but he's there and it's a really nice little feature

00:15:03   about shortcuts, right?

00:15:05   - Yes, yes.

00:15:06   So this has been in the works for quite some time,

00:15:11   obviously without getting into the details,

00:15:13   but I've known for a long time.

00:15:15   And essentially Apple reached out a while back asking for,

00:15:21   "Hey, do you want to share some thoughts on shortcuts from Mac and what you're doing with it?

00:15:25   What are some cool shortcuts that you think could be useful to people?"

00:15:30   And so that is really how they framed the story.

00:15:35   It's called Federico Vittucci's 7-Start Shortcuts.

00:15:38   And what I like about this, which was also...

00:15:42   I was concerned that this would go in a different direction,

00:15:46   but what I really appreciate here, and I want to say,

00:15:49   I didn't have to ask for any of this, but they kept basically all the context of my

00:15:58   or our original interviews. They kept all the links to the shortcuts that I made.

00:16:04   So the shortcuts that are linked in the story on the App Store, those are my shortcuts.

00:16:09   The icon.com links, those are my links. And the shortcuts, they have my comments inside,

00:16:17   Which means that, like, technically, I could pull those links and then it would break for the entire world.

00:16:24   Ahh!

00:16:27   Well, I mean, also you could just change them to literally whatever you want. Is that right?

00:16:31   Would that work?

00:16:32   No, I cannot change them, but I could pull them. But I'm a benevolent figure, and I will not do that.

00:16:38   Are you?

00:16:39   However, those... Yes, I am. However, those comments, they do have advertisements for max stories and club max stories inside,

00:16:46   because why not? I mean, you know, if you want to learn more about shortcuts, go to

00:16:50   Mac Stories or Cloud Mac Stories.

00:16:52   What if one of those shortcuts, just like every time you ran it, like it ran it, and

00:16:57   then like 30 seconds later you get a pop-up like, "Join the club!"

00:17:02   They checked the shortcuts and there were a few, like, there was a little bit of back

00:17:08   and forth to make sure that like some features were not confusing for people, so they checked

00:17:13   all of them. The screenshots are apples, so they obviously tested this.

00:17:18   You're like Taylor Swift.

00:17:20   Like, there is a Federico's version of these shortcuts.

00:17:27   You've got the shortcut that Apple's got and then people can get Federico's version.

00:17:33   And it's the real deal, you know?

00:17:36   So, yeah.

00:17:38   And they kept my joke about being someone

00:17:44   who doesn't remember anything unless he uses a task manager.

00:17:48   And they said, and like something along the lines of,

00:17:50   in between like a website, multiple podcasts,

00:17:54   and a social media presence, that's understandable.

00:17:57   Thank you, Apple.

00:17:58   That you think it's understandable.

00:18:00   It's nice to get that kind of--

00:18:04   It's good to be seen, I suppose.

00:18:06   Yes, I felt seen by App Store editorial, so thank you.

00:18:10   And they linked...

00:18:12   You have active social media accounts. Is that like some kind of shade?

00:18:15   Are they shade judging you?

00:18:17   No, I don't think so. I mean, I tweet about shortcuts and they're bugs.

00:18:21   He's very online, that guy.

00:18:23   I am. I am. Online.

00:18:27   And this was the surprise for me.

00:18:31   for me, they actually linked macstories.net at the end.

00:18:36   If you know Apple and the App Store,

00:18:39   you know that they must have some kind of problem

00:18:42   with linking in general.

00:18:44   They never, like, even when they do like the app of the year

00:18:48   like awards for the App Store,

00:18:50   they never link to the actual thing for reasons.

00:18:55   This time they put in a link to Mac stories.

00:18:58   So that was very cool of them.

00:19:00   I know like this is a, I'm not trying to make fun,

00:19:04   but I can't help it.

00:19:06   There's, this is very funny to me

00:19:08   that in the actual app store version, it just says like,

00:19:11   so it's got like a much more,

00:19:12   it talks about like why people should read about you.

00:19:14   It just says Mac stories, visit the site for.

00:19:17   - And that's weird.

00:19:19   - What does that mean?

00:19:20   - But it's only broken on the Mac.

00:19:22   Because on IO, if you open the story on iOS,

00:19:25   on the iOS app store, it actually says Mac stories,

00:19:28   shortcuts archive.

00:19:29   - This is just-

00:19:30   site for an issue with response like the with the responsive view the window was

00:19:37   too small so it truncates the text for some reason that was just for me like

00:19:42   when I opened it my Mac app store now if I make the window bigger it says visit

00:19:46   the site for hundreds of shortcuts yes funny to me the side hat that's really

00:19:51   broken because the window is really wide before it shows that that's funny man

00:19:56   Tips for a friend. This is so good though Federico. I love it. I love that it's not so much I mean

00:20:02   obviously I love that they did it like that you were on it because it's just

00:20:05   fun for me. I guess it's fun for you. It's just a nice thing. I just love that they

00:20:11   did it right. Yeah. There are a lot of ways between not doing it and how

00:20:17   they've done it that it could have been done and it all would have been fine.

00:20:19   Exactly. Yes. But they did it right. I just like more that they like linked out to the shortcuts

00:20:26   to archive and didn't say like, "Thanks for these shortcuts, we're going to edit them

00:20:31   all," which would have been weird.

00:20:34   And they didn't make it into a self-help thing. That was also one of my concerns. No, they

00:20:41   made it very practical and they asked for like, "Can you give us a range of examples?"

00:20:49   And they gave me total freedom, like, "What do you want to share?" And that was very cool

00:20:53   of them, and they wanted me to explain to them, like, step by step what each shortcut

00:20:58   does, and they made sure to test them, they took screenshots, they found some bugs, because

00:21:04   a couple of those shortcuts were existing shortcuts that I shared years ago. So they

00:21:08   asked me, "Can you actually update those?" And I did. So they were very open to working

00:21:15   on this together, and I think they did a—like, I'm really happy with it, and I think they

00:21:20   did an excellent job and they didn't even have to link to Mac stories.

00:21:24   They could have just said, "If you want to get more shortcuts, open the shortcuts app

00:21:27   and visit our own gallery."

00:21:29   Like, they could have done that, but instead they linked to Mac stories, and that was very

00:21:33   cool of them, very kind of them.

00:21:36   And I like the...

00:21:39   Obviously, we didn't make the art, I just sent them the photo.

00:21:43   Silvia took the picture using portrait mode on the iPhone 13 Pro Max, using my iPhone.

00:21:50   They cut out the background because, hey, that's, I guess, what you can do with portrait

00:21:53   mode.

00:21:55   But there were many other pictures that were taken that day.

00:21:58   There was also another outtake photo that maybe I should use at some point online for,

00:22:03   I don't know, my profile pic or something.

00:22:05   Or maybe when I do this article that I'm working on about the MacBook Pro, I will use it there,

00:22:11   they wanted to have a photo of me working at a Mac, so there was a sort of an in-context

00:22:16   photo done as well of me very serious with all my tattoos and my jewels.

00:22:22   I think you sent that one to us, right?

00:22:24   I did, I did. There was also that photo. But I love the animated art that they have done.

00:22:31   I had no idea there was a thing being done.

00:22:34   Yeah, it's really cool. It just makes it pop. It's just like an added thing. I mean, I figure

00:22:38   in non-Covid world, they would have done an actual photoshoot with you, I would expect.

00:22:43   Like I would imagine they would send someone.

00:22:45   Yeah, that's what they did with David when he was...

00:22:47   Yeah.

00:22:48   ...in a few years ago.

00:22:50   They do lightly troll you though.

00:22:52   So the get image resolution example,

00:22:55   they have a picture of a cat on a couch.

00:22:57   Yeah.

00:22:58   It's like, why not dog?

00:22:59   I don't know, maybe.

00:23:01   They also had, if you actually go look at my original tweet

00:23:06   from last week, originally the description said,

00:23:09   in 2009, he co-founded Mac Stories.

00:23:13   And that was wrong.

00:23:14   - What's your job, baby?

00:23:16   He's there from the beginning.

00:23:17   - That was wrong.

00:23:18   So I asked them, can you please fix this?

00:23:21   And they fixed it in like five minutes.

00:23:23   So that was cool.

00:23:24   Now he says, history needs to be respected.

00:23:28   I told them it was just me in 2009.

00:23:32   - Get out of here, John.

00:23:34   - I mean, just, you gotta be factual.

00:23:36   You know, you gotta be accurate with your things.

00:23:40   When I mentioned, like, they never link to things.

00:23:44   For example, in the Fantastical section,

00:23:47   a favorite feature of the Calendar app Fantastical

00:23:50   are 2020 Mac App of the Year.

00:23:52   Why is that 2020 Mac App of the Year thing not linked to,

00:23:57   like, it doesn't link to anything?

00:23:58   - Seriously.

00:23:59   - They had a story, they had a press release,

00:24:03   they had a bunch of things they could link,

00:24:04   but no, they don't link to that.

00:24:07   - Who needs it?

00:24:08   Links are for suckers.

00:24:09   This is cool. My mom was really happy about it as well. I think she printed it out and

00:24:16   I think she actually made the... because I sent her the photo of the art that I took

00:24:24   from Apple's CDN and I believe she's using that as a wallpaper now.

00:24:28   Me too.

00:24:29   It's fine. It's fine, man.

00:24:38   - No, man, this is really cool.

00:24:40   - I love it.

00:24:41   - Yeah, I opened, I think I found it before y'all did.

00:24:45   I opened the app store for something else.

00:24:47   It was like, oh, oh, I like stared at it

00:24:50   for like three seconds.

00:24:51   It was like, Federico's in the app store.

00:24:53   And then I sent it to y'all and everybody went crazy.

00:24:56   - You pointed out, Steven, the tagline

00:24:58   that you so appreciated.

00:25:00   (laughing)

00:25:02   What's the tagline of this story?

00:25:05   - The automation expert gets you going.

00:25:08   Yeah he does!

00:25:09   Yeah he does.

00:25:11   Hubba hubba.

00:25:13   People have been asking for a link to the shirt.

00:25:18   It's a nice shirt.

00:25:20   It's a gas shirt that Silvio got me for my birthday.

00:25:25   Can I get a link to the tattoo, please? I would like one of those.

00:25:29   It's a full arm done by my trusted tattoo artist named Gabriele Anakin,

00:25:36   like Anakin Skywalker.

00:25:37   It's based in Rome.

00:25:39   On my way.

00:25:41   Nice.

00:25:43   I'm kind of ready for another one.

00:25:46   It's fine.

00:25:48   Oh, me too, yeah.

00:25:49   Let's do it.

00:25:50   I know what I'm getting to. I know what I'm getting.

00:25:52   But I'm not going to tell you.

00:25:54   Speaking of shortcuts, our friends at Elgato, we don't actually know them, but we'll call them our friends.

00:25:59   I would love to know them, though.

00:26:01   Elgato, hook us up.

00:26:02   Just please, be nice.

00:26:05   They, this week, announced a new product called the Stream Deck Pedal.

00:26:11   So, of course, the Stream Deck is advice you set on your desk,

00:26:14   has a bunch of buttons and you can program the buttons to do different things

00:26:17   with shortcuts or macros, basically anything you want.

00:26:20   I've never heard you talk about that before, so thanks for the reminder.

00:26:24   I can't tell if you're serious or not.

00:26:26   Some people, you know, you gotta clarify what the Stream Deck is.

00:26:29   I know, I'm being a troll, it's unnecessary.

00:26:32   You were feisty today.

00:26:33   Yeah, I'm not feeling great, so I'm just like...

00:26:35   You keep saying that, like laying the groundwork to miss for next week.

00:26:39   I'm fighting back, man.

00:26:40   I'm on my upswing.

00:26:41   Wow, already, that was quick.

00:26:43   Can't keep me down.

00:26:45   They announced the Stream Deck Pedal, which is a floor pad, costs 90 bucks, has three

00:26:53   pedals, and basically it's like three buttons on the Stream Deck that you can use with your

00:26:58   foot or stick or something, I guess.

00:27:01   You know, if your foot's not available.

00:27:04   This is cool, right? I think this is really cool.

00:27:08   89.99. It also has a grippy surface to stop it from sliding away, so if you have to hit

00:27:15   hard, you know, like "Quick! Time to time track! Bang!" and you don't like kick it down

00:27:22   there.

00:27:23   Yeah, you used to, you know...

00:27:24   I'm into this idea of like foot automation, you know?

00:27:31   pay a lot for that. Oh dear, I'm sorry.

00:27:36   Somewhere there's someone considering like an OnlyFans but it's for like doing this kind

00:27:41   of stuff.

00:27:42   It's for very particular automations. I want also they announced an official Discord plugin

00:27:48   for Stream Deck so you can control audio stuff and join and switch channels. You two are

00:27:53   very Stream Decky, you know?

00:27:55   Yeah.

00:27:56   streaming on the deck. Do you genuinely like, could you imagine having the pedal

00:28:02   thing and like what what would you assign it to? Like do you have any any

00:28:08   actions right now that you're very frequently reaching out for that would

00:28:12   be nice if you could just like do you see a little little touch with the with

00:28:15   the toe? I can think of two but I want to hear Federico's first because I think

00:28:21   his are more imaginative than mine maybe?

00:28:23   - Well, the serious answer could be that you,

00:28:28   like you sit down to work and you press it

00:28:30   and it sort of, maybe you could do something

00:28:33   like it recreates like a podcasting setup for me.

00:28:37   Like I sit down, press the pedal,

00:28:39   and it opens like all the apps that I need

00:28:42   based on what's in my calendar.

00:28:44   So like if it's connected day,

00:28:46   it opens a particular Google doc,

00:28:48   and it sets my timer, that kind of stuff.

00:28:51   That could be the serious answer.

00:28:53   There's all kinds of ways in which this could go wrong,

00:28:55   though, like having, doing the foot thing with shortcuts.

00:28:59   I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe.

00:29:02   (both laughing)

00:29:05   - There's no good way to talk about this, man.

00:29:07   - No, no.

00:29:08   Well, yeah, you could use it barefoot, maybe.

00:29:15   You know, and do you press it and it, you know, sets the lights a certain color,

00:29:22   you know, the kind of stuff like dims the light, starts a playlist, you know.

00:29:26   Foot music.

00:29:28   Foot time.

00:29:33   Don't we all have a foot playlist in Apple Music?

00:29:36   My...

00:29:41   This is so juvenile.

00:29:43   - This is the worst podcast.

00:29:45   We are terrible at this.

00:29:47   - This is so bad.

00:29:47   - I mean, my first obvious idea was a mute switch,

00:29:50   but I think that's what everybody will say.

00:29:52   It'd be cool, but unimaginative.

00:29:54   The other thing I thought about is I've been using

00:29:56   Jason's podcast noter, which he and Dan Mort have been

00:29:59   writing about for a couple of weeks where you can--

00:30:02   - Oh boy, have they, those two.

00:30:04   They won't stop.

00:30:06   - Wait, what?

00:30:06   You mean Six Colors has been writing

00:30:08   about podcast automation?

00:30:11   I must have missed it.

00:30:12   - It's very strange.

00:30:13   (laughing)

00:30:15   - Where?

00:30:16   - You could just like throw your mouse cursor

00:30:22   in the general direction of six colors right now

00:30:24   and you'll land on one of these posts.

00:30:27   - This workflow basically lets you push a button

00:30:29   or do some sort of input

00:30:30   and it grabs the timestamp of your recording

00:30:33   and you can make a note of what went wrong.

00:30:35   And this is very helpful if you're editing.

00:30:37   I do this for Mac power users.

00:30:39   I don't edit MPU, but I take edit notes for Jim Metzendorf

00:30:42   who edits that show.

00:30:43   And I can just reach out and have it at the bottom left.

00:30:46   I'm very happy with my icon for this.

00:30:47   It's a little like cartoony speech bubble,

00:30:50   but instead of a word in the middle,

00:30:51   it's like a cartoony fire.

00:30:53   Kind of a, no.

00:30:55   And I hit it and it says,

00:30:56   tell us how your co-host hurt you.

00:30:58   And then I make a little note about what happened.

00:31:00   That would be pretty sweet to have as like a foot tap thing

00:31:06   because I put it in the bottom left hand corner

00:31:09   of my Stream Deck so I could do it by feel

00:31:10   without having to look down.

00:31:12   But the trick with it is getting it as fast as you can

00:31:16   so your timestamp is as accurate as possible.

00:31:19   And I think having that as like,

00:31:22   just like a tap away underfoot would be pretty sweet.

00:31:26   But I only record that show once a week,

00:31:27   so I'm not sure I need to spend $80 on it.

00:31:30   - It would be pretty good too,

00:31:32   'cause like you could just like,

00:31:35   I think you would more quickly

00:31:36   and more easily muscle memory that, you know?

00:31:40   Like, because the actual size of the button is much larger

00:31:45   than on the stream deck, you know,

00:31:48   like you just reach down and just like hit it.

00:31:50   Like in the same way that like,

00:31:52   I think David used to at least,

00:31:54   he used to have like a pedal for mute switch.

00:31:58   - He did, yep.

00:31:59   - Yeah, so like it's like a similar thing to that.

00:32:02   So it is cool, like it did make me want to just mention

00:32:06   like in general, just Elgato as a company,

00:32:09   They just make such good stuff.

00:32:12   They're like one of my favorite companies.

00:32:14   Like I just bought a bunch more stuff from them recently.

00:32:16   I bought a microphone from them called the Wave 3,

00:32:20   which I really like.

00:32:21   It's a USB-C microphone, but they,

00:32:26   it's, I don't know, it sounds pretty good,

00:32:28   but it's got a bunch of features that I like.

00:32:30   It's just nice and easy for me to use with my PC

00:32:33   for when I'm streaming.

00:32:34   And it has like a bunch of buttons on it

00:32:36   and like a wheel to allow you to control the volume really nicely and they built some pretty

00:32:40   good software so you can like do kind of like pseudo rogue amebury type things of bringing

00:32:46   in multiple tracks which is really hard to do on windows. They also make this mic arm

00:32:52   which i think steven's got too called the low profile mic arm which i hadn't seen this

00:32:56   before this is the first company i've seen do something like this. Well usually the mic

00:32:59   arms that we use they like come up and down again like that's kind of like it goes away

00:33:04   from the desk and then back towards the desk to suspend the microphone in front of your face.

00:33:08   But this is like it stays very low down, it's low profile and kind of swings in and the microphone

00:33:14   comes in from the other side. You have to go take a look at it. They make both types of boom arms,

00:33:20   mic arms so you can kind of get the idea of what's different between them. And also like I have a

00:33:25   bunch of their lights and stuff already on their multi-mount system. They just make like, they're

00:33:31   They just like for, if you do streaming stuff especially,

00:33:35   but anything like video related, audio related,

00:33:38   and then now all these other peripheral things

00:33:40   that could be used in other places,

00:33:43   they're just on it, man.

00:33:44   Like I have that capture card inside of my PC.

00:33:46   Like they just, they do great stuff.

00:33:48   Oh God, I like them.

00:33:50   - I agree.

00:33:51   I've got a bunch of their stuff too.

00:33:52   And it's all fantastic.

00:33:54   I really like this microphone arm.

00:33:56   I'm using it here at my main desk now.

00:33:59   And it just, it takes a way less space

00:34:01   and I can see much more of my display

00:34:03   'cause I don't have this big arm in front of me.

00:34:06   And yeah, I've been really impressed building out

00:34:09   more stuff in the studio with their accessories

00:34:12   over the last couple of years.

00:34:13   They're really on it.

00:34:14   And I feel like they took really good advantage

00:34:16   of the opportunity of work from home

00:34:18   and more people streaming.

00:34:20   Like you could just go there

00:34:21   and get almost everything you need.

00:34:24   Really probably everything you need now

00:34:26   'cause now they sell cameras and microphones as well.

00:34:28   - Yeah, that lights was sold out forever.

00:34:31   - Yeah.

00:34:32   - At the beginning of the pandemic.

00:34:34   Are either of you gonna buy the pedal?

00:34:36   - So they don't have any details.

00:34:37   I was checking on the webpage.

00:34:39   Don't have any details on like foot sizes that they support.

00:34:42   And also like they don't say whether you can use it

00:34:45   barefoot or not.

00:34:47   - I mean, you could use it barefoot.

00:34:48   Why couldn't you?

00:34:49   - Can you Dan, like I suppose you gotta clean it then

00:34:52   if you use it barefoot.

00:34:54   - Yeah.

00:34:54   - Like what if I bring it to the beach

00:34:55   use it barefoot and it's like sands all over the stream. Well it's not a

00:35:01   self-cleaning you know you always have to clean it. Whoa the springs get this

00:35:07   the springs are interchangeable so you can adjust the pedal pressure yeah that's

00:35:11   cool. Yep anti-skid feet for the feet it's heavy duty Federico so you can tap

00:35:18   with confidence is what the website says.

00:35:20   Do you think... do you guys think...

00:35:26   Oh here we go.

00:35:28   Do you guys think it also nibbles your fingers?

00:35:32   Nibbles your toe?

00:35:34   Nibbles your toe?

00:35:36   Will it nibble your toes is my question.

00:35:41   Oh my god I saw a Tamagotchi that you can poke inside of. Did you see this?

00:35:46   is this time somebody find me this someone must have seen this someone in

00:35:50   the discord must have seen this there's like a Tamagotchi that you can like you

00:35:54   can put your finger inside of to like pet it and it does the nib nib I don't know if it

00:35:59   does that it should but there's this is like a new thing that the Tamagotchi

00:36:04   knockoff it's not an but it's like that kind of thing there's an article on

00:36:08   Boing Boing what's he called the pewnerines touchable digital pet has a

00:36:13   hole in the side so you can insert your finger and quote "feel the virtual

00:36:16   creature inside" which is advertised as being very squishy and addictive to

00:36:20   touch. I Google touchable digital pet hole and I is it called the puny runes

00:36:29   touchable digital pet? Yeah, Punerine's touchable digital pet. Okay, so it's a hundred and forty three

00:36:35   dollars and there's a Japanese video that I will put into discord.

00:36:43   So we are now all part of this problem together.

00:36:46   I'll put this in the show notes too.

00:36:49   Yes.

00:36:49   Anyway, foot pedal.

00:36:51   Anyway, yes, back to the foot pedal.

00:36:54   No, I'm gonna pass.

00:36:56   I am fine, I think, with my actual stream deck with the multiple buttons.

00:37:01   That said, I think it's very cool, and I would suggest tying this kind of device to home

00:37:10   automation. I think it's perfect for controlling the lights. Home-related automation, I think it's

00:37:16   perfect for this kind of thing. Anything that... These kinds of switches, that are like one-way

00:37:25   buttons, in the sense that you just press them and they don't have any UI,

00:37:31   unlike a Stream Deck, which has actual graphics that you can see on the buttons.

00:37:35   This is like a physical thing that you need to press. It's always best, I think, to tie that

00:37:40   sort of thing to a home automation type setup, because it reminds you of a physical switch in

00:37:46   your house. So I could see this being very helpful for controlling the lights, if you have the kind

00:37:52   of setup that you like maybe you're a streamer right and you want to set the

00:37:56   lights a certain color or a certain temperature that could be pretty cool I

00:38:00   think yeah but it doesn't replace a stream deck obviously for all kinds of

00:38:05   automations that you want to set up with the multiple buttons on the stream deck

00:38:08   I mean and of course like the main reason that this thing exists is for

00:38:12   people that are gaming right so your hands are busy yeah so if you have like

00:38:19   a few actions that are good for you to hit while you're gaming, like you know maybe you want to

00:38:26   throw off some kind of hype signal or whatever, you can do that. Like it's smart. What I like

00:38:31   about Ogata in general is I feel like they have a very good understanding for what their customer

00:38:37   base wants and then they make those products. That's what I like about them. Which seems like

00:38:42   such an obvious thing but that isn't always so obvious it seems to some companies right?

00:38:47   They feel like they made a few things and then they're just slowly expanding out to

00:38:55   continue to meet the needs of their customer base.

00:38:58   I just think it's really cool.

00:39:00   Cool stuff.

00:39:01   They make a green screen mouse mat.

00:39:05   Which is like, why would you do that?

00:39:06   Well, if you had a camera, like say you're gaming, keyboard and mouse gaming, you could

00:39:09   have your hands in the bottom left hand corner of the screen so people could see it.

00:39:14   They can watch your moves on the controller or whatever while you're playing.

00:39:19   Stuff like that.

00:39:20   It's just so smart.

00:39:21   Very smart.

00:39:22   Good product design.

00:39:24   This episode of Connected is made possible by Capital One.

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00:40:55   All right, there's this weird story that started making the rounds earlier this week that MacOS

00:41:01   12.3, which by the way, MacOS 12.2 and iOS 15.3 are out, like as we're recording.

00:41:09   So go run software update this afternoon.

00:41:12   Also watchOS 8.4, which Apple really promises this time

00:41:16   will fix the charging issues on the Apple Watch Series 7,

00:41:19   which have made my wife so angry at her watch

00:41:22   that I think she may, if this doesn't fix it,

00:41:24   she's gonna go back to her old one.

00:41:26   - What charging issues?

00:41:28   - There are charging issues.

00:41:29   - She, well, she's the only person I've talked to with this,

00:41:32   but MacRumor says that there's been a lot of reports of it.

00:41:35   - Is this another GreenGate?

00:41:38   - I don't know.

00:41:39   You know what? I left the pink gate thing out of the show document this week,

00:41:42   but now you brought it up. Now I brought it up. Uh,

00:41:46   some users have had, including Mary have had where the watch will begin to charge,

00:41:50   but at some point overnight we'll stop charging and not actually like

00:41:55   top up again anyways.

00:41:57   And they said like 8.2 would fix it and 8.3 had more charging fixes.

00:42:02   And now they say 8.4 really fixes. So anyways, anyways,

00:42:05   This story that is actually the topic is that Mac OS 12.3 is bringing with it changes to

00:42:11   the cloud file provider API's and Dropbox and Microsoft have both come out and said

00:42:18   files that are offline, you will no longer be able to open them in the file open.

00:42:25   Wait, isn't it online?

00:42:27   You said offline.

00:42:28   Yes, online.

00:42:29   Online, not on your desk.

00:42:31   So Dropbox has this, I don't like this feature.

00:42:33   I don't use it.

00:42:34   They have this feature where say a pages document is not synced to your Mac, but you get a little icon where it would be.

00:42:41   And if you go in pages to file open and select it, it downloads it on demand and then opens the file.

00:42:50   That workflow, according to Dropbox and according to Microsoft with OneDrive, will no longer work in Mac OS 12.3 and later.

00:43:00   Instead, those files you have to open through Finder.

00:43:04   This is weird. There's obviously some sort of change here.

00:43:08   What was funny to me here is like initially I was seeing this as a "let's dunk on Dropbox"

00:43:14   Yes.

00:43:14   kind of thing and I don't think that's the case at all.

00:43:19   I don't either.

00:43:20   This seems like Apple have made a decision

00:43:22   and have told all of these companies that they're changing the way that this system works in 12.3

00:43:28   Yeah.

00:43:28   And now they all have to scramble to try and find some fix for it.

00:43:32   And Dropbox in particular says they will have a beta in March that should resolve this should work around this change

00:43:39   I wrote this thing last night basically saying Apple needs to explain what's going on here

00:43:45   Because not only is this crappy for users, but Apple has a cloud service

00:43:50   That nowhere does anybody say iCloud Drive

00:43:53   won't need some work around and

00:43:57   Apple's already like in hot water over anti-competitive moves and Dropbox and OneDrive directly compete with iCloud and

00:44:05   I got a bunch of email for people saying no, it's Dropbox's fault

00:44:09   It's like well read actually read what's happening and Microsoft and Dropbox are saying the same thing

00:44:15   like

00:44:17   It has to be some change that Apple is making

00:44:19   It's a weird change and I would like to know what that change is and why they're making it

00:44:25   But just it was a very weird story and my hope is that they're doing this to make it a more reliable system

00:44:33   So you don't I use this feature, right?

00:44:35   So I don't remember what this is actually called now because Dropbox has given it a bunch of names

00:44:39   I think it's like I don't know what it's called. It used to be first in front of an infinite

00:44:45   Yeah, that was that was the code name of it

00:44:47   That's what I've always thought of it as but it's like an online

00:44:49   So basically your files you can have a list of files. Yeah, and none of them are actually

00:44:55   Smart sync there you go, because I always get it mixed up with selective sync, which is a different thing

00:45:00   Yeah

00:45:00   I do smart sync is the feature so you can have files

00:45:04   that your system knows are in Dropbox and you see them and you see a little cloud icon next to it and

00:45:10   You can right click on it and download it or if you double click it

00:45:13   It will start to download or you can set files and or folders to always do one or the other, right?

00:45:19   So you could say like always download this or always leave it in the cloud and also the system just tries to be smart and

00:45:25   Downloading things that things you're gonna need or whatever

00:45:27   I was really hesitant when I first used this but I've been using it for years now and I think it's a really good feature

00:45:32   especially for someone who has like at this point

00:45:36   I think more stuff in Dropbox and I do almost of the then basic on any system that I have right?

00:45:41   It's kind of close ish

00:45:43   ish to like it's like somewhere between the way it works on the Mac and

00:45:48   and the way it works on iPadOS or whatever, right?

00:45:51   Like, not all your files are on iPadOS,

00:45:54   you just download them as you need them.

00:45:55   - Yeah. - With somewhere in between,

00:45:57   'cause it's also doing some downloading

00:45:58   and you can force stuff.

00:45:59   And like at the moment, say for example,

00:46:02   I open an application and then I go like file, open

00:46:06   and try and download something.

00:46:07   What happens is it hangs, the app hangs for a minute

00:46:10   because it can't open the file, the files being downloaded.

00:46:15   And sometimes that can be a bit weird

00:46:17   and sometimes the apps kind of act as if they are unresponsive,

00:46:22   like the beach ball starts spinning or whatever.

00:46:25   And so my hope is that Apple's got a new API that will,

00:46:32   I don't know, be a little bit kinder between applications

00:46:36   and the files with the file providers in the middle.

00:46:42   I mean, for me personally, what I would tend to do is I just go,

00:46:45   I'm used to just going through the finder to get what I want because it's better that way.

00:46:49   Like if you start it the way that Dropbox is saying is the only way you'll be able to do it,

00:46:54   I have found that that is a little bit more reliable because it will start the download

00:46:58   and then open the app rather than the app being in the middle and getting upset and

00:47:02   understanding what's going on. My question is the same as yours, which is,

00:47:05   why is this happening in 12.3? Like, I have, unless anybody can prove me wrong,

00:47:12   Like, was there any sessions about this?

00:47:14   Like, where does this come from?

00:47:15   And why has it seemed to have taken Dropbox

00:47:18   or Microsoft by surprise at seemingly such a random time?

00:47:23   -I also want to know, like, do we know if Dropbox

00:47:28   at this point is using the --

00:47:30   Apple has a native API for this kind of stuff.

00:47:32   It used to be called, I believe, Finder Sync Extensions.

00:47:36   Now they have the same API that is available on iOS and iPadOS.

00:47:39   It's called the File Provider API.

00:47:42   Do we know if Dropbox is using that?

00:47:44   I believe they are.

00:47:45   Okay.

00:47:45   I think you have to, to be able to put icons next to files and folders, right?

00:47:50   Okay, so they're making a change to the file provider API in 12.3,

00:47:55   and they're letting...

00:47:57   Hmm.

00:47:58   They're letting these companies know first as they should.

00:48:01   Okay, speculation time.

00:48:03   Yeah.

00:48:03   What if...

00:48:05   And I'm totally, you know, just came to mind.

00:48:09   This kind of thing, it suggests to me that Apple is doing something to the file provider API in general,

00:48:14   including files and iCloud Drive.

00:48:17   What if they're bringing back that feature for the pinned downloads?

00:48:22   Or shared folders or some nonsense?

00:48:25   Like, what's going on here?

00:48:27   But why is it on the Mac, though? That was an iOS feature.

00:48:30   Well, because the file provider API now runs everywhere.

00:48:33   Now it's iOS, HyperOS, and Mac.

00:48:36   And iCloud drive does not give you individual control over folders and subfolders for what's

00:48:43   local and what's not on the Mac. It's either everything's downloaded or the system just

00:48:48   guesses. And so maybe in doing this, there's also like new stuff coming to iCloud drive.

00:48:53   Yeah, because knowing Apple, it's weird that they are notifying this company of this very

00:48:58   particular change and just that change. Like.

00:49:04   the beta was even... has the beta even started for this? Not yet, not yet. I bet it'll be

00:49:10   the next few days because 12.2 just got released. You know, who knows, right? It's just, I think

00:49:17   jumping down Dropbox's throat about it is not the right answer. No, this is a lesson

00:49:22   in reading. Probably. Like, I know I sound like an idiot, but like, this is a lesson

00:49:28   in like actually reading and not jumping to conclusions. I mean, we all do it. I do it

00:49:33   the time too. But like people thought that what Dropbox was saying was like, oh 12.3,

00:49:38   oh that's the next version of Mac OS. No it wasn't. You know, like that, like people thought

00:49:44   that it meant in two days time none of this is going to work anymore. But like that's

00:49:48   not true. And them saying that they will have a beta available like in March, that might

00:49:53   be sufficient time. By the time 12.3 ships, it could be April, right? And it's all taken

00:49:57   care of. Like it's just one of those things where it's like if you actually just read

00:50:01   it and like think about it for a minute rather than just assuming Dropbox is bad because

00:50:05   of a reason that people have already pre-decided about them, then maybe you could come to a

00:50:10   different resolution about it. It's just, look, we're all guilty of it, I do it all

00:50:15   the time too, but I think it's just another one of these things where like we have to

00:50:19   just take a second before the tweet, you know? Yeah, you're bringing too much reason to the

00:50:24   show, I'm sorry. Out of their eye, right? No, but seriously, you're right, you're right.

00:50:30   in this case. And I think it's very cool of Dropbox to actually let everybody know even

00:50:35   before, because at this point, technically, 12.3 doesn't exist. Like, at this point, it

00:50:40   could be a typo. But no, it's not a typo. And given the timeline that they are providing,

00:50:46   it's obviously something that they know it's gonna happen soon. Maybe even this week. So

00:50:53   I think there's something else going on, though. I don't think it's just, "Oh, yeah, this update

00:50:59   as this one change that will affect Dropbox and all these other companies. I wouldn't

00:51:05   be surprised, I guess is what I'm saying, I wouldn't be surprised if this is part of

00:51:09   a bigger change that's happening to the file provider API in general, including iCloud

00:51:16   Drive.

00:51:17   It seems likely to me maybe because they bothered to tell these companies, like, be ready for

00:51:25   I don't know, but to be honest, this is kind of the type of stuff that I expect and we

00:51:31   talk about all the time, right? That like, to assume that there is a level playing field

00:51:36   is not true. Apple's not going out to every company that uses the file provider API and

00:51:40   telling them to get ready for this. Neither should they, in my opinion. Like, yes, you

00:51:44   should tell Dropbox and Microsoft and Google, "Hey, we're doing this, you should probably

00:51:49   get ready for it." Because if they don't, millions of people are going to have a bad

00:51:53   experience right and then it's Apple's fault because they didn't bother to

00:51:57   inform anyone but it's just one of those things right like this is the way this

00:52:01   stuff works it's the way it probably should work but this is again going back

00:52:06   to that whole idea of like what kind of partner at Apple like do you think they

00:52:11   consulted with any of these companies first no like they just like hey we're

00:52:16   doing this it's like oh great I guess we'll have to tell our customers then

00:52:21   Thanks.

00:52:22   We wanted to let you know that this is not your decision to make, but this is gonna happen,

00:52:27   so this is all the info you need.

00:52:29   File a radar.

00:52:32   Yeah.

00:52:33   Interesting.

00:52:34   Hey, maybe we'll get a beta tomorrow, who knows?

00:52:40   Or maybe today?

00:52:41   I could see that.

00:52:44   It's probably, I reckon, yeah, today or tomorrow, right?

00:52:46   Because they just put it out.

00:52:48   Yeah.

00:52:49   pretty wild stuff and it's just so complicated.

00:52:54   And this is really what I was trying to get at in my article.

00:52:57   It's just more complicated because of Apple's

00:53:00   other hot water when it comes to competing services, right?

00:53:04   And so it's probably a great thing

00:53:06   that they told these companies in advance

00:53:08   and not only for users, but also from like the,

00:53:12   are you doing something to break?

00:53:14   Like the story otherwise is Dropbox and OneDrive are broken,

00:53:18   but iCloud drive still works.

00:53:20   And then it takes two months for these

00:53:22   other third-party applications to catch up.

00:53:25   Apple can't afford that headline in the current climate.

00:53:28   So I can see why they wanted to get out ahead of it

00:53:31   and why Dropbox and Microsoft announced it too.

00:53:33   So they don't look like the bad guys.

00:53:35   This is very interesting.

00:53:37   The whole thing just really fascinates me.

00:53:39   - TJ in the Discord is saying apparently

00:53:41   that there've been new APIs for this for a while.

00:53:44   There is a session from WBC 2021 about this API,

00:53:49   and I tried watching it and it was so boring I quit.

00:53:53   So to be fair, there could have been details in there,

00:53:56   but it was so dry, I just, I couldn't do it.

00:53:59   But I now know how to build a cloud file service.

00:54:03   So apparently it's really easy.

00:54:05   Just to get like-

00:54:07   - It is that file provider API that we mentioned before.

00:54:10   It's part of that framework.

00:54:12   Maybe they are deprecating an older API

00:54:17   and they're letting these companies know,

00:54:20   look, starting with 12.3,

00:54:23   this old API that you're using will break,

00:54:27   so you gotta switch to the new system.

00:54:29   That could be something that they are also doing.

00:54:32   But the file provider framework has existed for a while.

00:54:36   So another theory could be they are deprecating

00:54:39   the old thing that Dropbox and Microsoft are using,

00:54:42   and they're telling them,

00:54:43   "You gotta switch to the new one."

00:54:45   So, and Dropbox was told about that,

00:54:48   and they're sending customers an email about it.

00:54:51   I could see that also, yeah.

00:54:53   - Hmm, hmm.

00:54:55   Look, the moral of the story is,

00:54:58   keep everything on a USB thumb drive,

00:55:00   and don't use the internet.

00:55:02   - Now, the moral of the story is,

00:55:03   are there people who just keep those files online only?

00:55:06   - Like, apparently.

00:55:08   Yes.

00:55:09   Yeah, you do?

00:55:10   Yeah, I have files that are massive

00:55:12   and I don't need them all the time.

00:55:14   So they just go online only.

00:55:16   So you don't want to use them with selective sync,

00:55:18   but you want to keep them so you see them.

00:55:21   But I want them in Dropbox.

00:55:23   But you want them visible on the Mac,

00:55:25   but not downloaded on the Mac.

00:55:27   I don't necessarily want them visible,

00:55:28   but they just are, like,

00:55:30   'cause that's just how the system works.

00:55:32   See, I have, on my Mac Pro,

00:55:34   I have my entire Dropbox downloaded,

00:55:37   but on my MacBook Pro, I have a couple of folders,

00:55:39   selective sync to it, which means they're like

00:55:41   not on the Mac at all,

00:55:43   because I didn't like the bugginess of this feature,

00:55:46   but it sounds like it's a lot better.

00:55:47   So maybe I was gonna say, maybe I try it,

00:55:50   but it's getting ready to break again.

00:55:51   So maybe after.

00:55:53   - It's gonna be real rough for you when you try,

00:55:56   like to go from one to the other.

00:55:59   - Yeah.

00:56:00   - Like that's a big old job, right?

00:56:01   Like, cause that's, you know,

00:56:03   a lot of stuff's gonna index.

00:56:04   So like, if you really wanna try it,

00:56:06   you gotta wanna try it, you gotta have a reason

00:56:08   for why you wanna try it, I feel like.

00:56:10   But I mean, I use it, it's great.

00:56:13   Like I have like large files or like for example,

00:56:16   like we have some shared folders

00:56:19   that are just loads of images from live events.

00:56:21   I do not need them to be on my Mac.

00:56:24   So online only, like I'll get them when I need them.

00:56:27   Or like the big one for me is me and Grey

00:56:29   keep every episode of Cortex's logic projects

00:56:32   in Dropbox folders.

00:56:35   but I don't need them.

00:56:37   But like, I don't need them on my Mac all the time,

00:56:40   but I like to keep them in Dropbox.

00:56:41   And this way it's like hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes

00:56:44   of files that I don't need to have all the time.

00:56:46   But sometimes I do need them.

00:56:48   So I go in and grab them.

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00:59:21   All right, Obsidian Shortcut Launcher, the OSL as they call it.

00:59:26   This is something that Federico has been working on with...

00:59:29   Is it... Did you work on this with One True Son?

00:59:32   Yes, yes I did.

00:59:34   One True Son Finn, Finn Voorhees.

00:59:37   Can you explain this?

00:59:40   Sure, like all of it?

00:59:43   Can you explain yourself?

00:59:46   So this is a free plugin for Obsidian.

00:59:48   Obsidian is the text editor note-taking app that we've been talking about lately.

00:59:52   Grey has been talking about it on Cortex. Everybody's talking about it.

00:59:56   Why is everyone talking about this?

00:59:59   Why is everyone talking about this?

01:00:02   Myke's not impressed.

01:00:04   I wish everyone would not.

01:00:06   I don't really. It's fine. It's a lot for my brain to handle.

01:00:11   Yeah, I'll explain it for you, Myke.

01:00:15   Even for my feeble mind.

01:00:17   You will come away from this segment wanting to try this thing.

01:00:21   No, I already do. That's the problem.

01:00:23   That's part of the problem.

01:00:24   Okay, well then, this is all useless.

01:00:26   Why are we talking about it?

01:00:28   Anyway, so this is a free plugin that you can find inside Obsidian

01:00:33   in the Community Plugins section.

01:00:35   So you can install it right there.

01:00:36   No need to manually download anything.

01:00:39   You can do it all with the UI in Obsidian.

01:00:42   And it's basically a way for you to run shortcuts

01:00:46   in the Shortcuts app from Obsidian.

01:00:49   So on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, you can create these launchers.

01:00:55   The plugin lets you create launchers.

01:00:58   And each launcher can trigger a particular shortcut in the Shortcuts app.

01:01:02   You give it the name of the shortcut,

01:01:04   and then what you can do, what makes it special,

01:01:07   is you're not just running the shortcut.

01:01:09   You can. You can just invoke the shortcut and run it as is.

01:01:14   But what you can do is you can send input from Obsidian to the shortcut, and that's why we needed

01:01:22   to work on this for quite some time and get it exactly right. You can send data from Obsidian

01:01:29   to the shortcut that you want to run, and there are seven different types of data that you can

01:01:34   send. You can send your text selection, or you can send the entire document, or you can send the path

01:01:40   to the document, you can send the name of the current document, and all that kind of stuff.

01:01:44   So you have multiple input types that you can choose from, and you can even send multiple inputs

01:01:53   at once. So you can say, "Well, I want to actually send my text selection and the name of the

01:01:58   document," and you can do it in a single launcher. Now, the beautiful thing about this is that all

01:02:03   these launchers show up as commands in Obsidian. Obsidian is very based on the idea of these

01:02:09   commands that you can trigger in the app. You press Command-P and you open the command

01:02:14   palette.

01:02:15   Oh, that's the shortcut for print. What are you doing, Obsidian?

01:02:19   Print, print. Who prints stuff anymore, man? Come on.

01:02:23   But it's universal.

01:02:24   They really co-opted Command-P?

01:02:27   Of all things.

01:02:28   Well, by diff, I think, or maybe I did? No, I think it's the default hotkey on the Mac,

01:02:35   correct?

01:02:36   Oh, where did you choose?

01:02:37   Anyway, you open the Command Palette, and all these launchers show up as commands, which

01:02:42   means every launcher can also be assigned a custom hotkey, meaning you can trigger these

01:02:49   commands with the keyboard shortcut, you can tie them to a string deck, you can do whatever

01:02:54   you want.

01:02:55   And that's basically the gist of it.

01:02:58   It's a system for you to use Obsidian and shortcuts together, you can trigger your favorite

01:03:04   shortcuts from Obsidian and you can pass along data. But, of course, you know me, I had to

01:03:12   go a little deeper than that. And so there are a couple of details that I want to point

01:03:17   out here. The first one being, in addition to sending text, you can also send attachments

01:03:25   from Obsidian to shortcuts. Obsidian lets you save images or PDF documents, whatever,

01:03:33   attachments in your Obsidian folder. And the plugin knows, shortcut launcher knows, that

01:03:42   if the cursor is over a link to a file, it should send that file to shortcuts, to which

01:03:50   you may ask, "But how can you send a file using a URL scheme?" And enter, once again,

01:03:56   my friend, base64.

01:03:57   Oh my god, why?

01:03:58   Oh no.

01:03:59   Oh no.

01:04:00   You're doing this again.

01:04:01   OSL knows that if you want to send an attachment, it needs to be encoded first.

01:04:08   And then you've got to take care of that yourself in shortcuts, obviously.

01:04:11   You've got to decode the base64.

01:04:13   But basically, what this allows me to do, for example, is I can take an attachment from Obsidian

01:04:19   and send it to a shortcut so that in one single step I can go from a local image in my Obsidian Vault

01:04:26   to an uploaded image on the Mac, sorry, CDN,

01:04:30   all thanks to Obsidian and Shortcuts working together.

01:04:33   So that's the first detail.

01:04:35   The second detail, which I think is even more fascinating,

01:04:39   the plugin works everywhere.

01:04:41   You can use it on the iPhone, you can use it on the iPad,

01:04:43   you can use it on the Mac.

01:04:44   However, a few days ago, I was taking a shower

01:04:47   and I had an idea.

01:04:49   This is necessary context about me,

01:04:51   because you need to know how I come up with these ideas.

01:04:55   I was cleaning myself and I thought about this.

01:05:00   On Monterey, you can trigger shortcuts in a bunch of ways

01:05:05   that are not supported on the iPhone and iPad.

01:05:08   Specifically, on Monterey, there's an API

01:05:13   to run shortcuts from the command line.

01:05:16   There's the shortcuts run command line,

01:05:20   what's it called, command?

01:05:22   Stephen, what's the proper terminology?

01:05:24   - They have like a command line interface?

01:05:27   Is that what you're looking for?

01:05:27   - Yeah, command line interface, yes.

01:05:28   - CLI.

01:05:29   - So you can run shortcuts from the command line.

01:05:32   And when you do, the shortcut just runs in the background.

01:05:37   The shortcuts app does not activate.

01:05:39   Like the shortcuts window does not come in the foreground.

01:05:43   You can actually keep the shortcuts app closed

01:05:46   and run a shortcut from the command line.

01:05:49   And the app in the dock stays closed,

01:05:52   but the shortcut runs.

01:05:54   That's one of the beautiful things about shortcuts on Monterey.

01:05:57   And I thought, well, plugins in Obsidian,

01:06:02   they are just running some JavaScript code.

01:06:04   What if we could check if the plugin's environment is macOS

01:06:13   and we built it in such a way that the plugin knows

01:06:17   if you're triggering a launcher on the iPhone,

01:06:20   it just launches shortcuts with the URL scheme,

01:06:24   because that's how you gotta do it on the iPhone and iPad.

01:06:27   But if you do it on the Mac,

01:06:29   it uses the shell command instead.

01:06:32   So the shortcut just runs in the background,

01:06:35   sort of like it feels like, it's not that it looks like,

01:06:38   if it is Obsidian talking to shortcuts natively

01:06:43   on the Mac in the background.

01:06:45   There's a few screenshots that show this in my article

01:06:48   and in the documentation on GitHub that you can see,

01:06:51   just like an alert box that just pops up on screen

01:06:56   from Obsidian.

01:06:57   And that's Obsidian talking to shortcuts

01:06:59   in the background on Monterey using shell commands.

01:07:02   So that's a nice touch.

01:07:03   And Fin, of course, I built this with Fin,

01:07:06   the one true son.

01:07:07   He made it all extra secure,

01:07:10   of course, with all the plugins that need to be accepted

01:07:14   into the Obsidian gallery.

01:07:17   There had to be a private code review

01:07:20   from the Obsidian developers, of course,

01:07:21   because they need to make sure that all the plugins

01:07:23   that they are accepting are,

01:07:24   you know, they're not doing anything malicious,

01:07:26   because you are running JavaScript

01:07:28   on your computer, after all.

01:07:29   And they came up with,

01:07:31   Finn and the Obsidian developers,

01:07:33   they came up with a very nice system

01:07:35   to run these shot commands on the Mac.

01:07:38   And I'm really happy about it,

01:07:39   because, like I said, this plugin,

01:07:41   you can use it everywhere,

01:07:43   but the best platform to use it is the Mac,

01:07:46   because on macOS, Apple built the command line interface

01:07:49   for shortcuts, I would love to have that feature

01:07:53   in iOS 16 this year, like being able to run shortcuts

01:07:56   without the X callback, like the URL scheme.

01:08:01   You can use it, again, you can use it everywhere.

01:08:04   It just runs a little bit better on the Mac

01:08:06   because it's more integrated with Obsidian.

01:08:09   And that's the summary of it.

01:08:12   - This is wild.

01:08:13   And I love that it does use the shortcuts CLI,

01:08:19   which I know we've talked about this,

01:08:20   but I would love to know where the idea came from

01:08:25   to have shortcuts accessible to you in the terminal

01:08:27   and that it shipped.

01:08:28   Like the apps UI barely worked when it launched,

01:08:31   but hey, we got a command line interface.

01:08:33   It's so interesting to me

01:08:35   and it does open the door to all this cool stuff.

01:08:37   And man, what a clever way to do this

01:08:39   because that is always listening, right?

01:08:42   It's always there.

01:08:43   You don't have to make sure you have the app running

01:08:46   or like shortcuts in the foreground

01:08:48   or anything silly like that.

01:08:49   - So there are lots of different,

01:08:52   John has been, the one true John has been playing around

01:08:55   this since Christmas, I believe.

01:08:58   It's actually funny because I kept this a secret

01:09:01   from John too at the time, and Finn, when he was over in,

01:09:06   when he was at home, he told his father

01:09:08   that we were building this, and John was surprised

01:09:11   to hear from his son that he was working on this

01:09:14   with me behind the scenes.

01:09:15   Jon has been putting together a bunch of really cool things

01:09:18   with Obsidian and Shortcut Launcher.

01:09:22   Jon is the type of person who does a lot of like

01:09:24   templates type stuff in Obsidian

01:09:27   for things like the Max Stories sponsor posts,

01:09:31   for App Stories show notes, you know,

01:09:33   the type of documents that require

01:09:37   a lot of like weekly templates.

01:09:40   And Shortcut Launcher is great for that

01:09:42   because you can combine Obsidian

01:09:44   and its powerful template system with shortcuts,

01:09:49   which of course, like Jon, for example,

01:09:51   came up with the system that Obsidian talks to shortcuts.

01:09:54   Shortcuts gives him a list of the latest articles

01:09:58   from Mac Stories, and that list is copied to the clipboard

01:10:02   so that you can just do Command + V in Obsidian,

01:10:05   and it's got a markdown list of all the latest articles

01:10:08   from macstories.net.

01:10:09   Now that type of stuff is totally doable now,

01:10:13   And I just wanted to have like a proper,

01:10:16   like the way that I approached this was,

01:10:18   I love Obsidian and I love shortcuts.

01:10:21   What if I combine them both?

01:10:23   Like, it's like when you wanna,

01:10:25   when you try to have your two best friends end up together,

01:10:28   which is something that I have personally done

01:10:30   twice in my life, and I'm happy to report that,

01:10:33   well, one couple broke up,

01:10:35   but the other one is getting married this year,

01:10:37   so that's cool.

01:10:37   But it's like, there's no greater feeling

01:10:40   that having your best friends end up together.

01:10:42   And this is the nerd markdown version of that.

01:10:46   Like, combining my two great loves in a plugin.

01:10:50   So I'm really happy about it, personally.

01:10:52   Like, even if nobody installs it, I built it for me.

01:10:56   And the fact that other people are liking it

01:10:59   makes me very happy.

01:11:00   - I mean, true love is always found in JavaScript.

01:11:02   That's what they've always said, you know?

01:11:04   - Also that.

01:11:05   And in the command line, yes.

01:11:08   - Is this like a thing for Federico now?

01:11:10   like Obsidian plugins?

01:11:13   - Well, so this, well, I think it is,

01:11:17   and I think it's been for quite a while,

01:11:19   because this is the first sort of free plugin,

01:11:23   like community plugin,

01:11:25   but we've already done three premium plugins

01:11:29   for club members only in September.

01:11:31   If you recall, we did the Todoist plugin,

01:11:35   the plugin for Markdown Links,

01:11:37   and the wild plugin that I used for my iOS review,

01:11:42   the one that compiles a table of contents.

01:11:44   - Yeah.

01:11:45   - But those were for club members only.

01:11:48   This one is free because I just thought

01:11:51   lots of people could use this.

01:11:53   And I just, you know, going back to what we said

01:11:57   a few minutes ago on the show,

01:11:59   sometimes you just make something cool

01:12:01   and you think it's neat and you wanna release it in the open

01:12:06   And it doesn't necessarily matter if other people use it,

01:12:10   because you know that you did it for yourself,

01:12:12   but you think, "Hey, maybe somebody else out there

01:12:14   is weird like me and wants this kind of thing."

01:12:17   And there's no greater feeling than that,

01:12:20   like creating something and releasing it for free

01:12:22   for everybody to use.

01:12:23   And that is something that, over the years,

01:12:26   it's a pleasure that I've learned

01:12:29   to appreciate more and more myself.

01:12:32   It's also why I really love writing about shortcuts and giving them to people,

01:12:39   because it makes me happy to make something, even though it's not like something tangible,

01:12:45   in the sense that it's not a physical product, but it brings me a lot of pleasure to build something

01:12:51   and release it in the wild. It's a nice feeling to have.

01:12:56   In the post you mentioned a few things that were kind of interesting to me.

01:13:00   you're publishing to WordPress straight from Obsidian now, you're uploading images straight

01:13:05   from Obsidian and also backing up your files into three places. I just read all that stuff and was

01:13:11   like except the publishing part, like I could see the benefits of being able to link these two

01:13:17   things together for iOS review time, like the CDN uploading and the backups. Like I know these are

01:13:23   things that you were doing. I guess you were going in, you were opening shortcuts right and doing

01:13:29   them? Yes. And again, John knows me well here because when he saw the full documentation

01:13:35   of all the things that you can do with the plugin, he was like, "Wait, you are preparing

01:13:42   for the iOS 16 review here." And I was like, "Yes, I am."

01:13:47   I don't like the way that sounds. iOS 16? I know.

01:13:51   That doesn't sound good to me. But yeah, and we try to make it as flexible

01:13:58   as possible. That's why you can choose whatever name you want for your commands. There's support

01:14:07   for multiple inputs. And it can get really complex if you want, or it can stay pretty

01:14:14   simple. But if you're the type of person who likes to fiddle around with this stuff, you

01:14:19   could, for example, put together launchers that do multiple things. Like, you could create

01:14:28   a macro in Obsidian. There's a plugin called QuickAdd that lets you create macros. And

01:14:34   in theory, you could do something like running multiple shortcuts in succession. Like, that's

01:14:40   the thing that you could do. It could get pretty complex and wild if you did, like,

01:14:47   "What if you ran shortcuts for an entire document and you scanned all the links

01:14:56   in the doc--" like, all that type of stuff you can do. And sometimes, another reason

01:15:01   why I wanted this plugin, sometimes it's much easier to create something in

01:15:07   shortcuts than it is in other apps like Obsidian. Or, I don't know, you know, AppleScript comes

01:15:14   to mind, other apps with automation features come to mind, like BetterTouchTool or Keyboard

01:15:18   Maestro. We have lots of options for automation, but sometimes you just know how to use shortcuts

01:15:24   more.

01:15:25   And so lots of people have built over the years, like me, a library of shortcuts. What

01:15:32   What if there was a bridge for the focus using Obsidian to tap into that existing library

01:15:39   of shortcuts? That was also one of the reasons why I wanted to have this plugin.

01:15:43   That's really nice, man. I think it's super cool. Obsidian is like, every now and then

01:15:47   these apps come along where I'm kind of jealous that I have no use for it. And I'm kind of

01:15:53   like, you know, in John's video, John made a little video showing it off. Maybe it was

01:15:57   in the article. Actually, it was in the article that you wrote, but you said what John was

01:16:00   doing with it. Yeah. Like he's making these like dashboards of his day and it's linking

01:16:04   out to all of it. It's like I see that stuff, it's like it sounds really interesting, but

01:16:07   I just don't think I work that way, but I'm kind of jealous of all the people that find

01:16:12   the use in that because it just sounds like a really cool thing to do. Maybe they're taller

01:16:16   than you too. Do you know what? They probably all are. I don't know if Jon's taller than

01:16:22   me. No it's not, I don't think he is. No it's not. Everyone is man. Well yeah, look I just

01:16:29   want to say you don't need to be like one of the fans. Like I don't consider myself

01:16:32   a fancy obsidian user. I don't do the graph thing. No, I don't. Get out of town, Federico.

01:16:38   No, no, no, no. I am serious. There are thresholds of obsidian users. There are the really, really

01:16:46   fancy obsidian users. They're like S tier. The S tier. Yeah, you're A tier. The academics

01:16:55   the scientists using mathematical expressions and having those, you know those graphs with

01:17:02   the dots? Like, I don't do any of that stuff. But that's the beautiful part about it.

01:17:09   This is why they didn't give you that content creator of the year, right? Which I tried

01:17:13   to fix it. I tried to fix that vote for you. What did they give you? What did you win?

01:17:17   You won an award, didn't you?

01:17:18   No, I was like in the top ten for content creators.

01:17:23   Ridiculous. You should have been number one.

01:17:24   They gave me like a $200 price, which I did not accept,

01:17:29   and I said, "Just do like a giveaway for Obsidian--"

01:17:32   Take that money, son!

01:17:33   No, no.

01:17:34   Take it, you know?

01:17:36   Go buy yourself something pretty.

01:17:38   No, it's fine.

01:17:39   They should give it away to the community.

01:17:42   I don't know, I just felt like I don't need it.

01:17:44   I paid for Obsidian Sync for a year,

01:17:47   and I know that there are like--

01:17:49   because I get those emails, right?

01:17:51   Like kids that are like 15 or something,

01:17:54   and they're just getting started with automation.

01:17:56   And they send me emails saying,

01:17:58   "Hey, I really wanna try this thing,

01:17:59   "but I don't have the money to send out for the club."

01:18:01   Like, I see these kids,

01:18:03   and I think it really makes me happy

01:18:06   to see, like, at a very young age.

01:18:08   At that age, I was stupid, you know?

01:18:11   Like, I was doing some stupid stuff with my friends,

01:18:15   and I wasn't into computers.

01:18:17   And I'm very jealous, in a good way,

01:18:19   of these kids that are like 13, and they are programming.

01:18:23   it's like man that's really cool and so I do not want that money I don't even

01:18:29   know why I'm saying this anyway yeah someone else won I like I like the the

01:18:35   no I like the unfinished thought of like these kids email me and they don't have

01:18:40   money for the club it makes me happy to see these kids as he archives their

01:18:44   email it's like but try harder child go get a part-time job as a federal

01:18:52   her things. Sometimes, sometimes, like I said, I am a benevolent figure. Don't say it, don't

01:18:58   say it out loud because then your email inbox will quadruple. Don't say it out loud. Exactly.

01:19:03   No, don't ask me for free stuff. I will not give you free stuff. I'm sorry, but I got

01:19:07   a business to run. But the sentiment behind it is very, it's very nice. Like to know that

01:19:15   there are people at a very young age interested in this kind of stuff. Yeah. It's great because

01:19:21   I know that I wasn't actually I wasn't allowed to go on the internet until I was 16 but that's

01:19:26   a different story. It was also just harder to get on the internet when we were younger

01:19:31   you know it was like no one would be on the phone. You couldn't go on the phone because

01:19:36   so that was your parents would yell at you it's like I'm on the phone. Yeah that's stupid.

01:19:41   That noise. Yeah that 50k modem oh my god that noise. When you pick up the phone the

01:19:47   - The one starts screaming in your ear.

01:19:48   - It's great.

01:19:49   - What was that noise like?

01:19:50   No, I don't know how to make it.

01:19:53   (imitates music)

01:19:55   Something like that.

01:19:58   - If you wanna find links to stuff we spoke about,

01:20:00   head on over to the website, relay.fm/connected/382.

01:20:05   While you're there, you can sign up

01:20:07   and become a member of Connected Pro.

01:20:10   That is the longer ad-free version of the show

01:20:13   that we publish each and every week.

01:20:15   Lots of fun.

01:20:16   We'd love to have you, uh, they are monthly and annual plans available.

01:20:21   Check it out.

01:20:22   Join connected pro.

01:20:23   If you remember, thank you for your support.

01:20:25   You can also send us feedback or follow up from the website,

01:20:29   or you can do that online.

01:20:31   You can find Federico on Twitter as Vatici V I T I C C I, and he's the

01:20:37   editor in chief of max stories.net Federico, what device are you going to

01:20:41   make a frames shortcut for next?

01:20:44   What's coming out next?

01:20:46   I don't know.

01:20:47   It's playdate.

01:20:48   Cable, if you're listening, send me a PSD and we'll make a play frame.

01:20:55   I don't even know if they have a screenshot capability.

01:20:58   Oh no.

01:20:59   Probably.

01:21:00   Hmm.

01:21:01   Well, maybe the analog pocket is next when they add the screenshot feature.

01:21:06   Steam Deck.

01:21:07   Did you see Federico?

01:21:08   It's coming out.

01:21:09   They announced a date while we were recording.

01:21:11   Yes.

01:21:12   February 28th, they start shipping.

01:21:15   Unfortunately. I logged, when I saw that email, I quickly logged into my Steam account, and

01:21:22   it said that my order is currently slated for Q2 2022.

01:21:27   Don't worry, it's gonna suck anyway. There's no embargo until like two days before.

01:21:31   Well, I could have said the same for Pokemon Legends, and yet the embargo lifted today

01:21:37   and it seems very good.

01:21:38   Yeah, but that's just because Pokemon's amazing. Steam don't know what they're doing over there.

01:21:42   And Steam is not?

01:21:43   Steam don't know what they're doing over there.

01:21:45   I think it's actually gonna be very nice, we'll see about this.

01:21:47   Hey Steam, hey Steam, how's your Steam previous hardware gone?

01:21:51   Oh, man, those controls are everywhere.

01:21:54   Why are you a Steam hater, man?

01:21:56   What about the Valve, oh, Valve boxes?

01:21:58   Oh man, Valve Index?

01:22:00   Can't move for those things.

01:22:01   Are you a Valve hater? Why?

01:22:02   I don't know, no, no, I am not actually, I've visited the...

01:22:05   Is this like a new thing you do?

01:22:07   Like, that's...

01:22:08   I walked past Gabe Newell in a corridor at their offices.

01:22:12   Did something happen?

01:22:13   No, I just looked at him and like I didn't really know what to say to the guy. I don't

01:22:18   think I could say anything to him really. I looked for Half-Life when I was in there.

01:22:22   Couldn't find it. I tried to do it. Couldn't find it. No, I don't know why I'm, I'm, I've

01:22:28   created this character for myself who hates steam.

01:22:30   A new persona that you have.

01:22:32   Yeah, this is my new, this is my new persona, steam hater.

01:22:36   Steam deck hater or steam in general.

01:22:39   Uh, booo. That's how it's gonna go. You can find Myke. He's on Twitter as @IMYKE. He hosts

01:22:45   a bunch of shows here on Relay FM. Myke, tell the people what we're doing on Friday.

01:22:50   On Friday, uh, Steven's birthday. And all Steven wants for his birthday is to watch

01:22:57   me rebuild an iPod. So we're gonna finish off a previous thing that I'd started. I have

01:23:03   an iPod video and the click wheel doesn't work. So I got a blue click wheel. And we're

01:23:08   gonna see how that goes we're gonna put that together together and we're just

01:23:11   gonna wish Stephen a happy birthday for a solid 90 minutes so you can join us at

01:23:16   11 30 a.m. Eastern Time that's 4 30 p.m. GMT at Myke.live on Friday which is

01:23:25   the 28th which is Stephen Hackett's 42nd birthday.

01:23:31   It's not 42nd!

01:23:32   Oh come on get it, I'm 43, come on man!

01:23:35   - Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, I'm a bad friend.

01:23:37   He's 43 years old.

01:23:38   - Well, pandemic year, you know, it doesn't count.

01:23:41   - That's true.

01:23:42   - You've had six pandemic years.

01:23:44   Yeah, this iPod-

01:23:45   - How old are you really gonna be?

01:23:46   Is it 35?

01:23:47   - 36.

01:23:49   - Ooh, 36. Damn.

01:23:51   - Wow, he's old.

01:23:52   - Wow.

01:23:53   - It sounds old.

01:23:54   - It's worse than I thought.

01:23:55   - Wait, do you guys think,

01:23:57   Myke, do you think we age shame Steven on the show?

01:24:01   - Yes.

01:24:02   (laughs)

01:24:03   - Yeah, I'm fine with that.

01:24:04   I'm fine with that. I'm totally fine with that.

01:24:07   In general, it's a bad thing. Like, you shouldn't do that.

01:24:10   I am 100% against age shaming.

01:24:14   But when it comes to Steven...

01:24:16   It's only fine if we do it in the context of the show with Steven.

01:24:19   It's no problem.

01:24:21   It's like in the same way that I don't actually have an issue with Steam or Valve,

01:24:25   but in that two minutes bracket I did.

01:24:28   But Gabe Newell crossed you somehow.

01:24:32   He did, he crossed me in the corridor.

01:24:34   He crossed past me in the corridor.

01:24:36   It's like maybe you saw him in the men's room,

01:24:38   he didn't wash his hands

01:24:39   and now you don't wanna use their products.

01:24:40   Is that what happened?

01:24:41   If something happened, something happened you can tell us.

01:24:44   Yeah, something went down there for sure.

01:24:47   Yeah, this iPod is the one back in September,

01:24:51   like five months ago, we put a battery and an SD card in it.

01:24:56   But then one of the buttons on the click wheel

01:24:58   wasn't working, I think it was the menu button.

01:25:00   So then I bought not only just a new click wheel, a blue one.

01:25:03   - A blue one.

01:25:04   It's gonna look so good, man.

01:25:05   You can find me on Twitter as ISMH

01:25:08   and I host other shows here on Relay as well

01:25:12   and right over at 512pixels.net.

01:25:14   I'd like to thank our sponsors this week,

01:25:16   Hover, Capital One and Trade Coffee.

01:25:19   You can learn more about them in the show notes.

01:25:21   Thank you to our members for your direct support.

01:25:23   And until next week, guys, say goodbye.

01:25:26   - I'll be there to you.

01:25:28   - Cheerio.

01:25:29   - Bye, y'all.