0:00:00[Music]
0:00:07Hello and welcome to Connected episode 511.
0:00:12It's made possible this week by our sponsors, NetSuite, Squarespace, and 1Password Extended Access Management.
0:00:19I am your Keynote Chairman, Steven Hackett, and I'm joined by our Annual Chairman, Mr. Mike Hurley.
0:00:25Hello, I am Annual Chairman Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Federico Vittucci. Ciao Federico!
0:00:31Sup Chairman, how's it going?
0:00:33Sup! Welcome back, welcome back to the show.
0:00:36So thank you, thank you. I wasn't here and I just want to let the people know that I have no idea what you did last week.
0:00:46Because Steven forbid it. Like, Steven told me you must not listen to the show.
0:00:55And I have not. I just saw the title, the Tichy Olympics. I have no idea what it's about. Literally no clue.
0:01:05Is it fair to tell him what it was about at least or do we don't even do that?
0:01:10I think even knowing what it's about could taint it. It's got to be...
0:01:14Is there a point, like at any point in 2024 will I be able to listen to this episode?
0:01:22Possibly. It's unknown. It's unknown. It's unknown.
0:01:27Okay, so I guess I gotta delete it from my hue. I was waiting for like...
0:01:30Yeah, you really actually should do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:01:33Okay, so not even this year at all?
0:01:37No, in a year you can. The danger is...
0:01:40In a year?
0:01:41We could create a space-time rift if you listen. And so we have to be really careful about that.
0:01:47There's a real problem.
0:01:49Okay, well I hope it was a fun episode.
0:01:53It was. It was. It was. I was interested to have Jon on the show. Did you know Jon was on the show?
0:01:57Jon was on the show.
0:01:58I knew that. That's the only thing. And Jon told me the Connected was fun.
0:02:03Good.
0:02:04That's it. Good.
0:02:05As everyone says, Connected is fun.
0:02:07Jon really does have a way with words, doesn't he?
0:02:09That he does. He does.
0:02:14Mike, tell us about next week.
0:02:17So we're off next week because we're going to be live in London. We look forward to seeing
0:02:24everybody at the Hackney Empire who's coming out. So we're going to be doing a live show,
0:02:28which I'm very excited about. It's going to be a good time by all and we're very excited.
0:02:33I'm really looking forward to it. I'm knee deep, shoulder deep, eye deep in planning.
0:02:39It depends on the way that you look at it. But I'm excited. Everyone's coming into town now.
0:02:45People are starting to arrive. And I'm really, really, really looking forward to our show at
0:02:50the Hackney Empire.
0:02:51Yeah, a bit of a bummer update that I need to share. Unfortunately, I won't be there.
0:02:57So I've already spoken with the guys, obviously. I don't want to get into details. Everything's
0:03:06fine. Just not really a good time of year for me to leave. And we're good. Obviously, I'm
0:03:16going to miss a lot being there. And I know that it's an incredible milestone for Relay.
0:03:23Doesn't feel like 10 years. At the same time, it feels like forever, which usually it's a
0:03:30good feeling to have. I'm very bummed that I can be there. But regardless, I know that
0:03:38you will both do an incredible job. And I know that you're going to have the time of
0:03:43your life with everybody coming in. So yeah, I just felt like I needed to share just in
0:03:50case, you know, in case anybody was coming in.
0:03:52The tichy fans. The tichy fans are going to be out there. Yeah, it's a shame. It's understood.
0:04:00But disappointing, but you're not disappointing. You know what I mean? We all wanted to be
0:04:05there together, but unfortunately, life finds its own ways sometimes. And they're not necessarily
0:04:12the ways that you want them to find. That's the full quote. That's the full quote. It's
0:04:18shrunk down in Jurassic Park.
0:04:20Yeah. We had some follow-ups. We had a lot of follow-ups that we can't talk about because
0:04:28Federico's here. I didn't really anticipate that being a problem. So if you sent feedback
0:04:34about what we did last week, thank you. I read it all. I'm sorry. But we did have someone
0:04:41point us to an Apple support document that I was not aware of. And anonymous wrote in
0:04:48Federico. I'm going to read this Federico. Know that it's coming from our listener, not
0:04:54for me, because it's a little antagonistic. I think I keep hearing Federico ignore this
0:04:59point about Apple bot crawling content, robbing the shop. I'm not ignoring it. Without ever
0:05:07pointing this out. If robot instructions don't mention Apple bot, but mention Google bot,
0:05:12the Apple robot will follow Google bots instructions. This is an important distinction.
0:05:18So other than the spiciness, I want to know what you think about this.
0:05:23I don't think it's an important distinction. And I think this person was probably playing,
0:05:31ah, gotcha. No. Because first of all, even Google bot extended is a relatively new addition to web
0:05:38crawling. So forgive me if I have not paid attention in the last six months. I mean,
0:05:43Google AI answers are something that are still rolling out, literally. It's like a feature that
0:05:49is launching now. So forgive me if I have not implemented the Google bot extended blocking.
0:05:56Obviously I do not want to block Google bot. So the, I'll tell you what's the important distinction.
0:06:03The important distinction is recognizing that I don't want to block Google bots because I still
0:06:09want my website to be indexed on search engines. Yeah. And Apple bot is also something that people
0:06:16want. Exactly. Exactly. Because I do want Mac stories to show up in spotlight. For example,
0:06:20if you are a suggested website that's made possible by Apple bot, but more importantly,
0:06:26why is it exactly like I failed to understand this point? Why is it that I should be okay with Apple
0:06:35doing what Google does? Like this, this part does not compute with me. And I feel like it's quite,
0:06:43um, ironic that we spend, you know, in the Apple community, a lot of people hold the Apple to a
0:06:49higher standard, but in this case, the argument would be, oh no, but they do what Google does.
0:06:54Therefore it's okay. I thought we were expecting better from Apple. Are we not? Um, so yeah,
0:07:00I disagree. Or different at least. I mean, I don't think, I mean, again, we will probably keep
0:07:06mentioning this for a while. We were not expecting Apple to do things the way they did them. Yeah.
0:07:12And also I would just mention like, just as a general, like rule of thumb with feedback,
0:07:18just because we don't mention something explicitly, it doesn't mean we don't know it.
0:07:23Like not everything needs to be explicitly drawn out every single time. Like, yes, this is an
0:07:30interesting distinction that if you don't mention Apple bot, but have restrictions around Google
0:07:36bot, then Apple will follow them. Okay, great. But that doesn't change the fact of what's happening
0:07:42here. They're still doing. The situation was that Apple, like, cause let's imagine Google,
0:07:48that Federico did know about Google bot extended, right? And he could have made a decision about
0:07:54Google bot extended. Apple bot extended didn't exist until after it had already crawled. Right.
0:08:00So they didn't, the situation's not different. Apple did not give a choice and just follow
0:08:08Google is not necessarily the way to do things. And like, it doesn't, it didn't, it didn't give
0:08:13people a choice. There is a scenario in which someone could say, I want Google to do this,
0:08:20all of it. I don't want Apple to do it. And part of the reason for that could be,
0:08:24if I'm ever going to make any money out of this, Google's probably going to be the one to work it
0:08:29out. Like if, if publish it, there's like a history that if publishers are ever going to make money,
0:08:36Google is the company who has a history of that being the case. I don't think that's going to be
0:08:42the case going into the future, but if you were to take the optimistic take, right? Like if you
0:08:48look at what Google pay, like what, you know, like Google sending traffic to people or YouTube paying
0:08:56creators, like all of those scenarios tend to be better off for the creator. I still don't believe
0:09:04that any of these things will have a better off for a creator, but that could be a decision I can
0:09:08imagine someone making. Apple's never going to give creators any money ever for anything.
0:09:14So that could be a decision somebody would make and just Apple being like, we'll just follow the
0:09:19Google rule is not, it's not an, uh, it's not a wholly acceptable way of doing things. That's just
0:09:27what they decided to do, but it doesn't mean that every publisher, like they were given no agency
0:09:32given no choice. They just went and did it. That's the issue. Talking about locks.
0:09:37Steven, you got a home kit lock. I did my, my first one. Okay.
0:09:48I, uh, what do you want to know? What do you think of it? Does it work? It does. What did you get
0:09:55and how does it, how does it work? Yeah. So I got the aquara aquara, a car, a car, a car, a car,
0:10:04you 200 smart lock. So this is there as of this according their newest smart lock. It works with
0:10:12matter and Google home and home kit. And most interesting to me, uh, the home key,
0:10:21uh, support or mechanism with an iOS and watch us where it basically puts a card and wallet.
0:10:27And when you bring your device near the lock, it senses it and then unlocks it, which is pretty
0:10:32cool. Yeah. This is, this is like the, it was, it's called, what is it called? Home home key feature.
0:10:39I think. Okay. Cause I have car key for cars. Home key thought imagine such a world, the naming
0:10:45incredible. Uh, but that's the key feature of these things, right? Is that you can just
0:10:51walk up to them. And then I don't think this lock is getting it, but like the next version of this
0:10:57is using ultra wide band. So you just walk up to the lock and it will open. Right. So ultra wide
0:11:02band is support for smart locks is coming in iOS 18 and watch us 11. And that will obviously require
0:11:10different hardware and I'm sure a car and others will, will move on that. And that is interesting,
0:11:16but this seems like something that is maybe a little bit better fit for me. Um, because my,
0:11:24like my, because my studio is in my backyard, I wanted a bit more, uh, I don't know,
0:11:31like intentionality about unlocking. And I just wasn't sure about like, how close do you have to
0:11:36be for the ultra wide band? Does it sense that you're moving towards it? I think the thing about
0:11:41ultra wide band is it's precision. I think that's the benefit of it over Bluetooth.
0:11:47Yeah. There's a distance, but like ultra wide band would know you were walking towards the door.
0:11:52Maybe so. So, but nevertheless, this is, this is a fantastic system because you don't have to do
0:11:59like open the app, unlock the lock or whatever. Oh yeah. And Bluetooth wouldn't work for you for,
0:12:05because you're so close all the time. Right. And it has a fingerprint. So, so you have the lock
0:12:12mechanism that goes on the inside of the door and it works with the lock that's already there. So
0:12:16it's like turning the dead bolt in my case on my very American door. And it has a keypad that's
0:12:23weatherproofs and go outside. It has a keypad on it. So you can, you can use a key, a pin code to
0:12:28get in, uh, in the car app, you can set a temporary pin. So it's like, if you know, if it's an Airbnb
0:12:34situation or you're letting your dog sit her in or something, you can give them a pin code. It's only
0:12:39good for a set amount of time, but it also has a fingerprint sensor on it. So I can also walk up to
0:12:45it and touch it. You know, I think I registered both my thumbs and both my index fingers and I can
0:12:50touch it and it will, it will unlock. And, uh, the installation wasn't too bad. I've got pictures and
0:12:56stuff on, on the blog post. I will say, and this is true for a car really across the board. Their
0:13:02documentation is pretty bad. And, uh, I don't know what that's about. I have some theories.
0:13:11You're buying products from a Chinese company. That's it. I think that's it.
0:13:15It's not like it's, it's, this is a totally fine thing, but like, I don't know how much of a
0:13:20presence, I don't really think they have much of a presence outside of China, but they sell worldwide.
0:13:25Yeah. And I think that they're not putting the work into localization. I mean, you can see it
0:13:31throughout the app. The app is just like weird, it weirdly words things, but it's fine. Um,
0:13:37one of the things I do like about a car is a lot of their products you can use without ever touching
0:13:42the car app, but you may just lose some features because of that. Yeah. And there, there was a
0:13:48thing, the initial version of the blog post, I had something that was incorrect. So I had to go back
0:13:52and edit it. Um, after a couple of friends pointed it out where this thing will work with matter.
0:13:58And I don't have any matter stuff enabled on my network. And in the setup flow for the lock in the
0:14:05Akara app, it's like, Oh, if you want to use matter, you have to upgrade to the new hub,
0:14:09which is the M three is there. Their current hub, the sports matter, but turns out that's not true.
0:14:15You can enable matter with a firmware update on the M two hub, which is the one that I happen to
0:14:20have. And, um, I ended up not doing that yet because when you enable matter, basically you're
0:14:27going to have duplicates of everything and home kit. You have like the standard to do it for this
0:14:31stuff. And I don't need to do it. So yeah, that for this particular product, like it, it gives
0:14:36you no benefit, right? Like only if you were tying, like if you, you know, if you had a home
0:14:42alarm system, like let's imagine that ring actually do what they promised and support home kit, which
0:14:47I don't think they're ever going to do as a matter. Sorry. I don't think they're ever going to do it,
0:14:51but if they had done that and you had like a ring alarm system, right. You could like tie these
0:14:55things together somehow. So I do have a system and the way I do that is home bridge, which
0:15:01explodes every six months, but that is more. Yes. But that means you don't need matter, right?
0:15:06Cause you can, you can just rebuild home bridge. Yeah. You know, it's like, it's like changing the
0:15:13batteries in the smoke alarm. You know, you do that and you rebuild home bridge and, and you're,
0:15:18you're good to go. This is exactly why I have no interest in those. Oh yeah. It can be, it can be
0:15:23really frustrating. But this it's pretty great. I mean, the home key thing's awesome. And I have it
0:15:29set up on the, you can see in the picture, I have it set up on the doorframe because I have the
0:15:33regular door and then I have a storm door with like a, like a screen on it. And when it's nice
0:15:37outside, I leave the regular door open and the screened open so I can like get fresh air and like
0:15:42hear the kids in the backyard or whatever. And so I have it in between those and I can just walk up
0:15:48and I do with my watch and just like put my wrist up to it. It unlocks and I've really enjoyed it so
0:15:55far. And of course you can do interesting automation stuff based on your locks. And I've done,
0:15:59I've, I've tinkered around the edges of that. I feel like it's easy when you're automating things
0:16:04with locks to like get yourself in a situation that's probably not the best safety wise. Yeah.
0:16:08So so I've, I've had fiddle with that a little bit, but it is it's pretty great. And I mean,
0:16:16like the other car stuff, I've got a bunch of their water sensors, like under the sinks and I
0:16:22have one in the pan for my hot water heater. And I have a couple of their, they have these, like,
0:16:26they don't sell them anymore. I don't know what happened, but they have these buttons and basically
0:16:31you can just use them as home kit triggers. So I have two of those. I do have one of those. Yeah,
0:16:37they're great. Um, the Acara mini button something. Yeah. And I've got two on our fridge and one opens
0:16:45and closes the garage door and the other turns on a lighting scene that basically turns on the lights
0:16:51across the front of the house. So you can just hit the button and, um, all their hardware is great.
0:16:57It's really the localization and some of the directions where things, uh, things fall down
0:17:02a little bit. And this lock is currently 20% off for prime day. Oh, nice. Yeah. Uh, I want to,
0:17:09like, while we're talking about this, I give like a massive recommendation for the, the doorbell,
0:17:13the G4 smart video doorbell. Uh, I have one and I love it. And what makes it so good compared to
0:17:21other products is it is home kit and it is wireless. Like it's powered by batteries. Yeah. So it was.
0:17:28Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Which is there's nothing else. It's the only product that does this. Yeah. And
0:17:34the way that they do that is the chime that you have inside is actually what's connecting to home
0:17:40kit. And then it is then creating a connection between itself and the camera. That's cool.
0:17:48Like section. So it's very clever the way that it's doing it. They make a lot of products that
0:17:53no one else kind of does. Like, uh, I was interested in like w water sensors for a while.
0:17:59And, uh, at least at the time, they were really the only company making them that worked with
0:18:03home kit. And the way they do that with home kit is super smart. They basically act like an alarm
0:18:09system in home kit. It's like, if one of those gets tripped, my phone is going to go nuts. And
0:18:13that's exactly what I want it to do. If there's water in a cabinet under a sink, interrupt my
0:18:18podcast recording to tell me that, you know? Um, so I have one of those. Yeah. Yeah. They're great.
0:18:24My irrigation system. And I think it's very clever how they use the, uh, the critical notifications
0:18:32of IUS so that even if you are in a focus mode or you have like your notification silence, like it's
0:18:38always gonna make a noise and a loud one at that. It makes me sleep better, honestly. Yeah. They
0:18:44have like their little temperature sensors, temperature, immediate sensors are great.
0:18:48And I have a couple of the cameras too. They have a camera that you can make look like a cat.
0:18:55Um, it comes in the box. Little cat ears. I'm realizing now that I have a lot of Acara products
0:19:01because they make such good stuff. Like their products are really, really good. And this,
0:19:06the camera, I don't remember which one it is, but I'll put, I'll put it in the show notes.
0:19:10The camera, the cameras are good because they are also hubs. So you don't need a hub.
0:19:14You can have a connects as a hub and then you can connect other things to that. And again,
0:19:19it's like you can, it's the hub G3 camera hub G3 is the product I'm talking about. Like you can
0:19:25just use it in home kit and you can use it as a camera. But then if you go into the Acara app,
0:19:29you can change what the, like, you can move the camera around up and down and turn it around.
0:19:35Like stuff like it's just like clever stuff that they do. I think they make,
0:19:38they make really, really good products. Ooh, I'm going to buy a door sensor right now.
0:19:43I, I don't use their door sensors, but I like the idea of having those. And cause I,
0:19:48the door sensors I have a like tied to the alarm system that we use, but it's good stuff.
0:19:54I've got, I got one door. I mean, all my doors are like that, but I got one door in particular
0:19:58that would be very handy to know its status. Cause you can't really see it easily. Uh, and it's $14
0:20:04on prime day. So doing that. I, uh, I put a lot in a Acara one on the fridge.
0:20:12Oh, that's clever. So, you know, if the fridge door is like stuck open, if the fridge is open.
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0:22:04Vision Pro is available worldwide now, which is well, not what, thank you. Uh, not completely
0:22:12worldwide, but more countries. They have it in a lot of Asian and European countries. It's in
0:22:17Canada too. Um, and a couple of people wrote in about this, Jonathan, including them with like
0:22:25pointing out, it is interesting in all of the newsroom pieces that they've done. They show,
0:22:30uh, the dual loop band instead of the solo loop band. Yeah. And yeah, I've read a report. I don't
0:22:37remember where this came from now. It might've been from Mark Gurman actually that that has just
0:22:41become a directive. Like Apple's kind of refreshed the way they're doing in store stuff and the dual
0:22:46loop band is, is one of the things they've refreshed to. It is more comfortable, I think
0:22:52than the solo loop. And I will also, I wanted to bring this up because I now am a solo top boy.
0:22:58So I did the solo top because I could get a solo band now because they're out in the UK. So I was
0:23:05waiting for them. So the solo top is where you take two of the solo loops, like the knitted one,
0:23:10and you get this 3d printed adapter and you can then use two of those instead of the dual loop.
0:23:17Here's what I'll say about it because I feel like everyone that uses it,
0:23:23it like goes wild for it. I would say it's fine. Like it's, it's more for me, it's more comfortable
0:23:31and it is more easily adjustable, but it is not as big an improvement improvement for me as I
0:23:37expected based on other people. And this is, I think for me, based on the fact that I found the
0:23:45dual loop to be comfortable where most people don't. Interesting. So I think if you, I think
0:23:52that's maybe your, uh, the thing to consider if you're considering this, if you already find the
0:23:57dual loop comfortable, I would say, I'm not sure that it is worth the amount of money that I had
0:24:01to spend on a second solo band. They're really expensive and like may, you know, I'm sure it
0:24:08will be better when I have other people trying it out, but you know, for adjustability, like
0:24:13just ability sake, it's, it's way better. And what I'll say is I need to do some more testing on this.
0:24:18Like I've been using my vision pro the last couple of days and the eye tracking is just so unreliable
0:24:23and I don't know if it's related to this. So I might need to do some, some testing if like
0:24:28something's happening and now it's not eye tracking me as well. But like, I had to stop using it today
0:24:32cause I was, I was really getting frustrated because I just couldn't, it would just would not work.
0:24:38Maybe you need to do the calibration thing.
0:24:41I did. It didn't help. But I mean, like I'm also on the beta, right? So like,
0:24:45I know I've got way too many factors here that are going on for why it wasn't working.
0:24:50Sometimes I genuinely feel like it's like a weather thing. And I think it's something with
0:24:56my eyes. Like I think that there might, sometimes there might be something going on with my eyes and
0:25:00it's just not, not as reliable, but it's a thing I've had on and off over using the vision pro. But
0:25:06like today it was just like particularly annoying, but I do feel like maybe I've thrown too many
0:25:11factors at it. Um, because one of what I was doing today is I'm like deleting all my apps and
0:25:17reinstalling my apps because it's, I have the app store now, like, and I'm nearly done. So I've just
0:25:22been going through slowly and like delete one thing and still another thing. Because if I try
0:25:27and do an update for an app, it's like, put your old password in. It's like, well, I don't want to
0:25:30do that. So, yeah. But so, so, so, but you're thinking that you have unreliable eyes. That is
0:25:37your, potentially there is, I am not ruling that out as well. That my eyes are unreliable. Oh God.
0:25:45No. That wasn't necessary though. Like, okay. I'm reliable. No, stop. We got it the first time.
0:25:53I don't think you did. Well, I'm taking the word eye, like, like I like eyes and I'm putting it in
0:25:58the middle. Oh, he's explaining it. Yes. You didn't laugh. So you didn't laugh. So I just figured
0:26:04that like you didn't get it, which is fine to not get it. Do you want us to clap for you? Should we
0:26:11clap? Please clap. Please clap. Thank you. Thank you. Just two claps. Wow. Two claps. I liked it.
0:26:18Is this how I am? Is this how people view me? Yes, Steven. Yes. Now you, you understand the pain
0:26:26now. Oh, okay. No, actually Mike was worse. Mike was worse. Way worse. But yeah.
0:26:36Big news. The HomePod mini has been updated. Are you guys excited?
0:26:41What's the point of this? So Apple had a newsroom release on July 15th.
0:26:54Today, Apple introduced HomePod mini in midnight made with a hundred percent recycled mesh fabric.
0:27:00The internet freaked out. Didn't they already make a black one? Yes. A space gray one. And let me
0:27:05tell you, they look identical. In my blog post, I took Apple's own press images and all I did was
0:27:11put them side by side in Photoshop and hand on heart. I cannot tell the difference between the
0:27:17two dark ones. Oh, let me play this game. Hold on a second. So I'm opening 512. Is there. Okay. I'm
0:27:24not reading the cat. I'm not reading the text. Okay. Don't read the text. Okay. So you have,
0:27:30okay, so you have the image on the left and the image on the right. Um, and I got to make out
0:27:35which one midnight is. I'm going to see that meeting. Okay. So the one on the left seems a
0:27:42bit darker. Is midnight darker than space gray? I'm going to go ahead and say that midnight is
0:27:49the one on the left. Nope. Other way around. Oh my God. No. Midnight is lighter than space gray.
0:27:57Now we know. Now we know. Wait, midnight is lighter than space gray. Apparently so.
0:28:03Okay. I'm done. Can we move on? Like what's the, like, so the other ones not made of a
0:28:11hundred percent recycled materials. Like, is that what they're saying? Is that the thing?
0:28:14Uh, I don't, I don't think so. So in the 2021 press release, when they added the different colors,
0:28:23all it says is, uh, mesh fabric. They don't say anything about recycling. So recycle. So
0:28:30I have here the 2020 product environmental report for the HomePod mini. Oh man. The receipts.
0:28:3790% recycled plastic in the mesh fabric. Okay. So the press release was for the additional 10%.
0:28:46And the maybe impossibly, uh, difficult color change. Wow. Okay. Very exciting.
0:28:53Sure. Very exciting. This obviously got people very worked up saying that how dare Apple
0:29:01update the HomePod mini without preparing it for Apple intelligence is still powered by whatever
0:29:07the HomePod mini is powered by, you know, some Stephen, everybody knows that 10% of recycled
0:29:12mesh fabric is all you need for Apple intelligence. That's you know, I forgot about that.
0:29:17You forget about that. It's the mesh of intelligence. You know, it's like a brain,
0:29:21the Apple mesh, intelligence. Uh huh. See, I've meshed those two words together.
0:29:27Yeah, that was good. If you like to be clapped, please clap me, daddy. Okay. So, uh, that HomePod
0:29:36mini up next, Mike, what is happening with your AirPods? All right. I have a problem with my
0:29:41AirPods and this is just one of these things that I want to say. Are you sure it's, it's AirPods and
0:29:45not your unreliable years? I don't know. Okay. There could be a lot of things. I want to explain
0:29:51the situation that I'm having. So AirPods in, this is usually happening when I'm on a train,
0:29:58but not exclusively. Sometimes it happens randomly. My AirPods in and I'm listening to something,
0:30:04sometimes listening to something and playing a game. The game I'm playing right now, by the way,
0:30:09is Pegglin. I have been playing this game all day, every day for months. This game rules so hard.
0:30:16Thank you, John Voorhees for doing this to me. I love this game. It is a peggle rope like,
0:30:22which is just a beautiful sentence. Fantastic video game. Love it so much. Anyway, so playing that,
0:30:30listening to a podcast, like one of my favorite podcasts, like NPC, you know? No, thank you.
0:30:36Although I have recently started listening to Into the Aether. So I've been listening to a lot of
0:30:40that and they're all just one episode. Do you know what I mean? I'm halfway through their 15 hour
0:30:44episodes. They put out a couple of days ago, Steve, we listen to a podcast that put out in
0:30:48a 15 hour episode. You know, I've heard y'all mentioned that a couple of times and it blows
0:30:52my mind. Yeah. That episode is so long. It will never appear on Spotify. Yeah. Like that's the
0:30:59thing. Smart speed is going to save you five hours. It was hilarious to me, right? Like I
0:31:07was like, cause they just put out another episode today, which is six hours and 40 minutes long.
0:31:11They don't always do this. It just so happened to happen two in a row. Um, and they're like
0:31:16long-term projects that they do, which are really cool. Um, and I want to listen to the GameCube
0:31:23one. I've really been looking forward to the GameCube one cause I want some GameCube recommendations.
0:31:28And I was like, well, surely I'm nearly done with the games of the decade episode and I have eight
0:31:31hours left. It's like, Oh man, I'm never going to get there anyway. So I'm listening to podcasts or
0:31:38whatever. And what happens is all of a sudden audio stops and the transparency or noise cancellation
0:31:48fails. So, you know, if you ever go from like transparency mode to like off, right? Yeah. If
0:31:55you ever try that, you know, you can like turn it off. You just be like, no, I don't want any of this.
0:31:59So like I hear it. And usually it's happens in one year first. So like say the left year will,
0:32:06the transparency will fail. Then the right one, all audio stops. It disconnects from like disconnect
0:32:12from my phone completely. And I have to wait. Then what will happen is it goes in reverse.
0:32:19The transparency mode will kick back in again. Then it will reconnect to my phone and then I
0:32:26can listen to audio. Like essentially my AirPods are rebooting and this happens. Sometimes I'm on
0:32:32a train journey, like a 15 minute train journey. And it will happen multiple times. At first,
0:32:38I thought it was like I was going through a specific area. Like I know this is a thing where
0:32:41sometimes Bluetooth connections can be knocked out, but that's not the case. It happens at
0:32:46multiple points, different points, and sometimes I'm not on a train at all. So this is a very weird
0:32:52and actually very annoying thing that I have. I'm having happened to my AirPods and I want to put
0:32:58this out there into the world of like, am I alone in this? Just to set the record straight. I am not
0:33:05doing any betas here. My phone is not on the betas. It's happening on my phone. I wouldn't even know
0:33:11how to do anything with AirPods. I am just using the devices as a regular human would be using them
0:33:18and this keeps happening to me. So essentially it's like they're just like rebooting, which is
0:33:24very strange. Have either of you ever had this happen to you? No. No. No. No. You don't know
0:33:32about US 18 on your phone? What's the point? That is the thing. Fair enough. I'll stop.
0:33:39Seriously. The stuff in there is interesting to me, but right now I will put it on,
0:33:48but I will probably wait for at least another beta because I mean we're going to talk about
0:33:53the beta in a second, but they regress some stuff that I was excited about even. But
0:33:56there is nothing that is really drawing me in. There are lots of things I'm interested
0:34:03about. By the way, Federica, I'm very happy that you got back on the right side of history with
0:34:08the photos design. Yes. It is good. The photos redesign is good. It's good. It's good. I'm a fan
0:34:15now. I'm happy that you... But I like that you... One, I love that it happened and two, I like that
0:34:20you wrote about it because I think for me that was always the point of the thing that you had to
0:34:25settle. I have a potentially warm take. It's the best time. Well done. Stay with me. I think in the
0:34:37Apple community, a lot of so-called pundits, they have this weird obsession with being right and
0:34:47they don't understand then being wrong and being wrong in public actually makes for great content.
0:34:54Okay. That's my warm take. Okay. So like, I see what you're saying, which is like,
0:34:59a lot of people may make a decision and they won't ever change from that decision where yes,
0:35:05if you change your decision, you get two blog posts out of it. Exactly. You know what I mean?
0:35:10And maybe you could change your opinion again and you get a third one. Well, then you just look like
0:35:14an idiot if you do it too much. Two is the maximum. There's a balance is what I'm saying.
0:35:21Yeah. Anyway, yes. Photos. Photos is good, but probably, you know, you're fine just waiting for
0:35:28maybe even a couple more betas actually. I mean, yeah, I saw that. That's my thought. Like,
0:35:33just wait until it gets really, really solid. I would probably expect the next one to have
0:35:38Apple intelligence or at the very least the new Siri, but we'll see. I don't know.
0:35:41Yeah. I think I am at this point kind of waiting on that at least because then it would be like,
0:35:46well, I might as well jump in and try it because I've tried some of these features out on my iPad,
0:35:52right? And like, I feel like that is going to be best to try on my iPhone, like on my iPad Mini,
0:35:56because obviously if there's any intelligence features, they're not going to work on that poor
0:36:00little thing. But it gets very hot, very slow, very hot, very slow. But anyway, we'll come back
0:36:06to that in a second. Going back to my Apple's problem, I find it very frustrating. If anybody
0:36:10has experienced this, please let me know. This is my feedback. This is the end of it. This is
0:36:17the feedback. The feedback is given. It's given. It's out there. What's the feedback number for
0:36:22people at Apple? Tiny topic three on connected episode 511.
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0:38:37and Relay FM. So we spoke about betas a second ago, but public betas are out over on max stories.
0:38:47This has been a slew of articles covering iOS 18, Mac OS, Sequoia, watch OS 11, and they're out.
0:38:54People are running them. There was some confusion because the day the public betas were supposed to
0:39:01come out, there was a new developer build, but it was of beta three and it regressed one area,
0:39:09Mike, that you talked about. So why don't you tell us about that and then we'll get Federico's take
0:39:13on the public betas. Yeah, so they republished beta three. Presumably it was then going to be
0:39:19the public beta because Apple have done that before. I don't remember when, but I remember
0:39:24this happening before of like redoing a developer beta and then the public beta came out.
0:39:29And in that reissuing, they removed the feature where stickers could become emoji.
0:39:38My expectation is that it was just, and I will say, I use it, this is kind of broken, like it worked,
0:39:43but it was like shaky. And I'm hoping that they just need to do some tweaks because it would be
0:39:50really weird to not have this feature. So like, I feel like it's just one of these things that
0:39:55it will appear maybe in beta four or beta five again, but they did remove that feature.
0:40:02It's a bummer. It's a real bummer. Yeah. Yeah. There's no public beta for Vino OS either.
0:40:09So that's probably good. They used to not do a watch public beta, remember for years. And I think
0:40:15just the complexity of restoring one of those devices, if it goes sideways is, I'm okay with
0:40:21that being. Is it still like a horror show if you mess that up? Like, is it still really bad?
0:40:27On the watch? Yeah. Probably. Maybe they just finally gave in.
0:40:31You need to go back. I mean, it can be fun. That's for sure. Like
0:40:36just by virtue of not having a USB cable, you know, like that's not, and being a slow device,
0:40:43like it's not going to be fun. The restore process, which I have not done in many years,
0:40:49probably only happened once to me, but I'm going to bet that it's not pleasant. You know?
0:40:58Yeah. On watchOS, I'll give a shout out to Jonathan who wrote your watchOS 11,
0:41:04the imagery. Yes.
0:41:08It's really good. Yeah. Jonathan has a template that I actually want to steal eventually.
0:41:14You can just be like mine. He's not stealing. He works for you.
0:41:17Mine now. I made this. I made this. I made this.
0:41:24Jonathan is, this is something that we did not share publicly, but actually Alex, who's been
0:41:31doing the previous watchOS coverage and annual reviews, been doing them for 10 years. Alex
0:41:37decided to wrap it up with watchOS 10. So going forward, Jonathan will be taking care of the
0:41:44watchOS coverage and the annual review on Mac stories.
0:41:47Can I, considering the time has passed, can I talk about what happened at WWDC when it came
0:41:53to watchOS 10 and Alex? Do you remember this? I do not.
0:41:59At WWDC last year, Alex was expressing a, what is the opposite of desire?
0:42:06Non desire to write the watchOS 10 review. He didn't want to do it.
0:42:12Oh yes. And at one point he pitched having Jeremy
0:42:16Burge do it. Alex was trying to get out of this so bad. I remember it was very funny.
0:42:26And like, we just like the whole week, just hearing him pitch different people to you
0:42:31to do the reviews. Walking by somebody like, Hey, do you want to write something for Mac stories?
0:42:36Honestly, I was around Alex enough that week that it did feel like that at a certain point where
0:42:44he just didn't want to do it. Well, he would have asked you, but you're tied up with tvOS.
0:42:48No, I got fired. It was a shame. And, uh, there's, there's, unfortunately, uh, we're in an
0:42:56arbitration right now. There's legal proceedings going on. I can't share anymore. And I also can't
0:43:02write any reviews because of the way in which I was fired.
0:43:05Interesting. Yeah.
0:43:08Are these proceedings in the room with us right now?
0:43:13Please point to the proceedings. If you can see the proceedings, point to them.
0:43:18Unfortunately, I can't talk about this right now. You'll be hearing from John Voigt. He's my lawyer,
0:43:27which is the second twist in the story.
0:43:30Oh, that works. That works. So he's suing himself. Interesting.
0:43:34Some people like that. Sure.
0:43:41Okay. Uh, no, but I'm very excited about Jonathan taking care of this and he's done a great job,
0:43:45I think, with the, with the public preview, um, testing things that I, that I would have
0:43:50never tested. So yeah, there's going to be a watchOS 11 review on Mac stories this year.
0:43:55For me currently, feature for feature, I am most excited about watchOS 11.
0:43:59Actually, I agree. Uh, like right now,
0:44:04like live activities in the smart stack. I want that. Right. And also the smart stacks promise
0:44:11to actually do what they said they would do last time, which is like reflow them a bit better.
0:44:17And I'm sure in watchOS, the watchOS 10, like I haven't checked this, but this is my memory
0:44:22that they said live activities would be in that. And that never happened. Um, training load. I'm
0:44:28really interested to see the judgment that my Apple watch report on me after my workouts.
0:44:35Um, I'm like, is that going to be good about, and also the vitals thing.
0:44:38And I can tell you, please share that story. I, uh, walk, uh, like, uh, last week in the evening,
0:44:49I started feeling a sore throat and I was like, um, uh, usually as we know, it's pretty much a
0:44:58sign that something is going on. Sure enough, woke up the next morning with a notification from the
0:45:04vitals app on my Apple watch running the watchOS 11 beta saying, uh, there's three data points
0:45:10that are outliers here. And specifically it's your temperature, your heart rate and your respiratory
0:45:16rate. It was like, boy, I'm dying over here, but it was like, your temperature is like 1.5 degrees
0:45:23higher and your heart rate is really off and your respiratory rate is also kind of off.
0:45:29And that persisted for multiple days. Of course I got sick and, uh, and you know, sure enough,
0:45:36I got a fever and I got a cough and everything. So, and, and then, um, it did it for like three
0:45:43days. And what was cool about it is that I could tell that I was getting better because every
0:45:49morning, like there was going to be like one fewer data point. So like the one day the temperature
0:45:55was okay, but the two other values were still not. And then it was just the heart rate that it was
0:46:01still high and then it stopped. So the vitals app, I know that it's not new data, like all these data
0:46:07points, you could manually check in health before, but I think it's the UI and the bringing them
0:46:13together, making them very actionable, like in the way that like it's presented in plain English.
0:46:20It tells you every morning when you wake up, it doesn't require you to go open health on your
0:46:26phone. You can just do it all with a very simple UI on the watch. I think it's very cool. And I
0:46:32think it's going to help a lot of people. Yeah. I don't worry, Steven. I got you. Uh, I see this
0:46:39data in sleep plus plus like, cause it underscore uses it to form like a sleep, like a readiness
0:46:46score is what he calls it of like pulling in. I think it's some of these are all of these things
0:46:51as a way to show you how prepared you might be for the day. But I don't check that every day.
0:46:58Like I, I actually check that usually because of something that I'm feeling. I like the idea of my
0:47:04watch actively reaching out and telling me like that something's changed. Like, I think that's
0:47:11cool. Uh, and in terms of, in terms of, um, Sequoia, John, uh, John wrote about it. Um,
0:47:19it's takeaway, I think pretty much in agreement with him. Um, there's that two features that are
0:47:26really cool, like the iPhone mirroring and the iPhone notifications. Like that's gonna be,
0:47:31that is the highlight of my quest Sequoia. And I think it's, it's gonna be something that a lot of
0:47:36people are gonna use, especially nerds. I think people like us, we're going to be all over that
0:47:40feature. Um, but otherwise, and that is also pretty much my sentiment right now in mid July
0:47:49with iOS and iPadOS 18, we're all just waiting for Apple intelligence stuff to show up. And,
0:47:55and so what you're left with in Sequoia, in iOS, in iPadOS is a lot of smaller, like app related
0:48:05features on iOS. You do have the customization to sort of salvage this release without Apple
0:48:13intelligence. You, you have control center, uh, which is customizable. And for me right now,
0:48:19it's the highlight of iOS 18. You do have the home screen stuff. Um, and, uh, the, the photos app,
0:48:28which as we have established, I am now a fan of it. And I think it's, I'm curious to see what Apple
0:48:34does now that there's a public beta. Uh, I don't think we are witnessing the kind of backlash that
0:48:42we experienced three years ago with the new Safari, because the new Safari, that version of Safari was
0:48:48bad. This version of photos, it's, it seems like it's more of a subjective thing. I wouldn't say
0:48:54it's an objectively badly designed photos UI. I don't think that's the case. I think Safari
0:49:03was not good and unhelpful for people. I think that in the new photos design,
0:49:11they came at it from the thing of there, we have all this stuff and nobody looks at it.
0:49:18And people like this kind of stuff. And so let's show it to them, but in a way where we're not
0:49:24taking away what they're used to, like all you need to do is just swipe to get,
0:49:28like you just continue scrolling. If you need to go further, like my expectation is like,
0:49:33I would say 90% of the time when people open the photos app, what they want is one of the
0:49:39last 20 photos and they're still visible. They're still there. And so you can still get to those if
0:49:45you want to, but now you're also going to be pulled into like, Hey, look, here's these pictures of you
0:49:49and your friends. And Hey, look, here's this. And Hey, look, there's that. And so I think that is
0:49:53like, I think the design has come from a, from a sincere place, not just a, how can we rethink
0:49:58this application, which is what Safari felt like, whether that was the case or not.
0:50:03I saw some people say, Oh, but I don't want to discover photos in my library. And like,
0:50:09that to me is like a mind blowing comment. Like, I'm sorry.
0:50:12Why are you even taking pictures? Like if you don't want to rediscover memories and photos,
0:50:20like it's almost like saying, um, no, actually I don't have an analogy. It just seems wild.
0:50:26It's really strange. That's weird.
0:50:28It's really strange. It's really strange that you may be against the idea of rediscovering photos
0:50:34and memories when you do have a photo library. Like, you know, uh, anyway, we'll see if Apple
0:50:41listened to, for example, one feedback that Apple may want to listen to is if you set your grid to
0:50:50be fully expanded on the, on the phone. So you swipe down and you see just the grid and you force
0:50:57quit photos, maybe something that Apple could implement is remember the state of photos. Um,
0:51:03right now, if you expand the grid and you force quit photos, the next time you open photos,
0:51:09the grid is not fully expanded. Um, so maybe that's something that Apple could do, but honestly,
0:51:15I don't think it's, I think it's a pretty good design and I think Apple is onto something with
0:51:21this idea of, look, you can still do just the basics and that's literally 60% of the screen
0:51:28by default. But if you want to, you can keep, you can keep scrolling and find stuff because
0:51:36and you can change so much about what the app shows you and where it shows you it.
0:51:44Yeah. Like that's like the second shoe to drop for me with this design,
0:51:48which is like, Oh, so you don't ever want to see, you know, X or Y thing. Just get rid of it.
0:51:53Like, I just think that's very, it's very, I love it. And I think, I think that a good job.
0:52:00What I also think it's wild is that we've gone from photos being a completely non customizable app
0:52:07to photos being Apple's most customizable app ever. Like second only, I mean, at this point
0:52:15to shortcuts really. And shortcuts is the app that literally is designed to let you create stuff.
0:52:20So it's customizable by design, but what you can do in photos, it's, it's wild. Like rearrange stuff,
0:52:27modify pin collections. Like I hope it, like, I hope that Apple is now entering it's actually,
0:52:36this is a pretty good sentence that I should say for my iOS review. See, this is something that we
0:52:43spoke about on the pre-show. Mike, where can people get connected pro while I'm saving this out.
0:52:47Getconnectedpro.co is where you can go to get longer ad-free versions of the show. We were
0:52:53talking about Federico preparing for his iOS review and what his plans are for that this year.
0:52:59Yeah. What I was going to say in the sentence that I wrote down is that I hope that we are,
0:53:05Apple is now entering its second era of customization. The first one being visual
0:53:11customization with the home screen, lock screen, widgets. And I hope that iOS 18 is pointing at a
0:53:17more functional customization in the sense of like, look at photos and look at control center.
0:53:23That's my theory. Yep. Which I literally just saved. So yeah, that's good. That's good. It's
0:53:30been, it's been interesting this year. I feel like there's been more overall like change in evolution
0:53:36in some areas than maybe we've seen in past years, like particularly around like the tinting and some
0:53:41of the home screen stuff on iOS 18. I don't know. It feels like things are maybe a little bit less
0:53:47set in stone this year, which is, which is always interesting. It's interesting to see how Apple
0:53:52solves these problems as time go on. Right. I think we talked about Safari,
0:53:55obviously the biggest example of that sort of in modern Apple history, but even, even there's
0:54:01other features, you know, they're continuing to evolve and continue to change. And that's always
0:54:05really interesting to watch. I think I'm going to change the color tinting. Do you think,
0:54:09or you think that's done now? Oh, I think it's done. I think it's done. Yeah. Yeah. I think
0:54:15if that time is passed now. I have seen, I can kind of on one hand, I have seen two, three examples
0:54:25of a pretty good looking tinted and custom icon layout on the home screen. Like I saw a photo on
0:54:34threads of a person with wallpaper and on the left side was like this skyscraper with like orange
0:54:41lights. And on the right side, the person had put like, just like, like a vertical row of two icons,
0:54:47tinted orange. I was like, yeah, that, you know, that looks pretty good. It's not something that
0:54:53I would ever use. And you got to wonder, like, especially on social media, how many of these
0:54:58screenshots are done for clout and like, do you actually use your phone like that? But I do think
0:55:04that there will be enough people using phones with cast, with weird and beautiful icon, custom icon
0:55:10layouts that it's justified for Apple to do it. Not something that I will ever do, but Hey, you
0:55:16cannot like customization only when it just so happens to be your kind of customizations. It's
0:55:22kind of like democracy, you know, you got to love it all the time. Otherwise you're not going to love
0:55:27it ever. Sure. That's the thing. That's the way to say it. I just, I just, I just want to be able
0:55:36to use dark mode and not have dark icons though. And dark widgets. Like I want to be able to
0:55:44separate those things out a little bit. Um, and like be able to pick and choose like dark mode
0:55:50or not dark widgets or not dark icons or not. And yeah, I don't like that. I have that choice.
0:55:57Here's the thing I also don't understand. I don't understand this. They can do whatever they want
0:56:01with this people. I don't know why they tint the wallpaper. I don't know why that's the thing. Like,
0:56:05like make it dark wallpaper, darker. That is like a very strange setting to even exist to me. Like,
0:56:12I'm not really sure what that serves. Like there is very, is I am concerned that there are user
0:56:20interface designers at Apple that don't understand what dark mode is like what people are using dark
0:56:27mode for. And the tinting is one of them. Like, I don't like when people choose dark mode, it's not
0:56:36like, Oh, I can't stand bright color. Like even like the way that they're doing this like dark
0:56:42mode tinting of apps. Like I'm looking at an image here in Federico's article and it's like, they
0:56:48make the WhatsApp icon a little less saturated. Like why though? Like for what reason? They're
0:56:53trying to get people to use messages. You know, that's, that's anti-competitive behavior.
0:56:57I guess, but like for, I just don't understand for what reason is felt to do that. Yeah. It's
0:57:05strange. Uh, and I'm concerned about the way that they do into dark mode. Cause like, I also just
0:57:11don't really like in general, Apple's dark mode icons. I don't, I don't think, no, I think some
0:57:19of them look great and some of them look not good at all. And what is the vibe check from both of
0:57:29you? Um, small icons, large icons. I don't like the large icons. I have not used it on my phone yet.
0:57:41Right. Like I have not tried it on my phone, but in every image that I see, I don't like the large
0:57:47icons. They are too big for me. Like it's too big. Yeah, but after a while, like I'm telling you,
0:57:53I also thought like, Oh, this is going to be like old person's home screen, you know, like,
0:57:58Oh, giant icons because grandpa can read the labels. Um, but after a while you do get used
0:58:04to them and it makes you appreciate, especially if you have like nice icons on your home screen,
0:58:09it makes you appreciate the icons more. And then when you go back to the smaller ones with the
0:58:13text, you're like, Oh, these are small and have text underneath them. They look, Oh, I don't know.
0:58:20Maybe it's like a novelty bias type of thing now, but I really like my chunky icons. You know,
0:58:26I'm gonna, I'm gonna try it when I, when I put it on my phone, but I've just, I'm not sold on it yet.
0:58:34Something that I was thinking while I was working on, on the preview article,
0:58:41um, for all the, the thoughts that I shared about AI and I'm not like, I, this is not an AI segment.
0:58:52Um, but over the past week I have found myself very much look forward to the new Siri,
0:59:00especially because of the, uh, text activation that it's going to be possible. Like the text
0:59:07mode. I was at the beach and, and I wanted to do a bunch of things. And obviously I had to do them
0:59:13like, for example, I had to, uh, turn off a specific light that I left on at home. And I had
0:59:24to open the whole map and, you know, find the room and find the accessory and turn it off, which was
0:59:29fine. It took me 20 seconds, but I had the thought of like, it's going to be so nice when I can just
0:59:36tap the virtual indicator and be like shut down balcony light and it's done. So like that idea of
0:59:45going from just an assistant to a smarter assistant that is also like,
0:59:52basically like a tiny command line on your phone. It does make me very excited.
0:59:59And I was kind of wondering if you also had, like, if you've been thinking about this at all,
1:00:04like anticipating the new Siri. I anticipate it in faith. Like I am going to choose to believe
1:00:17it will be as effective as they showed us. If that bears out, then I am excited about this.
1:00:26And so like I, and at the moment I am choosing to believe that that is true. So I am excited for a
1:00:32much more capable system. Like that's what I am looking forward to. Like the ways in which you can
1:00:38trigger it is nice. The new UI is nice. Fine. But like, that's not like, we're not going to get the
1:00:44capability until later on. It seems like the full capability. That is what I am most excited for
1:00:50because I want to be able to have a natural conversation with my devices and have it do
1:00:58things for me. Like that's what I want to be able to do. Like I use this example already,
1:01:05but I'll say it again. So I'm like, I had to do this thing where, uh, for, we have like a
1:01:12selection of tickets for the live show that we're giving out to the family members of hosts and like
1:01:17friends and stuff like that. So I had a like 100 page PDF and every page on the PDF was a,
1:01:27an individual ticket and I needed to do, I needed to split that PDF into individual PDFs
1:01:35and name them with the seat number, which was on the PDFs. The way I did this was I created a
1:01:45shortcut to separate it, but then I did, couldn't, I could not come up with a way to extract that one
1:01:54particular piece of information and then rename the file as that. I have no idea and I don't
1:02:02actually think that Siri will be able to do this, but that's what I'm aiming towards. Like that's
1:02:09what I want to be able to say to my computer, take this PDF, separate it into individuals,
1:02:15take the seat number and rename each file with the seat number. Computers should be able to do
1:02:22that task, right? Like, yeah, I don't think the Siri they showed, no, neither do I, but
1:02:27to get to there, I think is this middle part, right? Of like, Siri will understand what I want
1:02:35more, Siri will be able to talk to applications, there are Siri intents and like, you can see a
1:02:40scenario where we get to that, which on the face of it, a computer should be able to do that. I
1:02:49know computers can do that. I know people can make this work, right? That like, with a combination of
1:02:53OCR, like you could make it work, but the amount of time it would take to do that, I just did it,
1:03:00right? Like it took me like 10 minutes and I'd renamed them all, like not even that,
1:03:03but I would like to be able to just give one command to my computer and like,
1:03:09and it activate all of the things needed to do that and just provide me with the result, like
1:03:15in seconds, I think we're on the path to a computer being capable of doing these things
1:03:21for us, like a personal computer, but to get there, we got this part in the middle and is
1:03:27that part in the middle, I'm also excited about the idea of being able to have a communication
1:03:33with my phone and it surface information for me and then perform simple actions. Like I am excited
1:03:40about that rather than a, I ask the assistant a question and get an answer and that's the end of
1:03:48it. That is like all Siri has been for like 10 years and like, I am ready to move past that and
1:03:56give it another shot, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And it's not that computers can't do those things,
1:04:02right? You could make something to do that on a Mac, but you have to know how to do it. It's
1:04:08about unlocking those capabilities, not only on a new type of device, like an iPhone or iPad, but
1:04:14for people who aren't going to open automator or shortcuts or the command line. And yeah,
1:04:20but even then, like if I was the type of person where I was having to do that task frequently,
1:04:25I would work out the way to do it. Like I know I could do it. I could get some help from some
1:04:28friends to maybe write a script for me. Like for example, Jason created a script for me,
1:04:34which I did some modifications on and like he did some modification. So like every year when we do
1:04:39the upgrade is I can have it go through the calculations and try and like pull together
1:04:46the way that people write things. So like Breath of the Wild and Zelda Breath of the Wild, like try
1:04:51and like lump those together to make that job easier. And while that took a lot of effort,
1:04:57I need that every year. So it's good to have done the effort because then it saves me time in the
1:05:02long run. But this task about the PDF I needed once, right? So like it wasn't worth doing the
1:05:09effort, but I should still ask the computer once, right? Like and it do it that one time
1:05:14because there shouldn't be any set up for me. Like even just to have not written the shortcut,
1:05:22right? Like that's the part where like I knew I could get shortcuts to separate this PDF for me
1:05:28into individual PDFs. Like I should at least be able to say like, hey computer, take this PDF and
1:05:34split it up for me. And it do that part at least. And I would expect that new Siri should be able
1:05:41to do that. Like from my expectation, if it's in shortcuts, it should be able to do it. That is like
1:05:47a absolute minimum bar for me. I have no idea if I'm going to get that. Like whenever this probably
1:05:53ships next year, but like that for me is like the, if it's in shortcuts, it should be able to do it.
1:05:58If it can't, I don't understand why. But I don't know. - I don't think we're too far off from what
1:06:05you are envisioning here, especially if like Apple is going to add more domains to the app intent
1:06:13and they're going to roll out the app integration of course in the iOS 18 cycle. And it sounds like
1:06:19from Mark Gurman's report, one of those, that Siri will also get like the ability to chain multiple
1:06:25commands into one. So I think there's a scenario in which like late 2025, say early 2026 maybe,
1:06:34what you just described is actually a reality. - That would be amazing. - Yeah.
1:06:40This episode of Connected is brought to you by 1Password extended access management.
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1:08:03There's a link in the show notes. Our thanks to 1Password extended access management for
1:08:07their support of connected and all of Relay FM. I wanted to close this week with a couple of
1:08:14app stories. Hey, that's the stories of apps. The stories. My name is John Voorhees. I used to be a
1:08:25lawyer. I came to America on a boat. On a week for a week. If people are asked us, it took a week.
1:08:31We found that out today. Yeah. It took a week. UTM-SE is a retro PC emulator for the iPhone,
1:08:41iPad, and vision pro. And I think out of everything that has changed in the app store in the last
1:08:46couple of years, for some reason, this is the one that blows my mind the most. That I can emulate
1:08:51windows XP on my iPad. What is happening? Did you see my hot take on threads about this?
1:08:58What'd you say? So I responded to probably neil i potel, I think, saying that using with windows XP
1:09:08with UTM-SE on an iPad, you have a better multitasking than stage manager.
1:09:14Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, you saying that this has changed, like this has changed within the last
1:09:22month. Like this app has been on a whirlwind and it was rejected a bunch of times and things
1:09:29were changed. It was rejected. And now it's here and everything that I've found, no one is really
1:09:35saying why? I don't know why it got approved. Well, there is no why. Isn't that also like a
1:09:44Smashing Pumpkins song? Probably. There is no why because the idea is that, I mean, Apple is now
1:09:53letting... The way I look at it is if Delta is successful and old store is so successful,
1:10:00we also got to let it on the app store because that's what the people want. And we're going to
1:10:05give people what... We'd rather have people be happy on the app store than be happy on a third
1:10:12party store. That's sort of my takeaway. Well, because this one was making headlines because
1:10:18they rejected it from notarization to be on old store initially. Like that's what the big problem
1:10:24was with this because that's not something that Apple should be doing. Right. But they did it and
1:10:33then it became a whole thing. And then some stuff got changed. And now, as you say, it's also on the
1:10:39app store as well as being in Delta. Sorry, in old store. So, what happened? Why is this now
1:10:49available? And this is the consistent thing which is becoming more and more frustrating
1:10:54about authorization. What Apple is and isn't allowing on the app store and how it's changing
1:10:59its rules. And sometimes the rules are this and sometimes the rules are that. It's like,
1:11:06I'm happy it's there for the people that want it, but this is just a consistent...
1:11:11The only thing that is consistent about this process is how much of a mess it is.
1:11:14Yeah. Regardless of the politics of it all, pretty incredible that we can now have a
1:11:23basically virtual machines for retro operating systems on an iPad. You know,
1:11:30just technologically speaking, I think it's very cool that you can run Windows XP, you can run
1:11:36older versions of Mac OS. Steven, you should probably try this at some point.
1:11:40I should. Yeah. There's something for you to do here, obviously, when you're less busy.
1:11:45But yeah, this is something that you can do, like run older, like,
1:11:48DLS games, like whatever. Anything that is considered retro, you can emulate with UTM SC.
1:11:57UTM I have used before on the Mac to run the Linux distro that runs Home Assistant on my Mac Mini
1:12:06server, and SC is the iPad version. So yeah, that's pretty cool. And hopefully, slowly but surely,
1:12:14more and more of these apps are coming on the vanilla app store, and I hope that will continue
1:12:19to be the case, especially with emulators that require JIT, for example. I hope that Apple can
1:12:25relax that stance in the future, you know, progressively, but I hope they can do it.
1:12:31The other app that I think we want to... Oh, we should also mention Delta on the iPad.
1:12:37Yeah, version 1.6. Update finally got out there.
1:12:41Yeah, you can now run it on the iPad. You don't have to be in the EU, you can just get it on the
1:12:47app store. There's some iPad-specific skins, especially impressive, I think, are the DS ones.
1:12:54And what I think is also pretty cool is that you can use Delta with multi-window. I don't know who
1:13:00wants to play multiple video games at the same time, but Delta has been optimized for iPadOS
1:13:06and Stage Manager. So if you want to, you can keep, I don't know, Pokemon Red going in one window
1:13:11and Tetris in another. Like, you can run Mario Kart and, I don't know, give me a DS game, Mike.
1:13:19Mario Kart DS. Well, okay, sure. You can run two versions of Mario Kart at the same time.
1:13:26Uh-huh. Sorry, I did a bad job. No, that works. That works.
1:13:30Super Mario 64 DS. There you go. Excellent game. You can do that, multiple windows. I don't know
1:13:38why, but you can. And so, yeah, I think it's going to be... I think the iPad is especially well suited
1:13:46for DS emulation because of the dual screens and, you know, you have a bigger display. And I think,
1:13:54especially like an 11-inch iPad Pro, for example, in portrait mode, running Delta with DS games,
1:14:01it's a pretty sweet setup. So that's also quite exciting and it's on the App Store.
1:14:06This week also marked the launch of the new version of Overcast. Overcast turns 10 years
1:14:15old this week, which is mind blowing. And Marco has been talking about...
1:14:19I'm just something turning 10 years old. Yeah, something else I can't think of.
1:14:24Where did the time go? But Marco has been talking about this for a long time on ATP and, of course,
1:14:31under the radar here on Relay, talking about... Basically, Overcast was in a position where there
1:14:37was a lot of really old code and he was unable to move the app forward in a lot of ways that he
1:14:44wanted to because of all this Objective-C. And, you know, he wasn't in the Swift UI land that
1:14:51an app starting today would be in. And so he underwent a massive rewrite to basically bring
1:14:56Overcast over into the modern times using Swift and Swift UI. And the result of that currently
1:15:03is an app that is more or less the old version of Overcast minus a couple of features, but built on
1:15:11a new foundation to move forward. And we got some links in the show notes for people to go check
1:15:16out. I'm sure... Actually, I know that the majority of you listening are listening in Overcast because
1:15:22it is the most popular podcast client for this and many other tech podcasts. And I'd love to know
1:15:28what you all think about it. This update for me, Mixbag. I have some things about it that I really
1:15:36like, some things that I don't like, and some things that I'm kind of in the middle. So visually,
1:15:42a lot of the design tweaks that Marco has done, I do really like. I especially like the new
1:15:48home screen. I like the circle playlists. I would like to be able to remove some of them because I
1:15:54don't need them all, but like I only use two playlists and I think that they look nice.
1:15:59I like the kind of like carousel of shows that's at the top. I expect in the future that I'll be
1:16:06able to long press on these and do stuff with them, but I do like that they're up there because
1:16:11I do sometimes just find just, oh, that's just like a really quick way to just jump into what
1:16:16I'm listening to. I'm still getting used to the nail playing screen. The way in which you access
1:16:23show notes and chapters is especially what I'm trying to get used to. I really like the sliding
1:16:27cards that was there in Overcast before. You just slide left to right. I'm much more used to the,
1:16:39I actually quite like the way to get to, there's like a quick way to get to the show notes,
1:16:45which is just tap the artwork and that's how I'm doing it and that works pretty well. Although
1:16:49sometimes, you know, with some things that you, when you tap something, usually you tap it again
1:16:57to undo what you've done and obviously you can't do that here, but that's fine.
1:17:00I don't like the chapter screen where it just like full screen takes over and that UI I'm not a fan
1:17:11of, but it works though, which is fine, you know, like it's working for me, but I know I've got to
1:17:19get used to it. We've been using that nail playing screen for like six years, like in the exact way
1:17:25that it was. I think that's how long it's been since that was released and so I kind of got to
1:17:31get used to it. Originally I was very upset about the removal of streaming because that was how I
1:17:36don't download podcasts. I just press play and they stream, but in actuality it has not caused
1:17:45a problem for me and I think the way that Marco designed the idea that you press play and it brings
1:17:51up playing screen and then just goes downloads for you, I think is a very clever way of dealing with
1:17:56that problem and I'm sure because the way he's described it is essentially it was just
1:18:01the way in which podcasts are being produced now, which is what a lot of direct was the AI,
1:18:07like the ad insertion stuff, is causing him dynamic, I was gonna say direct but that's wrong,
1:18:12dynamic ad insertion. That was really making things difficult for him it seemed like and so
1:18:18if this allows him to continue making like the audio effects and all that kind of stuff better,
1:18:23great, like that then I'm fine with it. I really love the go back button that he's added,
1:18:32so if you accidentally seek or if you like skip chapters and something, there's like a little
1:18:37button that pops up on the artwork inside of the app, it says go back and there's a little time and
1:18:42it counts down and it will go away for you. This is great because I was listening to that 14 hour
1:18:48episode of the podcast that I mentioned earlier on and I accidentally knocked the home screen and
1:18:53jumped by many hours in that podcast and so I quickly opened Overcast and was able to hit the
1:19:00go back button and it took me back to where I was before I did the accidental jump. I really like the
1:19:06context menus for moving episodes between my, I have two playlists, an all episode playlist and a
1:19:12queue playlist, so I just move things from the all episodes to my queue and I like that when you kind
1:19:18of like tap the three dots you get some options of like add it to the queue, add it to next in the
1:19:23queue, I just like the way that is designed and similarly when I'm in my queue playlist how I can
1:19:28tap on something and just like make it jump right to the top or go right to the bottom,
1:19:32I like those buttons that are there but something that I miss is that you can no longer drag and drop
1:19:37multiple episodes or episodes between playlists, I used to do that a lot. This is kind of like the
1:19:44back and forth is where I am with this app where like there are things that I like about it,
1:19:49there are things that have changed that I don't like about it and that's because I've used this
1:19:53app in its, the state that it has been in for six years is an incredibly long time for an app to
1:19:59remain in a state. I actually think that is a testament to how good the design was in my opinion
1:20:06then that it has maintained for that period of time. I can't imagine any other app that I would
1:20:13still want to use after not changing for that amount of time so I think that that was a
1:20:19testament to the work that Marco had done but like the back be kind of like for me
1:20:25I am really hoping that it bears true that this rewrite allows for further iteration of the app
1:20:34because for me this version has not provided enough to warrant the time difference but like
1:20:41so I hope that it continues to get better because there are things that I like about it and there
1:20:45are things that for me are regressions. I understand the regressions but they are
1:20:50regressions for me and so we'll see where it goes from here. That's kind of my feeling on it. It's
1:20:55like this is fine for what it is right now and I hope that he will be able to iterate on it in
1:21:01the way that he said that he will be able to because this version doesn't click for me everywhere
1:21:05but I'm confident and hopeful that the app will continue to get better because there are these
1:21:10little shining moments in here which are like so nice like that go back button and I really like
1:21:16a lot of the animations in the app now and the app feels modern again so I'm hoping that this is
1:21:23as Marco has very well put it so I believe in completely like the foundation for the app moving
1:21:27forward so that's kind of where I am with it. I have some thoughts. So for the past year I used
1:21:34Pocket Casts as my primary podcast client. I do need to have voice boosting and stream silence
1:21:43or smart speed to listen to my shows so Apple Podcasts is out of the question. It's not something
1:21:49I can use. I use Pocket Casts for a year and just last month I decided I cannot use it anymore
1:21:59because and I know that it's something that Automattic who own Pocket Casts are working on
1:22:04but Pocket Casts is way too slow at refreshing my podcasts. So many times it happened for example
1:22:11that Mike just put out a new episode of Upgrade or a new episode of Cortex and I couldn't listen
1:22:16because it was not showing up in Pocket Casts and I know that Automattic has said they're working on
1:22:22improving server speeds and refresh times but I just needed you know I was so fed up that I
1:22:29started looking for something else. I would be surprised if they're able to do this and the
1:22:33reason I say this has been a fundamental issue of Pocket Cast for its entire existence and they've
1:22:40always said that they're working on it and it has gotten better but there's clearly something going
1:22:45on with their architecture which makes that complicated for them. So like I don't know in your
1:22:52situation I wouldn't believe it was going to improve to the point that you want it which is
1:22:56instant like Overcast has been and Apple Podcasts is and Castro is as well. Yep so just last week I
1:23:04tried Castro with the new owners. I really like Castro and for me right now it is the app to beat.
1:23:12I love its UI, its inbox and queue based approach. It's fast, I get notifications from it, I really
1:23:20like the now playing screen but I realized I decided you know with the new version of Overcast
1:23:25you know that's I want to give it a try and I am giving it a try. I temporarily deleted Castro and
1:23:31I put Overcast on my home screen. So this is the opinion of someone who hasn't used Overcast in a
1:23:36long time. I love that it's fast, that it feels a lot more modern than before and that it shows me
1:23:45those like quick new episodes at the very top of the UI. Something that I immediately noticed that
1:23:52is a common limitation all throughout the Overcast UI is that you cannot long press anywhere.
1:24:02Just like you cannot long press on those episodes, you cannot long press on a podcast, there are no
1:24:09context menus at all for these episodes. So that is something that I wish that Marco could add.
1:24:16I like that there's now like a more clear UI for having like the separation between all episodes
1:24:26and the queue. That's all I need to do, like I just want to see all episodes from my shows and
1:24:33then select some of those and put them in a queue. I like that there's like a proper playlist called
1:24:39Queue. It's obvious, it's simple, it's large enough, easy to get to and I appreciate that I
1:24:46can reorder episodes in the queue like you mentioned with the context menu or using drag
1:24:51and drop. Although I wish the drag and drop supported multi-item drag and drop. So let me drag
1:24:56and drop multiple episodes at the same time. Previous Overcast could, new one can't. I asked
1:25:03Marco about this and said this is a SwiftUI limitation. So okay or at least I see how whatever
1:25:10he's doing here like it's something that he wanted but it can't do. Okay. It's unfortunate.
1:25:19I think I like the new now playing screen. I'm okay with where the show notes are,
1:25:27where the chapters are. I love the undo button and obviously the audio effects are still the best
1:25:36ones. Like having used the PocketCast version and the Castro version, the Overcast audio effects are
1:25:42the best ones. So there's absolutely no question. I just want to make something very clear here that
1:25:47like Marco would have to mess up this app so bad. Like so so bad for me to not want to use it for
1:25:54how good that is. Like he has so much latitude for destroying this application if he wanted to,
1:26:01to like before I would want to switch because of how good it is. Like the smart speed and the voice
1:26:07boost features are so so good. Industry leading for sure. For sure. I love how fast it is. I was
1:26:15having some issues with refreshing a Patreon based RSS feed this morning but I know that Marco is
1:26:20working on some fixes for the new version of the app already so that's fine. The episode eventually
1:26:25showed up and I love how search because this is something that I do quite frequently. Search lets
1:26:32me search through my episodes so quickly. Like recently I needed to find a six-year-old episode
1:26:43of Into the Aether which is one of my favorite video games podcasts and it like searching for
1:26:49those old episodes in Overcast is excellent. I'm gonna give you two things that I dislike
1:26:56and hopefully these are areas where Overcast can improve with this new foundation. The first one is
1:27:02I dislike that the queue is a playlist rather than something that I can access from my now playing
1:27:12screen. This is something that for example it's something that I really like about Pocket Casts
1:27:19where I can see what's coming up almost like a music player right. Like the queue is part of the
1:27:26now playing UI and so I can manage my queue without having to dismiss the player and go
1:27:32back to the main view of the app. Right now the queue is basically a glorified playlist
1:27:38and I think it should also be something that you can access from the player. And the second thing
1:27:44and this is something that I have asked you guys to explain to me multiple times, you have and I
1:27:49still don't get it. In the home screen of Overcast right next to podcasts it says there's a segmented
1:27:59control that says current and all. I do not understand what this means. I just wanna see
1:28:08all my podcasts and I don't understand what's current and what's all. Some podcasts are decided
1:28:16by Overcast to be inactive because they've not published in a long time. Isn't that something
1:28:28that I should form as my personal opinion instead of Overcast's opinion? I have this consistent issue
1:28:35with all podcast apps that do this because people will sometimes let me know why is your show not,
1:28:42why is your show gone? And it's like well no that's not how it works. Actually you know what
1:28:48I'm wrong that's not what it is because I'm on current and I can see some things that are
1:28:53considered as inactive. So some I don't know. I thought I knew but maybe I don't because when I
1:29:00go to current some of my shows that are listed are inactive are there and some oh okay all right I
1:29:09think I've got it now. I think I've got it now. I think it shows that you have episodes that are
1:29:18unlistened to in. That's what it is. I'm always gonna have episodes that are unlistened to.
1:29:26Yeah but that's what's going on. This tab just makes me feel bad. So this and this is what I'm
1:29:31trying to get to. Like the way I listen to podcasts is I subscribe to a lot of shows.
1:29:37I don't listen to every single episode of every one of those. I just pick and choose and put them
1:29:42in my queue. I'm always gonna have unlistened episodes. So I'm guessing there's always gonna
1:29:49be something that is current. What I want is I just want to see all my shows. When I tap on one
1:29:55I see the list of all episodes and some of them are like grayed out or they have a checkmark or
1:30:00something that says you've played this. That's all I want. Like this if there was like an in-app
1:30:07purchase to spend two dollars to make this segmented control disappear I would pay for it.
1:30:13Like just because it visually bothers me. Just like because everything is for me everything is
1:30:20current and all at the same time. Like this state I don't need and I don't understand.
1:30:27So yeah but otherwise I'm really liking this update and like this is a very small thing. Like
1:30:36the audio quality is top-notch. Search is incredible. I like the new design and I
1:30:41hope Marco has a new foundation to iterate on this app now. Yep. My only really kind of big thing
1:30:49UI-wise is I don't understand why different components of what should be kind of the same
1:30:56thing look radically different. So the screen to manage or skip around chapters is a separate screen
1:31:05from the show notes which is a separate screen from the EQ and audio you know settings including
1:31:11the sleep timer and I think show notes and chapters could be one thing but they all interact in
1:31:17different ways. Like the EQ and the sound effects is a panel that slides up from the bottom. The
1:31:22other two are full screen but operate in different ways and I don't understand why they're not all
1:31:28similar and I would like to see that sort of stuff tidied up and that's feedback that I shared in the
1:31:33beta and again in my blog post so we'll see if that happens but overall I agree with you all.
1:31:39It's an app that a lot of people including three of us love and have used for a long time and if
1:31:44this means that he can move it forward in ways that are meaningful again then I'm super excited
1:31:49for him and you know our complaints are I think minor if he can move the ball forward in these
1:31:56new ways and I seem to think that he can. Yeah I think we're very consistent on that of like
1:32:02there are changes and changes to an app that you use this much you kind of question them but none
1:32:10of that will matter if the app gets the improvement that we want it to get. Yeah. Which is just like
1:32:15consistent features and and love and care and you know moving it forward so yeah I'm excited for it
1:32:23it's doing me great you know we've been using it for I don't know like a few weeks a month
1:32:28or something right through the beta process and it got better during that and I know that
1:32:33Mark has focused on it and I know that he pays attention to what people have to say and so I
1:32:39expect that it's only going to get better and only going to get better quicker too so. Yeah.
1:32:43He did and I would just say like you know listening to him and understanding what he's been through
1:32:49to get this done he has done something quite herculean it's basically started again like
1:32:54it's a new app like he may as well have given another name and like released another app like
1:32:59that's essentially what he has done here like this is not the typical like redesign like this is just
1:33:05like he went start new project basically and like let's go over again. Maybe should have called it
1:33:12overcast new year like you remember those names? Neuer. For like 15 years ago overcast Neuer.
1:33:21And so yeah I think it is quite an incredible thing and we only we only give it criticism
1:33:29because we love it you know. Yeah. Yeah. So that yeah I just want to say that to end.
1:33:35Well I think that does it for this week if you want to find links to the stories we spoke about
1:33:42head on over to the website relay.fm/connected/511 those links are also in your podcast player of
1:33:50choice there's also a link to become a member of get connected pro which is the longer ad-free
1:33:55version of the show that we do each and every week. Except next week. Except next week and we're
1:34:00off. Except next week. I've been I feel like underscore you know like when they did the
1:34:05the longer episode of under the radar and now he's like usually not longer than 30 minutes
1:34:12like so for the last two weeks I've been I've been I've not been I've been really restricting myself
1:34:16from saying every week. That's fine Mike. So and then like two weeks out and I'll be okay again.
1:34:23It's fine you know. Everybody will be fine. If you want to find us on oh I didn't finish my sentence
1:34:30uh you can also submit feedback or follow up there's a link in the show notes for that too.
1:34:33You can find us all online Federico is the editor in chief of maxstories.net and can be found on
1:34:39mastodon and threads as vatici. Mike can be found on those social networks as imyke. He's the host
1:34:47of a bunch of other shows here across relay and is the host of the relay 10 show which is very
1:34:53exciting. You're like you're only gonna get that once I'm not gonna. I know you know I only want it
1:34:59once I don't need it any other time like I want it to be you but I think or I think here's the rule
1:35:06if you arranged it you can host it you can host it and that will typically mean that you will be
1:35:12back to being host again. Yeah yeah you you are resigning as svp of european events after this
1:35:20immediately immediately. Tinder my resignation. Time for an election that's what y'all do in the UK right?
1:35:27Yeah yeah yeah yep. You can find me on mastodon and threads as ismh86. I write 512 pixels.net
1:35:35and co-host mac power users here on relay each and every sunday afternoon. I thank our sponsors
1:35:41this week netsweet squarespace and one password extended access management and until two weeks
1:35:49from now say goodbye. I'll leave it at you. Cheerio. Bye y'all.
1:35:54[ Silence ]