Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► From Relay, this is Connected, episode 562. Today's show is brought to you by Ecamm and Connected Pro. I am your Ricky Benchman, Federico Wittici, and it's my pleasure to introduce Stephen.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hello, Stephen.

00:00:22 ◼   ► I missed y'all last week, and I couldn't listen to the episode. I was forbidden, which makes me nervous slash sad, but I'm glad to be back. I'm glad to be back. Thank you for John for holding down my little corner of the show. I am joined by Mike.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Hi. I've realized now, I forgot to mention, Stephen, I wasn't just being rude when I removed one of your topics from the document. We spoke about it last week, the G2 thing. We spoke about that. I deleted it. I meant to say to you there's a reason I deleted this, not just like, boring, get out of here, nerd. No, we spoke about this.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Fair. I did see that. I was like, I mean, you know, we all edit this. We all have equal footing in the document. Like, things move around, so I didn't even really think twice about it. But that's very funny that I stumbled into something.

00:01:15 ◼   ► It's pretty harsh for one of us to just straight up delete a topic the other person. Like, 100%. Just, it's gone now.

00:01:21 ◼   ► I mean, usually there's a text message that accompanies that sort of nuclear option.

00:01:27 ◼   ► I did not do that. But we spoke about it last week. But you won't know about that. You can listen to the Chi 2.2 discussion next year.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Okay. I won't know how it works until then.

00:01:37 ◼   ► And there'll be also no support.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Did y'all make the joke that that name sounds like it came out of the USB consortium?

00:01:46 ◼   ► Like USB Gen 2.2?

00:01:49 ◼   ► Maybe. It's hard to remember the jokes.

00:01:52 ◼   ► No, I don't think we...

00:01:53 ◼   ► Okay, well, I've added something to the discourse, which is good.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Yeah, which is good.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Follow-up. This is where other people add to the discourse of the show.

00:02:01 ◼   ► Liam wrote in about TVOS.

00:02:04 ◼   ► My wife just turned on her Apple TV and everything was green.

00:02:08 ◼   ► We restarted too fast and I forgot to take a picture.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Sorry on so many levels.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Why would you do this? This is like...

00:02:16 ◼   ► No. No, why?

00:02:18 ◼   ► It's like bullying for me and Federico.

00:02:20 ◼   ► Is it?

00:02:22 ◼   ► It's not fair. Yeah.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Liam, if you're not a member, you need to be a member now.

00:02:26 ◼   ► That's what I've decided.

00:02:27 ◼   ► That's your punishment.

00:02:28 ◼   ► One month's membership for you.

00:02:30 ◼   ► That is your punishment for this follow-up.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:34 ◼   ► I won't take my third of that one.

00:02:36 ◼   ► Y'all can split that particular payment evenly.

00:02:40 ◼   ► Y'all spoke about WhatsApp, I guess?

00:02:44 ◼   ► Yeah, we spoke about voice messages.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Hilariously, I got a voice message from my accountant again.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Like, just before the show began today.

00:02:52 ◼   ► Getting a lot of those now.

00:02:54 ◼   ► I don't remember if this was on the main show or the...

00:02:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it was on the main show, right?

00:02:57 ◼   ► Who could tell?

00:02:58 ◼   ► Nobody knows.

00:02:59 ◼   ► But we had a listener, Marco, wrote in and says,

00:03:02 ◼   ► Marco from Italy, which is my second feedback to the show

00:03:06 ◼   ► about WhatsApp hidden settings.

00:03:07 ◼   ► So Marco was the person who saved my bacon about

00:03:10 ◼   ► that you can have the badge not clear

00:03:13 ◼   ► every time you open the app, which is great.

00:03:15 ◼   ► I love that.

00:03:15 ◼   ► But they said,

00:03:16 ◼   ► during last week's episode,

00:03:17 ◼   ► you were wondering about the possibility

00:03:19 ◼   ► of transcribing WhatsApp audio messages.

00:03:21 ◼   ► In case you don't know,

00:03:22 ◼   ► you just have to turn it on

00:03:23 ◼   ► by going to settings, chat, audio message transcription.

00:03:26 ◼   ► So I went and turned this on today.

00:03:29 ◼   ► I don't know if this is the setting for everyone,

00:03:31 ◼   ► but for me, the option is never is the default or manual.

00:03:37 ◼   ► And so now when I get a voice message,

00:03:39 ◼   ► I can tap for them to be transcribed

00:03:41 ◼   ► and it will transcribe them.

00:03:42 ◼   ► I did just do that with the last message

00:03:44 ◼   ► that I got from my accountant.

00:03:45 ◼   ► And about one in every six words was,

00:03:48 ◼   ► there was just a line where it like,

00:03:49 ◼   ► it didn't understand it.

00:03:50 ◼   ► But I don't really want to read it.

00:03:54 ◼   ► I just want to get a sense of what I'm getting myself in for

00:03:57 ◼   ► before I listen.

00:03:59 ◼   ► And so like, I can get that.

00:04:00 ◼   ► I can just transcribe it.

00:04:01 ◼   ► It took a few seconds

00:04:02 ◼   ► and I can just kind of scan it and be like,

00:04:04 ◼   ► okay, that's what this is all about.

00:04:06 ◼   ► And then I can listen to it even now or later on.

00:04:09 ◼   ► So thank you, Marco.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Again, I assume Marco is the CEO of WhatsApp.

00:04:15 ◼   ► That's my assumption.

00:04:17 ◼   ► I just tried this

00:04:20 ◼   ► and I enabled the manual setting,

00:04:23 ◼   ► switched my language to Italian.

00:04:25 ◼   ► But every time I tap on transcribe,

00:04:28 ◼   ► it says a transcript unavailable.

00:04:30 ◼   ► Okay.

00:04:31 ◼   ► So yeah, it's not working for me, it seems.

00:04:37 ◼   ► I'm scrolling through some previous chats,

00:04:39 ◼   ► but like it's never working.

00:04:42 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:04:43 ◼   ► Transcribe.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Transcript unavailable.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Your language isn't supported.

00:04:48 ◼   ► No, it's Italian.

00:04:50 ◼   ► Didn't you choose?

00:04:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Yes.

00:04:53 ◼   ► Yes.

00:04:54 ◼   ► This transcript is set to Italian, Italy.

00:04:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:58 ◼   ► Okay.

00:05:00 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:05:00 ◼   ► It's not working for me.

00:05:02 ◼   ► But thank you, Marco.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I did not know there was a setting.

00:05:06 ◼   ► Turns out there were lots of things.

00:05:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Way back in the day,

00:05:11 ◼   ► like a hundred years ago with the prompt,

00:05:12 ◼   ► we had this idea that we would have like experts come on.

00:05:16 ◼   ► I think we did it like two times.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Like Sean Blanc came on to talk about some camera or something.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Marco is now that for WhatsApp.

00:05:22 ◼   ► He's our WhatsApp correspondent.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Yep.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Thank you, Marco.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Zoe,

00:05:28 ◼   ► this is called Marco Zuckerberg.

00:05:31 ◼   ► That's who it is.

00:05:34 ◼   ► That's who it is.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Okay.

00:05:39 ◼   ► We got this thing on Mastodon.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Did y'all see this?

00:05:44 ◼   ► I've been spotted in the wild.

00:05:46 ◼   ► Okay.

00:05:47 ◼   ► Stefan sent this in.

00:05:49 ◼   ► Found the official vehicle of the Secretary of Deflex

00:05:53 ◼   ► while he's taking care of official business.

00:05:56 ◼   ► And it is a,

00:06:00 ◼   ► you can look at the thing in the show notes,

00:06:02 ◼   ► but it is a lifted second gen Lexus GX,

00:06:07 ◼   ► which I approve of.

00:06:08 ◼   ► Sounds like something you would do.

00:06:10 ◼   ► Great vehicle.

00:06:11 ◼   ► I approve of the champagne color.

00:06:13 ◼   ► I think it's the best color on this generation.

00:06:15 ◼   ► It is not me,

00:06:17 ◼   ► but this is very good.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Flexi.

00:06:20 ◼   ► What is it?

00:06:21 ◼   ► F-L-E-X-I.

00:06:22 ◼   ► A custom license plate.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Obviously a huge fan of the show.

00:06:28 ◼   ► This person drives with passion.

00:06:30 ◼   ► Did you ever have in real life a custom license plate,

00:06:34 ◼   ► Steven?

00:06:35 ◼   ► I've not had a custom license plate.

00:06:38 ◼   ► In my state though,

00:06:39 ◼   ► like many states,

00:06:40 ◼   ► you can have a specialty plate.

00:06:43 ◼   ► You pay a little more for it,

00:06:45 ◼   ► and that money goes to like whatever cause you're supporting.

00:06:47 ◼   ► So I have a St.

00:06:48 ◼   ► Jude plate on my truck,

00:06:49 ◼   ► but it is just the four numbers that were assigned to me from the DMV.

00:06:55 ◼   ► So it's not custom,

00:06:56 ◼   ► but it's like a specialty thing.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Got it.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I know people who have them though.

00:07:02 ◼   ► You know,

00:07:03 ◼   ► I'm not against it.

00:07:05 ◼   ► It's an idea.

00:07:06 ◼   ► I don't know what I would put though.

00:07:09 ◼   ► One of the many strange things,

00:07:09 ◼   ► one of the many strange things about America,

00:07:11 ◼   ► from my perspective,

00:07:13 ◼   ► like you can have a custom license plate.

00:07:15 ◼   ► People have them here too,

00:07:18 ◼   ► but they're not like this so much.

00:07:21 ◼   ► Like typically like a custom number plate is you're get your,

00:07:25 ◼   ► and they're not all like this,

00:07:26 ◼   ► but the vast majority of people's custom number plates is you are buying a

00:07:31 ◼   ► specific number plate in the standard style that says something.

00:07:35 ◼   ► If you put the letters and numbers together.

00:07:36 ◼   ► So like a five would be an S kind of thing.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And you're like,

00:07:41 ◼   ► you know,

00:07:41 ◼   ► you want like,

00:07:42 ◼   ► I don't know,

00:07:42 ◼   ► you want like T-C or whatever,

00:07:44 ◼   ► and you could get like T-1 CC-1,

00:07:50 ◼   ► you know,

00:07:50 ◼   ► T-1.

00:07:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:51 ◼   ► But they tend to be though in the full style.

00:07:54 ◼   ► So our typical number plates are two letters,

00:07:57 ◼   ► two numbers,

00:07:57 ◼   ► three letters.

00:07:58 ◼   ► And most these,

00:08:00 ◼   ► it seems like these days,

00:08:01 ◼   ► most people's custom number plates,

00:08:03 ◼   ► they,

00:08:04 ◼   ► they still get one that is the full thing,

00:08:05 ◼   ► but they are picking one that works for them in some way.

00:08:09 ◼   ► This isn't the only way it's been done,

00:08:11 ◼   ► but we've had this,

00:08:12 ◼   ► this kind of license plate system in the UK for a long time.

00:08:15 ◼   ► And since then,

00:08:16 ◼   ► most people are getting their license plates like that.

00:08:18 ◼   ► So like,

00:08:19 ◼   ► you know,

00:08:19 ◼   ► you might get,

00:08:20 ◼   ► uh,

00:08:22 ◼   ► I don't,

00:08:23 ◼   ► you know what?

00:08:24 ◼   ► I can't even think of any.

00:08:25 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Maybe your name is Bob and you get like PB51BOB or something like that,

00:08:33 ◼   ► right?

00:08:33 ◼   ► Like you're,

00:08:33 ◼   ► you're kind of paying for that.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:35 ◼   ► So,

00:08:36 ◼   ► so that's how we are,

00:08:37 ◼   ► right?

00:08:37 ◼   ► So if I wanted like 512PX for 512 pixels,

00:08:42 ◼   ► that would be on the standard Tennessee plate,

00:08:44 ◼   ► or I can choose like what I've done with a specialty plate.

00:08:47 ◼   ► I put a link in the show notes to all the specialty plates in Tennessee.

00:08:50 ◼   ► We have a million of them and,

00:08:53 ◼   ► uh,

00:08:53 ◼   ► there's some,

00:08:54 ◼   ► there's some fun ones in here for sure.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Is there a Batman one?

00:08:57 ◼   ► There's not a Batman one.

00:09:00 ◼   ► There should be a Batman one.

00:09:02 ◼   ► That would be sick.

00:09:05 ◼   ► Mike,

00:09:06 ◼   ► you have some news.

00:09:06 ◼   ► Yep.

00:09:07 ◼   ► I don't really know how to start talking about this.

00:09:10 ◼   ► I'll just sit to just,

00:09:10 ◼   ► I'll start talking about it.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Uh,

00:09:12 ◼   ► Steven designed a logo for me.

00:09:13 ◼   ► So that's pretty big,

00:09:15 ◼   ► really big news.

00:09:16 ◼   ► Uh,

00:09:17 ◼   ► I now have a logo at the enthusiast and Steven made it today.

00:09:20 ◼   ► So thank you for doing that.

00:09:21 ◼   ► You mean I,

00:09:22 ◼   ► I wrote the enthusiast and the typeface you wanted.

00:09:25 ◼   ► And then I borrowed artwork that jelly did for St.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Jude like five years ago and put them together.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Made is loose as a term,

00:09:34 ◼   ► you know,

00:09:35 ◼   ► like you did it,

00:09:35 ◼   ► you put it all together.

00:09:36 ◼   ► Uh,

00:09:37 ◼   ► but that isn't it.

00:09:38 ◼   ► So,

00:09:38 ◼   ► uh,

00:09:39 ◼   ► Steven,

00:09:40 ◼   ► for how long now have you been working with cross forward?

00:09:42 ◼   ► So underscores company,

00:09:43 ◼   ► a year and a half,

00:09:44 ◼   ► a little over a year and a half.

00:09:45 ◼   ► You've been there for a year and a half.

00:09:47 ◼   ► And then,

00:09:48 ◼   ► uh,

00:09:48 ◼   ► now I've also come on board the team.

00:09:50 ◼   ► Um,

00:09:51 ◼   ► I'm taking on a consultancy job.

00:09:54 ◼   ► I would guess we'd call it right.

00:09:55 ◼   ► A consultant because I'm not as involved in the business as you by any stretch,

00:09:59 ◼   ► um,

00:10:00 ◼   ► where I'm going to be working on kind of advertising and marketing stuff.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Um,

00:10:04 ◼   ► the two of you approached me with like talking about this and saying,

00:10:08 ◼   ► you know,

00:10:09 ◼   ► maybe this is something you might want to think about in the future.

00:10:11 ◼   ► And I was like,

00:10:11 ◼   ► no,

00:10:11 ◼   ► I like this.

00:10:12 ◼   ► Can I do it now?

00:10:13 ◼   ► Um,

00:10:14 ◼   ► and so we all agreed.

00:10:16 ◼   ► Uh,

00:10:16 ◼   ► and so I'm really excited about this.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Um,

00:10:18 ◼   ► I am excited to have something new in my portfolio,

00:10:21 ◼   ► uh,

00:10:22 ◼   ► just from a kind of wanting to do new things kind of perspective,

00:10:28 ◼   ► which I think I've been on that kick for a while.

00:10:30 ◼   ► hence the blog,

00:10:31 ◼   ► you know,

00:10:32 ◼   ► in and of itself.

00:10:33 ◼   ► Um,

00:10:34 ◼   ► and also from a,

00:10:35 ◼   ► just like thinking about my future and I think,

00:10:39 ◼   ► I think something new to the plate,

00:10:41 ◼   ► which,

00:10:41 ◼   ► uh,

00:10:41 ◼   ► can hopefully grow over time.

00:10:43 ◼   ► I've been involved in kind of sponsorship for the last 11 years,

00:10:48 ◼   ► but from the,

00:10:49 ◼   ► uh,

00:10:49 ◼   ► please give it to me perspective,

00:10:52 ◼   ► right?

00:10:52 ◼   ► With companies like please sponsor me.

00:10:54 ◼   ► Uh,

00:10:54 ◼   ► and now I will be,

00:10:55 ◼   ► uh,

00:10:56 ◼   ► working for cross forward as the person who is trying to find those people,

00:10:59 ◼   ► um,

00:11:00 ◼   ► as among a selection of other things.

00:11:02 ◼   ► So I'm very excited about this and I'm very,

00:11:04 ◼   ► uh,

00:11:05 ◼   ► thankful to you and Dave for trusting me with this opportunity.

00:11:08 ◼   ► And I thought it was important to say from a,

00:11:10 ◼   ► Hey,

00:11:11 ◼   ► this is a thing that I'm doing.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Uh,

00:11:13 ◼   ► but also as a kind of blanket disclosure thing that,

00:11:16 ◼   ► uh,

00:11:16 ◼   ► that I,

00:11:18 ◼   ► I bought a cross forward now.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Yeah,

00:11:21 ◼   ► no,

00:11:21 ◼   ► it's awesome.

00:11:22 ◼   ► Uh,

00:11:22 ◼   ► you bring a lot of expertise in this area that David and I don't have.

00:11:26 ◼   ► And instead of like poking around it,

00:11:29 ◼   ► like a couple of people who don't know what we're doing,

00:11:31 ◼   ► it's like,

00:11:31 ◼   ► Oh,

00:11:32 ◼   ► we know someone who knows what they're doing.

00:11:33 ◼   ► So it's a great fit all the way around.

00:11:35 ◼   ► I'm very excited about it.

00:11:37 ◼   ► Uh,

00:11:37 ◼   ► very excited about it.

00:11:38 ◼   ► And so,

00:11:39 ◼   ► yeah,

00:11:39 ◼   ► this will come up,

00:11:40 ◼   ► I'm sure in many ways now,

00:11:41 ◼   ► which I,

00:11:41 ◼   ► I've,

00:11:42 ◼   ► I've enjoyed how Steven's perspective has changed and that he is closer to

00:11:47 ◼   ► development.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Um,

00:11:48 ◼   ► and I expect that mine will,

00:11:50 ◼   ► I will get more insight into a bunch of different things.

00:11:53 ◼   ► Um,

00:11:54 ◼   ► I,

00:11:54 ◼   ► I would expect,

00:11:55 ◼   ► which is from this,

00:11:57 ◼   ► but also like working with content creators as a,

00:12:00 ◼   ► from the other side of it is also really interesting to me.

00:12:04 ◼   ► So yeah,

00:12:05 ◼   ► I,

00:12:06 ◼   ► I,

00:12:06 ◼   ► I,

00:12:06 ◼   ► I'm sure more of this will come up in the future,

00:12:08 ◼   ► but like I wrote a little blog post about it today,

00:12:10 ◼   ► which I'll put in the show notes and,

00:12:12 ◼   ► uh,

00:12:12 ◼   ► yeah,

00:12:12 ◼   ► I'm very excited about this.

00:12:13 ◼   ► It's exciting.

00:12:15 ◼   ► Congrats,

00:12:15 ◼   ► Mike.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Thank you,

00:12:16 ◼   ► Federico.

00:12:17 ◼   ► it's kind of funny that you two cannot help but work with each other.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:21 ◼   ► So yeah,

00:12:22 ◼   ► that's,

00:12:23 ◼   ► uh,

00:12:23 ◼   ► I think now that I'm in Slack,

00:12:25 ◼   ► there is,

00:12:25 ◼   ► there is,

00:12:26 ◼   ► there is,

00:12:26 ◼   ► there is a,

00:12:26 ◼   ► I'm sure I'm just goes very happy that this has happened.

00:12:29 ◼   ► I do get the sense that there's maybe a part of him that's like,

00:12:31 ◼   ► Oh God,

00:12:32 ◼   ► why,

00:12:33 ◼   ► why am I in here with them?

00:12:34 ◼   ► You know,

00:12:35 ◼   ► cause so he's kind of trapped in there with us now.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Uh,

00:12:39 ◼   ► and so I hope that,

00:12:40 ◼   ► I hope that he likes that,

00:12:41 ◼   ► but,

00:12:42 ◼   ► uh,

00:12:42 ◼   ► Oh,

00:12:44 ◼   ► Steven didn't want to,

00:12:45 ◼   ► didn't want to be part of the show anymore.

00:12:47 ◼   ► Wow.

00:12:47 ◼   ► That is,

00:12:48 ◼   ► uh,

00:12:49 ◼   ► that is actually quite perfect.

00:12:51 ◼   ► Well,

00:12:52 ◼   ► it seems like I spoke too soon.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:55 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:55 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:56 ◼   ► I don't know what to do now.

00:12:57 ◼   ► Cause also,

00:12:58 ◼   ► uh,

00:12:59 ◼   ► you're gone.

00:13:00 ◼   ► I am the host now.

00:13:03 ◼   ► Look at me.

00:13:04 ◼   ► I'm the host now.

00:13:05 ◼   ► He's having an internet issue.

00:13:06 ◼   ► I think.

00:13:07 ◼   ► All right.

00:13:20 ◼   ► Now we're all back together.

00:13:21 ◼   ► There's one thing I wanted to mention,

00:13:23 ◼   ► which is just a funny thing that joining a business today is very complicated because of one password,

00:13:28 ◼   ► email and slack because you need all three of these apps and which order do they go in?

00:13:34 ◼   ► Because they all need each other.

00:13:36 ◼   ► It's so complicated.

00:13:38 ◼   ► Like,

00:13:38 ◼   ► because slack now just does not want you to have a password and will do literally anything possible to stop you from setting up a password.

00:13:47 ◼   ► They just want to email you links.

00:13:48 ◼   ► They just want to email you links.

00:13:48 ◼   ► But the problem is you've got to get the email into the mail app.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And for that,

00:13:53 ◼   ► you need one password.

00:13:54 ◼   ► But then also for to use the email,

00:13:57 ◼   ► you need one password.

00:13:58 ◼   ► But then for the one password,

00:14:00 ◼   ► sometimes you need an email.

00:14:01 ◼   ► It's very complicated.

00:14:02 ◼   ► I do very much appreciate how one password does that thing where they sync your available accounts via iCloud.

00:14:10 ◼   ► That is good.

00:14:11 ◼   ► That is a good feature.

00:14:12 ◼   ► And then you just have to put in the password and it will unlock it and add it to your account.

00:14:18 ◼   ► I do like that feature.

00:14:19 ◼   ► That's that's very cool.

00:14:20 ◼   ► The rest of it is just just a nightmare.

00:14:23 ◼   ► And it is these times where I'm like,

00:14:27 ◼   ► why do I have so many computers?

00:14:28 ◼   ► That's when you're like,

00:14:32 ◼   ► oh,

00:14:32 ◼   ► too many computers.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:34 ◼   ► It was it was fun adding you to a bunch of stuff.

00:14:36 ◼   ► And then it's still happening.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:39 ◼   ► How did you do a calendar just like an hour ago?

00:14:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:43 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Welcome aboard.

00:14:45 ◼   ► We're excited to have you.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:14:48 ◼   ► There are some new emoji.

00:14:52 ◼   ► We are not playing the game.

00:14:54 ◼   ► We play.

00:14:55 ◼   ► OK.

00:14:55 ◼   ► We play the game where you guess the names when Apple shows their official images.

00:15:00 ◼   ► That has not happened yet.

00:15:02 ◼   ► They've just been.

00:15:05 ◼   ► I'm happy you've remembered finally.

00:15:06 ◼   ► I looked it up.

00:15:07 ◼   ► I have a page in Notion telling me how the Jeremy's work.

00:15:10 ◼   ► How do Jeremy work?

00:15:13 ◼   ► How do Jeremy work?

00:15:15 ◼   ► So you can.

00:15:16 ◼   ► If you're not Federico,

00:15:17 ◼   ► you can look at that blog post.

00:15:18 ◼   ► Also,

00:15:19 ◼   ► I'm just always I always laugh that Unicode still uses Blogger to like announce things.

00:15:24 ◼   ► I always forget that Google hasn't killed Blogger.

00:15:27 ◼   ► I had no idea.

00:15:29 ◼   ► I just would not have assumed that Blogger still existed.

00:15:31 ◼   ► Mm hmm.

00:15:32 ◼   ► Turns out.

00:15:33 ◼   ► This is real rough looking.

00:15:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:35 ◼   ► Like they just didn't do anything.

00:15:38 ◼   ► They just left that.

00:15:41 ◼   ► It's big, big 2006 in here.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Nice.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Nice.

00:15:48 ◼   ► My theory on this is that like some internal Google blogs or some external Google blogs are still using Blogger and that's why it's not dead.

00:15:56 ◼   ► That's probably a safe assumption.

00:15:58 ◼   ► Under the hood, every Google blog is a Blogger blog.

00:16:02 ◼   ► And they're just like, well, we can't get rid of it.

00:16:04 ◼   ► Blogger, blog.

00:16:04 ◼   ► Blogger, blog.

00:16:05 ◼   ► Blogger, blog.

00:16:06 ◼   ► Blogger, blog.

00:16:06 ◼   ► What came first?

00:16:08 ◼   ► Blog or like the name Blogger or Blogger?

00:16:11 ◼   ► Like do we call them Blogs because of Blogger or do we call them, or those Blogger called it because of Blogs?

00:16:17 ◼   ► Yeah, the second one.

00:16:18 ◼   ► They call Blogger it because of Blogs?

00:16:20 ◼   ► Mm hmm.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Yes.

00:16:21 ◼   ► I think so?

00:16:23 ◼   ► Yes.

00:16:24 ◼   ► So where does Blog come from?

00:16:25 ◼   ► Uh, well.

00:16:27 ◼   ► Weblog.

00:16:28 ◼   ► Weblog.

00:16:28 ◼   ► Weblog.

00:16:29 ◼   ► And where does that come from?

00:16:30 ◼   ► From the web and a log.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Tim Berners-Lee actually has created what is considered to be the first blog in 1992.

00:16:39 ◼   ► A web and a log.

00:16:42 ◼   ► It was out in the forest.

00:16:46 ◼   ► When a web and a log really love each other.

00:16:48 ◼   ► Y'all are telling different stories.

00:16:50 ◼   ► When a spider web and a wooden log really like each other, hot takes are born.

00:16:58 ◼   ► Oh, perfect.

00:16:59 ◼   ► If RSS falls in the forest.

00:17:02 ◼   ► It could.

00:17:04 ◼   ► Yes.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Any day now.

00:17:06 ◼   ► What are we talking about?

00:17:08 ◼   ► What are we?

00:17:09 ◼   ► Oh, emoji.

00:17:09 ◼   ► The new emoji we will play later, but we're putting a flag in the ground now.

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00:19:23 ◼   ► Big news, guys.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Apple has updated the AppleCare program in the United States.

00:19:31 ◼   ► Oh, this is U.S. only?

00:19:33 ◼   ► Uh, yep.

00:19:34 ◼   ► Ah, come on.

00:19:36 ◼   ► Uh, Apple has announced AppleCare 1.

00:19:40 ◼   ► So, for just $20 a month, you can have AppleCare on up to three products.

00:19:47 ◼   ► And then you can add additional products for $6 a month per device.

00:19:53 ◼   ► Um, so if you have a lot of devices, like you got a Mac and a watch and an iPhone, iPad, you're paying for AppleCare all, all, for all of them monthly.

00:20:02 ◼   ► This is almost guaranteed to be cheaper for you if you have, uh, if you're like a multiple device kind of person.

00:20:11 ◼   ► Um, and you can add in like your existing devices.

00:20:17 ◼   ► This is not just like, oh, new purchases only.

00:20:19 ◼   ► So, uh, if you have a product that's less than four years old and in good condition, then you can, uh, add in the, you can add them in to AppleCare 1 even beyond the 60-day window.

00:20:34 ◼   ► So, the way it has worked at this point.

00:20:36 ◼   ► That's not something you can do with regular AppleCare, right?

00:20:38 ◼   ► That's right.

00:20:38 ◼   ► Up to this point, you had 60 days.

00:20:41 ◼   ► And then you would get a badge in settings.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Or if it's a watch, you get a badge in settings and the watch app saying, hey, your limited warranty ends in 17 days.

00:20:50 ◼   ► Please, please sign up.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Uh, and so now you can do all of that kind of under the AppleCare 1 umbrella starting, uh, tomorrow, July 24th for U.S. customers.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Huh.

00:21:03 ◼   ► So, this could be a thing that like, you know, if you, if you cracked your iPad and the iPad doesn't know, you can finally get it fixed.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Although, I guess that's probably insurance fraud.

00:21:13 ◼   ► So, you know.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Yes.

00:21:14 ◼   ► That's my advice.

00:21:15 ◼   ► Don't recommend that.

00:21:16 ◼   ► Don't recommend that.

00:21:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:18 ◼   ► I don't recommend it, but, you know.

00:21:20 ◼   ► Um, this is interesting, I guess.

00:21:23 ◼   ► Like, I would love to actually work out the pricing on a various set of products because, like, AppleCare differs wildly.

00:21:31 ◼   ► It does.

00:21:32 ◼   ► Depending on the product and, like, that you have.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:34 ◼   ► In its cost.

00:21:35 ◼   ► But, I think it's a good thing.

00:21:38 ◼   ► I think it's not difficult to get three products that you might want to cover these days, right?

00:21:43 ◼   ► Because you're not three AppleCares.

00:21:45 ◼   ► It's one AppleCare.

00:21:46 ◼   ► That's genius.

00:21:47 ◼   ► I'm so proud of you right now.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Um, so, this is, so, you get up to three products.

00:21:52 ◼   ► Is it restricted on the products?

00:21:54 ◼   ► Can it be anything?

00:21:56 ◼   ► Like, can I put the Vision Pro in this if I wanted to?

00:21:59 ◼   ► I think you can.

00:22:00 ◼   ► I don't, I don't see anywhere that it's, like, limited.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Because the Vision, the Vision Pro AppleCare is pretty expensive, isn't it?

00:22:12 ◼   ► I mean, I know in my 16 Pro, it's, like, 13 bucks a month.

00:22:16 ◼   ► So, I'm over halfway there already.

00:22:18 ◼   ► But, um, I think for most people, this will be worth looking at.

00:22:23 ◼   ► You know, there's still the service fees for accidental damage, right?

00:22:27 ◼   ► So, if you shatter a phone, you're still paying the, you know, $29 service fee or whatever it may be.

00:22:33 ◼   ► There's still theft and loss.

00:22:35 ◼   ► Okay.

00:22:36 ◼   ► So, it's AppleCare Plus, then.

00:22:38 ◼   ► You're getting AppleCare Plus.

00:22:39 ◼   ► Yes.

00:22:39 ◼   ► Yeah, you're getting that.

00:22:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:41 ◼   ► Basically, the old AppleCare, I think, is more or less gone.

00:22:44 ◼   ► There's been a slow transition here.

00:22:46 ◼   ► And a couple years ago, David and I did an episode of Mac Power Users all about AppleCare.

00:22:51 ◼   ► And it was very confusing.

00:22:53 ◼   ► Because, like, you can seemingly keep paying monthly forever on your devices, at least until they are considered, you know, past the five or seven years where they're considered a vintage or obsolete.

00:23:06 ◼   ► But this includes the theft and loss, which I think, particularly on the iPhone, is probably worthwhile.

00:23:15 ◼   ► I feel like out of all of these devices, that's the one that's most likely to disappear on you.

00:23:22 ◼   ► And so, yeah.

00:23:24 ◼   ► So, I looked at what I'm paying for.

00:23:27 ◼   ► My MacBook Pro, I did the AppleCare Plus just the one-time purchase for, I think, the three years.

00:23:35 ◼   ► But on my phone and Mary's phone, we're paying monthly.

00:23:40 ◼   ► Mine is $13.49 for my 16 Pro.

00:23:43 ◼   ► And her iPhone 15 is $7.99 a month.

00:23:46 ◼   ► Now, her phone, like, I'm going to look at this tomorrow and I can follow up next week.

00:23:52 ◼   ► Her phone, that is paid through her Apple account, not mine.

00:23:56 ◼   ► But we're in an iCloud family.

00:23:59 ◼   ► And so, I wonder if I can attach family devices.

00:24:03 ◼   ► You're going to do it again.

00:24:04 ◼   ► To this.

00:24:05 ◼   ► You're going to do it again.

00:24:06 ◼   ► You're going to break everything.

00:24:07 ◼   ► You're going to have to release a new product to fix it.

00:24:10 ◼   ► So, I'm going to look at this.

00:24:12 ◼   ► I'm going to look at this tomorrow.

00:24:13 ◼   ► But that's the only thing I'm paying for.

00:24:15 ◼   ► Like, I don't have AppleCare on my watch or my iPad or my Vision Pro anymore.

00:24:22 ◼   ► So, I've really pared this down over time.

00:24:24 ◼   ► But my guess is, like, a friend of mine texted me today after this came out.

00:24:30 ◼   ► He saw it on 512.

00:24:31 ◼   ► He's like, this is going to save me so much money.

00:24:32 ◼   ► I think for a lot of people, it definitely could.

00:24:36 ◼   ► So, you do monthly when you do AppleCare.

00:24:38 ◼   ► Just on the phone because I keep, I generally keep a phone for a year.

00:24:44 ◼   ► I mean, now it's going to be a little bit different.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Like, it'll stick around, but I will end the AppleCare Plus.

00:24:50 ◼   ► And I know, like, if you sold a phone, you could apply for a refund or it went with it.

00:24:55 ◼   ► But this time around, I just switched to monthly.

00:24:58 ◼   ► It may not be worth it.

00:25:00 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:02 ◼   ► I very begrudgingly, incredibly begrudgingly have AppleCare on two devices.

00:25:07 ◼   ► Yeah, same.

00:25:09 ◼   ► Same.

00:25:09 ◼   ► And I remind people my begrudgingness, I don't know, for AppleCare is I once went to an Apple

00:25:16 ◼   ► store having AppleCare on all my devices for years with an incredibly scratched screen.

00:25:22 ◼   ► And they told me the scratches weren't deep enough and they would not replace it.

00:25:25 ◼   ► And I was treated like crap by the genius.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Was your genius the JerryRigEverything guy on YouTube?

00:25:33 ◼   ► He was like, this is six or seven.

00:25:36 ◼   ► It's not a level eight.

00:25:37 ◼   ► He treated me like crap.

00:25:40 ◼   ► It was so bad.

00:25:41 ◼   ► And he was just like, don't you go and break it now because we'll know.

00:25:44 ◼   ► And it's like, all right, buddy.

00:25:46 ◼   ► So I waited and then my phone happened to break and I got it switched out when I got

00:25:53 ◼   ► a new phone.

00:25:53 ◼   ► But then I decided I would never buy AppleCare again.

00:25:57 ◼   ► I have it on two devices.

00:25:59 ◼   ► I got it on my iPhone 16 Pro this year because of the baby.

00:26:04 ◼   ► And I was like, is this child going to break my phone?

00:26:07 ◼   ► And so far, the answer is no.

00:26:09 ◼   ► I will say I dropped my iPhone at home a couple of days ago.

00:26:13 ◼   ► We have concrete floor.

00:26:14 ◼   ► And I dropped it and I dropped it so bad.

00:26:17 ◼   ► It went camera side down, flipped over and hit the screen and went across the ground.

00:26:22 ◼   ► Yeah, that's not a scratch.

00:26:24 ◼   ► These things are so strong.

00:26:25 ◼   ► So I'm here to tell you, don't bother.

00:26:28 ◼   ► All right, don't bother.

00:26:29 ◼   ► And I won't be doing it again.

00:26:31 ◼   ► So I did it.

00:26:33 ◼   ► I'm not going to be getting it again on my iPhone this year.

00:26:35 ◼   ► Unless maybe I get the thin one and I'm worried I'll break that.

00:26:38 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:26:39 ◼   ► We'll find out.

00:26:39 ◼   ► But I don't plan to do it again.

00:26:41 ◼   ► I had such a bad.

00:26:44 ◼   ► I know it's just like a one person bad experience, but I had such a bad experience that I'm just

00:26:48 ◼   ► kind of like it just annoys me to pay it.

00:26:51 ◼   ► I did also get AppleCare on my Vision Pro and I would do that again.

00:26:54 ◼   ► I would.

00:26:55 ◼   ► That one, that thing, the $3,500 incredibly complicated thing with a big glass screen on

00:27:01 ◼   ► the front that I could bump into stuff.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Yes, I would get AppleCare on that one.

00:27:05 ◼   ► But on my iPhone, I'm not planning on doing it again.

00:27:08 ◼   ► Okay.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I have the AppleCare Plus with the, what is it?

00:27:14 ◼   ► Theft and loss protection thing on my phone and on the iPad Pro.

00:27:21 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:27:23 ◼   ► I honestly, I don't know why I keep doing it.

00:27:25 ◼   ► Like, I don't know why I keep purchasing it because every time, every year it's like, ah,

00:27:29 ◼   ► I guess I should do it.

00:27:31 ◼   ► But then it's not like I ever use it.

00:27:33 ◼   ► And it's not like I, I mean, I guess there's the peace of mind of knowing that I have it.

00:27:39 ◼   ► And as you're saying that, I'm like, I'm probably going to end up doing it again on my iPhone

00:27:42 ◼   ► this year.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Very begrudging.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:43 ◼   ► As you're saying that, it's like, it's getting in my head.

00:27:46 ◼   ► I guess that's sort of, that's sort of a, that's how they get you, right?

00:27:49 ◼   ► With any kind of insurance.

00:27:50 ◼   ► Well, most kinds of insurance.

00:27:52 ◼   ► So I don't love it, but I know myself.

00:27:59 ◼   ► And I know that it, like, I know the moment that I decide, oh, I'm not going to do it.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Something's going to happen to my phone.

00:28:06 ◼   ► It's just cosmic karma or something.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Like, it's going to happen.

00:28:09 ◼   ► The moment I don't renew it and I say, ah, no, I'll do without it this year, something's

00:28:15 ◼   ► going to happen.

00:28:15 ◼   ► So I'm basically screwed forever is what I'm trying to say.

00:28:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:19 ◼   ► They got me.

00:28:22 ◼   ► I would really like this, actually.

00:28:25 ◼   ► AppleCare one.

00:28:26 ◼   ► Like, this I would pay for.

00:28:28 ◼   ► Like, just pay 20 bucks a month, cover three things.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Like, that would be great.

00:28:33 ◼   ► That would be nice, actually.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Why is it US only?

00:28:37 ◼   ► Probably some regulation thing, that it's US only.

00:28:40 ◼   ► You know, it's probably, like, they have to get the insurance underwriter to agree.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And so, like, they may roll it out, but it would be slow.

00:28:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Would be my thought.

00:28:50 ◼   ► If you love Connected and want to support the show directly, check out the link in the

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00:29:32 ◼   ► So, developer beta 4 came out, and it's been a really regular 24 hours.

00:29:37 ◼   ► Super normal.

00:29:39 ◼   ► It's been just regular.

00:29:42 ◼   ► Everyone feels regular about it.

00:29:45 ◼   ► There are no complex feelings about it.

00:29:46 ◼   ► It's just a normal, average web time.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Like, fine.

00:29:51 ◼   ► And we're all happy.

00:29:52 ◼   ► Right?

00:29:53 ◼   ► Am I right?

00:29:54 ◼   ► No, I'm not right.

00:29:55 ◼   ► It's complicated.

00:29:56 ◼   ► So, they did the thing that we thought they might do, but weren't sure, which was so beta

00:30:02 ◼   ► 3, they frosted everything.

00:30:04 ◼   ► Beta 4, they went all the way back to glass again.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And they made a bunch of changes for, I guess, attempts at fixing legibility issues.

00:30:14 ◼   ► I think some things are better.

00:30:16 ◼   ► Some things aren't.

00:30:18 ◼   ► I've actually put, if you don't mind me starting this, because I've put beta 4 on my iPhone

00:30:24 ◼   ► last night.

00:30:25 ◼   ► Oh, you did it.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Okay.

00:30:26 ◼   ► My battery life is a disaster.

00:30:29 ◼   ► And that might just be because I've installed the new beta, or it's just going to be like

00:30:33 ◼   ► this the whole time, and I'm going to be real sad.

00:30:35 ◼   ► But that's just what it's all about.

00:30:37 ◼   ► So, using iOS 26 and liquid glass on your iPhone is incredibly different to your iPad.

00:30:45 ◼   ► Like, on the iPad, a lot of the issues just kind of aren't there for me.

00:30:52 ◼   ► In fact, all of the things that I'm frustrated about with 26, and it's not all design stuff,

00:30:58 ◼   ► these things just aren't there on the iPad.

00:31:03 ◼   ► So, I would say overall, for me, I do still love all of the animations, and I do really

00:31:10 ◼   ► like the overall look.

00:31:11 ◼   ► I like the glossy look.

00:31:13 ◼   ► I like the way that light interacts.

00:31:16 ◼   ► I like when you hit a button and it illuminates a bit of light.

00:31:19 ◼   ► I like when it refracts stuff.

00:31:21 ◼   ► I think it looks good.

00:31:24 ◼   ► But obviously, legibility is a problem, right?

00:31:27 ◼   ► Like, and I have set a set a couple of weeks ago, and I still maintain it, that I believe

00:31:33 ◼   ► that they can fix this.

00:31:35 ◼   ► They're trying in a variety of ways, but it's not, it's still not doing it.

00:31:40 ◼   ► Like, they added a thing in beta 4, because I think the worst part is the notifications.

00:31:44 ◼   ► Like, notifications are just unreadable in iOS 26.

00:31:47 ◼   ► And in 24, they've added a thing where they dim your lock screen when you scroll up for your

00:31:53 ◼   ► notifications, but you still can't read them.

00:31:55 ◼   ► So it's like, you tried, but it still didn't do it.

00:31:59 ◼   ► And there were just, like, a bunch of things across the system.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Federico posted some screenshots that he found, which are, like, a selection of particularly

00:32:07 ◼   ► egregious things, which are just, like, where you just can't read words.

00:32:11 ◼   ► Like, they put words on a button, and you just can't read it.

00:32:13 ◼   ► Like, in the Photos app.

00:32:15 ◼   ► In the Photos app, it's, like, an obvious place where things would be complicated, right?

00:32:18 ◼   ► Because there's all kinds of colors and everything.

00:32:21 ◼   ► But it kind of makes, like, why even put the text on the button?

00:32:25 ◼   ► If it's obviously unreadable in, like, so many scenarios.

00:32:28 ◼   ► What I keep coming back to, for me, is what I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

00:32:33 ◼   ► It's, like, what if the glass just wasn't there?

00:32:35 ◼   ► And it was just, like, a liquid UI.

00:32:37 ◼   ► Like, everything was kind of flowing, and the animations were fun.

00:32:40 ◼   ► Like, and maybe even somehow try to keep some of the light.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Maybe even, I don't know, put something behind it and somehow refract it.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Like, I should not be looking through anything that has text on it, right?

00:32:55 ◼   ► I think that is just, like, a general thing that's a problem.

00:32:57 ◼   ► It's so complicated.

00:32:58 ◼   ► And I still kind of keep to a lot of what I felt before, which was, like, I believe there

00:33:06 ◼   ► is a path for this.

00:33:07 ◼   ► And I like to believe that they have ideas.

00:33:10 ◼   ► Because if they don't, I don't know what they're doing.

00:33:13 ◼   ► But I'm not of the camp where a lot of people are, where they're, like, calling for heads.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Because it's just, like, you know, this is a decision that they decided to take.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I trust that they knew what they were doing.

00:33:23 ◼   ► But then when rubber meets the road, there's just, like, a lot of sharp edges that I really

00:33:29 ◼   ► hope that they would have thought about.

00:33:31 ◼   ► Maybe they did.

00:33:33 ◼   ► Maybe some they didn't.

00:33:34 ◼   ► And some they couldn't.

00:33:35 ◼   ► And it's just, you know, anyone that's ever shipped anything will know that there is a

00:33:40 ◼   ► difference between production and, like, development, right?

00:33:44 ◼   ► When you publish something to production, you realize, oh, no, we didn't think about this.

00:33:50 ◼   ► And I like to believe that they can fix it.

00:33:52 ◼   ► I just don't know.

00:33:53 ◼   ► It's really complicated.

00:33:57 ◼   ► The thing that I'm more frustrated about, though, is not UI stuff.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Yes.

00:34:03 ◼   ► It's, they're hiding buttons behind buttons.

00:34:09 ◼   ► And I don't understand why they're doing this.

00:34:12 ◼   ► So, like, if you want to get to all tabs in Safari now, it's three tabs.

00:34:19 ◼   ► To get to that.

00:34:20 ◼   ► Well, unless you enable the different mode for Safari.

00:34:25 ◼   ► The different mode.

00:34:26 ◼   ► So, here's the thing.

00:34:28 ◼   ► Safari, by default, goes to the compact view.

00:34:33 ◼   ► But if you go to settings, apps Safari, you can sort of go back to the before liquid glass

00:34:41 ◼   ► design, which is a bigger bottom floating toolbar.

00:34:45 ◼   ► And that is the much better version of Safari.

00:34:49 ◼   ► It's basically similar to iOS 18, but floating.

00:34:52 ◼   ► Oh, Federico, you saved my life.

00:34:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And here's the thing.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Like, if I can sort of jump in.

00:35:03 ◼   ► What you're saying is, like, I'm really struggling.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Okay.

00:35:08 ◼   ► So, here's my thing.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Like, if a public beta comes out this week, like Gurman was saying.

00:35:15 ◼   ► I think it will.

00:35:16 ◼   ► Okay.

00:35:17 ◼   ► I will not have my story ready.

00:35:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:20 ◼   ► And I know that because I'm going to be busy this week.

00:35:22 ◼   ► And because I did not have enough time with beta four.

00:35:25 ◼   ► And I feel like if I need to make a recommendation for Mac Stories readers, that recommendation needs

00:35:32 ◼   ► to be well informed.

00:35:33 ◼   ► And so, I'm not going to do that.

00:35:34 ◼   ► I could have been ready if I wanted to, but I chose not to.

00:35:37 ◼   ► So, my story will not be ready this week.

00:35:39 ◼   ► But that is part of a bigger problem, which is I am really struggling with, and I'm really

00:35:47 ◼   ► torn.

00:35:48 ◼   ► So, iOS and iPadOS are my responsibility at Mac Stories.

00:35:51 ◼   ► And I have this really enthusiastic approach on one side, which is iPadOS.

00:35:59 ◼   ► This sort of big comeback, you know.

00:36:02 ◼   ► And it's not without issues, but it's a big comeback.

00:36:04 ◼   ► And they're doing a lot of things.

00:36:06 ◼   ► It's so good.

00:36:06 ◼   ► It's so good.

00:36:07 ◼   ► They're doing a lot of things right.

00:36:09 ◼   ► They're not doing a lot of things perfectly.

00:36:11 ◼   ► Nothing's perfect.

00:36:12 ◼   ► They're doing a lot of things right.

00:36:14 ◼   ► And so, I'm torn between those feelings and this other part of me about iOS and liquid

00:36:20 ◼   ► glass, where it's been over a month that I've been using liquid glass.

00:36:24 ◼   ► I agree with you, Mike.

00:36:25 ◼   ► I think of all the places I got liquid glass on my Mac, on the iPad, on the Apple Watch,

00:36:30 ◼   ► and on the iPhone.

00:36:31 ◼   ► And it's by far the worst implementation of liquid glass is on the most popular platform

00:36:38 ◼   ► that Apple makes, iOS and the iPhone.

00:36:41 ◼   ► And I'm torn because I keep going back.

00:36:43 ◼   ► After a month, I keep thinking about it.

00:36:46 ◼   ► And I keep coming back to this thought, which is, I don't like the material.

00:36:52 ◼   ► And I don't like the philosophy behind it.

00:36:55 ◼   ► Where by the material, I mean the liquid glass.

00:36:58 ◼   ► We can talk about that some more in a minute.

00:37:00 ◼   ► And the philosophy, I guess, the few structural things that they have done, I basically disagree

00:37:08 ◼   ► with all of them, or 90% of them.

00:37:11 ◼   ► Or rather, I only agree with moving more UI elements at the bottom of the screen.

00:37:17 ◼   ► That, I think that they're doing a good thing.

00:37:20 ◼   ► It makes sense to move search bars and more elements at the bottom than at the top.

00:37:25 ◼   ► Well, I do like that they've put more stuff in contextual menus.

00:37:28 ◼   ► I just think they've put too much stuff in some contextual menus.

00:37:32 ◼   ► There is, they have, I'm just going to say it.

00:37:36 ◼   ► I think Alan Dye and whoever works for Alan Dye has developed over the years this tendency.

00:37:42 ◼   ► They have been on this quest that, I don't want to say nobody assigned it to them.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Maybe somebody did.

00:37:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:37:51 ◼   ► But they've been on this quest to hide, to progressively hide more and more UI Chrome

00:37:56 ◼   ► or UI elements.

00:37:58 ◼   ► And they're taking this hiding to this extreme in iOS 26, where more and more stuff is getting

00:38:06 ◼   ► nested into context menus that require an additional activation tap or click.

00:38:14 ◼   ► They're collapsing top bars and toolbars when you're scrolling.

00:38:17 ◼   ► They're, have you seen what they've done with the share sheet, for example, where now when

00:38:23 ◼   ► you open the share sheet, it doesn't show you all the things that you have in the share sheet.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Now, when you share, you get a minimized version of the share sheet.

00:38:32 ◼   ► And if you want to see all of your shortcuts or all of your extensions, you got to tap on a

00:38:37 ◼   ► button to sort of expand the share sheet.

00:38:39 ◼   ► Was it a problem?

00:38:41 ◼   ► I do like that they put my favorite ones horizontally, though.

00:38:45 ◼   ► I do like that.

00:38:46 ◼   ► You could have done that.

00:38:47 ◼   ► You could have done.

00:38:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:48 ◼   ► I mean, sure.

00:38:49 ◼   ► They could have combined them.

00:38:50 ◼   ► They could have done both.

00:38:51 ◼   ► I agree with that.

00:38:52 ◼   ► But I do like that they kind of my top three actions, top four actions, they got put into

00:38:57 ◼   ► the horizontal view and then I can scroll.

00:38:59 ◼   ► But it is weird that it's not obvious that you can scroll.

00:39:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:04 ◼   ► And so this idea of like we're hiding UI from you.

00:39:11 ◼   ► unless you tap or click.

00:39:14 ◼   ► And so that obviously creates a question of like, is that going to be discoverable enough

00:39:18 ◼   ► for people?

00:39:19 ◼   ► We don't know.

00:39:19 ◼   ► Then the liquid glass effect, which is, I mean, when you, the parts of the story that I wrote,

00:39:27 ◼   ► I'm basically saying like when you take a look at it superficially in a very controlled

00:39:33 ◼   ► environment in, you know, and maybe that's what also Apple thought internally with, with

00:39:38 ◼   ► the, you know, with the marketing shots that they have, it looks nice for the first few

00:39:43 ◼   ► minutes, maybe for the first few days, like it looks nice.

00:39:45 ◼   ► And you, you have to admit that from a technical perspective, it is an engineering feat.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Like the fact that it's animating in real time, it's refracting, reflecting, everything happening

00:39:55 ◼   ► at 120 Hertz.

00:39:57 ◼   ► It is, it can, it can look nice.

00:40:00 ◼   ► I think it looks nice.

00:40:02 ◼   ► Like I do like the parts of it that look good, I think look really good, but that isn't all

00:40:07 ◼   ► the time.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:40:08 ◼   ► I'm of that.

00:40:10 ◼   ► And if we were looking at, at a painting or a photo, I would say, oh, this looks so

00:40:15 ◼   ► nice.

00:40:15 ◼   ► Right.

00:40:16 ◼   ► And my interaction with that would stop there, would stop at the staring, right.

00:40:21 ◼   ► I'm going to an art exhibit or something and I'm looking at a picture and like, yeah, that's

00:40:25 ◼   ► nice.

00:40:25 ◼   ► But in this case, I'm not just looking at the Apple music UI.

00:40:29 ◼   ► I'm actually using Apple music.

00:40:31 ◼   ► I'm using Apple podcasts.

00:40:32 ◼   ► I'm, I'm using Safari.

00:40:33 ◼   ► I'm using messages.

00:40:34 ◼   ► And so like there, there is the, the balance that you got to hit with the looking nice

00:40:39 ◼   ► and the feeling nice or the feeling useful or the being readable, like the very basics.

00:40:43 ◼   ► And, and it just doesn't do that.

00:40:47 ◼   ► And I, and like, I second guess myself a lot over the past few weeks and thinking to be completely

00:40:52 ◼   ► honest with you, like, okay, you know, the question that we all ask ourselves at some

00:40:57 ◼   ► point, and I guess Steven started a few years ago, like, am I a boomer?

00:41:00 ◼   ► Like I started asking myself this question and, and I thought, well, what's that?

00:41:04 ◼   ► Well, I don't know, because I feel like, I feel like I enjoy being on the bleeding edge

00:41:09 ◼   ► of tech.

00:41:09 ◼   ► I enjoy trying new things and constantly changing my workflow and, and breaking the things that

00:41:17 ◼   ► I use.

00:41:17 ◼   ► I think I am not the kind of person that is resistant to change, but when something is bad,

00:41:24 ◼   ► something is bad.

00:41:26 ◼   ► And, and, and when I'm looking at Apple podcasts and I'm looking at the mini player at the bottom

00:41:31 ◼   ► and I cannot make out the title, I don't know.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I mean, I feel like, I feel like we're all living in some kind of, like when I see these

00:41:42 ◼   ► comments from people on, on, on, on, on blue sky saying, ah, yeah, the tech boomers are complaining

00:41:49 ◼   ► about text that is unreadable.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Like, I just, I don't, I don't think that is a matter of opinion.

00:41:57 ◼   ► It is literally unreadable, right?

00:42:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:01 ◼   ► Unless those people have supervision or something, but I don't know.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Um, and I mean, I can go on and on here, but just.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Can I, can I just jump in with two, two, um, two other areas of, of hiding the UI and then

00:42:16 ◼   ► Steven, I want to know what you're thinking about, but I just wanted to kind of close that

00:42:19 ◼   ► loop.

00:42:19 ◼   ► So there's the all tabs, uh, in mail, if you want to select multiple messages, you have

00:42:26 ◼   ► to hit an ellipses button that includes a bunch of options about visual elements in mail.

00:42:36 ◼   ► So like, it's the area where you would choose between categories and list view, where you

00:42:40 ◼   ► could show priority messages, show your contact photos, and then also the select button to

00:42:46 ◼   ► select multiple messages.

00:42:47 ◼   ► That is just an, a completely wrong place to put that button because it is everything

00:42:53 ◼   ► else that's in that menu is completely unrelated to this, right?

00:42:57 ◼   ► To be able to select multiple messages to archive them.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Like what am I supposed to, what, how, how else am I supposed to do this?

00:43:05 ◼   ► Please tell me.

00:43:05 ◼   ► I would love to know.

00:43:06 ◼   ► The, but the one that I, I just don't, I like, I cannot understand why they did this.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:13 ◼   ► So the camera app, right?

00:43:15 ◼   ► You open the camera app and you've got the two new, new options, like a splash screen.

00:43:21 ◼   ► It's like, Hey, you've got photo and you've got video.

00:43:23 ◼   ► I think that's actually smart, right?

00:43:24 ◼   ► Like make it way simpler.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Most people don't use most of these options, but they can get them if they need them and

00:43:31 ◼   ► you can scroll, right?

00:43:33 ◼   ► It's reverse scrolling, not natural scrolling.

00:43:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:38 ◼   ► It goes in the wrong direction.

00:43:40 ◼   ► Yes.

00:43:40 ◼   ► Nothing else in the system does this.

00:43:42 ◼   ► This is truly unhinged decision-making.

00:43:44 ◼   ► From my perspective, this is the worst decision in iOS 26.

00:43:48 ◼   ► More than the readability stuff.

00:43:50 ◼   ► Like, why would you do this?

00:43:52 ◼   ► Like what leads to you doing this?

00:43:53 ◼   ► So, you know, we are attuned to, if you want to go left, you swipe right.

00:43:58 ◼   ► If you want to go right, you swipe left.

00:44:00 ◼   ► Right.

00:44:00 ◼   ► Like if you're scrolling something, because you're, you're independently manipulate, sorry,

00:44:05 ◼   ► you are directly manipulating the UI, right?

00:44:08 ◼   ► Like that is the natural part of natural scrolling, right?

00:44:11 ◼   ► So like you're imagining that the content that you're looking on is on like some kind of ball

00:44:16 ◼   ► or a wheel and you push it and it will move in the way that you want.

00:44:19 ◼   ► And absolutely like just like wild, wild decision-making to make it like, if you want to go left,

00:44:30 ◼   ► you have to swipe left.

00:44:31 ◼   ► And if you want to go right, you swipe right.

00:44:32 ◼   ► I don't know why they're doing that.

00:44:34 ◼   ► That doesn't make any sense to me why they would do that.

00:44:37 ◼   ► And like, I get it wrong every time I want to choose something.

00:44:40 ◼   ► And, and that is how everyone will react.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Cause it's like, you have trained us in every other part of the system to do it differently.

00:44:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:44:48 ◼   ► Wild, just wild, wild, wild stuff.

00:44:50 ◼   ► I keep coming back to something that, um, Federico, I think you said a couple of weeks ago,

00:44:59 ◼   ► maybe when this, when this first came out, um, about Apple redesigning something that hundreds

00:45:08 ◼   ► of millions of people use.

00:45:11 ◼   ► And I think the people in the beta now are like a microcosm of that.

00:45:17 ◼   ► I personally think it looks cool in some areas, but cannot deny that in some other areas,

00:45:25 ◼   ► it is utterly impossible to read what is happening.

00:45:30 ◼   ► Like your screenshot of Apple podcast versus bucket cast is mind blowing.

00:45:36 ◼   ► And I just don't see how they can ship it the way that it is in beta four to the whole world.

00:45:44 ◼   ► And I don't think that's a boomer thing.

00:45:47 ◼   ► I don't think it's even like a accessibility thing.

00:45:49 ◼   ► It's just, it's just hard to read.

00:45:51 ◼   ► It's just the, the text gets disappeared.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Um, and I, Mike, I also keep coming back to something you said, like separate the liquid

00:46:01 ◼   ► and the glass, like the, the little animations, like, and the way the controls sort of like

00:46:07 ◼   ► pop out, like, oh, that's really cool.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Even though they overdo it.

00:46:10 ◼   ► And like, why do I have to tap twice to get to my tabs in Safari?

00:46:14 ◼   ► I hate it.

00:46:15 ◼   ► I really hate it.

00:46:16 ◼   ► But.

00:46:16 ◼   ► I just, I just don't know.

00:46:21 ◼   ► Um, the, I think there is a version of this that is the, the essentially the dynamic

00:46:28 ◼   ► island sort of like organic, almost fluid UI, but solid and just floating.

00:46:34 ◼   ► So, because there are some nice ideas, like make everything round, more, more rounder so

00:46:41 ◼   ► that it matches the bezels of the, of the device.

00:46:43 ◼   ► You know, it feels like, uh, nicer, uh, you know, and you got these animations, although

00:46:50 ◼   ► there's another conversation to be had about the animations.

00:46:53 ◼   ► Like the animations are cool, but like to see them every single time.

00:46:57 ◼   ► And I'm just asking this question because I don't know the answer.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Do they get tiring after a while?

00:47:02 ◼   ► Like if you try and do this, for example, open the photos app and from the main grid, uh,

00:47:08 ◼   ► open a photo and then back out immediately, like, and do it multiple times.

00:47:12 ◼   ► Like you open a picture and then you swipe down, then you go to another picture and swipe down

00:47:15 ◼   ► and look at the buttons in the top, right?

00:47:17 ◼   ► Like, is that, is that, is that necessary?

00:47:22 ◼   ► Like to have these animations occurring every single time?

00:47:26 ◼   ► Uh, I don't know.

00:47:28 ◼   ► Some of them could maybe be dialed down a little, um, it's too slow and it's right.

00:47:34 ◼   ► It's kind of like the, the problem that I'm having with liquid glass beyond eligibility and

00:47:39 ◼   ► beyond the hot, like, see, I keep piling on issues.

00:47:42 ◼   ► It's also that, that these animations, they're, they're slow sometimes.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Like they're, they're taking their sweet time to almost to tell you, look at me, I'm animating

00:47:53 ◼   ► myself.

00:47:54 ◼   ► And like, I get it.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Like, I get it.

00:47:56 ◼   ► You're doing the animation.

00:47:57 ◼   ► It's like, and for the hundred times, it's like, oh yeah, here comes the button again.

00:48:00 ◼   ► Morphine.

00:48:01 ◼   ► Yeah, there it is.

00:48:02 ◼   ► Like, I don't know.

00:48:03 ◼   ► It feels like they wanted to really show it off.

00:48:07 ◼   ► And it's one thing to do it with the Dynamic Island and live activities, because you only

00:48:13 ◼   ► see them every once in a while.

00:48:15 ◼   ► Here, it's like, it's like the guy who had a funny joke once and repeated the joke twice.

00:48:23 ◼   ► And then he started doing it all the time.

00:48:26 ◼   ► And everybody's like, oh gosh, it's joke again.

00:48:28 ◼   ► You know, it kind of feels like that.

00:48:30 ◼   ► Which one of us is he talking about, Stephen?

00:48:32 ◼   ► Definitely me.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:48:34 ◼   ► No, no.

00:48:35 ◼   ► They're always, they're always, they're always different.

00:48:37 ◼   ► They're always different.

00:48:37 ◼   ► But yeah, I think there was a version of this that could have been not liquid glass.

00:48:43 ◼   ► I also feel like, and maybe I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to justify what Apple is

00:48:48 ◼   ► doing.

00:48:48 ◼   ► I'm just trying to maybe find some personal internal logic that helps me rationalize what's

00:48:56 ◼   ► going on here.

00:48:57 ◼   ► It almost feels like maybe they wanted to do this for a future product in which compact and

00:49:04 ◼   ► transparent UI makes sense.

00:49:06 ◼   ► I'm talking about glasses.

00:49:07 ◼   ► But if that's the case, maybe we should doubt the entire idea of making everything consistent.

00:49:15 ◼   ► What if making the design language consistent everywhere was not a good idea?

00:49:20 ◼   ► What if that was a bad idea?

00:49:22 ◼   ► What if, what if actually every single device needs to have its own optimized UI?

00:49:27 ◼   ► And maybe, maybe that's the problem.

00:49:29 ◼   ► I mean, even, even with the consistency thing though, like the iPad just doesn't feel like

00:49:37 ◼   ► this.

00:49:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:38 ◼   ► And the Mac feels even less like it in some places.

00:49:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:41 ◼   ► And like when I'm using the iPad, I can see all these things, but they don't feel the same

00:49:48 ◼   ► to me or like they're not hiding all the buttons away from me.

00:49:53 ◼   ► I mean, for now.

00:49:54 ◼   ► For now.

00:49:55 ◼   ► I mean, I just, I'm so conflicted about this because I do, there are, there are times where

00:50:05 ◼   ► I'm like, wow, that is amazing.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Right?

00:50:09 ◼   ► Like, I'm like looking at things, I'm like, that's so cool.

00:50:12 ◼   ► I love the way this looks.

00:50:13 ◼   ► And then I'm at other points where I'm like, oh man, that's real bad.

00:50:17 ◼   ► And so like, you kind of get in, I'm getting into my head with it.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Right?

00:50:20 ◼   ► Where it's like, am I forming too many opinions based on beta software or should I be performing,

00:50:28 ◼   ► like forming all my opinions based on the beta software?

00:50:31 ◼   ► Right?

00:50:32 ◼   ► Like, it's like, what is accurate?

00:50:34 ◼   ► Right?

00:50:34 ◼   ► Like, is it fair to judge them on what I'm shipping or is it, or is it like, on what,

00:50:42 ◼   ► like, is it fair to judge them on what I can see or is it, or would it, I'm trying to think

00:50:48 ◼   ► of the opposite of that, or it's like, would it be unfair for me not to is kind of what I'm

00:50:55 ◼   ► saying.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

00:50:56 ◼   ► Right?

00:50:56 ◼   ► Where it's like, I'm judging them on what I'm seeing right now.

00:50:59 ◼   ► And there would be people that say, yeah, but it's not finished.

00:51:03 ◼   ► But also at the same time, this is work that they're shipping in some degree, right?

00:51:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:09 ◼   ► And something happened where they tried something else and went back to this, which is in some

00:51:14 ◼   ► ways the most interesting thing to me is what was beta three about?

00:51:18 ◼   ► What happened there?

00:51:19 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe they just, maybe it was broken.

00:51:23 ◼   ► Like genuinely, like maybe it just wasn't supposed to be like that.

00:51:28 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:51:29 ◼   ► Cause like, I can't think of a reason otherwise, cause it doesn't really seem, I mean, look,

00:51:34 ◼   ► I haven't used it on my iPhone for long enough.

00:51:35 ◼   ► Federica, maybe you can tell me.

00:51:36 ◼   ► It doesn't really feel like much changed between two and four.

00:51:41 ◼   ► From like legibility wise.

00:51:45 ◼   ► No, it's basically that.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:48 ◼   ► Here's what I wonder.

00:51:49 ◼   ► What would it be like if like, let's pick tab bars, for example, right?

00:51:53 ◼   ► Let's just start with that.

00:51:54 ◼   ► We'll start with tab bars, right?

00:51:55 ◼   ► Because I know all the bottom kind of Chrome that's at the bottom of the window, right?

00:52:01 ◼   ► I think I would say that seems to be where the majority of problems seem to lie from a

00:52:06 ◼   ► legibility standpoint in using apps, right?

00:52:08 ◼   ► Federica had a great example earlier.

00:52:10 ◼   ► I've been taking some screenshots of like trying to read what's in the Safari text box when it's

00:52:16 ◼   ► in front of any kind of URL, all that kind of stuff.

00:52:19 ◼   ► And the controllers, right?

00:52:21 ◼   ► So like you're going between library and collections and photos or whatever.

00:52:24 ◼   ► What if you just didn't see through it?

00:52:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:28 ◼   ► Well, would that fix it?

00:52:31 ◼   ► Like if it had all the light and it had all the bouncing and it had all of the like the

00:52:38 ◼   ► movement, but there was like, let's say a piece of stone behind the glass.

00:52:44 ◼   ► If we're like continuing to talk in a material kind of kind of standpoint, like it wasn't frosted.

00:52:51 ◼   ► It was just like, you know, like, you know, you might see like signs on a wall where like

00:52:56 ◼   ► someone's got like a piece of glass and they've like attached it to a wall or whatever, right?

00:53:00 ◼   ► It's still going to have an element of transparency, but you see an element behind it.

00:53:05 ◼   ► It could still pick up light from outside.

00:53:08 ◼   ► It could still kind of maybe refract.

00:53:10 ◼   ► Now, of course, we're going to start bending the laws of physics here.

00:53:13 ◼   ► But you know what?

00:53:14 ◼   ► That actually doesn't matter.

00:53:15 ◼   ► Like that's fine.

00:53:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:16 ◼   ► Like it could still pick up light from around it, right?

00:53:23 ◼   ► Like if you're scrolling photos, the edge of the window could still shimmer with the with

00:53:28 ◼   ► the photos that are flying by.

00:53:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:30 ◼   ► But you would be able to read everything that's in the UI because behind it is something that

00:53:35 ◼   ► when these photos scroll, it goes behind that.

00:53:39 ◼   ► Yeah, my I agree with that.

00:53:42 ◼   ► But my question is.

00:53:43 ◼   ► Why did you design something that allowed you to see through in the first place?

00:53:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know, man.

00:53:53 ◼   ► What was the process there?

00:53:56 ◼   ► Because I think that's concerning.

00:53:58 ◼   ► What's what's concerned?

00:54:00 ◼   ► Like, I agree with your suggestions, but like.

00:54:01 ◼   ► German keeps saying that they've been working on this for three years.

00:54:06 ◼   ► I'm not sure I believe that, but let's assume that it is accurate.

00:54:09 ◼   ► In three years, it didn't you didn't realize you never.

00:54:14 ◼   ► So in three years, you never realized that unless you have a highly controlled environment

00:54:20 ◼   ► in your UI, this can happen.

00:54:23 ◼   ► In three years, you haven't realized that.

00:54:26 ◼   ► OK.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Sure.

00:54:29 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, it's a little concerning.

00:54:31 ◼   ► It is, but I don't know.

00:54:34 ◼   ► If it was put together in three years.

00:54:36 ◼   ► It's a big team, but like, you know, people make mistakes.

00:54:40 ◼   ► I don't know, man.

00:54:41 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:54:41 ◼   ► I mean, yeah.

00:54:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:43 ◼   ► And here's the thing.

00:54:44 ◼   ► People make mistakes.

00:54:45 ◼   ► I mean, it's not like we're launching a crusade against Alan Dye.

00:54:49 ◼   ► Like, we're not doing that.

00:54:50 ◼   ► You know, the guy made some poor decisions and, you know, hopefully, you know, they'll be

00:54:57 ◼   ► able to fix them.

00:54:57 ◼   ► But here's the thing.

00:55:00 ◼   ► Very rarely, we've seen modern Apple say, ah, we think we made a mistake.

00:55:07 ◼   ► Well, actually, more recently, they've been doing more of it.

00:55:11 ◼   ► I don't think that they like to do it.

00:55:13 ◼   ► But like, they're at least deleting ads from places.

00:55:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:18 ◼   ► You think they're going to delete liquid glass?

00:55:21 ◼   ► I don't think they can do that.

00:55:22 ◼   ► I...

00:55:23 ◼   ► The reasonable thing would be for Apple to see how the public beta goes and, you know, sort

00:55:29 ◼   ► of read the room.

00:55:30 ◼   ► And if the vast majority of developers and feedback items are telling you, this is not ready, be

00:55:36 ◼   ► like, we need some more time with this.

00:55:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I do...

00:55:41 ◼   ► But they're not going to do that.

00:55:42 ◼   ► They're not going to do that.

00:55:42 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:55:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:55:44 ◼   ► I...

00:55:45 ◼   ► What's the reason that the entire...

00:55:48 ◼   ► Not the entire, but massive parts of the UI change between beta 3 and beta 4?

00:55:52 ◼   ► Why did that happen?

00:55:53 ◼   ► Right?

00:55:54 ◼   ► Like, if we're trying to apply some kind of logic on that, what if it was like, here is

00:55:59 ◼   ► a route that we might go down, but for the public beta, we want to see if we just unleash

00:56:04 ◼   ► this.

00:56:04 ◼   ► What do people say?

00:56:06 ◼   ► And at the same time, we're going to keep working on another version where it's more

00:56:11 ◼   ► frosted.

00:56:11 ◼   ► Like, why did that work happen?

00:56:15 ◼   ► Like, I made a joke.

00:56:16 ◼   ► I was joking earlier when I said it was a bug, like, mostly.

00:56:19 ◼   ► Like, somebody had to make it look like that, right?

00:56:22 ◼   ► Like, it's the stuff that it's not, like, naturally occurring.

00:56:27 ◼   ► When, like, the Safari bar got more frosted, somebody did that, right?

00:56:35 ◼   ► Like, so why did they do that?

00:56:38 ◼   ► And then why did it not stick?

00:56:40 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe Claude in their Xcode realized the issue and did that.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Let me get in there and fix this for you.

00:56:48 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know.

00:56:49 ◼   ► Like, I would like to believe, genuinely, and for now I would choose to believe that they

00:56:55 ◼   ► want to release this version, the most, the best version of what they have got so far with

00:57:02 ◼   ► Liquid Glass, as it was shown off in the keynote in the public beta, and just see.

00:57:07 ◼   ► Because we are very opinionated and very particular people, right?

00:57:15 ◼   ► Us and all of the people listening to this show, right?

00:57:19 ◼   ► And all of the people in Macedon and Blue Sky that have installed the dev beta, anyone that's

00:57:23 ◼   ► installed the developer beta, you are a person who has strong opinions about the way these

00:57:30 ◼   ► things look and work.

00:57:31 ◼   ► Because you chose to sacrifice the most important computer in your life to just see what the glass

00:57:38 ◼   ► looked like, right?

00:57:39 ◼   ► Like, you are that person, right?

00:57:41 ◼   ► Or even if you didn't install it, the fact that you choose to listen to us debate this

00:57:45 ◼   ► week after week, right?

00:57:47 ◼   ► You are a very particular person.

00:57:49 ◼   ► It could be helpful for them to release it to millions of people in the public beta process.

00:57:58 ◼   ► I would love to.

00:57:58 ◼   ► I have no idea how many people download the public beta.

00:58:00 ◼   ► I would love to know.

00:58:01 ◼   ► But like, let's just say millions of people and get that feedback from online, from people

00:58:08 ◼   ► contacting them from, I'm sure like many people will be asked to give a survey, right?

00:58:13 ◼   ► One of the, Apple does this, they'll send out these surveys and maybe there'll be something

00:58:18 ◼   ► in the feedback app that wants your feedback about it and they want to see what people think

00:58:23 ◼   ► about it.

00:58:23 ◼   ► And then use that as an opportunity to, over the next two months, finish this thing up.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Is that completely unhinged to think that that might be what's going on?

00:58:38 ◼   ► No, it's just an, it's so unusual to see Apple working this out in public though.

00:58:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:45 ◼   ► They're doing the whole, they're doing the whole building public thing.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Yeah, but this is, this is where we are though, in 2025.

00:58:51 ◼   ► We've not been here before.

00:58:52 ◼   ► Like we just haven't, this hasn't happened before, right?

00:58:56 ◼   ► Where like there was even the public to build in front of in this way, right?

00:59:02 ◼   ► Like we spoke about this the last time we spoke about it.

00:59:03 ◼   ► When iOS 7 came out, like their social media just wasn't what it is now.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

00:59:10 ◼   ► And I think that this is the difference.

00:59:12 ◼   ► The difference is everyone's seeing everything all the time.

00:59:15 ◼   ► And so you can't really, you know, you can't really do these things in secret.

00:59:21 ◼   ► You just, it just doesn't work like that anymore.

00:59:23 ◼   ► And there's just so many eyes on everything that I just think that they, they have to be realistic.

00:59:30 ◼   ► And I think they are being realistic to a point because there is a different version of this that we saw a few weeks ago.

00:59:37 ◼   ► And now it's different again.

00:59:38 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:59:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:42 ◼   ► I mean, I guess at the very least, they succeeded in not letting us, not making us talk about where they are in artificial intelligence.

00:59:54 ◼   ► I don't think this is what they wanted though.

00:59:57 ◼   ► Well, you know, what is it the thing?

01:00:01 ◼   ► There's no such thing as bad publicity as long as you talk about it.

01:00:05 ◼   ► You know, we're talking about their design.

01:00:08 ◼   ► We're not saying Apple is behind an AI anymore.

01:00:10 ◼   ► We're not having the conversation anymore, even though they are.

01:00:13 ◼   ► I'm not sure that like that, that line works in the modern context, you know.

01:00:18 ◼   ► Like, and I'm not saying that you say it does.

01:00:19 ◼   ► Like, just like, I think that there is such a thing as bad press now.

01:00:25 ◼   ► Oh, I agree.

01:00:26 ◼   ► I think there is bad publicity.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:28 ◼   ► Like, there was a time, I think, when that was the case.

01:00:31 ◼   ► But I think once, once we had the public town square of the internet, I think that that changed, right?

01:00:37 ◼   ► Like, look at the Coldplay guy, you know, the CEO of that company anymore.

01:00:43 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:00:43 ◼   ► That was bad press for him.

01:00:46 ◼   ► I don't know, boys.

01:00:48 ◼   ► It's an interesting time to be in.

01:00:50 ◼   ► I'm trying, I am trying, I'm trying to choose optimism.

01:00:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, that's, you're called the enthusiast, not the negative.

01:01:00 ◼   ► I just, I like to believe, and not only, I do believe there are lots of very smart people

01:01:07 ◼   ► with a lot of opinions and good taste working on this project.

01:01:12 ◼   ► Like, I believe that.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And I like to believe that those people will ultimately win out in this scenario.

01:01:20 ◼   ► But, it's going to take longer than maybe we're used to for that to occur.

01:01:26 ◼   ► They will be making changes to this all the way to 0.3 or whatever.

01:01:31 ◼   ► You know?

01:01:33 ◼   ► That's going to take a lot of complaining, is that, is what it's going to take.

01:01:37 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe.

01:01:38 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:01:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:41 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:01:41 ◼   ► I suspect the public beta will steer them one direction or the other.

01:01:47 ◼   ► And look, maybe, like, there is a scenario, like what Mike said, there's a scenario in

01:01:51 ◼   ► which a lot of people get the public beta, a lot of people get it, and everybody's like,

01:01:55 ◼   ► oh, this is cool.

01:01:56 ◼   ► And that's it.

01:01:57 ◼   ► And, you know, readability, legibility, be damned, like, they're not going to do anything.

01:02:03 ◼   ► Whatever.

01:02:03 ◼   ► People think it's cool.

01:02:05 ◼   ► You know, Gen Zers think it's cool.

01:02:07 ◼   ► Whatever.

01:02:08 ◼   ► Like, we're just going to do it.

01:02:09 ◼   ► So.

01:02:10 ◼   ► And then maybe it's like The Simpsons in me, right?

01:02:12 ◼   ► It's I, is it me that was wrong?

01:02:14 ◼   ► You know?

01:02:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:15 ◼   ► Or whatever.

01:02:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:16 ◼   ► I almost posted that meme yesterday, and then I thought it was too much.

01:02:21 ◼   ► I was going to post it saying, is it me?

01:02:25 ◼   ► Or no, it's Alan Dye, who is wrong.

01:02:29 ◼   ► But then I did not do it.

01:02:30 ◼   ► When you do post the things that you post on social media, like, you know, really kind

01:02:34 ◼   ► of getting into it, what is the kind of tenor in your replies?

01:02:37 ◼   ► Okay, let's see.

01:02:40 ◼   ► Like, are people agreeing with you?

01:02:43 ◼   ► Most of them.

01:02:44 ◼   ► Does it depend on the service?

01:02:46 ◼   ► Most of them.

01:02:47 ◼   ► Okay.

01:02:48 ◼   ► Well, it obviously depends on the service.

01:02:49 ◼   ► Mastodon, by nature, is the kind of place that attracts a lot of people who don't like

01:02:56 ◼   ► what Apple has been doing.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:58 ◼   ► So, but there is a contingent of people.

01:03:01 ◼   ► I would say, I would say, I don't know, 25%, like, this reply, have you considered that many

01:03:07 ◼   ► of us like this redesign?

01:03:09 ◼   ► Or the fact that I suggested that open AI as a problem, as an opening for, to take advantage of Apple's problems?

01:03:23 ◼   ► Obviously, you got the people complaining, telling me that I'm ruining the world with AI and all of that.

01:03:30 ◼   ► Then you got the people saying that they disagree with the idea that Apple has not been cultivating a third-party developer relationship.

01:03:40 ◼   ► Like, where does that statement come from?

01:03:42 ◼   ► I mean, have you looked at the past 10 years of Apple coverage?

01:03:46 ◼   ► That's incredible.

01:03:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:48 ◼   ► Is it just something that I think?

01:03:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:50 ◼   ► But by far, this design is not going well with the, just anecdotally speaking, of the 33,000 people that follow me on Mastodon,

01:04:01 ◼   ► the ones that are interacting with me because they're using Mastodon, I would say, I don't know, let's look at this post.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Like, yeah, I would say, eyeballing it, 80% of people agree with that.

01:04:16 ◼   ► Now, obviously, it's a self-selecting audience, but still, yeah.

01:04:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:22 ◼   ► So, I don't know.

01:04:24 ◼   ► I feel like it's, to go back to the beginning, I'm feeling very torn between how happy I am about the iPad

01:04:31 ◼   ► and how slow and, to be honest, like cumbersome this is going to be, this whole thing.

01:04:39 ◼   ► Because now it's going to be a thing.

01:04:41 ◼   ► It's going to be like multiple betas, and they're going to change things.

01:04:44 ◼   ► And then you're going to get the people split into two groups.

01:04:47 ◼   ► Oh, there's, there's, there's Betici and Marco and Gruber complaining.

01:04:51 ◼   ► And they're just like, oh, but the people on Twitter actually like this design.

01:04:55 ◼   ► It's going to be a thing.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Like, stage manager became a thing years ago.

01:04:59 ◼   ► And I really hoped I wouldn't live through another thing again.

01:05:03 ◼   ► But here we are.

01:05:04 ◼   ► And at least, like, stage manager being a thing was, for most people, just like a thing that they were aware was happening,

01:05:10 ◼   ► but they didn't use it, so they didn't care.

01:05:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:13 ◼   ► You can't avoid this.

01:05:15 ◼   ► Like, everyone's going to be using this.

01:05:17 ◼   ► Like, everyone's going to have an opinion about this of their own, rather than, like, a lot of people's opinions about stage managers informed by whoever's, whoever's content that they read, right?

01:05:29 ◼   ► Like, I'm sure a lot of people's opinions about stage manager were informed by your feelings, right?

01:05:34 ◼   ► Because they weren't going to use it, they didn't care, whatever, right?

01:05:38 ◼   ► And so, but now, everyone's going to draw their own opinions on liquid glass, because everyone's going to get it on their devices, or will be able to get it on their devices, right?

01:05:48 ◼   ► And so, like, that is going to, I don't know what that does to the conversation.

01:05:52 ◼   ► I know I wouldn't want to be in your situation.

01:05:55 ◼   ► Like, this is, you know, the conversations that we have together are somewhat easy, compared to writing a review, I think.

01:06:04 ◼   ► No, no, it's exhausting.

01:06:05 ◼   ► I, even just writing the, I have postponed and delayed and sort of, I haven't been writing the public beta story just because it's been demotivating, it's been exhausting, and just to have the ground change under you every couple of weeks, like, no, I don't want to do it.

01:06:25 ◼   ► Like, I don't, I honestly don't have the energy for that right now.

01:06:28 ◼   ► And if I could, I would just write about the iPad this year, which is something that I seriously considered.

01:06:33 ◼   ► Maybe for the public beta, you should just do an iPad story.

01:06:37 ◼   ► But I also feel like I want to say something, I don't know.

01:06:40 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:06:41 ◼   ► It's hard for developers, too.

01:06:44 ◼   ► I mean, we've been working on the Pedometer++ redesign with some of the map stuff.

01:06:48 ◼   ► We have controls floating over the maps, and they look wildly different in betas 3 and 4.

01:06:55 ◼   ► The longer this goes on, before they pick a direction, like, it means the launch is going to be tougher for everybody in the fall.

01:07:06 ◼   ► For Apple, for developers, and for customers.

01:07:08 ◼   ► You know, I saw, I think it was Marco on Macedon was like, they need to ship iOS 18 on the new phones.

01:07:15 ◼   ► Like, that's just not going to happen.

01:07:16 ◼   ► That would break 18 years of precedence.

01:07:19 ◼   ► Like, it's, iOS 18 is not going to get what it needs to support those new phones.

01:07:25 ◼   ► Like, I just don't think that's going to happen.

01:07:28 ◼   ► They didn't do that when it was literally broken.

01:07:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:32 ◼   ► Right?

01:07:33 ◼   ► What one was that?

01:07:34 ◼   ► Was it, was it, was it, 16?

01:07:38 ◼   ► What, they shipped like a .1 later on, or like, the next week or something?

01:07:42 ◼   ► Yeah, there was like a version of, yeah, it was like a version of iOS that only shipped on the phones, right?

01:07:49 ◼   ► Because there was like significant problems with the system.

01:07:51 ◼   ► I don't even remember what the problems were, but like, there were actual problems with the system.

01:07:56 ◼   ► So, it only was on the phone, and everybody else had to wait for .1.

01:08:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:01 ◼   ► I forget.

01:08:02 ◼   ► Zoe says it's 13.

01:08:04 ◼   ► 13, that sounds right.

01:08:06 ◼   ► And so, that would kind of clock out to maybe be 2020, which would make sense.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:08:10 ◼   ► So, yeah, there's lots of moving parts here, and they got to, they got to get it right, and hopefully they can.

01:08:20 ◼   ► But the longer this goes on, the sort of, the pit in my stomach kind of continues to be there.

01:08:27 ◼   ► This feels like a monkey's paw situation for me personally, because like, I spent like a few weeks before WWDC being like, at least if they do the redesign, we can argue about the placement of pixels.

01:08:38 ◼   ► And like, now we're in it, it's like, oh, I asked for too much.

01:08:41 ◼   ► I asked for too much.

01:08:43 ◼   ► I wanted to argue about pixels, but not this much, you know?

01:08:47 ◼   ► Like, I wanted us to be like, oh, I think this button should be placed here, not there.

01:08:51 ◼   ► Not like, I can't read anything anymore.

01:08:54 ◼   ► I took all my buttons away and put them in drawers, and like, I meant digging through four layers of settings so I can easily open and close tabs in Safari.

01:09:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I do wonder, the tab bar in particular, like, Apple News does this.

01:09:11 ◼   ► I think it's a really good example.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Like, you scroll and the buttons disappear, and the far left one is actually the News logo, which is really weird.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Like, I don't see a lot of developers copying that, at least at first.

01:09:23 ◼   ► I think you're going to see tab bars that still extend the whole width of the screen, just sort of glassy.

01:09:29 ◼   ► Even Apple's apps are inconsistent in how they interpret liquid glass.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Like, it's not just a button you check and everything just springs to life.

01:09:41 ◼   ► You got to go in and do a bunch of stuff.

01:09:44 ◼   ► And when you're developing this and you're looking at Apple's apps as examples of what to do and what not to do, they're not consistent, even internally.

01:09:53 ◼   ► And that's also kind of frustrating.

01:09:54 ◼   ► The buttons thing is wild.

01:09:57 ◼   ► I mean, I do like the search button being down in the bottom, and it, like, expands.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Like, I like that.

01:10:04 ◼   ► And I like that, like, search is in a more consistent place rather than being on the top.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Like, I do like, I think that's fun.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Like, you know, I like how that works in App Store or whatever.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Like, you press the search button and it, like, takes, you can just, like, start searching.

01:10:18 ◼   ► That's fun.

01:10:18 ◼   ► Like, stuff like that.

01:10:19 ◼   ► There are so many things that I like.

01:10:22 ◼   ► I love the clock on the lock screen.

01:10:24 ◼   ► You know, and it gets so big and small.

01:10:27 ◼   ► I like that.

01:10:28 ◼   ► I like that my widgets are at the bottom on the lock screen.

01:10:33 ◼   ► I think that looks really good.

01:10:36 ◼   ► I'm trying, I'm just trying to find a bunch of things that I like now.

01:10:38 ◼   ► Because, like, I like the way the app library looks.

01:10:40 ◼   ► What are your lock screen widgets?

01:10:43 ◼   ► That's a great question.

01:10:44 ◼   ► So, at the moment, I'm in my recording focus.

01:10:48 ◼   ► And in my recording focus, I have a time zone widget from WidgetSmith.

01:10:54 ◼   ► I have a Timery widget and I have a Mango Baby widget, which shows, like, the last log thing for the baby.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Usually, it's Carrot Weather.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Yeah, Carrot Weather, Mango Baby.

01:11:07 ◼   ► I have a step count from WidgetSmith, because I like the fonts, rather than from Pedometer, because you can customize them.

01:11:13 ◼   ► And then Timery.

01:11:15 ◼   ► And then my buttons, I have the flashlight, and I have a shortcut, which does a bunch of baby-related stuff.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Oh, nice.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Nice.

01:11:25 ◼   ► What do you boys have?

01:11:27 ◼   ► I've got the date at the top.

01:11:32 ◼   ► I have the time zones from WidgetSmith.

01:11:37 ◼   ► And then I have Carrot Weather.

01:11:39 ◼   ► And then at the bottom, I have flashlight and the custom shortcut that opens Control Center.

01:11:44 ◼   ► I didn't mention my top one.

01:11:47 ◼   ► Remember, I spoke about this a few weeks ago.

01:11:48 ◼   ► It's like a, it's the next calendar event that pulls from WidgetSmith.

01:11:54 ◼   ► But then when I tap it, it opens Fantastical.

01:11:55 ◼   ► Nice.

01:11:56 ◼   ► Because I don't like how Fantastical does this.

01:12:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I've had Shazam, the calendar, at the bottom.

01:12:05 ◼   ► I mean, I've had Shazam, the calendar, and ChaiGPT for a while.

01:12:11 ◼   ► And now that I'm trying the new clock, I'm trying to go for a cleaner look with the nothing at the top.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Like, so just the date and time.

01:12:23 ◼   ► I want to say that I do like something that I like.

01:12:26 ◼   ► If we are sharing things that we like.

01:12:28 ◼   ► I think that's a good way to finish the episode.

01:12:30 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:12:31 ◼   ► That we like.

01:12:32 ◼   ► I do like the parallax, like, spatial scenes effect.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:12:36 ◼   ► I think it's cool.

01:12:37 ◼   ► It's great.

01:12:38 ◼   ► It's kind of, it's, it's kind of, I can see why it can be a little creepy looking.

01:12:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:43 ◼   ► I think it's incredible.

01:12:44 ◼   ► It freaks me out.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:47 ◼   ► It's a bit freaky because it's like you're holding a person or a dog that is moving inside the phone.

01:12:53 ◼   ► Like, right now, I got a picture of Zelda on the lock screen.

01:12:56 ◼   ► And I'm rocking the phone back and forth.

01:13:00 ◼   ► And her nose is speaking above a notification when I'm doing that.

01:13:05 ◼   ► It's kind of cute.

01:13:06 ◼   ► It is incredible technology, but I find it so freaky.

01:13:11 ◼   ► And I, what else do I like?

01:13:14 ◼   ► Oh boy.

01:13:16 ◼   ► What else do I like?

01:13:17 ◼   ► I know there's things in there.

01:13:19 ◼   ► The app library.

01:13:20 ◼   ► I like the look of the app library.

01:13:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:22 ◼   ► I like the, like I mentioned before, more UI elements at the bottom.

01:13:27 ◼   ► I do like, here's something that I actually do like, non-design related.

01:13:32 ◼   ► They have made the shortcuts editor so much better for picking variables.

01:13:39 ◼   ► You know when in an action, in shortcuts, used to be that you could long press, right?

01:13:46 ◼   ► To pick a variable.

01:13:47 ◼   ► Like you long press on a parameter and you get the menu, right?

01:13:51 ◼   ► So that you can choose the variables from the menu or you can hit the select variable button.

01:13:58 ◼   ► And sort of like all the actions expand so that you can scroll through the shortcut to pick a variable, right?

01:14:04 ◼   ► Used to be that when you did that, the editor would scroll up and down all over the place and lose your position.

01:14:13 ◼   ► Now, they have completely fixed it.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Now, when you hit select variable, all of the actions quickly expand.

01:14:20 ◼   ► They show you all of their outputs and you can pick one and it scrolls back.

01:14:25 ◼   ► Like they have completely redone that aspect.

01:14:28 ◼   ► They've done a nice job.

01:14:29 ◼   ► I gotta say they've done a nice job.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Was it the opening of the menu to give it space would move where you were?

01:14:35 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:14:37 ◼   ► Now they've made that a lot better.

01:14:39 ◼   ► And I don't know, design-wise, honestly.

01:14:42 ◼   ► It doesn't need to be design-wise.

01:14:43 ◼   ► Like I've picked a bunch of things that are design-wise.

01:14:45 ◼   ► But there are, I think, across the system, there are a bunch of them.

01:14:49 ◼   ► This is the thing.

01:14:50 ◼   ► They have touched so much, which is why things are good and bad, right?

01:14:55 ◼   ► They've made some decisions that are bad about where UI is going.

01:14:59 ◼   ► But they've also put new UI in a bunch of places.

01:15:01 ◼   ► There's a bunch of stuff that's fun and interesting and cool.

01:15:06 ◼   ► But there's also a bunch of stuff there.

01:15:08 ◼   ► Do you use any of the tinting or anything like that?

01:15:11 ◼   ► Either of you, are you doing any of that?

01:15:13 ◼   ► No.

01:15:13 ◼   ► No.

01:15:14 ◼   ► Just, so I do light mode during the day, dark mode at night automatically.

01:15:19 ◼   ► And I have the widgets switched between the two.

01:15:21 ◼   ► But no clear, no tinting.

01:15:24 ◼   ► I think people will like it, but it's just, it's not quite my jam.

01:15:27 ◼   ► I don't know if this was a thing before, because again, I've only used it.

01:15:32 ◼   ► And I didn't remember seeing this on the iPad, that there's a button to take a color from your wallpaper automatically.

01:15:38 ◼   ► Yeah, that's pretty cool.

01:15:39 ◼   ► That's really cool that it does that as like a system.

01:15:43 ◼   ► Or you can do an eyedropper yourself.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Like when I do it on my wallpapers, like this actually does look good.

01:15:50 ◼   ► It's not what I want, because I do like seeing all of the colors and the different designs and the app icons that I've chosen.

01:15:56 ◼   ► But I do think it actually looks good now in a way that it didn't before.

01:16:01 ◼   ► Big icons or regular icons?

01:16:03 ◼   ► Big icons.

01:16:06 ◼   ► Regular on the phone, but big on the iPad.

01:16:08 ◼   ► That's what I've done.

01:16:10 ◼   ► The big on the iPhone just doesn't look right to me, and I'm not sure why.

01:16:14 ◼   ► But I like the big icons on the iPad.

01:16:17 ◼   ► I think it fits more.

01:16:18 ◼   ► I think it's just because there's more space around the icons.

01:16:22 ◼   ► The home screen grid on the iPad is still hilarious.

01:16:25 ◼   ► It's very funny.

01:16:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:27 ◼   ► So having that be kind of filled in a little bit better, I think actually looks pretty good.

01:16:34 ◼   ► But yeah, on the phone, I just don't quite like it.

01:16:40 ◼   ► I think I still kind of use the labels to like look what I'm looking for subconsciously on the phone.

01:16:49 ◼   ► I don't know if you do.

01:16:51 ◼   ► I think you might think you do.

01:16:52 ◼   ► I think if you turned them off, you would be fine.

01:16:54 ◼   ► You're going to be like, wait, where's notes?

01:16:56 ◼   ► I switched it to large.

01:16:58 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:16:59 ◼   ► We'll see how it goes.

01:17:00 ◼   ► I was like, Stephen, this is like context anyone for two weeks.

01:17:03 ◼   ► It's like, I just can't find the messages.

01:17:05 ◼   ► I just can't find it.

01:17:06 ◼   ► I know the group me one because it's terrible.

01:17:09 ◼   ► You never forget group me.

01:17:11 ◼   ► Never forget.

01:17:12 ◼   ► So tune in next time when we discuss iOS 26 beta 5.

01:17:19 ◼   ► I guess.

01:17:20 ◼   ► But that'd be two weeks, right?

01:17:21 ◼   ► Two weeks.

01:17:22 ◼   ► Would it be next week?

01:17:23 ◼   ► Or is it two weeks?

01:17:24 ◼   ► Probably two, I would think.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Okay.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Unless this is really bad.

01:17:28 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:17:29 ◼   ► Until then, if you want to find more of us?

01:17:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:17:38 ◼   ► We're online.

01:17:39 ◼   ► You can find...

01:17:40 ◼   ► Is that a question?

01:17:41 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:17:41 ◼   ► Well, is this enough?

01:17:43 ◼   ► I missed one week.

01:17:44 ◼   ► I missed one week.

01:17:46 ◼   ► On the off chance you're not tired of us, you can find us on the internet.

01:17:49 ◼   ► Federico is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net and host of some great podcasts over there.

01:17:56 ◼   ► You can find Mike's work across Relay and Cortex brand.

01:18:01 ◼   ► And you can find his blog at theenthusiast.net.

01:18:05 ◼   ► Such a good logo.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Pretty good.

01:18:09 ◼   ► You can find my writing at 512pixels.net.

01:18:12 ◼   ► And I co-host Mac Power Users here on Relay.

01:18:15 ◼   ► This coming Sunday, Federico is the guest on MPU.

01:18:19 ◼   ► It was great.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Oh, yes.

01:18:21 ◼   ► I look forward to that.

01:18:22 ◼   ► A crossover event for the ages.

01:18:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I look forward to that.

01:18:27 ◼   ► How we're building that.

01:18:28 ◼   ► So check that out.

01:18:29 ◼   ► We'll put that in a follow-up next week.

01:18:30 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

01:18:31 ◼   ► What's the episode about?

01:18:32 ◼   ► Computers.

01:18:33 ◼   ► Oh, I love those.

01:18:35 ◼   ► They're my favorites.

01:18:37 ◼   ► It's about Mac Power Users.

01:18:39 ◼   ► That's what we talked about.

01:18:41 ◼   ► Do you write and review other Mac Power Users?

01:18:43 ◼   ► He does.

01:18:44 ◼   ► I give Stephen five stars.

01:18:46 ◼   ► It was brutal.

01:18:47 ◼   ► Oh, no.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Jason didn't come out as good as you would think he would.

01:18:51 ◼   ► Oh, no.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Pretty rough.

01:18:52 ◼   ► The man's using a calendar for task management.

01:18:56 ◼   ► What's going on over there?

01:18:57 ◼   ► What's he doing?

01:18:58 ◼   ► If you want to send us feedback or follow-up,

01:19:03 ◼   ► there's a link in the show notes.

01:19:04 ◼   ► There's also a link to become a member of Connected Pro,

01:19:07 ◼   ► which is the longer, ad-free version of the show.

01:19:10 ◼   ► And your membership dollars go to support the three of us directly.

01:19:14 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsor this week,

01:19:16 ◼   ► Ecamm, for the support of the show.

01:19:18 ◼   ► And until next time, guys, say goodbye.

01:19:20 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:19:22 ◼   ► Cheerio.

01:19:23 ◼   ► Bye, y'all.