Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► All right. This is the pre-show. Let me explain what's going on here. We have a special guest. That's right. It's not your usual voices on Connected. We have a special guest. It's Glenn Fleischman. Glenn, welcome to Connected.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:15 ◼   ► It's good to have you here.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Thank you. I'm always very connected.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Now, I want to remind everybody that this pre-show segment is, of course, the segment only for non-members, because our members pay, and one of the deals is that they don't hear Glenn. They pay to not hear Glenn. That's how it works.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I get a cut of that. Thank you.

00:00:37 ◼   ► And so for members, let's start the show. And for non-members, let's talk to Glenn. Glenn, you just started a column at Six Colors called Help Me, Glenn.

00:00:48 ◼   ► You're also doing a lot of stuff at Take Control, and you've got all these Kickstarter books. You're a very busy guy these days.

00:00:55 ◼   ► I am. It seems like, you know, I never thought that becoming an expert on 19th century printing technology would be the path of greatest career success in 2020.

00:01:07 ◼   ► On the internet.

00:01:07 ◼   ► But, you know, stranger things have happened to almost all of us, I think. Yeah, it's been great. I will, you know, A, love being at Six Colors. I never have gotten so many like, hooray!

00:01:18 ◼   ► You're there! Kind of things from anybody but family since joining Six Colors.

00:01:23 ◼   ► And what's great is even after, gosh, I've been writing since the 90s about Mac stuff.

00:01:29 ◼   ► I started with an Aldous Magazine article about flat management.

00:01:35 ◼   ► So I was 94, maybe? And I am still surprised that people are like, hey, this thing happened to me.

00:01:41 ◼   ► I'm like, that has never happened, to my knowledge, to any other person in the history of computing. Let's see if we can figure it out.

00:01:47 ◼   ► And you'd think maybe, I mean, Apple keeps inventing new things to trouble and challenge us.

00:01:53 ◼   ► But you would think that at some point, you'd be like, oh, yeah, that's answer number 35.

00:01:57 ◼   ► And it's like, no, I just got one the other day.

00:02:00 ◼   ► I was writing a column about somebody asked a question.

00:02:02 ◼   ► I'm like, you know, that's a really funny one.

00:02:04 ◼   ► I've never had to write an answer to that before.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And no one has ever asked me, let's make that a column.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Because other people will probably have that question, too, and haven't dared to ask.

00:02:12 ◼   ► I love it. I love it.

00:02:14 ◼   ► What are you doing to take control these days?

00:02:17 ◼   ► Well, I'm the executive editor there, which is just a fancy title for saying Joe Kissel, the publisher, needed some help.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Because it's kind of a one-person show.

00:02:26 ◼   ► His partner and wife handles financial stuff and marketing and planning, strategic and so forth.

00:02:31 ◼   ► But on the editorial side, it's Joe and a variety of editors and writers, including one, Jason Snell.

00:02:37 ◼   ► And it's needed more editorial support and technical consulting and that kind of thing.

00:02:42 ◼   ► So I'm kind of, we're doing, you know, the boring stuff, which is how do we find more readers?

00:02:47 ◼   ► Because we know they're out there and they're hard to find.

00:02:49 ◼   ► But also I'm taking over some editing duties.

00:02:51 ◼   ► Josh Centers, long-time take control writer, contributor to Tidbits and so forth.

00:02:56 ◼   ► He's moving into different content areas.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And so he had some books that I'm taking over future editions of with his compliments or with my compliments, however the way that phrase goes.

00:03:05 ◼   ► And I have like eight books I update that I've written like solo.

00:03:10 ◼   ► So I think I'm going to be writing like 13 books a year in some form.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Updating, not writing, but you know, the way Apple works.

00:03:17 ◼   ► I'm working on the iOS Basics book or the iOS iPadOS Basics book, which was Joe's idea to have one book about the Mac and one about iPad and iPhone that would be just, you know, hey, people who don't really, they're new to it.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Or they're like, I don't know how this interface thing works.

00:03:35 ◼   ► They get a book.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Perfect sense, right?

00:03:37 ◼   ► Well, it's Apple keeps adding stuff.

00:03:39 ◼   ► So it's kind of ballooned out of shape a little bit.

00:03:41 ◼   ► And I start to go in for the liquid glass has, of course, a bazillion changes.

00:03:46 ◼   ► So I go in to make the changes for 26 for iPhone and iPad.

00:03:49 ◼   ► I'm like, well, this won't be that bad.

00:03:50 ◼   ► I have to do this and this.

00:03:51 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, they changed that icon.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Oh, just by the way, in health, you no longer favorite something.

00:03:57 ◼   ► You pin it and there's a new icon.

00:03:59 ◼   ► So it's like practically unfolding changes, as I'm sure you have also discovered.

00:04:05 ◼   ► So the good news about your projects about 20th and previous century typography is there are very few updates.

00:04:14 ◼   ► It's true.

00:04:15 ◼   ► It's been a lot of fun doing those because I get to do, you know, I'm not an academic.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Like my terminal degree is a bachelor's in art and literally in art, graphic design.

00:04:25 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:04:27 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:04:27 ◼   ► I've always had a bug or an itch I wanted to scratch about doing research.

00:04:31 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:04:31 ◼   ► You've known me long enough.

00:04:32 ◼   ► You know, I'm always like, how does this thing work?

00:04:34 ◼   ► You know, lead type is great for scratching itches.

00:04:36 ◼   ► Yeah, so you can reach.

00:04:37 ◼   ► I've got these old rulers, the pica sticks, the pica poles.

00:04:40 ◼   ► You just have a nice little edge on the back.

00:04:43 ◼   ► But I just started pulling threads.

00:04:45 ◼   ► And in 2017, a local sort of commercial art school had a letterpress program.

00:04:51 ◼   ► And they said, come be our designer in residence for a year and sort out what you want to do.

00:04:55 ◼   ► And I said, great.

00:04:56 ◼   ► And then I just started doing research.

00:04:57 ◼   ► And so I've wound up doing both popular stuff, popular in the sense of like people are really

00:05:03 ◼   ► interested in it, like how comics are made, which is in bookstores now.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Very exciting.

00:05:07 ◼   ► And which was the whole history of how newspaper comics got printed, which is, you know, completely

00:05:14 ◼   ► Baroque and absurd.

00:05:15 ◼   ► And then I've also got a chapter in preparation for an Oxford University Press book about, it's

00:05:19 ◼   ► called Printing Things, which is a great title.

00:05:21 ◼   ► It's about the material objects of printing from 1400 to 1900.

00:05:25 ◼   ► And so it's so meaty.

00:05:27 ◼   ► And I wrote about flong for them, of course.

00:05:29 ◼   ► So it has been a very interesting time to be, well, I had this joke.

00:05:34 ◼   ► I used to tell, I'd give talks and I'd say, I was trained as a typesetter.

00:05:38 ◼   ► And then I moved to freelance journalism.

00:05:40 ◼   ► I collect obsolete professions and people used to laugh and now they don't laugh.

00:05:46 ◼   ► They make noises of sympathy.

00:05:48 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, we're at that point.

00:05:49 ◼   ► So thank you for supporting freelance journalists, a six color.

00:05:53 ◼   ► But Kickstarter is a way I can find that, you know, niche audience that is interested, just

00:05:58 ◼   ► enough people interested in a topic that I could never, you know, I can never sell to a publisher.

00:06:03 ◼   ► They would never sell enough copies.

00:06:04 ◼   ► But for me, I can scratch those people's itches too.

00:06:07 ◼   ► And it helps me make a living.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Okay.

00:06:10 ◼   ► It's a, since this has helped me Glenn at six colors, I thought we would do a little round

00:06:14 ◼   ► of help me Glenn here.

00:06:15 ◼   ► So John, James, do you have something to ask Glenn?

00:06:19 ◼   ► You're going to, we're going to put Glenn on the spot here.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I've got one.

00:06:22 ◼   ► So as you know, Tahoe is finally getting rid of firewire support.

00:06:28 ◼   ► So how am I going to use my original iPod now, Glenn?

00:06:32 ◼   ► It's got my favorite U2 album on it.

00:06:34 ◼   ► Well, you probably can get a firewire to Thunderbolt connector.

00:06:39 ◼   ► What is it?

00:06:40 ◼   ► A firewire to USB?

00:06:41 ◼   ► No, it's, it's, it's the, it's not the connectors.

00:06:43 ◼   ► It's the drivers.

00:06:44 ◼   ► Like you can, you can adapt it all, but in Tahoe, in Tahoe, the firewire drivers are just

00:06:49 ◼   ► gone.

00:06:49 ◼   ► So you can do a physical connection and it won't mount.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Sorry to jump in, Glenn.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Oh, shoot.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Well, obviously you need to keep an old, for a while, I needed to run Quicken 2007 because

00:06:58 ◼   ► the company refused to update it.

00:07:00 ◼   ► At one point I had an old Mac mini, actually, you know, those, there's those mounts for

00:07:07 ◼   ► minis.

00:07:07 ◼   ► I can't remember the company that makes it Mac something, Mac thing or whatever.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Anyway, they, not Strag thing.

00:07:11 ◼   ► I'm thinking of, sorry.

00:07:12 ◼   ► There's a company that makes these mounts for minis.

00:07:14 ◼   ► And I had a, a cheap 2007 era mini screwed to the bottom of my desk.

00:07:20 ◼   ► And all I used it for was to screen share over to use Quicken 2007 after it stopped working.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Uh, so I'm afraid you'll have to keep an old Mac, uh, screwed to a desk somewhere, uh, and, um, and run

00:07:33 ◼   ► your YouTube album from that.

00:07:34 ◼   ► James, you just, uh, keep a Sequoia boot drive around, right?

00:07:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:38 ◼   ► Because it's not a physical problem.

00:07:40 ◼   ► It's literally an OS, but also.

00:07:42 ◼   ► Yeah, but then you have to reboot.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Just need an extra, just get an extra Mac.

00:07:45 ◼   ► It's easier that way.

00:07:46 ◼   ► I know.

00:07:47 ◼   ► It's hilarious.

00:07:47 ◼   ► You might have like $50, $10.

00:07:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:07:50 ◼   ► 300 pounds.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Like an M1 Mac mini.

00:07:52 ◼   ► And James, your favorite U2 album is the Joshua Tree, right?

00:07:56 ◼   ► Uh, yeah.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Cool.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Octoon Baby.

00:07:59 ◼   ► I mean, it's not the one everybody's thinking of.

00:08:01 ◼   ► I read this thing about one of the Coldplay, Coldplay band members, uh, the other day.

00:08:05 ◼   ► And, um, someone was, uh, asked, oh, it was Richard Osmond.

00:08:08 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

00:08:08 ◼   ► He was talking on a podcast.

00:08:09 ◼   ► He does, uh, the rest is entertainment.

00:08:10 ◼   ► And, uh, he was, I think he was quoting somebody talking about this as someone who worked with

00:08:15 ◼   ► a venue and went to pick up the Coldplay.

00:08:18 ◼   ► This guy, I can't remember his name.

00:08:19 ◼   ► It was one of the back.

00:08:20 ◼   ► It's not Chris Martin.

00:08:21 ◼   ► And, um, picked him up to go to the venue from the tube in, uh, London.

00:08:25 ◼   ► And he's like, don't you want to get a car to take you there?

00:08:27 ◼   ► And he's like, nobody knows who I am.

00:08:29 ◼   ► He said, they said, do you, does that bother?

00:08:31 ◼   ► He said, listen, I'm going to play the set.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Then I'm going to go sit in the audience with my family and enjoy the rest of it.

00:08:35 ◼   ► And nobody will have any idea who I am.

00:08:38 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

00:08:39 ◼   ► So, you know, that's, I was thinking about two of the four people in U2.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Adam Clayton knows what he did.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Um, John, do you have a question for Glenn?

00:08:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I do.

00:08:49 ◼   ► I have a slightly less technical question for you, Glenn.

00:08:52 ◼   ► I've got a real problem because I've got 10 pounds of sausage that I'm trying to fit into

00:08:57 ◼   ► a five pound bag and I'm wondering what I should do.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Oh, that's an interesting one.

00:09:02 ◼   ► Um, let's see.

00:09:03 ◼   ► What are you trying to make?

00:09:04 ◼   ► Uh, a bag of sausage.

00:09:06 ◼   ► Well, I think, I think intestine lining is very thinly divisible.

00:09:13 ◼   ► So you might be able to take that, that five pound bag and pull another five pack bag out

00:09:17 ◼   ► from inside it by pulling one lining out of the other.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Whoa.

00:09:20 ◼   ► And you'd have two five pound bags.

00:09:21 ◼   ► That's gross.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Wow.

00:09:24 ◼   ► That just blew my mind right there.

00:09:26 ◼   ► My question for you is, should I make a gigantic RAID array out of all those USB flash drives

00:09:30 ◼   ► I have around?

00:09:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:31 ◼   ► I'll imagine all the flashing.

00:09:32 ◼   ► It would be incredible.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Just like all these lights going.

00:09:35 ◼   ► Like I could like plug them all into like a USB hub that's got 10 ports or whatever.

00:09:40 ◼   ► I could put 10 of them in there and then like make a, could I like make a RAID out of them?

00:09:44 ◼   ► Would that be faster?

00:09:45 ◼   ► It would be, uh, no, it would not be fast.

00:09:48 ◼   ► You shouldn't do it.

00:09:48 ◼   ► It's a bad idea and you should feel bad.

00:09:50 ◼   ► Um, I'm looking around my desk and because SSDs are still so expensive above like certain

00:09:55 ◼   ► capacities, like one terabyte is pretty affordable.

00:09:57 ◼   ► Two is, then you get up to four and four terabytes are of course like, I don't know,

00:10:02 ◼   ► they're like four times as much as a two terabyte because we haven't hit that quantity

00:10:05 ◼   ► of a manufacturer yet happens.

00:10:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:10:08 ◼   ► I was gonna say soon, but not with the world global nonsense going on.

00:10:11 ◼   ► But so I look around my desk and I've got a USB hub and a studio Mac and a fire or a

00:10:17 ◼   ► Thunderbolt, uh, four hub.

00:10:19 ◼   ► And I have four different two terabyte drives plugged in all blinking happily because I'm using

00:10:26 ◼   ► these for, you know, network time machine, uh, external photo.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Cause I've got a one terabyte, uh, drive inside my studio Mac because it's so expensive to

00:10:35 ◼   ► buy the higher capacities from Apple.

00:10:37 ◼   ► So I've got, I think what, eight terabytes.

00:10:39 ◼   ► Then I've got a dual or I've got a, uh, 12 gigabyte HDD that's RAID zeros or mirrored,

00:10:45 ◼   ► um, for backup.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Cause, uh, I need another set of backups and I've had hard drives fail multiply over the

00:10:51 ◼   ► last 15 years, more times than ever before that last 15 years.

00:10:55 ◼   ► So I've got that backup plus backblaze plus time machine, you know, it's a lot.

00:11:00 ◼   ► It's a lot.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Well, Glenn, thank you so much for being our special, uh, special intro guest this week.

00:11:05 ◼   ► It's a great pleasure.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And I'll be looking forward to my check for the, uh, all the membership fees for not having

00:11:11 ◼   ► to listen to me.

00:11:11 ◼   ► That's right.

00:11:12 ◼   ► We just remember for everybody out there, if you pay for connected plus pro, you wouldn't

00:11:15 ◼   ► have to have heard this.

00:11:16 ◼   ► So please, please do that.

00:11:18 ◼   ► My power grows.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of connected number 566.

00:11:34 ◼   ► This one is brought to you by Ecamm, Seltrios and Sentry.

00:11:39 ◼   ► I'm one of your co-hosts, John Voorhees, and as instructed by connectedinfo.com slash triple

00:11:47 ◼   ► J, I am now required to introduce my co-host, the Grand Admiral Pinkerton, Mr. Jason Snell.

00:11:54 ◼   ► Hey, Jason.

00:11:54 ◼   ► Hey, John.

00:11:55 ◼   ► It's good to be here.

00:11:56 ◼   ► Uh, as always, ahoy to all out there.

00:11:59 ◼   ► It's my pleasure to be required to introduce our other co-host, 2025 Jamesy's champion, James

00:12:08 ◼   ► Thompson.

00:12:08 ◼   ► Hi, James.

00:12:09 ◼   ► Hi.

00:12:10 ◼   ► I think it's important for people to unexpected, unexpected the expected.

00:12:15 ◼   ► You never know who might appear and when, and sometimes it's even a surprise to the people

00:12:20 ◼   ► involved.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:21 ◼   ► I mean, I think Glenn was surprised that he was on a podcast, but...

00:12:24 ◼   ► I think he was.

00:12:25 ◼   ► He seemed a little shell-shocked.

00:12:26 ◼   ► We woke him up from hibernation.

00:12:28 ◼   ► He doesn't talk a lot, though, so he's a very quiet guy.

00:12:30 ◼   ► No, he doesn't.

00:12:30 ◼   ► Quiet guy.

00:12:31 ◼   ► You gotta get him going.

00:12:32 ◼   ► We should do some follow-up, I think.

00:12:37 ◼   ► I have an update.

00:12:39 ◼   ► A couple weeks ago on the show, I was looking at my server and I opened SoftRate and it said

00:12:48 ◼   ► a disk is predicted to fail in the next 30 days, which is not a great thing.

00:12:52 ◼   ► You know, these are spinning disks, which seem so primitive, but SSDs are just too expensive

00:12:59 ◼   ► even now.

00:13:00 ◼   ► So, on the show, I bought a drive.

00:13:06 ◼   ► The drive came and I thought, oh, this is gonna be easy.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And I just wanted to do the follow-up here.

00:13:10 ◼   ► It was...

00:13:11 ◼   ► I wouldn't say it was hard.

00:13:13 ◼   ► I would say that it took forever.

00:13:14 ◼   ► So, I use SoftRate.

00:13:16 ◼   ► So, I went to OWC's website and they've got a whole thing of like, what happens if you get

00:13:20 ◼   ► the warning, like the smart status says, this drive is gonna fail, which is great because

00:13:25 ◼   ► you can replace it before it fails.

00:13:27 ◼   ► That's nice.

00:13:27 ◼   ► And they said, well, okay, here are your steps.

00:13:30 ◼   ► First thing you're gonna do is you're gonna, you're going to, I think, basically it's like

00:13:33 ◼   ► verify or certify or whatever it is that the existing volumes.

00:13:37 ◼   ► And this is a thing you can do where you basically say, I'm going to replace a drive, but first

00:13:45 ◼   ► make sure that all the content is as it should be, which is available on all the drives and

00:13:50 ◼   ► that they're all lined up in parallel because it's safer that way.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And I'm like, great.

00:13:53 ◼   ► But, you know, I, my RAID is two 8 gig drives and two 12 gig drives.

00:13:58 ◼   ► I guess technically that RAID is four 8 gig partitions because they all have to be the

00:14:04 ◼   ► same size.

00:14:05 ◼   ► And then I use two 4 gig partitions for a different RAID for backup.

00:14:11 ◼   ► So I don't know if you guys know this, but spinning discs are really slow.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:17 ◼   ► They really are.

00:14:18 ◼   ► To verify it took three days.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Three days?

00:14:23 ◼   ► Then I could remove the disc from the enclosure and put in the new disc.

00:14:33 ◼   ► And then it says, okay, now you need to certify the new disc, which took several more days because

00:14:40 ◼   ► it has to write and check the rights on a 12 terabyte drive.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:45 ◼   ► And then you add it to the RAIDs and it slowly copies all of the redundant and parity data

00:14:54 ◼   ► and all of that over to the drive, which took several other days.

00:14:57 ◼   ► So here I am two weeks later and I can report that like three days ago, my RAID was completely

00:15:02 ◼   ► back up and, and functioning normally.

00:15:04 ◼   ► And so that, that's, that's my story is Amazon got me a drive in 24 hours.

00:15:09 ◼   ► The rest of it took like 10, 11 days to get through it all.

00:15:15 ◼   ► But, um, but my RAID's back now.

00:15:17 ◼   ► And, uh, that's wild.

00:15:18 ◼   ► That's good.

00:15:20 ◼   ► That's good.

00:15:21 ◼   ► Where do you, where do you have that?

00:15:22 ◼   ► Like in relationship to where you work?

00:15:24 ◼   ► Cause I, I, the thing about spinning hard drives is I always, I, the noise and the heat

00:15:29 ◼   ► and all that bugs me.

00:15:30 ◼   ► I hate the sound of it.

00:15:31 ◼   ► It sounds like, I always say it sounds like a, like a percolate, a percolator on the

00:15:34 ◼   ► I'm like a coffee maker, which I don't drink coffee, but it's that thing.

00:15:36 ◼   ► It's like all the time, weird, irregular sound.

00:15:40 ◼   ► And that, that would be the number one reason to do, to move to SSD.

00:15:43 ◼   ► Except again, I would, I would pay thousands and thousands of dollars.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:15:47 ◼   ► For the amount of storage you have.

00:15:48 ◼   ► So the, the way I have it is it used to be, there was a point it started in my office

00:15:54 ◼   ► and I couldn't take it anymore.

00:15:55 ◼   ► So I moved it and, and, and my kids are out of the house now.

00:16:02 ◼   ► So during the school year, I have it in a closet in Julian's room behind a, you know,

00:16:08 ◼   ► behind a sliding door, there's ethernet in there, there's power in there.

00:16:11 ◼   ► And, um, and even though you can kind of hear it, it, it, it's really muffled and that's

00:16:17 ◼   ► great.

00:16:17 ◼   ► But Julian has been coming home for the summer from college.

00:16:20 ◼   ► And so for summers it, it, it, it takes its summers in the back bedroom, which is Jamie's

00:16:26 ◼   ► bedroom.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Um, it moves into just like into the corner there.

00:16:30 ◼   ► Like it knows what it did.

00:16:31 ◼   ► It just sits in the corner.

00:16:32 ◼   ► And, uh, I don't want to leave it there cause it gets, it's, it's down on the floor.

00:16:36 ◼   ► So it's dustier and it's damper and like, it's better in the closet, but there's no other

00:16:41 ◼   ► place to put it.

00:16:42 ◼   ► And Julian has also complained about the sound of the thing.

00:16:45 ◼   ► So, so that's the answer is it's like a, um, I try to move it away from everybody.

00:16:51 ◼   ► It will annoy if possible.

00:16:53 ◼   ► That's my mom is staying here this week and she's staying in Jamie's room and she hasn't

00:16:57 ◼   ► complained about it, but I'm sure she thinks it's just another weird sound going on in our

00:17:00 ◼   ► weird tech technological household.

00:17:03 ◼   ► What happens if Jamie's home too, though?

00:17:05 ◼   ► I bet her hearing's probably a little better since she's younger.

00:17:08 ◼   ► So she just visits, but, um, but yeah, it's, it's, then she has to hear it.

00:17:13 ◼   ► And, and I, I, I've looked into like putting it in a soundproof enclosure or something like

00:17:18 ◼   ► that.

00:17:18 ◼   ► But again, those cost a fortune and at that point I should just get SSDs.

00:17:21 ◼   ► So I, I just keep moving it around.

00:17:22 ◼   ► Just buy it.

00:17:24 ◼   ► It's an apartment that it can live in.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Well, great idea.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Put it in a shed in the back there.

00:17:28 ◼   ► I mean, the problem there is then there's spiders and stuff.

00:17:31 ◼   ► Um, let me spiders out here too.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Uh, anyway.

00:17:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:34 ◼   ► So that's my rate update is it's, it's currently, and yes, I did all of this sitting on the floor

00:17:39 ◼   ► in Jamie's bedroom because that's where it is right now using, I did use an iPad to connect

00:17:43 ◼   ► to it, uh, using screens.

00:17:45 ◼   ► So I didn't actually, uh, you know, have to bring another computer cause it, it, it doesn't

00:17:51 ◼   ► have a monitor attached to it.

00:17:52 ◼   ► It's just a server that sits in the corner.

00:17:54 ◼   ► It's a, it's a Mac mini attached to a giant, uh, raid box.

00:17:58 ◼   ► But, um, anyway, two weeks later.

00:18:01 ◼   ► I, I recently decommissioned a Mac mini server.

00:18:04 ◼   ► I had a 2018 Mac mini and I was tired.

00:18:07 ◼   ► I wasn't using it for as much anymore.

00:18:09 ◼   ► And it was just sitting there sucking electricity and, and, um, making heat.

00:18:15 ◼   ► So I got rid of it.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:16 ◼   ► I hear.

00:18:17 ◼   ► my bit of infrastructure is that I have finally finished upgrading all of my internal home

00:18:23 ◼   ► ethernet to 2.5 gigabit.

00:18:25 ◼   ► Uh, and this is in preparation for some wifi seven, six gigahertz access points that will

00:18:31 ◼   ► actually use it and allow me to talk from one side of the flat to the other at high speed.

00:18:36 ◼   ► But I had to buy a bunch of TP link switches, some USB C 2.5 gigabit ethernet adapters for

00:18:43 ◼   ► like the older computers that don't have it.

00:18:45 ◼   ► Um, and also discovering that almost every single ethernet cable that I have here is terrible and

00:18:53 ◼   ► and cannot work, but thankfully the big long one, when I first bought that, I specced it

00:18:59 ◼   ► out as six E or whatever, whatever the top was at the, at the time.

00:19:04 ◼   ► And it still works fine.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Okay.

00:19:07 ◼   ► But I'm going to stop you big long one.

00:19:10 ◼   ► The implication there is that you have your, uh, infrastructure for your flat includes a

00:19:16 ◼   ► ethernet cable that just runs through the flat.

00:19:18 ◼   ► It does because this, you don't understand that this building is made of pure lead.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:24 ◼   ► I've been in it.

00:19:25 ◼   ► I do understand it.

00:19:26 ◼   ► It's amazing that wifi gets through.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Well, I mean, it doesn't, which is why I have the cable.

00:19:32 ◼   ► Um, but you know, it, it's now working and you know, I can see the little,

00:19:37 ◼   ► lights, like you get a different light if it's doing 2.5 and, and I'm very happy when

00:19:42 ◼   ► I see those lights.

00:19:43 ◼   ► And I did a, uh, like we had got a new backup disc like you and we were, I was trying to

00:19:49 ◼   ► like move a ton of data onto it.

00:19:52 ◼   ► And, uh, I did that over the 2.5 and it was running at really, really fast speeds.

00:19:58 ◼   ► And so I was quite happy with that.

00:20:00 ◼   ► Um, but what I'm not going to do is do this major networking infrastructure upgrade and then

00:20:05 ◼   ► immediately move house because that would be madness.

00:20:08 ◼   ► And who would do that?

00:20:09 ◼   ► I don't know, James.

00:20:09 ◼   ► I mean, maybe you're causing you, you've been in that flat a very long time.

00:20:13 ◼   ► Maybe you'll be out in the next year.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Maybe just like that.

00:20:15 ◼   ► This is what, this is what causes it.

00:20:17 ◼   ► Well, I'm hoping to just blanket the entire network, the entire neighborhood in my wifi

00:20:22 ◼   ► signals that nobody else can get any and they will all leave.

00:20:26 ◼   ► You know, my, my neighbor across the street, we, we spent last summer putting in solar and

00:20:30 ◼   ► new HVAC, uh, and a new roof.

00:20:33 ◼   ► And then she came over to me at the end of the process and said, so are you moving?

00:20:36 ◼   ► I was like, what?

00:20:38 ◼   ► No, I like, no, this is the opposite of that.

00:20:42 ◼   ► I'm not moving.

00:20:43 ◼   ► I just spent all this money on my roof.

00:20:45 ◼   ► You're nesting.

00:20:45 ◼   ► I am staying here if at all possible.

00:20:48 ◼   ► So did you, you talk about your cables being bad.

00:20:51 ◼   ► Do you have like a cable tester?

00:20:53 ◼   ► Did you do that?

00:20:53 ◼   ► Cause I am convinced that some of my cables are bad.

00:20:55 ◼   ► I do not have one.

00:20:57 ◼   ► I'm sure you can buy one and I would like one.

00:20:59 ◼   ► All I was going on was a plugging the first few in and it not doing 2.5 and going, ah, that'll

00:21:06 ◼   ► be a giveaway.

00:21:06 ◼   ► It doesn't turn the light on.

00:21:07 ◼   ► It doesn't turn the light on.

00:21:09 ◼   ► You get the boring light.

00:21:10 ◼   ► Uh, but then looking at the actual cables and they're all like cat five.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Um, and it's like, if you, this is like when you have all the wife, all the, the, um,

00:21:20 ◼   ► HDMI cables lying around in a drawer, just get rid of them.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Uh, you know, put them in electronics recycling because they're not going to work at the point

00:21:30 ◼   ► in the future where you need a lead and you grab one of those, you're going to be bitterly

00:21:34 ◼   ► disappointed because it's not going to do eight HDMI 2.1, 2.2, whatever.

00:21:39 ◼   ► I just did a cable reorg, um, and I bought a bunch of, uh, new little bags to put the

00:21:46 ◼   ► cables in.

00:21:46 ◼   ► I did it in my last cable reorg.

00:21:48 ◼   ► I looked it up.

00:21:48 ◼   ► It was like seven or eight years ago.

00:21:50 ◼   ► Wow.

00:21:50 ◼   ► And I did discover I've got some USB C plugs that, that are like bent.

00:21:56 ◼   ► And I was like, okay, that's just going in the, in the trash.

00:21:59 ◼   ► But what I really need to do is get a cable tester.

00:22:01 ◼   ► Cause I'm convinced that some of them are just bad, but it's hard to tell on site with

00:22:05 ◼   ► bad cables.

00:22:06 ◼   ► You have to test them.

00:22:08 ◼   ► John, um, your compatriot from Mac stories, Federico Vatici.

00:22:13 ◼   ► Yes.

00:22:14 ◼   ► Has been talking with my compatriot from upgrade Mike Hurley about a, uh, about a singing Italian

00:22:22 ◼   ► rabbit that Mike's daughter loves.

00:22:25 ◼   ► And, you know, Federico visited, uh, London in order to go see Oasis and also saw Mike and

00:22:34 ◼   ► saw the rabbit and got to interpret the rabbits.

00:22:37 ◼   ► I think just translated from English, a song that nobody actually sings in Italian.

00:22:42 ◼   ► Um, but, but the origin of this is you, you are the root cause of this.

00:22:47 ◼   ► And I don't think anybody's really, uh, had you do a deep dive into the origin of the singing

00:22:53 ◼   ► Italian rabbit.

00:22:53 ◼   ► So I was wondering if you might be able to address that now on, on, on our podcast here.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Yes.

00:22:59 ◼   ► Yes.

00:22:59 ◼   ► I haven't talked about the Italian rabbit.

00:23:01 ◼   ► And I think in fact, Federico went to London to see the Italian rabbit and it, he just got

00:23:06 ◼   ► a bonus of seeing Oasis at Wembley at the same time.

00:23:10 ◼   ► But I specified it was supposed to be Oasis and Italian rabbit.

00:23:14 ◼   ► That was right.

00:23:15 ◼   ► It was the Italian rabbit.

00:23:16 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:23:17 ◼   ► And he saw Oasis, but, but yeah.

00:23:19 ◼   ► So here's the thing.

00:23:20 ◼   ► I have three kids.

00:23:22 ◼   ► And one of the things you learn as a young parent is that your friends and family will torture

00:23:28 ◼   ► you with loud, large toys for your children that you will have to suffer through as a parent

00:23:35 ◼   ► for many years.

00:23:37 ◼   ► And so I have a policy with new parents that I know of just paying that forward and doing

00:23:43 ◼   ► the same thing.

00:23:44 ◼   ► And, and it goes back, the Italian rabbit has an origin beyond the Italian rabbit, which is

00:23:52 ◼   ► the singing elephant.

00:23:53 ◼   ► What?

00:23:54 ◼   ► Because when, when.

00:23:56 ◼   ► What nationality is the elephant?

00:23:58 ◼   ► Yeah, this, this is actually a true UK elephant because when Rob Knight, who's my cohost on

00:24:05 ◼   ► Ruminate, when he, his first daughter was born, I went on Amazon UK and I found this very cute

00:24:13 ◼   ► elephant that sang a little song and his, uh, his ears flapped as, as he was singing.

00:24:19 ◼   ► I thought, well, this is perfect.

00:24:21 ◼   ► Rob will suffer.

00:24:22 ◼   ► So I got Rob, the, the, uh, the, um, the UK elephant that actually spoke proper English

00:24:30 ◼   ► and his daughter loved it.

00:24:33 ◼   ► His daughter absolutely loved it.

00:24:35 ◼   ► It's what kept her falling asleep for months and months when she was a little baby.

00:24:40 ◼   ► And then, you know, fast forward a couple of years and Mike's daughter is born.

00:24:47 ◼   ► And I thought, well, I don't, you know, this, this was a big hit in the night household.

00:24:52 ◼   ► I think I'm going to get something similar, but I, you know, you don't want to re-gift.

00:24:55 ◼   ► I didn't want to, I didn't want to do the same thing.

00:24:58 ◼   ► Yeah, vary it a little.

00:24:59 ◼   ► So I, yeah, I want to vary it.

00:25:01 ◼   ► So I went, so I went for the rabbit.

00:25:02 ◼   ► And at the time, you know, I was poking around in Amazon UK.

00:25:06 ◼   ► I didn't pay a lot of attention and apparently the rabbit spoke Italian, not English.

00:25:12 ◼   ► I sort of assumed that on the UK website that the children's toys would speak English,

00:25:18 ◼   ► not Italian.

00:25:19 ◼   ► I thought that that made sense.

00:25:21 ◼   ► It turns out if you read through the, uh, the reviews, a lot of people gave it glowing

00:25:26 ◼   ► reviews, but there were a lot of, but it speaks Italian, not, not English.

00:25:31 ◼   ► I'm, I missed that part, but, uh, I ordered the, the rabbit for, for Mike and Adina and

00:25:38 ◼   ► their daughter.

00:25:38 ◼   ► And it too has become a big hit in their household, which Mike says, you know, helps,

00:25:44 ◼   ► helps his daughter fall asleep.

00:25:46 ◼   ► And it just so happens that it speaks Italian, which when Mike, when Mike texted me and said,

00:25:52 ◼   ► did you get a rabbit that sings Italian on purpose?

00:25:56 ◼   ► So I was like, well, no, and that's, that's how the Italian rabbit happened.

00:26:01 ◼   ► It was, it was an attempt at a different animal that would sing children's songs to, to a new

00:26:08 ◼   ► baby.

00:26:08 ◼   ► And it, it went a little bit off the rails with the Italian aspect, but, uh, but yeah, I think

00:26:14 ◼   ► it was still a hit nonetheless.

00:26:15 ◼   ► I feel like you've added important texture to the lore here with the, uh, introduction

00:26:22 ◼   ► of a new character, the singing elephant though.

00:26:24 ◼   ► I think that's, I don't know why we didn't know about that before, but this seems like

00:26:28 ◼   ► crucial information now to me.

00:26:30 ◼   ► It's very important.

00:26:31 ◼   ► All right.

00:26:32 ◼   ► Well, we are going to take an ad break now to all of you listeners who heard Glenn, um,

00:26:38 ◼   ► because you're not a member and, uh, we're not allowed contractually to read the ads.

00:26:42 ◼   ► So, uh, we've gotten one of the founders of, uh, of Relay, Stephen Hackett to do it.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Stephen.

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00:28:44 ◼   ► Beta Brigade time.

00:28:48 ◼   ► Choo, choo, choo.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Beta Brigade.

00:28:50 ◼   ► Beta Brigade.

00:28:51 ◼   ► I thought it would be fun if we checked in with James to see how the 26 betas are going for James.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Because James is a user of software and also a developer of software.

00:29:00 ◼   ► And that's got to be fun this summer.

00:29:01 ◼   ► So James, how are 26 betas going for you?

00:29:05 ◼   ► It's been interesting.

00:29:07 ◼   ► So some challenging life events meant that I skipped out on doing p-count updates in 2024 entirely.

00:29:15 ◼   ► So now I get to do both the iOS 18 updates and the iOS 26 updates in the space of two months, which is super fun and not at all stressful.

00:29:25 ◼   ► And stuff was kind of broken right at the start.

00:29:29 ◼   ► So I looked at it and I said, I'm not going to deal with our problem right now.

00:29:33 ◼   ► And I may have spent basically a month after WWDC working on another secret relay project as a distraction from the aforementioned life events.

00:29:44 ◼   ► And all I can say is that I spent a lot of time looking at stills from a show on Apple TV.

00:29:48 ◼   ► And I will say no more.

00:29:49 ◼   ► But iOS 26 is less terrible on device than I was actually expecting.

00:29:56 ◼   ► Liquid glass is fine in most places until the point when it's really not.

00:30:03 ◼   ► And you remember why putting your user interface on a piece of transparent glass is something that we only typically do in sci-fi movies.

00:30:11 ◼   ► And I can see it driving a lot of people to the accessibility settings, a lot more people this time.

00:30:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:17 ◼   ► And I think that's a failure of design.

00:30:20 ◼   ► But, you know, I will grumble about UI designers having young eyes because mine are definitely not at this point.

00:30:29 ◼   ► But, you know, it's fine.

00:30:32 ◼   ► It's not too bad.

00:30:33 ◼   ► Most stuff just works.

00:30:34 ◼   ► I mean, most of them, PCALC, actually, it really just worked out of the box when I recompiled it.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Most of my UI is either entirely custom stuff or it's entirely native stuff.

00:30:44 ◼   ► So it's fine.

00:30:45 ◼   ► You know, things work.

00:30:46 ◼   ► And the main thing that hit me on iOS is there's a new icon format across, basically, across all the systems.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And it's actually good.

00:30:56 ◼   ► It's all vector-based, finally.

00:30:58 ◼   ► So, like, previously, you know, you had to include, like, these 1,024 by 1,024 ping images in your app of every icon.

00:31:07 ◼   ► And if, like me, you have, say, 50 to 60 alternative icons in your app, that was a lot of data to include.

00:31:17 ◼   ► And now it's, you build your icons out of, like, vector SVG pieces.

00:31:23 ◼   ► And then there's an app where you apply effects to them, like highlights and shadows and various translucency things.

00:31:29 ◼   ► And then it just spits out a little icon file.

00:31:32 ◼   ► And my main icon file is something like 6K.

00:31:36 ◼   ► So, you know, and it looks pretty much as good as the previous stuff.

00:31:41 ◼   ► So, that's great.

00:31:42 ◼   ► But I needed to redesign about 300 icons.

00:31:46 ◼   ► So, that's 50 base icons, regular, dark, and tintable variants.

00:31:51 ◼   ► And then, because the corners are a different radius, I had to go back and redo all of the old ones to match.

00:31:58 ◼   ► So, I spent about two weeks doing this.

00:32:01 ◼   ► And you think, I've got problems.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Underscore David Smith.

00:32:05 ◼   ► He's got 88 base icons, he was saying, in Widgetsmith.

00:32:09 ◼   ► And we both ran into a problem that when you were building your app, it would basically render out these icons into, like, the high-res versions for older systems.

00:32:21 ◼   ► And that was taking me about 10 minutes on a Mac Studio Ultra, just every time I built my app.

00:32:28 ◼   ► But thankfully, we worked a way around that.

00:32:32 ◼   ► And, yeah, with the icons, I ended up writing code in Dice by PCALC of all places, which generated the SVG code for me.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Because it knows about pride flags and a whole bunch of stuff like that.

00:32:42 ◼   ► So, I just said, yeah, just make icons in this style with this thing.

00:32:46 ◼   ► And it did all the work.

00:32:48 ◼   ► So, that was good.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Yeah, iPadOS adds a lot of things.

00:32:54 ◼   ► A lot more, I guess, than iOS.

00:32:56 ◼   ► I mean, if you leave aside the visuals.

00:32:59 ◼   ► And, like, the freely resizable Windows stuff, I'd done a lot of the work for that already for Vision OS.

00:33:07 ◼   ► And so, that was okay.

00:33:09 ◼   ► But these new window controls, like, the, like, close buttons and zoom and all that, they now get slapped on top of your own UI, like, up in the corner.

00:33:20 ◼   ► And there's an API called the Safe Areas, which says which areas of the screen you should avoid and don't put your UI in there.

00:33:28 ◼   ► And it doesn't include this.

00:33:30 ◼   ► So, if you don't do anything, you just get this thing slapped on top of your buttons.

00:33:36 ◼   ► But there's a new, super secret, even safer API where you can find out which corners that Apple has decided to steal this year.

00:33:44 ◼   ► It's a pain, but I got all that done.

00:33:47 ◼   ► Watch OS broke a whole bunch of stuff, killed off my old complications.

00:33:52 ◼   ► So, I'm currently, as of, like, half an hour ago, I was rewriting large chunks of that app.

00:33:56 ◼   ► Vision OS, almost identical.

00:33:59 ◼   ► Doesn't even have, really, the new controls or anything.

00:34:02 ◼   ► I think it will probably get an update in six months or a year or whatever.

00:34:06 ◼   ► Of course.

00:34:08 ◼   ► And Mac OS, well, I'm going to install it at some point.

00:34:12 ◼   ► And that is a problem for future James.

00:34:14 ◼   ► Future James.

00:34:15 ◼   ► That's good.

00:34:16 ◼   ► I mean, I like Mac OS Tahoe.

00:34:19 ◼   ► John, you and I are on the Mac OS beta beat and review beat.

00:34:25 ◼   ► We are.

00:34:26 ◼   ► And visually, it's not as dramatic as I think people are fearing.

00:34:30 ◼   ► And I think, functionally, it's got lots of great, like, reasons to update just to get new features like the, you know, model access and shortcuts and the whole clipboard manager and spotlight updates.

00:34:45 ◼   ► What are you thinking about Mac OS?

00:34:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm a fan of Mac OS, too.

00:34:50 ◼   ► I like Tahoe.

00:34:51 ◼   ► I think, you know, one of the things that I've noticed, I think that there is a lot of, I don't know if I would call it fear-mongering,

00:34:58 ◼   ► but it feels like fear-mongering amongst people about the design of liquid glass.

00:35:03 ◼   ► Because one of the things, last weekend I was with my youngest son, we were on a vacation together.

00:35:09 ◼   ► And he was complaining to me because he said that iOS 26 was going to have, was taking all the color out of the icons and they were going to all be clear.

00:35:19 ◼   ► I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:35:21 ◼   ► I said, that's not how, he said, well, that's what everybody's saying on, you know, like TikTok and Instagram.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Basically, that that is the new look of iOS 26, which, you know, yes, you can do clear icons, but you don't have to.

00:35:34 ◼   ► It's not even the default.

00:35:35 ◼   ► So, you know, I kind of put that to rest.

00:35:37 ◼   ► But I think that there's a lot of focus on some of the more extreme aspects of the UI design.

00:35:44 ◼   ► And on the Mac, it's really a pretty mild, pretty mild implementation.

00:35:49 ◼   ► I, I think, I'm not sure where it's going.

00:35:52 ◼   ► This is the big mystery to me.

00:35:53 ◼   ► And I'm curious what you think, Jason, because on the one hand, there are some apps that have, I would say, a glassier feel to them than others.

00:36:02 ◼   ► For instance, I think like Journal and Home and even Music all have much more clearer buttons and aspects of liquid glass that you see on iOS.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Whereas if you look at things like Safari or Finder, you don't have that same kind of clear button look.

00:36:25 ◼   ► And I am, I mean, there are other differences with those apps, things like, you know, more drop shadows and more of an elevated look to buttons over the UI.

00:36:34 ◼   ► But they're not clear in the same way.

00:36:37 ◼   ► They're just more translucent than they used to be.

00:36:40 ◼   ► And I kind of wonder whether that's going to be made consistent going forward, whether Apple hasn't gotten to all the apps, whether Apple just has priorities that are elsewhere, which I think is really kind of what I think is going on.

00:36:53 ◼   ► But I wonder where, where we land kind of, even if the priorities aren't there, where do we land with, you know, is, is macOS going to at some point in the future become consistent?

00:37:07 ◼   ► And what's the consistency going to be?

00:37:09 ◼   ► Is it going to be the more clear look or is it going to be maybe the more Finder translucency look?

00:37:14 ◼   ► I, I tend to think it's going to be the clearer look.

00:37:17 ◼   ► It's just going to take maybe another turn of macOS before that happens.

00:37:21 ◼   ► We might end up somewhere in the middle between the two.

00:37:24 ◼   ► But I think there's, there's two things.

00:37:28 ◼   ► One, I think with these OS updates, they're basically doing what feels like two years worth of stuff in a year.

00:37:35 ◼   ► And just haven't had the time to touch on a lot of things.

00:37:38 ◼   ► Like I was saying about vision OS, not really having that, having had the, the same visual makeover really, even though the others are allegedly inspired by the vision OS look.

00:37:51 ◼   ► But I think with the apps, you need like somebody who is assigned to that app, who's going to, who's looking after it kind of thing, but has the time to do it.

00:38:01 ◼   ► And I just don't think they have the people to go in and give everything a makeover.

00:38:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:07 ◼   ► But the question is, are they going to be any less busy next year?

00:38:12 ◼   ► And I guess we'll find out.

00:38:14 ◼   ► I know everybody says, oh, Apple is so huge, but like the people who implement some of these specific details aren't, it's not so huge.

00:38:22 ◼   ► It's a smaller group.

00:38:23 ◼   ► And I, I agree with both of you.

00:38:26 ◼   ► I think Mac OS is just not a priority.

00:38:29 ◼   ► And I think that's okay.

00:38:31 ◼   ► Obviously the iPhone is the number one priority.

00:38:33 ◼   ► It's always going to be that.

00:38:34 ◼   ► I think iPad OS comes along for the ride to a certain extent, obviously.

00:38:38 ◼   ► And so it picks up a lot of this stuff.

00:38:40 ◼   ► I also think that liquid glass makes the most sense on iOS and a little less sense on iPad OS and a lot less sense on Mac OS, especially now.

00:38:49 ◼   ► And, and, you know, John, you asked about consistency.

00:38:52 ◼   ► First off, I could argue that maybe the Mac is the least consistent and always has been because developers can kind of do whatever.

00:38:58 ◼   ► But I think your prediction is exactly right, which is it's going to take time.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Like James said, you know, there will be progressions, I think, in this cycle, and then there will be progressions in next cycle.

00:39:11 ◼   ► And I think what will happen is developers will update their apps and Apple will update its apps.

00:39:17 ◼   ► And it, you know, as with any change on Mac OS, it isn't just, you know, flip a switch and it changes.

00:39:24 ◼   ► It's more like we start the process of changing and then it changes over time.

00:39:29 ◼   ► And I'm okay with that.

00:39:30 ◼   ► I would rather, I would honestly rather have the Mac OS design partially implemented and it be usable than to have it be kind of badly implemented and broken for a while.

00:39:41 ◼   ► And the thing I keep coming back to with Tahoe is it is completely usable.

00:39:45 ◼   ► And some of the worst offenders in terms of like design things that, because it shipped almost unimplemented.

00:39:51 ◼   ► Like there were things that were so messed up and, you know, they are, it's fine, right?

00:39:56 ◼   ► The bad stuff has mostly been cleared out and it's completely usable.

00:40:02 ◼   ► I've spent, there are a couple of bugs in the last couple of betas, but for the most part, this summer is just, I've been using the beta on Mac OS and it's been fine.

00:40:10 ◼   ► So I think, I think in the end, you know, the Mac will just, wherever it's going, it will be less than iOS always, but I think it will become more consistent over, you know, really over a couple of years, probably.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Our basic OS reviews are, it's fine.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Yes, yes, it's fine.

00:40:27 ◼   ► Well, getting away from the design though, I do have a few things that I really do like that I think people, a lot of people will like, and one that I don't like so much.

00:40:34 ◼   ► But the things that I really like are the automations and shortcuts.

00:40:38 ◼   ► Finally, you can set a shortcut to run on a schedule, which makes a lot of sense if you have a desktop Mac, right?

00:40:46 ◼   ► There's a lot of other triggers besides, you know, a date and time, but that one alone is, is worth its weight in gold.

00:40:53 ◼   ► On the folder stuff for me is huge because.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Folder too.

00:40:56 ◼   ► If you're using or not using Hazel, either way, um, there was this folder action thing that they added in OS eight and then they added again in like Jaguar and, and now it's, uh, there's a native folder action, uh, automation and shortcuts.

00:41:12 ◼   ► That is really good and works very well.

00:41:14 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:41:15 ◼   ► And I, I'm a big fan of spotlight.

00:41:17 ◼   ► I think spotlight's really great.

00:41:19 ◼   ► I think it'll, it'll solve a problem for the majority of people, except for maybe the high end power users.

00:41:25 ◼   ► And that has been, you know, satisfied by launcher apps for a long time.

00:41:30 ◼   ► I've been using it.

00:41:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:33 ◼   ► I've been using it and I don't miss using Raycast, which I was using before, except for, I do appreciate still Raycast clipboard manager, which is better than the, the Apple one.

00:41:44 ◼   ► Because Apple's, I don't mind that Apple's is limited to eight hours because the times that I go back further than eight, the last eight hours are very rare.

00:41:53 ◼   ► But I do like having a handful of things that I send out to people by email and things regularly pinned in my clipboard manager where it's easy to access them.

00:42:01 ◼   ► You know, that's one of the things I use the most.

00:42:04 ◼   ► There's some stuff in, I stopped using launch bar and, um, I am using the clipboard manager cause I don't have those sort of fancy needs for it.

00:42:12 ◼   ► But, you know, the question with some stuff is going to be, is there a different way for you to get that feature that you don't need to use Raycast for?

00:42:20 ◼   ► Cause it's not quite clipboard management, right?

00:42:22 ◼   ► It's more like a snippet management thing.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Yep.

00:42:24 ◼   ► And that's fine.

00:42:26 ◼   ► I mean, I think, I think that different people are going to use them in different ways.

00:42:29 ◼   ► The one that I keep hitting on is launch bar had emoji pickers in it so that I could start, I could do command space and start typing the name of an emoji or type command space emoji tab.

00:42:41 ◼   ► And then the name of an emoji, either one would work and it would just insert an emoji wherever I was going.

00:42:46 ◼   ► And now I've had to use other means, whether it's Apple's thing, which I don't really love or rocket, which is a utility that's okay, but it's not great, but it's, it's okay.

00:42:57 ◼   ► Um, and that's, that's one of those things that I, I, I stumble on where it's like it, it covers almost everything I use launch bar for, except for this one thing that I'm going to have to find a different workflow for.

00:43:08 ◼   ► If I'm going to stay off of launch bar and haze, a couple of things I don't like a lot, I do like control center a lot.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Although, uh, one thing, I don't know if this is just me, but my third party control center, uh, widgets have disappeared in the latest beta update.

00:43:26 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:43:26 ◼   ► I only had a couple of them that developers who are way out ahead of the curve had shared with me in betas, but those are now blank and they're not listed in the gallery at all anymore.

00:43:37 ◼   ► So who knows what's going on there?

00:43:40 ◼   ► Hopefully that reappears in a beta or two.

00:43:42 ◼   ► Uh, and I'm not a fan of the, having the play controls at the bottom of music.

00:43:47 ◼   ► That really bugs me.

00:43:48 ◼   ► I understand why you do that in, on iOS with the, you know, with a, with a handheld device on the Mac, it just gets in the way of the content.

00:43:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:58 ◼   ► It's literally covering content for no reason.

00:44:00 ◼   ► And that's a longstanding feature of iTunes and music that should just on the Mac be, uh, it doesn't need to be covering content.

00:44:07 ◼   ► Being just having content distorted behind it, making it hard to use.

00:44:10 ◼   ► And yeah, it's very frustrating.

00:44:13 ◼   ► I have a very big screen, you know, I'm not needing to like save the pixels or whatever, just put everything outside.

00:44:19 ◼   ► Let me see.

00:44:20 ◼   ► I get that.

00:44:21 ◼   ► I get that.

00:44:21 ◼   ► It's the family resemblance with iOS, but, um, my frustration there is that music on the Mac doesn't work like iOS.

00:44:28 ◼   ► The lyrics are in a different place.

00:44:29 ◼   ► The, uh, there's a mini player that behaves differently.

00:44:33 ◼   ► There's a full screen mode, which does sort of what the music on iPad and, and, and iPhone do, but it's the wrong context because I don't want it in full screen on my Mac, but that's the only way to get that view.

00:44:46 ◼   ► Like if I would be okay, if they're like, everything is like iOS now I'd be like, okay.

00:44:52 ◼   ► But instead it's like, they just made this cosmetic change because they could and left everything else using these weird things that go back a couple of decades.

00:45:01 ◼   ► And I, I just, I don't like it.

00:45:03 ◼   ► I really do like the concept of control center.

00:45:05 ◼   ► I think people over time are going to really appreciate it because they're basically building a whole, uh, menu bar manager using control center into Mac OS as a default.

00:45:16 ◼   ► I think it's going to be great, especially as third party apps embrace it, but because you can be in the menu bar or in a control center dropdown and you can have multiple control center dropdowns.

00:45:24 ◼   ► I think it's going to be a real, um, a find for people.

00:45:28 ◼   ► Um, and I think Apple, if it commits to it over time, I think apps are going to all support it.

00:45:33 ◼   ► And then that's going to be like the way we do menu bar stuff going forward, but, um, it's, it's early and it's going to take the third parties to embrace.

00:45:40 ◼   ► And I haven't heard from third party developers about like, you know, it being there is one thing, but a third party developers actually have to see value in it and say that it's, it's worth implementing or, you know, cause if they turn their backs on it, then it, it won't work.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:55 ◼   ► I haven't turned my back on it.

00:45:56 ◼   ► I just haven't installed it yet.

00:45:57 ◼   ► Okay.

00:45:57 ◼   ► That's good to hear.

00:45:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:59 ◼   ► No, I, I think, I, I think it'll catch on.

00:46:01 ◼   ► I actually do think that that one will catch on.

00:46:03 ◼   ► I, uh, on music though, the thing that really bugs me about the cosmetic change is that there's still a lot of problems with that app under the hood.

00:46:11 ◼   ► It's such old code.

00:46:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:12 ◼   ► And I've gotten to the point where I tend to airplay music from my phone to speakers in my office instead of using my Mac music app because it's just not reliable with airplay.

00:46:23 ◼   ► I, I, I use it every day on my Mac as well with airplay.

00:46:26 ◼   ► It can be frustrating.

00:46:28 ◼   ► Um, it's not worse in Tahoe and it might be a little better, but it's still got a bunch of issues.

00:46:34 ◼   ► I've got this issue where like if my laptop goes to sleep and then I wake it back up and I continue to play on airplay, it just plays, uh, not on airplay until I, and then I have to go to music and set it to not play on airplay.

00:46:46 ◼   ► Even though it's not playing, it thinks it is, and then move it back to those speakers and then it picks up.

00:46:50 ◼   ► It's so frustrating.

00:46:51 ◼   ► And it's been there for ages now.

00:46:53 ◼   ► My problem, John, is that I've got the muscle memory of using my keyboard on my Mac to do play, pause and volume control and taking it to an iOS device.

00:47:02 ◼   ► It's just, I, I, if I have to pick up an iOS device every time I want to, um, change tracks or pause or change the volume.

00:47:10 ◼   ► I just, I, I don't think I can do that yet, but yeah, it's very frustrating.

00:47:14 ◼   ► Anybody who uses music on the Mac all the time will tell you that there's so many old, broken, weird things in it that that's why I almost would be willing.

00:47:22 ◼   ► Well, the original sin here is turning iTunes into music.

00:47:25 ◼   ► They should have left iTunes in its final state and then added a music app that was the iOS music app and let people choose which one they wanted to use.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Because, you know, I use, I have a lot of uploaded music, uh, using like iTunes match and all of that, or the equivalent in Apple music.

00:47:42 ◼   ► You can do that.

00:47:43 ◼   ► And I'm glad it's there.

00:47:44 ◼   ► I don't want a pure Apple music client, but, um, the music app obviously gets all the attention.

00:47:50 ◼   ► And iTunes or music on Mac is still kind of broken and they're never going to fix that stuff.

00:47:56 ◼   ► So no, no, I agree.

00:47:58 ◼   ► I mean, it, it, yes.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Using iOS instead of the Mac is not an ideal solution, but, uh, but I have been driven that direction sometimes, unfortunately.

00:48:07 ◼   ► Wow.

00:48:08 ◼   ► All right.

00:48:10 ◼   ► We are going to move on.

00:48:11 ◼   ► And that means it's time for another sponsor break for, uh, those of you not, those of you who, who, uh, heard Glenn also get to hear this from Stephen Hackett.

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00:50:04 ◼   ► Our thanks to Seltrios for their support of the show, and all of Relay.

00:50:08 ◼   ► Okay, it's time.

00:50:12 ◼   ► It's time for something new.

00:50:14 ◼   ► A new thing that we're doing here for the very first time, due to reasons that we're about to explain,

00:50:20 ◼   ► involving the recent amendment to the Pickies Charter.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And so I ask all of you to please remain in the position of your choosing for the reading of the all-new revised Pickie Charter Ultra Plus,

00:50:33 ◼   ► most recently amended during our Constitutional Convention on Jason Voorhees' Day,

00:50:38 ◼   ► which is the first Friday of the 13th of the year.

00:50:40 ◼   ► That was June 13th, 2025.

00:50:42 ◼   ► Take it away, James.

00:50:51 ◼   ► So, as you all know, I won the annual Jamesies competition this year by correctly doing everything that I predicted that I was going to do a year ago today.

00:51:01 ◼   ► And because of that completely uncontroversial win, I was able to play my Chaos card from that

00:51:07 ◼   ► and amend the Charter in a completely fair and balanced way, with no additional checks or balances needed.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Did I find a loophole in the system that I'm going to exploit like a wish for infinite wishes?

00:51:18 ◼   ► Was I just disappointed that I wasn't winning?

00:51:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:22 ◼   ► Well, you'll see.

00:51:25 ◼   ► Well, James, this just doesn't seem right.

00:51:29 ◼   ► But there are technically no rules against it.

00:51:32 ◼   ► So I guess having a really simplified set of rules doesn't always work out the way you intended.

00:51:39 ◼   ► I guess that's the lesson here.

00:51:40 ◼   ► All right, here we go.

00:51:41 ◼   ► Every year we play three games and predict what will happen at WWDC,

00:51:46 ◼   ► what will happen during the autumnal season and over the course of the entire year.

00:51:51 ◼   ► James always picks first.

00:51:53 ◼   ► John then flips a coin to see who goes second.

00:51:55 ◼   ► For the autumnal pickies, everyone picks five things that they think will happen between September 1st

00:52:03 ◼   ► and our annual pickies episode at the end of the year.

00:52:07 ◼   ► James gets an additional sixth pick because he does just plain deserves it.

00:52:11 ◼   ► Oh boy.

00:52:13 ◼   ► In the case of a tie, there are multiple winners, unless one of those winners is James, in which

00:52:17 ◼   ► case he wins by default.

00:52:19 ◼   ► There shall be no disputes over scoring because we are all just inherently honorable people,

00:52:25 ◼   ► especially James, who is the most honorable.

00:52:28 ◼   ► I like how you talk about yourself in the third person, James.

00:52:31 ◼   ► It's just the rules.

00:52:32 ◼   ► I can't help it.

00:52:33 ◼   ► I'm just reading the rules here.

00:52:34 ◼   ► At the end of each round, Jason and John, speaking in the third person about myself now,

00:52:41 ◼   ► will alternate saying something nice about James.

00:52:44 ◼   ► I can't believe this got in here.

00:52:46 ◼   ► James will say thank you very much, and then we move on to the next round.

00:52:49 ◼   ► It's so nice of you both.

00:52:51 ◼   ► I really appreciate it.

00:52:52 ◼   ► All right.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Let's get started.

00:52:55 ◼   ► John flipped a coin before the show, and he won, so we're going to place him second, and

00:53:02 ◼   ► I'll be third.

00:53:02 ◼   ► James, of course, has to go first.

00:53:04 ◼   ► It's in the rules.

00:53:05 ◼   ► Round one of the autumnal pickies inaugural edition.

00:53:10 ◼   ► James, what's your first pick?

00:53:12 ◼   ► I am picking that an M5 Pro or M5 Max chip is going to ship before the end of the year.

00:53:18 ◼   ► Whoa.

00:53:19 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:53:19 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:53:20 ◼   ► Right out of the gate.

00:53:22 ◼   ► He's really going strong.

00:53:23 ◼   ► In what?

00:53:24 ◼   ► We will find out.

00:53:25 ◼   ► All right.

00:53:26 ◼   ► Maybe in a robot.

00:53:28 ◼   ► All right.

00:53:29 ◼   ► All right.

00:53:30 ◼   ► So my first pick, I think it's a pretty safe one, which is that the AirPods Pro 3 are going

00:53:36 ◼   ► to be released this fall.

00:53:38 ◼   ► I think that's a good one that was on my list.

00:53:41 ◼   ► It's been a long time since the AirPods Pro 2.

00:53:45 ◼   ► It has been.

00:53:47 ◼   ► It's been like at least a year and a half, hasn't it?

00:53:48 ◼   ► I think it's one of Apple's most, it's a couple of years at least.

00:53:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:53 ◼   ► I guess it was a fall release.

00:53:54 ◼   ► I mean, they keep doing silent revs to them as well.

00:53:56 ◼   ► So.

00:53:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:57 ◼   ► It's just, it's such a, I think it's actually one of Apple's low key, you know, most popular

00:54:02 ◼   ► products.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:54:04 ◼   ► And Pro 3, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing it.

00:54:09 ◼   ► I wonder what will happen.

00:54:09 ◼   ► I think you can tell that the new ones are coming because they've been on constant sale

00:54:14 ◼   ► on Amazon for like the last two months.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Yeah, probably so.

00:54:17 ◼   ► A new iPhone will be less than six millimeters thick, but not as thin as an iPad Pro.

00:54:29 ◼   ► What's the Pro again?

00:54:31 ◼   ► Is it 5?

00:54:32 ◼   ► 5.3, I want to say.

00:54:34 ◼   ► 5.2.

00:54:34 ◼   ► Oh wow.

00:54:35 ◼   ► You're not giving yourself much margin here.

00:54:37 ◼   ► No.

00:54:38 ◼   ► I, uh, I'm buying into the 5.5 millimeter thickness, but look, I, I, it's, I'm bringing the passion.

00:54:45 ◼   ► We know this about me.

00:54:46 ◼   ► I bring the passion to these picks.

00:54:47 ◼   ► You do.

00:54:48 ◼   ► You do.

00:54:48 ◼   ► Uh, but you know, now I need to give James a compliment.

00:54:51 ◼   ► So I'm going to say, um, James, you are so good at this that you don't need the passion.

00:54:56 ◼   ► You are cold and meticulous and that's what's brought you all of this way.

00:55:00 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

00:55:02 ◼   ► I appreciate that.

00:55:03 ◼   ► Stone cold killer.

00:55:05 ◼   ► Round two.

00:55:06 ◼   ► Um, one of the new phones has an eight X or greater optical zoom.

00:55:13 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:55:14 ◼   ► I picked 10 initially and then I thought, nope, there's no way it will be 10.

00:55:18 ◼   ► So, you know, it could be six, but I'm going to say eight or more.

00:55:23 ◼   ► I think that's a, probably a pretty good pick.

00:55:26 ◼   ► I'm going to go with the Apple TV gets an update.

00:55:27 ◼   ► I'm going to go with the Apple TV gets an update and I'm not entirely sure why personally, because

00:55:32 ◼   ► I'm not sure that the last update of the Apple TV was really all that necessary, but a faster

00:55:38 ◼   ► chip might open up, you know, Apple's eternal pursuit of gaming on some sort of device that

00:55:45 ◼   ► they make.

00:55:46 ◼   ► Uh, so having more storage space and a, and a faster chip will make that easier to get

00:55:52 ◼   ► some of those bigger name games on, on the TV.

00:55:55 ◼   ► So I think that's why they might do it.

00:55:56 ◼   ► I look forward to making, um, emoji, uh, on my television.

00:56:01 ◼   ► Every time I hear Apple T new Apple TV hardware described as being a gaming play.

00:56:09 ◼   ► I, I mean, first off, I pass out briefly and then I wake myself up because you know, Apple

00:56:16 ◼   ► and games.

00:56:17 ◼   ► it, I, I don't, I don't disagree.

00:56:20 ◼   ► I feel like though, if Apple wants to make gaming on the Apple TV, a thing, it kind of

00:56:24 ◼   ► needs to make it a thing.

00:56:25 ◼   ► I was thinking about this.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Like if you're going to do, if you're going to do this, like sell a skew with a controller,

00:56:32 ◼   ► like sell a gaming edition or something that really makes the point that you can play games

00:56:38 ◼   ► on this thing.

00:56:39 ◼   ► You can't just having games that are available for it.

00:56:43 ◼   ► If you go and buy a controller is, I mean, it works.

00:56:47 ◼   ► But I feel like if they're going to do this, like it's the usual story, which is Apple

00:56:50 ◼   ► and gaming where it just sort of happens.

00:56:52 ◼   ► But Apple sometimes I think doesn't try.

00:56:54 ◼   ► Yes.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Yes.

00:56:56 ◼   ► And this is the least, the least amount of try you can possibly do is putting in a better

00:57:00 ◼   ► chip just to tell people that you can play games on the Apple TV.

00:57:03 ◼   ► It's the standard thing.

00:57:05 ◼   ► If it's not included in the box, you know, only a tiny percentage of your audience are

00:57:09 ◼   ► going to buy it.

00:57:10 ◼   ► So put the controller in the box, put some like go faster stripes on the side of the thing

00:57:15 ◼   ► or whatever, make it a special edition.

00:57:18 ◼   ► Maybe a special color.

00:57:20 ◼   ► And throw in Apple Arcade or something.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Throw in a year of Apple Arcade or something for free.

00:57:25 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:57:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:57:26 ◼   ► But I mean, meanwhile, the rest of the gaming industry continues on in much faster direction

00:57:33 ◼   ► elsewhere.

00:57:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:57:34 ◼   ► I mean, I think Apple's model would be, you know, can we be like, cause Apple is successful

00:57:41 ◼   ► in gaming because of the iPhone, right?

00:57:43 ◼   ► And that gives them games that they can, I just think, I feel like there are alternate

00:57:47 ◼   ► paths.

00:57:47 ◼   ► Nintendo shows that there are alternate paths for games.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Apple could, I can't believe we're even talking about this.

00:57:55 ◼   ► I shouldn't have been brought it up because it's like, we always talk about the possibility

00:57:58 ◼   ► and then it never happens.

00:57:59 ◼   ► I'm going to just move on.

00:57:59 ◼   ► Like, like sure.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Theoretically, Apple could do something with games and people could do it, but that won't

00:58:03 ◼   ► happen.

00:58:04 ◼   ► But they won't.

00:58:04 ◼   ► So why am I even, I learned this lesson, uh, like when I was at Macworld in the nineties,

00:58:11 ◼   ► like, I mean, it's just, it's not any different.

00:58:14 ◼   ► It's the real Lucy's football of, uh, Apple.

00:58:16 ◼   ► It is.

00:58:16 ◼   ► It really is.

00:58:17 ◼   ► Um, we did an episode with that title.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Um, okay.

00:58:21 ◼   ► Here's my pick because this is the autumnal pickies and the Emmy awards are awarded in

00:58:25 ◼   ► September.

00:58:26 ◼   ► I'm going to say Apple TV plus shows will win several Emmy awards, but not the most of any

00:58:33 ◼   ► outlet.

00:58:33 ◼   ► So Apple will have a good Emmys, but not the greatest of Emmys.

00:58:39 ◼   ► I think they'll get beat out by probably HBO.

00:58:41 ◼   ► So that's my, yeah, that's a good call.

00:58:44 ◼   ► Emmy related since we have the ability to all of the, the fall, all of the autumn stretches

00:58:49 ◼   ► before us, I thought I would throw in an Emmys pick there.

00:58:51 ◼   ► That's about it.

00:58:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:52 ◼   ► I do think they're going to win a lot.

00:58:53 ◼   ► I think that a really good solid year of, of new shows, but tough competition does feel

00:58:59 ◼   ► sort of like it's severance's year, but we'll see.

00:59:00 ◼   ► Yep.

00:59:01 ◼   ► Yep.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Well, I have a compliment for you, James, and I just want to say that there is no blue deeper

00:59:08 ◼   ► and better than the icon of Peacalc than your deep blue eyes.

00:59:14 ◼   ► Oh, that that's lovely.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Whoa.

00:59:16 ◼   ► I have spent a lot of time looking at one of those two things over the last few.

00:59:21 ◼   ► It sounds like it.

00:59:23 ◼   ► Sure.

00:59:23 ◼   ► All right.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Round three.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Okay.

00:59:26 ◼   ► I'm going to say a new Apple studio display will be introduced with a better camera that

00:59:31 ◼   ► I'm not going to complain about.

00:59:33 ◼   ► Unlike the one I have.

00:59:34 ◼   ► All right.

00:59:37 ◼   ► I think that at least to one Apple watch is going to be released that doesn't need an

00:59:44 ◼   ► iPhone to use the workout buddy.

00:59:46 ◼   ► I'm a little obsessed with, with the workout buddy because I feel like it's one of those

00:59:51 ◼   ► features that Apple has put out into the world, kind of half baked on purpose and that we're

00:59:59 ◼   ► going to get to the point relatively soon.

01:00:01 ◼   ► And this fall may end up being too soon, but I'm hopeful that we'll get a chip enhancement

01:00:06 ◼   ► of some sort, or maybe it's the 5G connectivity that's been rumored in the Apple watch that will

01:00:13 ◼   ► allow the watch to do that kind of AI processing without having to have your phone along for

01:00:19 ◼   ► anybody who, you know, wants to go out for a jog without bringing their phone, for instance.

01:00:23 ◼   ► I mean, Apple intelligence is just branding, right?

01:00:27 ◼   ► So they could brand, they could do this feature and not brand it as Apple intelligence.

01:00:32 ◼   ► If they wanted to, they could just make it a feature.

01:00:35 ◼   ► It does seem like I get why they're doing it, but you, you've sniffed something here, John, that

01:00:41 ◼   ► I think is really smart, which is Apple does like this thing where they, they, they sometimes

01:00:46 ◼   ► introduce a feature and it's got all these limitations.

01:00:48 ◼   ► And then in the fall when the OS is shipped, they're like, Oh, also it's a hardware feature.

01:00:53 ◼   ► And so this would be a perfect example of like series 11 and ultra three, just have work

01:00:59 ◼   ► workout buddy, regardless of whether you've got your phone nearby.

01:01:02 ◼   ► It's an interesting idea.

01:01:04 ◼   ► I think they need to focus on making workout buddy useful.

01:01:06 ◼   ► Boom.

01:01:08 ◼   ► Yes, there's that too.

01:01:09 ◼   ► Cause it's literally like, I'm sorry.

01:01:11 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it's gotten better in the betas, but the demos that they give at WWDC usually

01:01:16 ◼   ► reflect what they think the feature should be.

01:01:19 ◼   ► And I could not have been less impressed with workout buddy at WWDC because all it seemed

01:01:26 ◼   ► to be doing is doing text to speech to tell me about stats that are shown in the Apple watch

01:01:32 ◼   ► activity app.

01:01:34 ◼   ► Like you, you ran 2.1 miles or doing great.

01:01:39 ◼   ► You just passed one mile.

01:01:40 ◼   ► And like, I mean, I have apps that also do that.

01:01:44 ◼   ► I turn all that off because I actually don't want to hear it.

01:01:46 ◼   ► And maybe that's part of it too, but it's like, if you're going to have a, a synthesized

01:01:50 ◼   ► voice, give me insights.

01:01:52 ◼   ► I'd like them to be insightful, I guess.

01:01:54 ◼   ► And I don't find it insightful.

01:01:55 ◼   ► I also don't want fake enthusiasm from a robot.

01:01:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:59 ◼   ► It's gotten a little better in that it will surface things that are more like in the work, the

01:02:04 ◼   ► track, the track in activity and the tracking where it'll be like, Oh, you went farther today

01:02:09 ◼   ► than you've gone all month or something along those lines.

01:02:12 ◼   ► So it's doing that and I found that it's more consistent because I had trouble in the early

01:02:18 ◼   ► betas where I think it, it showed up maybe once out of like 10 walks that I went on.

01:02:23 ◼   ► So, but it's, it seems to be settling down and getting catching its groove at this point.

01:02:29 ◼   ► Well, since, um, my, my M5 pick was stolen from me, I'm going to go in a different direction

01:02:36 ◼   ► now and say, Apple will release a heartwarming film, which is, you know, long commercial for

01:02:45 ◼   ► the holiday season.

01:02:46 ◼   ► They usually do that.

01:02:47 ◼   ► Yep.

01:02:48 ◼   ► I'm not predicting the, the weird controversy that will be, you know, attempted to be caused

01:02:55 ◼   ► by some website just declaring something as bad about it, which will certainly also happen,

01:03:00 ◼   ► but I'm not going to pick that just that once again, we'll get a heartwarming film from Apple

01:03:06 ◼   ► for the holiday season.

01:03:07 ◼   ► They love it.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Um, James, uh, one of my favorite things about you is that you are Scottish.

01:03:19 ◼   ► And one of the great things that Scotland and the entire United Kingdom has given us is

01:03:24 ◼   ► the concept of the holiday film, which, and holiday special, because I feel like when Apple

01:03:31 ◼   ► does these things, they're really catering to you and your market.

01:03:35 ◼   ► And the rest of us just get to enjoy the extended two minutes of snow and Apple products.

01:03:40 ◼   ► So, uh, well done Scotland.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Well done UK.

01:03:43 ◼   ► Uh, you, you, you get this one, you win this one.

01:03:47 ◼   ► That's my compliment for you.

01:03:49 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

01:03:49 ◼   ► I will accept on behalf of Scotland.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Round four.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Right.

01:03:54 ◼   ► Round four.

01:03:54 ◼   ► I think Apple will drop a promo for their Neuromancer TV show based on the books by William Gibson.

01:04:01 ◼   ► And they were filmed, I think at the start of this year.

01:04:05 ◼   ► So they've probably got enough footage to put something together.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Um, I think we've seen one still, um, of, of, uh, of a set.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Of a set.

01:04:14 ◼   ► So I think we will probably like, it's been a little while since we've had something.

01:04:20 ◼   ► So I think they'll, they'll want to drop, drop, uh, a little trailer so that we get excited

01:04:26 ◼   ► for that show.

01:04:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:26 ◼   ► It's been a while since we've heard anything about it.

01:04:28 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if we got this around the holiday season, just to kind of get people,

01:04:32 ◼   ► I don't know, excited.

01:04:34 ◼   ► Buy your Apple TV, your new Apple TV.

01:04:36 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:37 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:37 ◼   ► Sure.

01:04:38 ◼   ► Sounds good.

01:04:39 ◼   ► All right.

01:04:40 ◼   ► My pick is that Apple is going to make an acquisition that's reported to be valued at more than $5

01:04:45 ◼   ► billion.

01:04:45 ◼   ► All right.

01:04:47 ◼   ► I went back and looked and Beats was purchased for $3 billion.

01:04:52 ◼   ► And that was quite a few years ago.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Uh, I think that Apple's going to break the 5 billion barrier.

01:04:58 ◼   ► I think personally, this is not part of my pick, but I think personally it'll happen right

01:05:02 ◼   ► after Thanksgiving.

01:05:03 ◼   ► Oh, I worked for far too long in a big corporate law firm where everybody thinks they can get

01:05:09 ◼   ► their deals done before the holidays and they don't.

01:05:11 ◼   ► And then a bunch of, uh, underlings have to work through the holidays, putting together

01:05:15 ◼   ► documents.

01:05:16 ◼   ► It's absolutely going to happen here after the Thanksgiving.

01:05:19 ◼   ► It'll be like on a, like it'll be, it might even be announced the Friday after Thanksgiving.

01:05:25 ◼   ► I feel bad for those lawyers, but not that bad.

01:05:27 ◼   ► Wow.

01:05:29 ◼   ► Wow.

01:05:29 ◼   ► Big, big news.

01:05:30 ◼   ► I, uh, are we assuming this is AI related?

01:05:33 ◼   ► I think it's going to be AI related.

01:05:34 ◼   ► I don't know what else it would be at this point.

01:05:36 ◼   ► This plays into one of my later picks.

01:05:37 ◼   ► Okay.

01:05:37 ◼   ► But yeah.

01:05:38 ◼   ► Wow.

01:05:39 ◼   ► That's a bit, that's a risky pick.

01:05:40 ◼   ► You're sure you're bringing the passion.

01:05:42 ◼   ► I am.

01:05:43 ◼   ► I like it.

01:05:43 ◼   ► That's my riskiest one for sure.

01:05:44 ◼   ► All right.

01:05:45 ◼   ► I am going to be a little less risky, but you don't know whether this will happen or not.

01:05:48 ◼   ► I'm predicting Apple will continue its, um, its winning ways by making yet another newsroom

01:05:56 ◼   ► post about a financial commitment it's making to something involving American manufacturing.

01:06:02 ◼   ► Just keep it going.

01:06:03 ◼   ► Keep it rolling.

01:06:03 ◼   ► It feels like a poker game at this point where you have to ante up every few months.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Yep.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Yep.

01:06:09 ◼   ► I think so.

01:06:10 ◼   ► I think so.

01:06:10 ◼   ► So I'm, I'm, I'm betting on another, I don't know what it will be.

01:06:14 ◼   ► I don't know if it'll be, you know, that we did glass in Kentucky.

01:06:16 ◼   ► Is it going to be like action buttons in Iowa?

01:06:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:06:23 ◼   ► You know what I bet it'll be?

01:06:24 ◼   ► I think it'll be the campus in North Carolina because they announced years ago now that they

01:06:30 ◼   ► were expanding into the Raleigh-Durham area.

01:06:32 ◼   ► It's been stalled.

01:06:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:33 ◼   ► And then they put it like, because of COVID in particular, they put it on, on ice.

01:06:37 ◼   ► They do have people there from what I understand, but they put it on the, the big development

01:06:42 ◼   ► on ice for a while, but I think it's still, I think they still have the land and I could

01:06:48 ◼   ► see it being something like that.

01:06:49 ◼   ► They've never called it off, but they could re that's one of those great things where you

01:06:53 ◼   ► already committed to it, but now you can announce it as if it was a new commitment, even though

01:06:57 ◼   ► it's not Apple breaks ground on new, whatever.

01:06:59 ◼   ► And yeah, maybe that's it.

01:07:02 ◼   ► That's a good one.

01:07:03 ◼   ► That feels like, you know, Oh, it's like buying yourself a present, you know, Oh, we're investing

01:07:08 ◼   ► in our campus.

01:07:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:09 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, now you've got a 5 billion campus or whatever.

01:07:13 ◼   ► USA, USA.

01:07:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:15 ◼   ► They can talk about all the people that they're going to employ in North Carolina and like the

01:07:18 ◼   ► infrastructure that they're going to build and all that stuff.

01:07:21 ◼   ► Um, all right.

01:07:23 ◼   ► I have a compliment for, for James, which is, you know what, there's nothing more soothing

01:07:27 ◼   ► and relaxing than, than to listen to James make his pickies on this show.

01:07:32 ◼   ► Soothing or relaxing, putting you to sleep.

01:07:35 ◼   ► Um, thank you very much.

01:07:36 ◼   ► Round five.

01:07:37 ◼   ► Um, so I'm going to go negative.

01:07:41 ◼   ► Um, sadly, I'm going to say that no new vision pro hardware is going to ship before the end

01:07:46 ◼   ► of the year.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Alas, I think, I mean, there's, there's certainly rumblings that there's, there's an M5 that it

01:07:54 ◼   ► was going to be M4 and now it's going to be an M5 based one.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Um, but also I think it's fair to say that there's not the most excitement about vision

01:08:06 ◼   ► pro at the moment.

01:08:07 ◼   ► And I don't know that just introducing new hardware is going to make that happen because

01:08:13 ◼   ► the, the, the hardware we've got is really great.

01:08:16 ◼   ► I love the hardware and some of the features are really good, but you know, just because

01:08:22 ◼   ► we sit around and we have our chats around a virtual campfire, um, in FaceTime, it's not,

01:08:30 ◼   ► you don't need an M5 for that.

01:08:32 ◼   ► So you're going to need something big and you know, we, we, we will see, but, um, yes,

01:08:41 ◼   ► you can pair the controllers with it.

01:08:43 ◼   ► But as we've said previously, if it's not in the box, uh, nobody's going to have them.

01:08:47 ◼   ► What do you think the odds are that Apple opens up the USB C port on the developer strapped

01:08:54 ◼   ► to things like ethernet, for instance?

01:08:57 ◼   ► I mean, I, they really just need to put a standard USB controller.

01:09:02 ◼   ► port on those devices.

01:09:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:04 ◼   ► Um, because the developer strap is a expensive, be a hack and it sticks out.

01:09:10 ◼   ► It's unwieldy.

01:09:11 ◼   ► It, and then it doesn't work with all the additional, um, uh, straps and comfort things that you can

01:09:18 ◼   ► get for the vision pro.

01:09:20 ◼   ► Um, I would, I would love to see, you know, just have a charge port.

01:09:25 ◼   ► There's also a USB C port and just do it that way or something, you know, yes, there

01:09:30 ◼   ► is the, the, the difficulty with the, um, their proprietary, uh, power connector, but you

01:09:38 ◼   ► know, they could do something.

01:09:39 ◼   ► They could do something that carry data and had a port down the way or something.

01:09:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:44 ◼   ► Their wifi antennas just are not good on the vision pro.

01:09:47 ◼   ► I mean, if they built the batteries into the thing so that they didn't have to have like

01:09:51 ◼   ► little dongles hanging off, that would be nice.

01:09:53 ◼   ► I don't think they're going to redesign the hardware though.

01:09:55 ◼   ► I think this is going to be a chip update is all.

01:09:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:58 ◼   ► And, and that's just going to be like, great.

01:10:00 ◼   ► I can do all the same lack of things.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:03 ◼   ► The problem is not the hardware.

01:10:05 ◼   ► Um, so what's enabled by the, I mean, what's enabled by the M five or M four, even in a vision

01:10:10 ◼   ► pro is that they can stop making the M two.

01:10:12 ◼   ► I think, I think that's literally it.

01:10:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:16 ◼   ► John, what do you have?

01:10:18 ◼   ► Oh, I do have an, it's my pick again.

01:10:21 ◼   ► All right.

01:10:21 ◼   ► So I think Apple is going to introduce at least one new OS feature based on new hardware.

01:10:28 ◼   ► That wasn't part of the OS 26 betas.

01:10:31 ◼   ► And this kind of goes to my previous pick a little bit about, about the, uh, the workout

01:10:37 ◼   ► buddy.

01:10:37 ◼   ► I think that unlike the workout buddy, though, there will just be a feature that gets sprung

01:10:41 ◼   ► on us.

01:10:42 ◼   ► This happens with the Apple watch an awful lot, but I also, but it could also happen with

01:10:46 ◼   ► iPhone cameras happens a lot.

01:10:48 ◼   ► Yep.

01:10:48 ◼   ► Yep.

01:10:49 ◼   ► It could be happened with the camera.

01:10:50 ◼   ► It could happen with a bunch of things.

01:10:51 ◼   ► I think the most likely candidates are something like the camera or something related to the sensor

01:10:55 ◼   ► on the Apple watch.

01:10:56 ◼   ► I'll throw in a third possibility here, which is, uh, could be an AirPods three, AirPods

01:11:02 ◼   ► pro three, something.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:11:04 ◼   ► That is enabled, uh, you know, on your iPhone when you're using AirPods that does something.

01:11:10 ◼   ► I don't even know what, something magical.

01:11:12 ◼   ► Takes pictures.

01:11:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:14 ◼   ► Sure.

01:11:15 ◼   ► Little cameras.

01:11:16 ◼   ► I mean, who knows anything?

01:11:18 ◼   ► Oh, um, it's me.

01:11:21 ◼   ► My last pick.

01:11:22 ◼   ► I'm going to do it.

01:11:23 ◼   ► I'm bringing the passion.

01:11:25 ◼   ► I'm going to do it.

01:11:26 ◼   ► Yep.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Mac pro will be updated or at least an update will be announced.

01:11:31 ◼   ► Mac pro it's happening this fall.

01:11:34 ◼   ► That is a passion one.

01:11:35 ◼   ► That is a passion.

01:11:35 ◼   ► And for the last time, possibly, but it's time to define updated.

01:11:40 ◼   ► I think it will.

01:11:42 ◼   ► I, I mean, I think it will either get the chip that's in the Mac studio, or it will get a chip

01:11:48 ◼   ► that goes beyond what's in the Mac studio.

01:11:50 ◼   ► I mean, it may depend on what we get, but yes, they could, they could find the M4 ultra that

01:11:58 ◼   ► was down the side of the sofa.

01:12:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:12:01 ◼   ► I was going to say, it'd be very, uh, very Mac pro to update it at the end of the year with

01:12:06 ◼   ► that chip and then have the Mac book pro updated to a better chip right after.

01:12:12 ◼   ► And I do it before, like do the, do the M5 before.

01:12:15 ◼   ► Talk about Lucy and the football.

01:12:16 ◼   ► Here we are.

01:12:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:17 ◼   ► That's what the Mac pro is John Syracuse on the Mac pro.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Um, all right, uh, James, um, I, I have known you longer than almost anybody in the Apple

01:12:29 ◼   ► world going back way, way, way too many years now.

01:12:34 ◼   ► And our friendship has been very valuable to me and I enjoy it.

01:12:39 ◼   ► Um, you were also, I will say, uh, one of the first people I knew who, uh, understood all

01:12:46 ◼   ► of my Dr. Who references and understood about what kind of color blindness I have because

01:12:54 ◼   ► you share it.

01:12:55 ◼   ► So thank you for being a friend, a good friend.

01:12:58 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

01:13:00 ◼   ► And thank you for being a friend too.

01:13:01 ◼   ► And yes, I, I, anytime I run into a color issue, I think, uh, Jason will have run into

01:13:07 ◼   ► that.

01:13:07 ◼   ► It's certainly true.

01:13:10 ◼   ► Uh, time for round six, which is just for James, because James, for all of his compliments

01:13:14 ◼   ► has also just completely hosed us by giving himself an extra pick.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Go ahead, James.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Fine.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Pick again.

01:13:19 ◼   ► I mean, look, this is, this is the riskiest of picks.

01:13:22 ◼   ► So I don't think this round six is going to make a difference, but, um, uh, I'm going

01:13:29 ◼   ► to say that Apple is going to make a significant investment into Anthropic or buy them outright

01:13:35 ◼   ► to sort of mirror Microsoft's investments into open AI and Apple needs something.

01:13:43 ◼   ► And I think this goes back to the, uh, John's, uh, acquisition of more than five billion.

01:13:49 ◼   ► I think they need to spend some of that money on a big, a big company that's got scientists

01:13:57 ◼   ► that won't be stolen by open AI immediately.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Um, because, yeah, because they're, they're, I mean, they're, they're having to kind of outsource

01:14:07 ◼   ► a whole bunch of stuff because they don't have it in house and I think it's hurting them.

01:14:12 ◼   ► I mean, I still brackets, I still hate AI, but, you know, I think the perception that they're

01:14:20 ◼   ► behind is going to, is really going to start costing them.

01:14:23 ◼   ► And, uh, so yeah, they're going to, they're going to open their, open their, their wallets

01:14:30 ◼   ► and, and, and buy something.

01:14:32 ◼   ► But if they buy Mr. All, you don't get the point here because.

01:14:34 ◼   ► No, I don't.

01:14:35 ◼   ► But, you know.

01:14:36 ◼   ► For French AI.

01:14:36 ◼   ► Um, I was going for Anthropic because they've been doing this rumors of Claude

01:14:42 ◼   ► stuff going into X codes that really got some kind of, uh, some kind of relationship there.

01:14:51 ◼   ► And, you know, that just takes a lunch of Tim Cook saying, how would you like, you know,

01:14:57 ◼   ► 20 billion?

01:14:58 ◼   ► I think that brings us to the end of the pickies.

01:15:01 ◼   ► I think John and I can both compliment you, James, on your ability to create self-serving

01:15:06 ◼   ► rules in the pickies.

01:15:07 ◼   ► I think that's the, the ultimate compliment.

01:15:09 ◼   ► I mean, yes.

01:15:10 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

01:15:11 ◼   ► I'm really enjoying this new charter and I can't see anything going horribly wrong with

01:15:16 ◼   ► it before December.

01:15:17 ◼   ► John, I am looking up when the next Jason Voorhees day is now because we're going to, oh, it's

01:15:23 ◼   ► in February.

01:15:23 ◼   ► Oh, that's good.

01:15:24 ◼   ► It's soon.

01:15:24 ◼   ► It's in February this year, not, or next year, not June.

01:15:28 ◼   ► So we don't have to wait until June.

01:15:30 ◼   ► We can, we can, we can nip this in the bud next February 13th.

01:15:35 ◼   ► Um, all right.

01:15:36 ◼   ► It's, it's all perfectly legal.

01:15:38 ◼   ► Okay.

01:15:39 ◼   ► Now it's time for our final sponsor.

01:15:42 ◼   ► Uh, here's Stephen Hackett.

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01:17:44 ◼   ► Winter Wonderland!

01:17:51 ◼   ► Yes, everybody, it's time for the Winter Wonderland segment, one of my favorites.

01:17:55 ◼   ► This is when we celebrate winter in the Southern Hemisphere by having a good time doing something

01:18:05 ◼   ► fun.

01:18:06 ◼   ► I was pitching the Autumn of Adequate, but I got overruled.

01:18:09 ◼   ► Yeah, well, that was not as good.

01:18:12 ◼   ► We did the Autumn Pickies, though, but now it's time for Winter Wonderland, because we're still

01:18:16 ◼   ► in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, or more importantly, the winter in the Southern

01:18:19 ◼   ► Hemisphere.

01:18:20 ◼   ► And this week, it's connected Q and A, where you, the listeners, have sent in connected

01:18:28 ◼   ► Qs, and we are going to A them.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And we begin with a letter from D Griffin, who writes, what is the best computer shape?

01:18:39 ◼   ► I'm going to say Icosahedron.

01:18:41 ◼   ► I haven't seen one, but I think that would be the best computer shape.

01:18:44 ◼   ► Give me that D20.

01:18:45 ◼   ► Well, interesting, interesting.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Well, Winter Wonderland, it should probably be shaped like a snowflake.

01:18:52 ◼   ► What?

01:18:52 ◼   ► I think round.

01:18:54 ◼   ► I don't know what does computer shape as round.

01:18:56 ◼   ► Like, sort of BB-8 just follows you around?

01:19:00 ◼   ► Is this the Apple robot?

01:19:01 ◼   ► Or it rolls right off the table, I don't know.

01:19:03 ◼   ► Whatever.

01:19:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:04 ◼   ► It's an engineering challenge, I love it.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Everything has to be completely wireless.

01:19:08 ◼   ► Well, this Apple's going to love that.

01:19:09 ◼   ► They don't want any wires.

01:19:10 ◼   ► No, it doesn't have to have any buttons.

01:19:11 ◼   ► It'll just be a sphere.

01:19:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's great.

01:19:13 ◼   ► I love it.

01:19:14 ◼   ► Okay.

01:19:15 ◼   ► Edwin asks, what is the most lemon, I like that phrase, the most lemon piece of tech,

01:19:21 ◼   ► the worst, you have ever used?

01:19:22 ◼   ► I'm going to say I very much dislike my Netgear Orbeez that I bought for a lot of money.

01:19:28 ◼   ► And A, they could not get a Wi-Fi signal through the walls.

01:19:31 ◼   ► And they have recently just started killing all my HomeKit network.

01:19:37 ◼   ► So, I'm going to be replacing them and going all Ubiquity soon.

01:19:42 ◼   ► Okay.

01:19:43 ◼   ► Interesting.

01:19:44 ◼   ► I've got one.

01:19:45 ◼   ► What's that?

01:19:46 ◼   ► Because I want to follow up James going all Ubiquity and say, my biggest lemon, most lemon

01:19:53 ◼   ► piece of tech.

01:19:55 ◼   ► I'm holding it in my hand now because I was just digging through all of my old cables.

01:19:59 ◼   ► And I found this at the bottom of a bin, completely useless, unplugged.

01:20:05 ◼   ► It's a Ubiquity Edge Router X, which I bought a few years ago where people are like, oh, Ubiquity

01:20:09 ◼   ► makes great stuff.

01:20:10 ◼   ► And you need a gigabit or like a 10 gigabit Ethernet switch.

01:20:16 ◼   ► Get the Ubiquity Edge Router X.

01:20:19 ◼   ► And its web interface was bad.

01:20:22 ◼   ► And it didn't work right.

01:20:24 ◼   ► And I unplugged it.

01:20:25 ◼   ► So, I don't want to hear from people who are like, you're just using it wrong.

01:20:28 ◼   ► All I can say is, I know a little bit about networking.

01:20:31 ◼   ► And I found it completely a waste of time.

01:20:34 ◼   ► So, this is why I avoid Ubiquity gear, honestly, as I had such a bad example with this, which

01:20:40 ◼   ► I'm going to define as the most lemon piece of tech.

01:20:42 ◼   ► John?

01:20:43 ◼   ► All right.

01:20:44 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:20:44 ◼   ► I had pretty good luck, but I'm going to pick, I think, my original tour box that I got, which

01:20:52 ◼   ► is like one of these, it's a little bit like a stream deck, but it's got knobs and buttons

01:20:59 ◼   ► and wheels, all different shapes meant to be used with things like audio editing and video

01:21:05 ◼   ► editing applications.

01:21:07 ◼   ► And one of the things on it is a D-pad, which is actually really helpful because having a

01:21:13 ◼   ► four directional pad, it gives you a lot of options and a lot of that kind of software.

01:21:17 ◼   ► But the down, the down button just didn't work at all.

01:21:21 ◼   ► It got, it was kind of stuck in the chassis.

01:21:23 ◼   ► I did, I will say I did after they sent me a new one, which I was, I appreciate it.

01:21:29 ◼   ► And that one worked.

01:21:30 ◼   ► I went, took the old one.

01:21:32 ◼   ► I took it apart and I was able to make it work pretty consistently.

01:21:37 ◼   ► So now I have one for my, my desktop Mac and one for my, my laptop.

01:21:42 ◼   ► Nice.

01:21:43 ◼   ► Nate writes, what's the oldest piece of tech you still use regularly, or at least the oldest

01:21:49 ◼   ► you still use occasionally or have around the house just in case.

01:21:53 ◼   ► A lot of broad questions here.

01:21:55 ◼   ► I mean, I still have my original USB soundsticks on my desk, although the power supply has started

01:22:01 ◼   ► to fail.

01:22:01 ◼   ► So it's crackling and I'm on my second power supply, but that thing is 25 years old and still

01:22:08 ◼   ► works.

01:22:09 ◼   ► And I, I challenge anyone to have an older piece of tech that they're using at least

01:22:15 ◼   ► enough to know that it's starting to not work.

01:22:17 ◼   ► It's pretty good.

01:22:19 ◼   ► John?

01:22:19 ◼   ► I, I guess I, I don't have a lot of old tech because I'm constantly buying new things.

01:22:25 ◼   ► Uh, and, and I did just move a few years ago.

01:22:30 ◼   ► So probably my TV, which is from 2022 or 2023.

01:22:35 ◼   ► Wow.

01:22:36 ◼   ► Wow.

01:22:37 ◼   ► John's just a new, a new man, a new world man.

01:22:40 ◼   ► I'm just a new, new guy.

01:22:42 ◼   ► I, I like John.

01:22:44 ◼   ► I, it's hard for me to pick.

01:22:45 ◼   ► I've got some, I've got a metric time clock that I bought a while ago that it's just shows

01:22:51 ◼   ► the time and the temperature and I don't really need it to do much more.

01:22:54 ◼   ► Um, so I've got that one.

01:22:56 ◼   ► I, I, what I want to say is I have a floor lamp in my office.

01:23:01 ◼   ► That's technology.

01:23:03 ◼   ► That, that dates that was in my, my parents' house in the eighties.

01:23:07 ◼   ► Okay.

01:23:08 ◼   ► It's good.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Um, adjustable.

01:23:10 ◼   ► I, at one point in the, I'm going to say in the nineties, I, it was flickering and I took

01:23:15 ◼   ► it to, uh, a lamp store and the guy was like, oh yeah.

01:23:20 ◼   ► He, well, first off it was the nineties and he's like, oh, they don't make them like this

01:23:23 ◼   ► anymore, which is like, that was in the nineties and he rewired it.

01:23:27 ◼   ► And, and since then it's been, uh, immaculate.

01:23:31 ◼   ► I think everybody else in my life thinks, why does Jason like this ugly lamp?

01:23:34 ◼   ► I don't know what to say.

01:23:36 ◼   ► They don't make them like this anymore.

01:23:38 ◼   ► And now it has a smart bulb in it so I can control it from my desk.

01:23:43 ◼   ► And in fact, when I come into the garage in the morning, I press a button on a smart switch

01:23:48 ◼   ► and the, the, this old floor lamp lights up.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Uh, it's great.

01:23:54 ◼   ► So that's, I might argue that the eighties janky eighties floor lamp is my oldest piece

01:23:59 ◼   ► of tech.

01:23:59 ◼   ► Okay.

01:24:00 ◼   ► The EJJ says, what technology are you still odd by, even though it may be old and standard

01:24:05 ◼   ► by now?

01:24:06 ◼   ► Personally says the EJJ.

01:24:08 ◼   ► I think the world adjusted to fully capable on-device fingerprint scanners too quickly.

01:24:12 ◼   ► That's amazing.

01:24:13 ◼   ► James, what about you?

01:24:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:24:15 ◼   ► I mean, on a similar note, I would say wireless communication, like wifi, Bluetooth, et cetera.

01:24:20 ◼   ► I remember playing with an original iBook, like sometime before it actually got released when

01:24:25 ◼   ► I was working at Apple and it was just magical.

01:24:28 ◼   ► It was like, how does this even work?

01:24:30 ◼   ► You know, I know radios and things like that, but it just seemed, I don't know how it works.

01:24:35 ◼   ► And now, you know, we sit and like all our game controllers are now wireless and, uh,

01:24:43 ◼   ► well, unless you really need the low latency, but you know, I remember sitting there and, oh,

01:24:48 ◼   ► you have to be within, you know, six feet of the TV because the, the lead is this length

01:24:54 ◼   ► and things like that.

01:24:55 ◼   ► So I think wireless.

01:24:57 ◼   ► I am going to go with the internet.

01:25:00 ◼   ► Literally nothing that I do would be possible today if it weren't for the internet.

01:25:04 ◼   ► Oh, that's pretty good.

01:25:05 ◼   ► still, still, uh, awes you even now.

01:25:08 ◼   ► It does.

01:25:09 ◼   ► It does.

01:25:09 ◼   ► I still feel it, feel like it's amazing to me that, that I can have a conversation with

01:25:15 ◼   ► somebody like James off in Scotland, uh, while, while, you know, over the internet, which,

01:25:21 ◼   ► which for basically for free, because, you know, back in the day you would have spent like

01:25:26 ◼   ► this call on a long distance phone call in the eighties.

01:25:29 ◼   ► would have cost probably $150.

01:25:32 ◼   ► Hundreds of dollars.

01:25:32 ◼   ► Yeah, for sure.

01:25:33 ◼   ► For sure.

01:25:33 ◼   ► I was, I was thinking, I was talking to my friend Greg Noss about this, that we have a,

01:25:37 ◼   ► we have a Linode that runs all of the incomparable and some six color stuff.

01:25:41 ◼   ► And I pay at this point, it's probably about $120 a month for that.

01:25:47 ◼   ► Right.

01:25:47 ◼   ► But it's a, we have an allowance of data that's like, I forget how many terabytes it

01:25:53 ◼   ► is a month.

01:25:55 ◼   ► And when, when we started having an internet server that we tried to do a podcast on in

01:26:01 ◼   ► like 2007, the, every, every download of the podcast cost us money.

01:26:07 ◼   ► And the fact that, that I can spin up a pretty powerful server that runs, you know, a large

01:26:13 ◼   ► portion of my business and serves podcasts out to the world.

01:26:16 ◼   ► We don't use a CDN for the incomparable other than the mothership.

01:26:19 ◼   ► It's all just served off of Linode and it costs me 120 bucks ish a month.

01:26:24 ◼   ► That's completely wild.

01:26:27 ◼   ► And then I'll also throw in, um, face tracking cameras.

01:26:29 ◼   ► I have a Insta 360, um, webcam and I don't use the auto tracking much, but I, I, I just

01:26:36 ◼   ► that and, and, and even, um, center stage, like that continues to wow me the idea.

01:26:43 ◼   ► Like I do a zoom call with my wife's family every week or every other week on, um,

01:26:49 ◼   ► our TV using zoom and center stage on my iPhone camera.

01:26:53 ◼   ► And it is every time I do it, I think I am now in a sci-fi movie from the sixties, like

01:27:00 ◼   ► where they're like, Oh, video phones will be ubiquitous and cameras will pan around to

01:27:04 ◼   ► like, we always used to think, I always used to think that movies and TV shows that showed

01:27:08 ◼   ► you a camera footage, but it was obviously being run by like a camera person who was zooming

01:27:13 ◼   ► in and focusing and stuff.

01:27:15 ◼   ► And I'd be like, Oh, that's so silly.

01:27:16 ◼   ► It should be fixed because it's a kid.

01:27:18 ◼   ► And now I'm like, Oh, actually the, the, the software is the cameraman on that shot.

01:27:25 ◼   ► Uh, that still amazes me.

01:27:27 ◼   ► Um, okay.

01:27:29 ◼   ► Let's see.

01:27:29 ◼   ► What else do we have here?

01:27:30 ◼   ► Uh, uh, chat, I guess says what's a skill or habit that you developed in a different job

01:27:36 ◼   ► that has helped you in your current career?

01:27:38 ◼   ► What do you mean?

01:27:40 ◼   ► Different job.

01:27:41 ◼   ► I've been doing this.

01:27:43 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:27:44 ◼   ► Um, I mean, I've been doing literally this at literally this space where I'm currently

01:27:50 ◼   ► standing for 25 years.

01:27:51 ◼   ► And then before that, you know, four years at Apple.

01:27:55 ◼   ► And then before that another four years, but I've been writing software and kind of doing

01:28:00 ◼   ► the same thing the whole way.

01:28:01 ◼   ► like the only job that I had that wasn't that was working in the money room of, uh, uh,

01:28:08 ◼   ► uh, so the money room where, where all the tills came in and we counted up the money and

01:28:15 ◼   ► we put it in the safe and then we found there was money missing.

01:28:18 ◼   ► Then I got blamed.

01:28:19 ◼   ► Um, but now we know how you've made your fortune.

01:28:22 ◼   ► But yes, I guess that's it.

01:28:24 ◼   ► My ability to count money, money has kept me, uh, has helped me in my current career.

01:28:30 ◼   ► Every time I go to Whole Foods and I get deli turkey, I think about the fact that my summer

01:28:34 ◼   ► job in college was working at a deli slicing among cleaning tables and setting up plates and

01:28:40 ◼   ► also slicing meat.

01:28:41 ◼   ► Uh, and so I see them use the meat cutter and I'm like, oh man, I could do that.

01:28:45 ◼   ► I could do that job.

01:28:47 ◼   ► By the way, the, the woman who ran that place, um, when she shows you how to safely

01:28:51 ◼   ► use the meat cutter, um, the first thing she does is she, you must be careful or, and she

01:28:57 ◼   ► shows me her hand and the, um, the last knuckle of her pinky finger on that hand is gone.

01:29:02 ◼   ► Oh, and, uh, and, and it's horrifying.

01:29:06 ◼   ► And then she says this, I didn't, I didn't use cut it on the meat cutter, but, but don't

01:29:10 ◼   ► cut yourself on the meat cutter.

01:29:11 ◼   ► I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:29:12 ◼   ► So every time I go to Whole Foods and I order, you know, a pound of smoked turkey, I'm like,

01:29:16 ◼   ► oh man, I could do that job.

01:29:18 ◼   ► If I, if all this internet stuff falls apart and the Apple and computers and stuff, uh, I

01:29:24 ◼   ► mean, look for me at your local Whole Foods, I'll be cutting the meat.

01:29:26 ◼   ► Cause that's the only other skill I have.

01:29:27 ◼   ► You, you think about the pinky knuckle is what you think.

01:29:30 ◼   ► I do Rocha Fenyo showing me her pinky knuckle.

01:29:34 ◼   ► It really is a thing where it's just like, oh God, be careful.

01:29:37 ◼   ► You gotta be careful.

01:29:38 ◼   ► Um, when you cut meat now, I suspect this question was for John.

01:29:44 ◼   ► Uh, well I did used to be a lawyer and back in the nineties and I learned a skill that

01:29:52 ◼   ► does serve me really well now, which I, is that I learned all about Boolean operators because

01:29:58 ◼   ► back in the day you would do legal research on a thin client for services called Lexus and

01:30:05 ◼   ► Westlaw where the text would be returned to you over a dial up connection line by line,

01:30:12 ◼   ► really literally character by character.

01:30:14 ◼   ► You could watch it fill the screen.

01:30:16 ◼   ► And so it was really important to be really good at search.

01:30:19 ◼   ► And so, and they all, they were all designed by, you know, computer nerds of the era and

01:30:25 ◼   ► they relied very heavily on, uh, Boolean operators, just not just, you know, and or not, but a bunch

01:30:32 ◼   ► of other, a bunch of other, um, bunch of other characters and, and ways to do Boolean searches.

01:30:38 ◼   ► And I use that to this day because all that stuff is available in Google search still.

01:30:42 ◼   ► So that's, that's cool.

01:30:44 ◼   ► I, uh, when I got to journalism school, we got access to Lexus Nexus and it was amazing.

01:30:49 ◼   ► Cause that's, that was the, that back before there was the internet, there was a legal and

01:30:54 ◼   ► news database that had all content kind of historically and searchable.

01:30:59 ◼   ► And it was an expensive subscription.

01:31:01 ◼   ► Oh, it was thousands and thousands of dollars.

01:31:04 ◼   ► That's what opened up my, my mind to the internet.

01:31:06 ◼   ► I would say that was, that was it.

01:31:09 ◼   ► And, uh, and short anecdote, um, my, uh, I'm, I'm my mom's only, but my dad had three kids

01:31:16 ◼   ► from a prior marriage.

01:31:17 ◼   ► And also it turns out a fourth that was put up for adoption before they got married.

01:31:22 ◼   ► It was the fifties and my other three half siblings had been trying to find him and all

01:31:27 ◼   ► they knew was his name and my sister had hired a private investigator to find him and come

01:31:34 ◼   ► up empty.

01:31:34 ◼   ► I put his name in Lexus Nexus and I had his business license for his business and his address in

01:31:42 ◼   ► 10 seconds.

01:31:43 ◼   ► Yep.

01:31:43 ◼   ► So the moral of the story is that was a bad private investigator.

01:31:48 ◼   ► It really was.

01:31:49 ◼   ► I did it in 10 seconds and I got to meet him, which is great.

01:31:53 ◼   ► They got to meet their full sibling and they'd never met before.

01:31:55 ◼   ► It was awesome.

01:31:55 ◼   ► Uh, you're welcome.

01:31:57 ◼   ► Uh, did they, they probably thanked me.

01:32:00 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:32:01 ◼   ► Anyway, it's fun.

01:32:02 ◼   ► It's weird being a half sibling.

01:32:03 ◼   ► Uh, okay.

01:32:04 ◼   ► A couple more before we go.

01:32:05 ◼   ► Uh, Nicholas wrote in, you're all enthusiasts about a lot of things.

01:32:10 ◼   ► Have any of you ever gotten close to being audiophiles?

01:32:12 ◼   ► Are you already with what podcasting equipment?

01:32:15 ◼   ► What about for music?

01:32:16 ◼   ► Um, I would say I've never been an audiophile and now that I can actually afford to be an

01:32:21 ◼   ► audiophile.

01:32:22 ◼   ► My ears can't hear the difference anyway.

01:32:23 ◼   ► Um, I do like a nice microphone, but that's for the listener's ears.

01:32:27 ◼   ► Uh, mine.

01:32:28 ◼   ► That's very nice.

01:32:29 ◼   ► John.

01:32:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:31 ◼   ► I flirted.

01:32:32 ◼   ► I flirted with, uh, being an audiophile way back in the day in college, I would say, but,

01:32:38 ◼   ► you know, I had a family and I had kids running around and a lot of noise in the background.

01:32:42 ◼   ► So I sort of gave up on that and, uh, and now I don't, now I, no, I'm not at all.

01:32:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:49 ◼   ► I, um, I kind of believe that audiophile stuff is BS.

01:32:52 ◼   ► Sorry, everybody.

01:32:54 ◼   ► Um, you mean you don't want speaker cables for a hundred dollars?

01:32:58 ◼   ► I, uh, Neil, nothing, very few things in tech have made me angrier than Neil Young endlessly

01:33:04 ◼   ► talking about the Pono player and how lossless give generates more emotion.

01:33:10 ◼   ► He was in the news again recently.

01:33:11 ◼   ► I forget for what I saw.

01:33:13 ◼   ► I mean, I was never really a Neil Young fan musically.

01:33:16 ◼   ► And then I became also not a fan of his technically.

01:33:19 ◼   ► It was like, I just think, I just think it's nonsense for a guy.

01:33:22 ◼   ► I also take it from a guy who's blasted out his hearing that he thinks that the lossless

01:33:25 ◼   ► is great.

01:33:26 ◼   ► Uh, anyway, I don't, I don't have any special, um, audiophile stuff.

01:33:30 ◼   ► I mean, when I was a kid, I bought a pair of headphones that were slightly, slightly nicer

01:33:35 ◼   ► and, um, uh, was blown away by how great they sound.

01:33:39 ◼   ► But I was like, listen to cassette tapes, folks.

01:33:41 ◼   ► Like it was not, they didn't, they weren't that nice.

01:33:43 ◼   ► Um, and you know, I have in-ear monitors for podcasting.

01:33:47 ◼   ► I do it mostly because, um, I have their customs.

01:33:51 ◼   ► And so they go in my ears and they fit really well.

01:33:53 ◼   ► So I can wait, wear them for hours at a time and it doesn't hurt my ears, but it's more about

01:33:58 ◼   ► that than it is about the quality.

01:33:59 ◼   ► Obviously I can tell that there are better quality speakers and there are better quality

01:34:03 ◼   ► headphones and all of that.

01:34:04 ◼   ► And I, I want them to be nice, but I wouldn't consider myself an audiophile.

01:34:07 ◼   ► And I really do believe, I think maybe I've got my Apple music to set to do, you know, to,

01:34:13 ◼   ► to play lossless because why not?

01:34:16 ◼   ► But honestly, high, high bit rate MP3 or, uh, AAC files also sound very, very good to the

01:34:24 ◼   ► human ear.

01:34:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:26 ◼   ► I mean, I've got that switched on too.

01:34:28 ◼   ► Have I done any AB testing to see if I can tell the difference?

01:34:31 ◼   ► No, I'm certain I can't.

01:34:33 ◼   ► Um, I did actually, I bought a lot or I got a coupon that gave me a, a speaking of you two

01:34:38 ◼   ► albums, a lossless version of Octung baby.

01:34:40 ◼   ► And I actually did do an AB test with that, with a high bit rate, uh, MP3 or AAC.

01:34:47 ◼   ► And I totally couldn't tell the difference.

01:34:49 ◼   ► So that's a weirdly specific, uh, coupon Jason.

01:34:53 ◼   ► Well, it was like, Hey, we, we're selling, we're selling albums on our lossless store

01:34:58 ◼   ► and we want you to write about it.

01:35:00 ◼   ► So here's a coupon for an album.

01:35:01 ◼   ► Oh, I see.

01:35:02 ◼   ► And they only had like 15 albums and probably four of them were 14 of them were Neil Young.

01:35:07 ◼   ► Right.

01:35:08 ◼   ► So I was like, Oh, you too.

01:35:09 ◼   ► Octung baby is an album I love.

01:35:11 ◼   ► And also I thought an album I know really well, which is why I wanted to listen to the

01:35:16 ◼   ► lossless version of it.

01:35:17 ◼   ► And I didn't, I couldn't tell the difference, honestly.

01:35:20 ◼   ► Um, okay.

01:35:21 ◼   ► One last one here in the main show.

01:35:23 ◼   ► We'll save some more for the pro, uh, the post show, pro max show.

01:35:26 ◼   ► Um, it's David 2017 Apple releases iPhone X or 10 to celebrate 10 years.

01:35:35 ◼   ► Please speculate outrageously about iPhone double X, which may or may not be coming soon.

01:35:40 ◼   ► Well, I mean, it's got to be better than the iPhone X, Y was making a chromosome joke,

01:35:46 ◼   ► but nevermind.

01:35:47 ◼   ► Wow.

01:35:48 ◼   ► Wow.

01:35:48 ◼   ► Wow.

01:35:48 ◼   ► You wrote that one down.

01:35:49 ◼   ► You wrote that joke down.

01:35:50 ◼   ► You thought that was good enough to write down.

01:35:52 ◼   ► So good.

01:35:52 ◼   ► I wrote it down for posterity.

01:35:55 ◼   ► I, well, you know, this made me, this got me thinking about when the, the iPhone X, X might

01:36:01 ◼   ► actually happen.

01:36:01 ◼   ► And that's only three years away.

01:36:03 ◼   ► So I honestly don't think they're going to be that many changes other than the, what I

01:36:10 ◼   ► think we will get very soon is a folding phone.

01:36:13 ◼   ► And I think, you know, I think that it's all going to come together with the folding phone.

01:36:17 ◼   ► I think a lot of this liquid glass stuff is designed to be bubbly and organic and imprecise.

01:36:24 ◼   ► So that when your buttons are, are straddling the hinge, that it doesn't look bad.

01:36:30 ◼   ► I think that Apple will do a lot of, do what they do, did with, you know, the dynamic island

01:36:35 ◼   ► and the notch.

01:36:35 ◼   ► They'll just make it instead of, they'll take something that's kind of a flaw in the hardware

01:36:40 ◼   ► and make it part of the UI.

01:36:42 ◼   ► So you don't notice it as much.

01:36:43 ◼   ► So I think that's kind of where we're headed.

01:36:45 ◼   ► I mean, I would like an iPhone DS, but I just, I like the conspiracy theory, John.

01:36:50 ◼   ► I like that.

01:36:51 ◼   ► That's one of my favorites is it's, it's all the clues are there for you.

01:36:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:55 ◼   ► You only understand the glass when you, when you see the completely transparent phone that

01:37:02 ◼   ► is the iPhone X, X.

01:37:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:03 ◼   ► Next fall, we're going to, we're going to, they're going to announce it and we're all going

01:37:06 ◼   ► to go, Oh, I see it now.

01:37:08 ◼   ► Like it'll all make sense then.

01:37:09 ◼   ► And then everybody will remember the pickies.

01:37:12 ◼   ► Everybody will remember the autumnal pickies.

01:37:14 ◼   ► Oh, by the way, my answer here is I'm going to hold out for the iPhone XL.

01:37:17 ◼   ► Very good.

01:37:19 ◼   ► That is, I think that's it for this episode, right?

01:37:23 ◼   ► I think.

01:37:24 ◼   ► I think so.

01:37:25 ◼   ► I think, I think we've done our usual weekly episode.

01:37:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:29 ◼   ► And we will be back next week.

01:37:31 ◼   ► Like always.

01:37:32 ◼   ► Cause why would we even say that?

01:37:33 ◼   ► Like, of course we'll be back next week.

01:37:36 ◼   ► But until then, uh, the website doesn't tell us how to say goodbye, but, uh, thank you to

01:37:41 ◼   ► everybody out there.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Thank you for listening to this normal episode of connected.

01:37:44 ◼   ► Uh, and until next time, gentlemen say goodbye.

01:37:50 ◼   ► It's, uh, always my pleasure to do one of these.

01:37:53 ◼   ► Adios.

01:37:55 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:37:56 ◼   ► Something else in Italian said by, uh.

01:38:00 ◼   ► You don't have a Scottish farewell, James?

01:38:02 ◼   ► Not one that wouldn't get me thrown out of the country.

01:38:06 ◼   ► We just have to bleep it.

01:38:07 ◼   ► Yes.

01:38:08 ◼   ► Thrown out of the country or thrown off the network.

01:38:10 ◼   ► One of the two.

01:38:11 ◼   ► Okay.