Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► So I sat down to begin work on our show document for this episode and I started pulling together all the items of follow-up that I had.

00:00:10 ◼   ► I have more follow-up than I think we have time for an episode.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:00:15 ◼   ► So much has happened.

00:00:16 ◼   ► The "Time Strikes Back" episode wreaked more havoc than was originally anticipated.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Because it didn't only just affect the episode that came after it, which was...

00:00:32 ◼   ► No, before it, which is technically after it.

00:00:36 ◼   ► It still affects this one as well, because we set up a lot of things on that episode that we have not resolved.

00:00:43 ◼   ► So this episode we're gonna hopefully close the time continuum problem that we have opened.

00:00:51 ◼   ► [DING]

00:00:52 ◼   ► Looking through the show notes, there are things

00:00:55 ◼   ► that you put on here that I thought,

00:00:57 ◼   ► didn't that happen three months ago?

00:00:59 ◼   ► - It's very confusing.

00:01:00 ◼   ► - It's so hard, and I have this extra layer of difficulty,

00:01:04 ◼   ► which is that my wife has been traveling,

00:01:07 ◼   ► so I've had the house to myself,

00:01:09 ◼   ► and the radius of my life has been so very small

00:01:13 ◼   ► because I also don't have my office,

00:01:16 ◼   ► and I redid my home office so that I could just work here,

00:01:19 ◼   ► and I've been on my own,

00:01:20 ◼   ► just living this cycle of like getting up, working,

00:01:24 ◼   ► going back to sleep.

00:01:25 ◼   ► And when you don't change your environment at all

00:01:28 ◼   ► for a month, you have no sense of time.

00:01:31 ◼   ► So I feel doubly confused looking at this list

00:01:36 ◼   ► because the last month of my life,

00:01:38 ◼   ► I have no sense of how long it is.

00:01:40 ◼   ► And then we have all of these things to talk about.

00:01:42 ◼   ► So I'm baffled by this list.

00:01:45 ◼   ► - 'Cause I'm super confused.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Like I'm trying to piece together right now,

00:01:48 ◼   ► Like when did we even record episode 91?

00:01:52 ◼   ► - Nobody knows.

00:01:53 ◼   ► - Like I'm so confused about it.

00:01:54 ◼   ► Like I know that we were in person,

00:01:57 ◼   ► but I don't remember when it, anyway,

00:02:00 ◼   ► so we have really ruined everything by doing that.

00:02:04 ◼   ► - Yes, we have ruined everything.

00:02:06 ◼   ► So we have to start out with the thing

00:02:07 ◼   ► from the mists of time,

00:02:09 ◼   ► which is the Relay FM podcast-a-thon.

00:02:14 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:02:15 ◼   ► - Do you remember that, Myke?

00:02:16 ◼   ► - I do remember that.

00:02:17 ◼   ► So throughout all of September, we were raising money

00:02:20 ◼   ► for St. Jude's Children's Cancer Research Hospital.

00:02:23 ◼   ► We raised over $314,000, which is unbelievable.

00:02:28 ◼   ► I would like to sincerely thank every cortex

00:02:32 ◼   ► that put money in, that's absolutely incredible.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Our original goal was $75,000, and we raised over 300,000,

00:02:40 ◼   ► so that is absolutely unbelievable.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Like, just really could not believe

00:02:46 ◼   ► that we quadrupled and then some, our original goal.

00:02:50 ◼   ► The six hour podcast, a fun that we recorded at St. Jude

00:02:53 ◼   ► went off perfectly, we're so happy with it.

00:02:56 ◼   ► If you are interested and have not yet seen it,

00:02:58 ◼   ► there is an entire video of this

00:03:01 ◼   ► 'cause we streamed it live on Twitch,

00:03:03 ◼   ► but we have the video on YouTube.

00:03:05 ◼   ► I'll put a link to that in the show notes,

00:03:06 ◼   ► but I just wanted to round that out and say like,

00:03:09 ◼   ► thank you to everyone.

00:03:10 ◼   ► I, you know, absolutely blown away by the response.

00:03:13 ◼   ► Like just wild.

00:03:14 ◼   ► pie hundred thousand dollars is a shocking amount of money.

00:03:18 ◼   ► - Wow, I hadn't thought of that.

00:03:20 ◼   ► - Oh, had you not?

00:03:20 ◼   ► - We raised pie.

00:03:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:23 ◼   ► - It's like, it's doubly pleasing because of that.

00:03:25 ◼   ► But yeah, it is a totally shocking amount of money.

00:03:29 ◼   ► And I remember at one point checking in and being like,

00:03:32 ◼   ► oh, they're going to cross the quarter million dollar mark,

00:03:34 ◼   ► which was already mind blowing.

00:03:36 ◼   ► And it's like, it kept on moving.

00:03:38 ◼   ► - Just kept going, just kept on trucking that thing.

00:03:40 ◼   ► - Thank you to everyone who contributed to that.

00:03:42 ◼   ► - Yep, really awesome.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Like, genuinely, like, absolute career highlight

00:03:46 ◼   ► to be able to do all of that.

00:03:48 ◼   ► So, yeah, we were absolutely blown away by it.

00:03:50 ◼   ► It was awesome.

00:03:52 ◼   ► We spoke about Jiro Dreams of Sushi on our last episode.

00:03:57 ◼   ► And I just wanted to tell you

00:03:58 ◼   ► that I've eaten some really good vegetarian sushi.

00:04:00 ◼   ► I'm like tiptoeing my way through this.

00:04:03 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:04:04 ◼   ► Are you trying to level up in sushi?

00:04:06 ◼   ► Is that what you're trying to do here?

00:04:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Okay.

00:04:08 ◼   ► - I'm slowly, like, I'm trying to get more used

00:04:09 ◼   ► to, like, the flavors and just the presentation

00:04:13 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff as I'm trying to move myself

00:04:16 ◼   ► along the route.

00:04:17 ◼   ► 'Cause I decided I want to go to Japan in like two years

00:04:20 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Like that's kind of what I'm aiming for.

00:04:22 ◼   ► So I do not have any desire,

00:04:25 ◼   ► not desire's not the right word,

00:04:27 ◼   ► I do not want to book a table at Jiro's restaurant,

00:04:30 ◼   ► but I do want to eat good sushi in Japan, right?

00:04:33 ◼   ► So while I'm up until then,

00:04:35 ◼   ► I'm trying to like level up slowly

00:04:37 ◼   ► and I've started a vegetarian sushi,

00:04:39 ◼   ► which is like, that's where I'm kind of

00:04:41 ◼   ► moving forward from there.

00:04:42 ◼   ► What's the initial report?

00:04:44 ◼   ► Well the place that I ate at was the restaurant in London.

00:04:47 ◼   ► It was very good!

00:04:49 ◼   ► So I'm gonna try and convince you to eat it.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Okay.

00:04:53 ◼   ► You're gonna try to level me up on sushi as well?

00:04:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:55 ◼   ► I mean I did recently eat the equivalent of conveyor belt sushi, which as we all know

00:04:59 ◼   ► is the bottom of the barrel, and to be spit upon according to Jiro.

00:05:04 ◼   ► What do you mean?

00:05:05 ◼   ► Oh it was just like a sort of takeaway sushi thing.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Was it fish though?

00:05:10 ◼   ► No no it wasn't fish.

00:05:12 ◼   ► It was also vegetarian.

00:05:13 ◼   ► It was also vegetarian, yeah.

00:05:14 ◼   ► It was just like little avocados in rice.

00:05:17 ◼   ► But I did have the ghost of Jiro leaning over me, just like tut tutting at the existence

00:05:21 ◼   ► of this sort of sushi, like, "No, no, this is not how it's supposed to be."

00:05:24 ◼   ► But yes, I will be more than willing to try highly recommended vegetarian sushi from Myke

00:05:31 ◼   ► and maybe try to lay-- wait, what was that?

00:05:35 ◼   ► You said "from me."

00:05:36 ◼   ► It's like, "I didn't make it.

00:05:37 ◼   ► I just went to a place."

00:05:39 ◼   ► Look, I think when someone brings you to a restaurant, that counts as them cooking, as

00:05:44 ◼   ► far as I'm concerned.

00:05:45 ◼   ► It's close enough.

00:05:46 ◼   ► So…

00:05:47 ◼   ► Who pays in this scenario?

00:05:49 ◼   ► The idea of them like you thinking that they cooked for you.

00:05:53 ◼   ► Do they then have to pay?

00:05:54 ◼   ► No, I think the answer is whenever you're out at a restaurant, everyone should always

00:05:58 ◼   ► split the bill.

00:05:59 ◼   ► And this is my crusade, and I totally hate this.

00:06:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I have joined you in this.

00:06:04 ◼   ► Okay, yeah.

00:06:05 ◼   ► We work together on this when we're in larger groups.

00:06:10 ◼   ► You have to split.

00:06:11 ◼   ► You just have to split.

00:06:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, the idea of trading off is,

00:06:16 ◼   ► I don't like it at all.

00:06:19 ◼   ► It just makes more sense.

00:06:20 ◼   ► We live in the modern world.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Just split the bill and that's what you do

00:06:23 ◼   ► and it's nice and easy.

00:06:24 ◼   ► - I am also, while we're talking about this,

00:06:27 ◼   ► like for some reason we've turned into

00:06:28 ◼   ► a Dinner Manners podcast at the moment,

00:06:30 ◼   ► but I also believe in splitting the bill equally.

00:06:34 ◼   ► Well it's equally proportional to couples.

00:06:36 ◼   ► - Or however people are at a meal,

00:06:39 ◼   ► but I believe equally.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Like I hate when we go to,

00:06:43 ◼   ► and like, oh, but I didn't drink alcohol,

00:06:45 ◼   ► but you did, so therefore I shouldn't.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Just split, if you're amongst friends,

00:06:52 ◼   ► just split it equally, you know?

00:06:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's two things

00:06:54 ◼   ► that you're trying to optimize here for.

00:06:56 ◼   ► It's like fairness and simplicity,

00:06:59 ◼   ► and splitting equally is the way to do that.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Because I always feel sorry for the wait staff because they then have to get a calculator.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Like you just, you know, I feel bad for them.

00:07:11 ◼   ► I don't know, like get a calculator. What, like we live in a world where everybody doesn't have a calculator immediately?

00:07:15 ◼   ► No, no, no, no, no. I mean in the scenario when you're not splitting equally.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Ah, okay.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Right? Because then you're becoming a problem for them as well at that point.

00:07:24 ◼   ► I agree, yes. That is the point at which you're an inconvenience to the other person unreasonably.

00:07:29 ◼   ► But the pushback on "Oh, the waiter has to divide by five" I don't think is...

00:07:34 ◼   ► No, everyone can do that.

00:07:35 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:07:36 ◼   ► And I don't expect people to do it in their brains.

00:07:39 ◼   ► I want to see a calculator come out at that point.

00:07:43 ◼   ► We're all adults here.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Yeah, so anyway, that's the answer to "Who's paying?

00:07:48 ◼   ► We're all paying."

00:07:49 ◼   ► We're all paying.

00:07:50 ◼   ► All of you are all paying.

00:07:53 ◼   ► So Myke, can I ask, which hand are you?

00:07:57 ◼   ► Alright, so, couple of episodes ago, we had a debate about whether I was left or right-handed,

00:08:02 ◼   ► because I write with my left hand, I do everything else with my right hand, you said I was right-handed.

00:08:08 ◼   ► I was infuriated by this, and created a poll, right?

00:08:13 ◼   ► Okay.

00:08:14 ◼   ► Now, I was very frustrated by this poll.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Were you frustrated because it told you that you were right-handed?

00:08:20 ◼   ► No, no, wait, shush.

00:08:23 ◼   ► To start, it was horrifyingly level, like for a long time, for like multiple days, it

00:08:29 ◼   ► was wild to see that this, it was basically oscillating around 50%.

00:08:34 ◼   ► It was crazy to watch that.

00:08:35 ◼   ► Like I've never really seen that type of thing before, like I know you see these things on

00:08:39 ◼   ► the internet quite a lot, but I don't think I've ever been involved in one, where it was

00:08:43 ◼   ► just like incredibly level at 50%.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And then it started to skew quite significantly towards right-handed, and I got really mad.

00:08:51 ◼   ► And do you want to know why I got really mad?

00:08:54 ◼   ► Why did you get really mad?

00:08:55 ◼   ► Because I believe that this is one of those situations where everybody's agreeing with you because it's you?

00:09:00 ◼   ► Now, see, I disagree with that, Myke. Everyone's agreeing with me because you're right-handed.

00:09:04 ◼   ► No! I don't believe that most people in an isolated environment would say that I was right-handed.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Because nobody thinks of it. But anyway, this is all moot.

00:09:13 ◼   ► No, no, no, the reason, no, the reason, no, the reason, no, listen, the reason it wouldn't happen

00:09:19 ◼   ► because people wouldn't contradict you because they're being polite.

00:09:22 ◼   ► No, that's bull.

00:09:23 ◼   ► And they're thinking, like, look, if he wants to think of himself as a lefty, it's not worth

00:09:29 ◼   ► pushing back on this point.

00:09:30 ◼   ► Right, well, but then that's also the point then, isn't it? The point still remains that,

00:09:33 ◼   ► like, I should be able to define myself as a human being. But anyway, this is all nonsense.

00:09:39 ◼   ► On many vectors, yes, but not handedness. Handedness you don't get to say which way

00:09:44 ◼   ► you are.

00:09:45 ◼   ► When I closed the poll down, 88% of people said I was right-handed.

00:09:50 ◼   ► Okay, well that sounds suspicious.

00:09:52 ◼   ► Especially when I looked at the results and it said that over 40,000 cortexes voted.

00:09:58 ◼   ► Now, it seems like a very high number for a poll, right?

00:10:01 ◼   ► Like that is a very high number.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:05 ◼   ► 40,000 people caring enough to answer that question.

00:10:08 ◼   ► We have a lot of listeners, but that's a crazy high engagement rate.

00:10:11 ◼   ► Yeah, 40,000 people is a lot of people.

00:10:14 ◼   ► There has been some foul play, Gray. I have access to the voting history.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Okay. Starting on September the 14th,

00:10:22 ◼   ► there was a continuous stream of right-handed votes every few seconds that lasted for multiple

00:10:28 ◼   ► days. So someone has ruined this for everyone. Okay.

00:10:34 ◼   ► I will say that on the 18th of September there was some left-handed votes for a bit,

00:10:38 ◼   ► but it was nowhere near as many as the right-handed votes. So

00:10:43 ◼   ► This whole thing is a travesty. The entire vote has been null and voided.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Yes? Completely null and void now?

00:10:51 ◼   ► No, that's different.

00:10:53 ◼   ► It's 100% didn't happen.

00:10:55 ◼   ► No, I'm going to disagree with you here.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Why?

00:10:58 ◼   ► Well, okay, so it does sound like there was some foul play and that someone ruined it for everyone.

00:11:04 ◼   ► There was a lot of foul play and it was ruined.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Right, which is what happens on the internet.

00:11:10 ◼   ► There's always someone with a pie who's just waiting to throw it because it's so fun.

00:11:14 ◼   ► I will say, again, I don't think I've ever been a part of something like this before.

00:11:20 ◼   ► It was kind of fun for me to see that, like to see all these votes. It's like, "Uh oh,

00:11:25 ◼   ► look, someone's being mischievous out there!" But you've ruined it for everybody. I just want you

00:11:30 ◼   ► to know. However. No. However. So there's this thing which people find very difficult to believe,

00:11:37 ◼   ► But it's that poll results, very often, you know, if you're asking a bunch of people,

00:11:43 ◼   ► "Hey, vote on this thing," the first minute of polling is going to be exactly the same

00:11:50 ◼   ► as like the next two weeks later.

00:11:52 ◼   ► Right, well that means we're 50/50 then.

00:11:55 ◼   ► But this is what I'm saying.

00:11:56 ◼   ► So like you say, the whole thing is invalidated and the very fact that you had a couple days

00:12:01 ◼   ► where it was just like the the audience's split on this the most vital issue of our

00:12:07 ◼   ► time and that like that was being shown to be the case that I think it's probably fair

00:12:13 ◼   ► to say the actual representation of the audience thoughts are that 50% of them are being polite

00:12:21 ◼   ► and agreeing with you that you're left-handed and the other 50% know that you're right-handed.

00:12:28 ◼   ► That is unacceptable what you just said. But this whole thing has, I will not say I'm right-handed

00:12:35 ◼   ► because that is nonsense. Some actual helpful non-mischievous cortexes have informed me

00:12:44 ◼   ► of a thing called cross dominance. Not only, like people telling me about this, I had somebody

00:12:49 ◼   ► email me who knows somebody who works in academia in this exact field and I am cross-dominant.

00:12:58 ◼   ► So I want to read the Wikipedia entry for cross-dominance. Cross-dominance, also known

00:13:04 ◼   ► as – because people said this to me as well – mixed-handedness, hand confusion, which

00:13:08 ◼   ► is hilarious –

00:13:09 ◼   ► Oh, hand confusion, I like that.

00:13:10 ◼   ► – very confused – or mixed dominance is a motor skill manifestation in which a person

00:13:14 ◼   ► favors one hand for some tasks and the other hand for others. That's me, right?

00:13:19 ◼   ► - Interesting. - Cross dominant.

00:13:20 ◼   ► I'm cross dominant.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I'm not right-handed, I'm not left-handed,

00:13:23 ◼   ► I am in fact cross dominant.

00:13:24 ◼   ► Which is different to being ambidextrous.

00:13:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not the same as ambidextrous.

00:13:30 ◼   ► - No. - You have hand confusion,

00:13:32 ◼   ► which is just a different thing.

00:13:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:13:34 ◼   ► From ambidextrous. - You know, I think

00:13:35 ◼   ► I might say that instead.

00:13:37 ◼   ► I'm hand confused.

00:13:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, you have hand confusion.

00:13:40 ◼   ► Wikipedia page here says, for example,

00:13:42 ◼   ► a cross dominant person might write with the right hand

00:13:46 ◼   ► and throw mainly with the left one.

00:13:49 ◼   ► I think for no other reason than linguistic clarity,

00:13:53 ◼   ► they should say should write with the left hand

00:13:57 ◼   ► and perform other tasks with the right one.

00:14:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know why you would say

00:14:02 ◼   ► write with the right hand.

00:14:03 ◼   ► That is just, it's just a peculiar thing

00:14:07 ◼   ► to make your decision on.

00:14:08 ◼   ► - But you know, for no other reason,

00:14:10 ◼   ► I think those two should be switched.

00:14:12 ◼   ► - And also, as I will believe that

00:14:14 ◼   ► that is the best way to be anyway.

00:14:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:14:17 ◼   ► - Great.

00:14:18 ◼   ► (both laughing)

00:14:20 ◼   ► Now we have hand confusion dominance

00:14:22 ◼   ► is what's going on here.

00:14:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:14:24 ◼   ► (both laughing)

00:14:25 ◼   ► - That's very interesting though.

00:14:25 ◼   ► I never, I had not come across this.

00:14:27 ◼   ► - I'd never heard of this.

00:14:28 ◼   ► - No.

00:14:29 ◼   ► - Because people have always said to me like,

00:14:30 ◼   ► "Oh, you're ambidextrous."

00:14:31 ◼   ► No, I'm not ambidextrous.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Like that's a different thing.

00:14:34 ◼   ► I said like, and then kind of the conversation ends.

00:14:37 ◼   ► No one's ever said to me before, "You're a cross-dominant."

00:14:39 ◼   ► Like this makes perfect sense.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And I'm willing to live my life,

00:14:43 ◼   ► the rest of my life believing this.

00:14:45 ◼   ► - You're hand confused.

00:14:46 ◼   ► That's what you are.

00:14:47 ◼   ► hand confused.

00:14:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I like that.

00:14:49 ◼   ► I like coming across something that I've never come across before.

00:14:52 ◼   ► I'm a little bit sad that I won't get to forever tell you that you're actually a

00:14:56 ◼   ► righty and instead I'll have to tell you that you're hand confused.

00:14:59 ◼   ► I'm fine with hand confused.

00:15:01 ◼   ► I mean I will not describe myself as such but I have no problem with you doing it.

00:15:07 ◼   ► It feels like a good thing for a Twitter bio like Michael Hurley, hand confused.

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00:16:21 ◼   ► best thing that I have found from HelloFresh is getting the confidence to cook. It helps

00:16:26 ◼   ► you step by step in how to make something and you learn new skills, you practice in

00:16:31 ◼   ► the kitchen and that has been a big change to my life and I think it can for you too.

00:16:35 ◼   ► For $80 off your first month of HelloFresh go to hellofresh.com/cortex80 and enter the

00:16:42 ◼   ► code Cortex80.

00:16:45 ◼   ► That's like receiving 8 meals for free.

00:16:47 ◼   ► So go right now to hellofresh.com/cortex80 and use the promo code Cortex80.

00:16:52 ◼   ► Our thanks to HelloFresh for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:16:56 ◼   ► Throughout the month of September we were very combative.

00:17:01 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:17:02 ◼   ► we had the left and right-handed thing and we also had a bet on the theme system. Remember this?

00:17:06 ◼   ► I have a vague memory that I was right. I don't remember what about.

00:17:12 ◼   ► I don't know why. We had two- no, you had a vague memory that you were hand confused.

00:17:17 ◼   ► We had 2,000 notebooks to sell, right? Oh, okay, wait a second. This is- right.

00:17:25 ◼   ► We discussed this when we recorded in person. That's what- okay, now I have a clearer memory.

00:17:31 ◼   ► of what happened here.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Okay, got it.

00:17:34 ◼   ► - So when we last spoke, we had 2,000 notebooks to sell.

00:17:37 ◼   ► Well actually it wasn't when we last,

00:17:39 ◼   ► it doesn't matter.

00:17:40 ◼   ► (both laughing)

00:17:42 ◼   ► In our last episode, we spoke about the fact

00:17:45 ◼   ► that there were 2,000 notebooks for sale

00:17:47 ◼   ► and that they were on their way to our fulfillment part

00:17:51 ◼   ► in the content bureau where they would be put on sale

00:17:53 ◼   ► and that was it, we weren't gonna promote it,

00:17:55 ◼   ► we were just gonna let the email notification list go out

00:17:58 ◼   ► and just see what happened.

00:17:59 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:18:00 ◼   ► made a bet. So the bet was you thought they would sell out immediately. And my bet was

00:18:09 ◼   ► that we would sell half within like the first day and then the rest would sell slowly from

00:18:15 ◼   ► there.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Right. This would be establishing what we both wanted, which is regular sales. So we

00:18:24 ◼   ► some sense of what is the audience and usage size of this journal over time, not what does

00:18:31 ◼   ► a single sales spike look like. And I thought you had ordered too few to actually achieve

00:18:36 ◼   ► that goal by a lot.

00:18:38 ◼   ► So they went on sale on the 6th of September. It's just bonkers to me, like, the way that

00:18:47 ◼   ► time worked for us. I just am so confused.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Did you say 6th of September?

00:18:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:53 ◼   ► the 24th of October now. I know. Oh my god. But we last recorded on the 5th. Okay. Even

00:19:03 ◼   ► though all the episodes came out after that. Okay. But anyway. But anyway. So it went on

00:19:11 ◼   ► sale two months ago and now we're getting the result. Well, like I'm on. Anyway, we

00:19:16 ◼   ► We had 2,000.

00:19:18 ◼   ► We sold 1,500 notebooks on day one.

00:19:22 ◼   ► - Oh, I win.

00:19:23 ◼   ► - Just wait.

00:19:25 ◼   ► - No, no, I've already won.

00:19:26 ◼   ► - That's not sold out,

00:19:27 ◼   ► weren't sold out in 24 hours, my friend.

00:19:29 ◼   ► All right, I'm not saying you've lost,

00:19:32 ◼   ► but I wanna dig into this.

00:19:35 ◼   ► - Okay, all right, you keep digging.

00:19:36 ◼   ► - My favorite thing was that over the first few hours

00:19:39 ◼   ► we were selling 35 notebooks a minute.

00:19:42 ◼   ► - Oh, that's great.

00:19:43 ◼   ► - Which was awesome.

00:19:45 ◼   ► this I think both terrified and excited cotton bureau as they were watching this happen.

00:19:52 ◼   ► By Monday the 9th we had sold 1,645. By Saturday the 14th we were sold out.

00:20:01 ◼   ► Interesting. That's an interesting shape to that curve.

00:20:04 ◼   ► It is, isn't it? So what happened was the people that were on the mailing list, they'd

00:20:10 ◼   ► I think pretty much all purchased by Monday.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Oh, okay. Right.

00:20:16 ◼   ► So then we had a small amount left, and like, I tweeted about it, we tweeted about it from the Cortex Twitter account,

00:20:22 ◼   ► and I think that that just then added to the rest of them trickling out over the rest of the week.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Right. When did the episode talking about it go up?

00:20:31 ◼   ► After.

00:20:32 ◼   ► After all of this had happened?

00:20:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:34 ◼   ► Huh, okay. Hmm, alright, that slightly changes things.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Yep.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:20:38 ◼   ► It was all very peculiar.

00:20:39 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:20:40 ◼   ► Obviously I've won, but what I was going to say is the shape of that curve initially made me think

00:20:46 ◼   ► we got kind of closer to what the correct order amount was than I would have guessed, but

00:20:54 ◼   ► then to realize all of this happened before the episode where we talked about it even went up

00:21:01 ◼   ► says to me, "Oh, the order size was still way off."

00:21:04 ◼   ► The order size was way off, yes.

00:21:06 ◼   ► That wasn't correct. That this is entirely from the email list and a little bit of Twitter.

00:21:11 ◼   ► It says order size was still too small.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Yes, the order size was too small. Especially because I wanted to have some in stock for the rest of the year from that order.

00:21:19 ◼   ► Right. In theory, we would be selling them right now.

00:21:22 ◼   ► We would be telling you to go to Cortex-March.com.

00:21:28 ◼   ► They both work.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Cortex-March.com. Yeah. Whatever.

00:21:31 ◼   ► Yeah, whatever.

00:21:32 ◼   ► To go buy the theme system, but that's not something that we can tell you to do right

00:21:35 ◼   ► now.

00:21:36 ◼   ► That's how we would have known that you were correct in the bet.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Yes, so if we were still selling them now.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Because we'd be saying, "Go buy them."

00:21:42 ◼   ► But instead what we have to tell people now is to get on the email list if you want them.

00:21:48 ◼   ► There are two email lists now, and they serve different purposes.

00:21:52 ◼   ► So if you go to cortexmerch.com and click on the theme system and put your email address

00:21:56 ◼   ► in that field, you will be notified the next time

00:22:00 ◼   ► that they go on sale and then that's it.

00:22:03 ◼   ► It's not an email newsletter,

00:22:04 ◼   ► it's just a restock notification.

00:22:06 ◼   ► So if you put your email address in previously

00:22:09 ◼   ► and you didn't buy or you want to know

00:22:11 ◼   ► when it's gonna happen again,

00:22:13 ◼   ► you still have to go there

00:22:14 ◼   ► and put your email address in again.

00:22:15 ◼   ► I think that that is a sensible way of doing it.

00:22:18 ◼   ► It's not an email newsletter,

00:22:19 ◼   ► it's just like when will it next restock.

00:22:22 ◼   ► If you want to be on an email newsletter,

00:22:24 ◼   ► so you'll know every time,

00:22:26 ◼   ► and maybe get some additional information in the future.

00:22:29 ◼   ► If you go to thethemesystem.com,

00:22:31 ◼   ► there is a sign up there.

00:22:32 ◼   ► That's gonna be an email newsletter

00:22:34 ◼   ► that I will be running over time.

00:22:35 ◼   ► Like I'm trying to work out what we would put in there,

00:22:37 ◼   ► but I will also be sending out like,

00:22:39 ◼   ► oh, we have them in stock, notifications on that one too.

00:22:42 ◼   ► So yeah, that's where we are right now of email stuff.

00:22:45 ◼   ► So, 'cause again,

00:22:47 ◼   ► we're still trying to manage expectations for this.

00:22:50 ◼   ► It's super tricky.

00:22:52 ◼   ► The current status is we will have some in stock

00:22:54 ◼   ► sometime in December.

00:22:56 ◼   ► We have more on the way.

00:22:57 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:22:58 ◼   ► - We'll have some for sale in December,

00:23:00 ◼   ► some for sale in January.

00:23:01 ◼   ► I know that for sure.

00:23:03 ◼   ► And then post January,

00:23:05 ◼   ► my expectation is that the next printing after that

00:23:10 ◼   ► will feature some revisions to the journal,

00:23:12 ◼   ► which I'm working on now.

00:23:13 ◼   ► So that'll be the second edition.

00:23:16 ◼   ► But it's tweaks.

00:23:17 ◼   ► I'm very happy with the overall format,

00:23:18 ◼   ► really just tweaking some stuff.

00:23:20 ◼   ► We definitely had some production peculiarities,

00:23:25 ◼   ► but I've been told by everybody that we work with,

00:23:27 ◼   ► we were within the kind of the expected percentages

00:23:30 ◼   ► for considering the amount of size that we had.

00:23:33 ◼   ► But we always hold back a small amount of notebooks

00:23:35 ◼   ► for replacements.

00:23:36 ◼   ► And we had some that were like,

00:23:38 ◼   ► there was one that was printed,

00:23:39 ◼   ► the cover was printed upside down,

00:23:40 ◼   ► which is kind of hilarious and stuff like that.

00:23:43 ◼   ► But we just replaced those.

00:23:45 ◼   ► - I really puzzled over that one for a long time.

00:23:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've asked like,

00:23:49 ◼   ► Because mine and your theory on this, you posited this theory to me and I totally believed

00:23:53 ◼   ► it which was like, "Oh, they must have stopped the machine, took it out to look at something

00:23:57 ◼   ► and put it in the wrong way."

00:23:58 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the only way I can conceive of this happening.

00:24:02 ◼   ► But then when I asked Tom and Dan at Studio Neat who helped me with all this stuff, like,

00:24:06 ◼   ► "No, that wouldn't happen.

00:24:08 ◼   ► You wouldn't do that.

00:24:09 ◼   ► You can't stop it and take it out."

00:24:11 ◼   ► So I have no idea.

00:24:12 ◼   ► No, but that has to be what happened.

00:24:16 ◼   ► Alright, okay.

00:24:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:24:19 ◼   ► 'Cause look, these experts,

00:24:22 ◼   ► they may know everything about the manufacturing process,

00:24:24 ◼   ► but what I wanna know is how does one book out of 1,000

00:24:29 ◼   ► end up with a cover that's upside down?

00:24:31 ◼   ► Okay, it's maddening to try to think about

00:24:36 ◼   ► how does this physically occur in the world?

00:24:40 ◼   ► And this again to me is a delightful discussion

00:24:43 ◼   ► about the completely unexpected things

00:24:46 ◼   ► in terms of manufacturing, of what can happen.

00:24:51 ◼   ► And this is something that would also never have occurred

00:24:54 ◼   ► to me ahead of time.

00:24:55 ◼   ► It's like, oh, manufacturing, high quality notebook,

00:25:00 ◼   ► the finest of papers, the most delightful of covers,

00:25:04 ◼   ► the deepest of embossing. - The most deep of embossing.

00:25:06 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly.

00:25:07 ◼   ► - The deepest bossing.

00:25:09 ◼   ► - Yes, the deepest bossing.

00:25:11 ◼   ► And you expect, oh, when you're manufacturing something,

00:25:15 ◼   ► yes, anything is going to have some number of defects, like that's just what happens

00:25:21 ◼   ► in the manufacturing process. But something like a cover upside down feels to me like

00:25:26 ◼   ► a completely different thing.

00:25:28 ◼   ► Yep, like we had a couple of people who like the binding didn't sit correctly, like the

00:25:33 ◼   ► cover came away, I totally expect that. Or like that there was, it got like significantly

00:25:39 ◼   ► dinged up during postage. Again, like this is stuff that happens.

00:25:42 ◼   ► That stuff just happens.

00:25:43 ◼   ► But the cover being upside down, like that person, they have like a collector's item right there.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Yeah, it really is. But that's why, you know, I'm convinced the machine stopped, someone took out a thing to look at it,

00:25:56 ◼   ► and they put it back in, and it went in backwards, and they didn't notice.

00:26:00 ◼   ► There's no other physical explanation for how that could have possibly occurred. But this is why you hold back some.

00:26:05 ◼   ► I will tell you, when I, like, 'cause you know, you hear from people, they tweet at me, or they tweet at the Context

00:26:05 ◼   ► hold back some? I will tell you, when I, like, because you

00:26:08 ◼   ► know you hear from people, I tweet at me, I tweet at the context of Twitter account

00:26:11 ◼   ► or whatever and I was really concerned, I was like "oh no, like is this happening?"

00:26:15 ◼   ► and basically everybody that I work with was like "nope, it's gonna have happened, like

00:26:19 ◼   ► we've probably heard from everybody who had a problem and we're all, you know, we're good."

00:26:24 ◼   ► I was like "whew". I was really worried about it. I think you were too, right, we were kind

00:26:28 ◼   ► of like "oh no, look, it's like people posted on the Reddit, like, but it's just there's

00:26:31 ◼   ► a few that were wrong and we fix it and the way we fix it is by sending people a new one."

00:26:35 ◼   ► - This is also the terror of again, physical products.

00:26:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:26:40 ◼   ► - Because you have a hard time gauging the scale.

00:26:43 ◼   ► Like you know, you get shipped the samples

00:26:45 ◼   ► for is this the quality that you're looking for,

00:26:47 ◼   ► but you just don't know if something happens

00:26:50 ◼   ► where the guy at the factory loaded them all in backwards,

00:26:53 ◼   ► wasn't paying attention, and then we just manufactured

00:26:56 ◼   ► 1500 with a cover upside down.

00:26:58 ◼   ► - It's all a leap of faith, this stuff.

00:27:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it introduces new random high variance

00:27:05 ◼   ► sources of stress into your life, having physical products in this way.

00:27:09 ◼   ► But I do have to say, the upside, and one of the things that I have enjoyed, is being

00:27:15 ◼   ► on the Reddit and seeing the examples of how people are using the journal.

00:27:20 ◼   ► And it's like, man, some of the examples of what people are doing are fantastic and

00:27:27 ◼   ► beautiful.

00:27:28 ◼   ► Like, there's been some really great postings there on the Reddit.

00:27:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I am blown away by the creativity of some people that are using the notebook.

00:27:40 ◼   ► Like, the way that some people are, like, interpreting the daily theme section,

00:27:43 ◼   ► and using color and completely different markings to what I've been doing,

00:27:48 ◼   ► it really is fascinating. And there is a something that I wanted to do with the

00:27:55 ◼   ► theme system.com website, I want to be able to post examples of other people's layouts,

00:28:02 ◼   ► right? To just kind of give you more of a flavor. Like I have one of my own on there.

00:28:07 ◼   ► So I wanted to encourage theme system users to do that. So please post on the Reddit,

00:28:13 ◼   ► which is r/cortex. Or if you want to post them on Instagram, a couple of things you could do,

00:28:20 ◼   ► do, you could either use a hashtag, the theme system, and I'll find it, or, and probably

00:28:26 ◼   ► good, you can, I don't know if Gray knows about this, but Cortex brand has an Instagram

00:28:30 ◼   ► account, which is Instagram.

00:28:31 ◼   ► >> Oh, I know, I know Cortex has an Instagram.

00:28:33 ◼   ► I'm all about the grams, Myke.

00:28:35 ◼   ► >> You really are.

00:28:36 ◼   ► So we are Cortex brand on Instagram.

00:28:38 ◼   ► Tag that, and if you, and then, you know, I'll get in touch and ask you if it's okay

00:28:42 ◼   ► for me to publish them on the website, which is something that I want to do.

00:28:45 ◼   ► But I will include in the show notes for this episode a couple of my favorite examples that

00:28:49 ◼   ► I've seen on the Reddit so far.

00:28:51 ◼   ► It really is awesome.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Like I'm so, I cannot tell you how great it feels

00:28:57 ◼   ► to see people using this notebook.

00:29:00 ◼   ► Like really using it, it's been kind of overwhelming for me

00:29:05 ◼   ► because this is a thing that like,

00:29:09 ◼   ► I believe it can help people and because it helps me.

00:29:13 ◼   ► And then I see people that have been using it

00:29:15 ◼   ► like incredible detail, really like understanding the system and getting into it. Like I'm super

00:29:21 ◼   ► happy and I'm also really happy with like the way people have taken to the instructions

00:29:26 ◼   ► that I made and you know like I've heard from people who initially bought the book and didn't

00:29:31 ◼   ► know what to do with it and now know that they get it now and I think that's really

00:29:35 ◼   ► great so.

00:29:36 ◼   ► I like the side of the flexibility of it like and and whenever whenever you have these conversations

00:29:44 ◼   ► I'm always on the side of like it should be super flexible.

00:29:47 ◼   ► And my favorite example of this was the person who posted how they're using it as a student,

00:29:53 ◼   ► which is, I think is a great example of it's like theme system adjacent slash exam prep and planning.

00:30:02 ◼   ► And I think that's just a great example to me of you have these boxes, they can be used in a variety of ways.

00:30:09 ◼   ► and I really like seeing the example of here's how I'm using it as a student to get ready

00:30:15 ◼   ► for exam day. So it's been very interesting to see all the unexpected ways that people

00:30:21 ◼   ► are using it.

00:30:22 ◼   ► - Yep. So you can go to cortexmerch.com, get your name on the restock newsletter, like

00:30:28 ◼   ► the restock email list there. Go to thethemesystem.com, get your name on the email newsletter. And

00:30:33 ◼   ► while you're at cortexmerch.com,

00:30:35 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:30:37 ◼   ► - Cortexmas is fast approaching.

00:30:38 ◼   ► - It is.

00:30:39 ◼   ► - It is.

00:30:40 ◼   ► - I have had something I've wanted to do for years.

00:30:42 ◼   ► We're finally doing it.

00:30:44 ◼   ► The Cortexmas ugly sweater.

00:30:45 ◼   ► Gray, are you familiar with the ugly sweater phenomenon?

00:30:49 ◼   ► - I am familiar with the ugly sweater phenomenon.

00:30:52 ◼   ► - So this is around the holiday season.

00:30:54 ◼   ► Buying and wearing at parties,

00:30:57 ◼   ► sweaters that are intentionally very ugly

00:30:59 ◼   ► and loud and wild, right?

00:31:01 ◼   ► Which is coming from just like a trend

00:31:03 ◼   ► where people were being bought these sweaters

00:31:05 ◼   ► probably as kids.

00:31:06 ◼   ► I know I got them, everyone got a Christmas jumper

00:31:08 ◼   ► and it was terrible. So now people embrace it and create ugly sweaters. Now look, I am

00:31:14 ◼   ► very aware of the fact that it is not even Halloween when this episode comes out and

00:31:20 ◼   ► we are talking about the holidays.

00:31:22 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's fine. We're recording this in the UK, which doesn't do Halloween and

00:31:26 ◼   ► just blows straight into Christmas starting in September.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Yeah, there's advent calendars everywhere. It's so upsetting. But now we are adding

00:31:31 ◼   ► to that problem. But there is a reason for this. This is a two-week campaign from when

00:31:36 ◼   ► that goes on sale so you only have a couple of weeks to get it. They then have to be made

00:31:40 ◼   ► and shipped and I want people to have the best chance possible of getting these to wear

00:31:46 ◼   ► to their office holiday parties. Right? So we are selling these very early, two weeks

00:31:52 ◼   ► only, we're selling a sweater and t-shirt variant of something I am so unbelievably

00:31:58 ◼   ► proud of. It is... Okay I want to try and describe this but you have to go and see it

00:32:03 ◼   ► for yourself. It will be in our show notes and it will be at cortexmerch.com. It is a

00:32:08 ◼   ► design of, I think, like the most perfectly cortex thing. We have a cowboy hat for all

00:32:17 ◼   ► the cortexes. There is the cortex-mas tree. And then we have iconography of email and

00:32:25 ◼   ► and time tracking. So very cortexy, but I think office appropriate, right?

00:32:33 ◼   ► Yes, it is office appropriate. The thing is, Myke, I know you want to make an ugly sweater,

00:32:38 ◼   ► but I think this is genuinely really nice looking.

00:32:40 ◼   ► I do not disagree with you.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like I think if you were trying to make an ugly sweater, you sort of failed

00:32:45 ◼   ► because it looks really nice.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Well it's like inverted commas ugly, right? Like I'm doing like the quotation marks as

00:32:54 ◼   ► I think it is very beautiful but in the realm of holiday sweater. So it looks like it's

00:33:04 ◼   ► knitted, it's not, it's screen printed but our wonderful designers made it look that

00:33:08 ◼   ► way like it's not actually thread, it's very clever. So you can go and get it now

00:33:12 ◼   ► at cortexmerch.com and to go alongside this we are bringing back the subtle tee and subtle

00:33:18 ◼   ► sweater for two weeks. I am wearing my subtle sweater for the first time today because we

00:33:23 ◼   ► We last put them on sale as we were going into summer, which was the best time to sell

00:33:28 ◼   ► sweaters.

00:33:29 ◼   ► It was a really good way to gauge the interest in such a product.

00:33:34 ◼   ► That's true.

00:33:35 ◼   ► That's fair.

00:33:36 ◼   ► I am wearing mine today and I am so happy with the subtle sweater.

00:33:39 ◼   ► It is very soft, very nice, very nice sweater.

00:33:42 ◼   ► So you can get the subtlety, the subtle sweater and the cortex most ugly sweater at cortexmerch.com

00:33:49 ◼   ► for two weeks.

00:33:50 ◼   ► Go and get them.

00:33:51 ◼   ► holiday gifts for you or somebody that you love, cortexmerch.com.

00:33:55 ◼   ► - Cortexmerch.com.

00:33:57 ◼   ► - You mentioned a moment ago about being on the Reddit.

00:34:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah I did.

00:34:04 ◼   ► - You're back on the internet, aren't you?

00:34:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm back on the internet.

00:34:08 ◼   ► This is one of the million things that's happened

00:34:09 ◼   ► since the last time I spoke to you.

00:34:12 ◼   ► I think I hinted in one of those early recordings

00:34:14 ◼   ► that I was expecting to being back on the internet

00:34:16 ◼   ► and then we just blew past it.

00:34:17 ◼   ► - You said like, it's coming basically, you know.

00:34:20 ◼   ► So like I was expecting it, but it was still a surprise.

00:34:24 ◼   ► It started with seeing you in the Reddit for an episode.

00:34:26 ◼   ► I was like, "Uh-oh, here he goes."

00:34:28 ◼   ► And then you started tweeting up a storm

00:34:30 ◼   ► and we're gonna get to some of those tweets,

00:34:31 ◼   ► I think, in a little bit.

00:34:32 ◼   ► - I mean, would we say that I was tweeting up a storm?

00:34:34 ◼   ► I'm not 100% sure about that.

00:34:36 ◼   ► - A very small storm, like a snow globe like storm,

00:34:40 ◼   ► but a storm nonetheless.

00:34:41 ◼   ► The thing is though, when you came back

00:34:44 ◼   ► and started tweeting again, a storm arose around you,

00:34:47 ◼   ► whether you wanted that or not.

00:34:50 ◼   ► It feels like you're like pretty back on the internet.

00:34:53 ◼   ► I was expecting maybe tiptoeing in,

00:34:56 ◼   ► but it feels like you are back, baby.

00:34:59 ◼   ► And so I wanted to understand

00:35:02 ◼   ► what does the internet look like for you now,

00:35:04 ◼   ► especially social media?

00:35:06 ◼   ► And are you being reminded of things

00:35:09 ◼   ► that you enjoyed or missed?

00:35:11 ◼   ► - I like that, Myke.

00:35:12 ◼   ► Yes, I'm back, baby.

00:35:14 ◼   ► That's what you're looking for.

00:35:16 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:35:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:35:18 ◼   ► I'm having a, there's a weird way in which I'm having a little bit of a hard time talking

00:35:23 ◼   ► about and articulating this project because it's gone on for so long.

00:35:30 ◼   ► It's a very long project to have gone on and you know you're a different person at the

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00:36:51 ◼   ► I mean, the internet still looks like the Wild West crazy place that it always has been,

00:36:59 ◼   ► which is both the best and the absolute worst of humanity.

00:37:03 ◼   ► But I'm glad the project's over.

00:37:10 ◼   ► It went on for a while and it felt like it was time for it to end.

00:37:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I just like I had a video coming out around the year time and I thought this is

00:37:21 ◼   ► a this is a good way to to come back to just be like hey here's the video posted on the

00:37:25 ◼   ► Twitter and then say hi to people in the Reddit and sort of have it at that.

00:37:30 ◼   ► So yeah I'm back.

00:37:35 ◼   ► I almost don't know really what to say about it in some ways.

00:37:39 ◼   ► I think you actually articulated a really interesting idea thinking about the internet that sort of got into my head

00:37:47 ◼   ► where you said you have this note in your notes file about rules of engagement.

00:37:51 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:37:53 ◼   ► And I don't have anything as firmly as that.

00:37:58 ◼   ► But I do think that I have a clear idea in my head about--

00:38:06 ◼   ► particularly with something like Twitter or Instagram--

00:38:12 ◼   ► about the intentionality of what am I using this for.

00:38:16 ◼   ► Like, what is the purpose of this thing?

00:38:21 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't know.

00:38:22 ◼   ► I feel like that's probably one of my biggest thoughts and feelings is like,

00:38:27 ◼   ► there are a bunch of ways in which I sort of don't want to use this or ways that

00:38:31 ◼   ► I don't want to use the system and just being a little bit more intentional

00:38:34 ◼   ► about what am I trying to achieve with this?

00:38:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:38:40 ◼   ► It was also just interesting talking to people over the course of that year

00:38:44 ◼   ► because I feel like this is the key year where almost everybody's opinions on

00:38:49 ◼   ► social media have changed quite a lot.

00:38:51 ◼   ► And the overwhelming tide of consensus

00:38:55 ◼   ► from most of the people who I speak to is about,

00:39:00 ◼   ► oh, this is obviously not good.

00:39:02 ◼   ► Like it's always interesting to see how public opinion

00:39:05 ◼   ► changes in some ways.

00:39:07 ◼   ► And this feels like yes, over the last 18 months,

00:39:12 ◼   ► over the last year, the general consensus on social media

00:39:17 ◼   ► has really had quite the downturn.

00:39:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm getting increasingly concerned.

00:39:24 ◼   ► - I've sort of mentioned it before,

00:39:25 ◼   ► but I do think I've seen people kind of lose their minds

00:39:28 ◼   ► over this stuff, but I think the awareness of that

00:39:32 ◼   ► has also spread further.

00:39:35 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't know, but I'm happy to be back

00:39:39 ◼   ► and I don't think I will be as back as I was

00:39:45 ◼   ► if we rewind to 18 months ago, but like I'm, I think I'm back in a better return on investment

00:39:51 ◼   ► way on the internet for now.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Will Barron This is something that I want to keep coming

00:39:55 ◼   ► back to because I'm thinking a lot about this myself. My main concern right now about social

00:40:00 ◼   ► media, I am concerned about what the direct access model between people and real celebrities

00:40:14 ◼   ► is doing to our minds in general,

00:40:18 ◼   ► both as the public and the famous people.

00:40:23 ◼   ► I think it is good for neither end,

00:40:27 ◼   ► and I am becoming concerned about that.

00:40:32 ◼   ► - Can you elaborate on that, Myke?

00:40:34 ◼   ► - The best, it's very difficult for me to talk about this,

00:40:38 ◼   ► about talking about specifics,

00:40:40 ◼   ► and talking about specifics leads to, a lot of the time,

00:40:44 ◼   ► political issues.

00:40:46 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:40:47 ◼   ► - So I would, what made me start to think about this

00:40:50 ◼   ► is Chrissy Teigen, who's one of my very favorite people

00:40:53 ◼   ► to follow on social media,

00:40:54 ◼   ► she was posting about issues that she is having

00:41:00 ◼   ► with a conspiracy theory group,

00:41:02 ◼   ► saying that her and her husband are involved

00:41:07 ◼   ► a lot of very nasty things, which is all untrue, but it follows her around and she can't get

00:41:14 ◼   ► rid of it. And she's been kind of, over the last few days when we're recording this, posting

00:41:20 ◼   ► examples of the types of things that she is receiving, like messages that she receives,

00:41:25 ◼   ► things that she has sent. And I don't think that this is good for her or any of the people

00:41:32 ◼   ► obsessed with the conspiracy and whilst there have always been conspiracy

00:41:36 ◼   ► theories I think that the model that we have all built for ourselves of give me

00:41:42 ◼   ► all the content here's all the content is affecting everyone and I just don't

00:41:51 ◼   ► know how I feel about all of it because there's so much good that comes from it

00:41:55 ◼   ► but there's also this bad part and I don't know how to separate the good part

00:42:02 ◼   ► and the bad part because like as somebody who shares a lot about his life

00:42:07 ◼   ► I get so much good from it but then there is also a bad right that does

00:42:14 ◼   ► happen to me but it is minuscule compared to the good but at someone of

00:42:20 ◼   ► Tegan's level who has 12 million followers right she I'm sure is in

00:42:29 ◼   ► proportionally similar to me so much good but also bad but because the

00:42:34 ◼   ► numbers are so much larger the bad is so much bigger and louder hard to ignore

00:42:39 ◼   ► and so I you know I am concerned for individuals that are in the spotlight

00:42:47 ◼   ► for what this kind of thing does to them but I am also concerned for the people

00:42:53 ◼   ► that become obsessed with these types of peculiarities because they get more

00:43:00 ◼   ► input than they would have before right and this even comes down to like gossip

00:43:07 ◼   ► like celebrity gossip there's too much of it now right because we can see

00:43:15 ◼   ► everything and then we can talk about it and we can talk about it with people we

00:43:19 ◼   ► don't know we can just talk about it and like you can go on to the trending pages

00:43:24 ◼   ► and find out what things people are talking about and like what celebrity

00:43:28 ◼   ► right now is trending why are they trending let's find out let's have an

00:43:32 ◼   ► opinion I am concerned about the sheer amount of this type of input in all

00:43:39 ◼   ► directions. I don't know it's bad. I don't think social media on a whole is bad, but

00:43:46 ◼   ► I think that there is a part of it which is not good for us and unfortunately is the exact

00:43:52 ◼   ► same thing that the companies that run these networks need to push to get their engagement

00:44:00 ◼   ► up. So I think that it is a slightly concerning situation that we're finding ourselves in

00:44:08 ◼   ► right now and I'm keen to see where it goes from here over the next 5-10 years. How do

00:44:17 ◼   ► we change as a society? Which moves do we make? But I feel like right now we are at

00:44:23 ◼   ► a point politically, globally, where this stuff is being highlighted a lot more than

00:44:30 ◼   ► it has been before. And I say politically, not in just politics, right? This idea of

00:44:36 ◼   ► that being sides to big arguments, you know?

00:44:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm just pausing here because I'm trying to think about

00:44:43 ◼   ► how to talk about something

00:44:47 ◼   ► because you're sort of hitting on a thing

00:44:50 ◼   ► which I think of as a little bit of a...

00:44:55 ◼   ► It's like a forbidden and dangerous topic among people who have any level of

00:45:00 ◼   ► fame. So here is the thing that's

00:45:04 ◼   ► that I really noticed because a lot of people who have public personas of in some sort knew

00:45:12 ◼   ► when we're fully aware of me doing this project. And so a lot of people wanted to

00:45:17 ◼   ► talk to me and I had this interesting experience of people sometimes expressing what I could

00:45:23 ◼   ► describe as like they're kind of afraid of their own audiences and that that it's

00:45:32 ◼   ► kind of thing that what happens is you're producing content and you're sort of afraid

00:45:40 ◼   ► of what's going to happen when a small portion of the audience reacts extremely negatively

00:45:46 ◼   ► or they're just like worried about what's going to happen.

00:45:49 ◼   ► So I had a lot of people say like, "Man, I wish I could just sort of disappear like

00:45:53 ◼   ► you have and everything would be fine."

00:45:56 ◼   ► But they're also afraid that there would be like a big pushback if they did that.

00:46:01 ◼   ► And yeah, there's like a, there's just this very strange phenomenon that happens

00:46:05 ◼   ► when you have really large numbers of people because you start collecting like high variance

00:46:11 ◼   ► negative individuals within that group.

00:46:15 ◼   ► And it's just like, you know, you talk about someone who has 12 million followers.

00:46:20 ◼   ► I always think it's useful to kind of think of that as, you know, imagine you were dropped

00:46:24 ◼   ► into a city where the population is 12 million and they all know you.

00:46:28 ◼   ► It's like, well, that's a, that's a bad situation.

00:46:31 ◼   ► You gotta leave that city.

00:46:32 ◼   ► You gotta get right out of that, yeah.

00:46:34 ◼   ► Yeah, that is a really bad situation because you know what a city of 12 million needs?

00:46:39 ◼   ► It's like, well, it needs police because at that level you can't just depend on how

00:46:45 ◼   ► everybody's a good person.

00:46:47 ◼   ► You draw a circle around 12 million people.

00:46:50 ◼   ► There are a lot of people who are not stable people in a group of 12 million randomly selected

00:46:55 ◼   ► individuals.

00:46:56 ◼   ► And so like, it's just an interesting thing that because fame is a thing that's available to many more people than before,

00:47:08 ◼   ► there's like a multiplication of this strange effect.

00:47:11 ◼   ► And I think you've put it in a good way there that I was thinking of some of the people that I've spoken to,

00:47:18 ◼   ► but your point about like, it's not good for anybody is a good thing to focus on.

00:47:23 ◼   ► of like this isn't good for the audience in some ways and it's really not good for the

00:47:27 ◼   ► creator.

00:47:28 ◼   ► And this is why I wanted to talk about it a little bit because I've hit on this feeling

00:47:33 ◼   ► right with that specific thing because I think the concern that I have is and I think a concern

00:47:38 ◼   ► a lot of people have is if you are somebody who is complaining about social media because

00:47:43 ◼   ► you have a large following it seems it's so detached from reality right so the concern

00:47:49 ◼   ► of like oh I'm worried about what this is doing to celebrities like that on its own

00:47:53 ◼   ► is like it's a non-useful thing to talk about but I am also concerned about everyone like that's the

00:48:02 ◼   ► new thing that I've started to feel is I am concerned about everybody. People who are just

00:48:09 ◼   ► the consumer of it as well as the creator of the content. As the world continues to change

00:48:16 ◼   ► politically in many ways. I think that it is very fair to look at social media as like

00:48:22 ◼   ► a nucleus of this type of change. And I am just not sure how I feel about it all. I feel

00:48:33 ◼   ► like it's pro- I feel like it's not- I think like it's not good for the human race as a

00:48:40 ◼   ► all in history. And there are like all of these problems of I am also a voracious consumer,

00:48:50 ◼   ► right? Because I am as addicted to social media as everybody else. But I am trying to

00:48:55 ◼   ► change my habits and I'm happy about where a lot of my habits are changing. I really

00:49:01 ◼   ► think weirdly, a lot of this problem is focused around networks which are text based. Like

00:49:10 ◼   ► that seems to be the problem, right? Like, because people can fight and people can share

00:49:16 ◼   ► things that aren't true and they go viral even though they're not true because people

00:49:20 ◼   ► like to believe in the truth of this thing and then that changes people's opinions because

00:49:26 ◼   ► we're all silly monkeys who just read headlines, right? And believe the headline and then that's

00:49:33 ◼   ► that. I'm just concerned because the best interests of the users are not held by the

00:49:40 ◼   ► the networks because they can't be because of the way that we value companies, right?

00:49:47 ◼   ► Especially venture capital backed social media companies. They need engagement and people

00:49:52 ◼   ► get really engaged when they're annoyed about something. And it's like, I just don't know

00:49:58 ◼   ► where we go from here. And I am realizing that it is something that I am becoming a

00:50:05 ◼   ► a little bit more concerned about as I see things unfolding online. It's a very peculiar

00:50:11 ◼   ► thing.

00:50:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's difficult to talk about on multiple levels. I still just find your phrase

00:50:20 ◼   ► about "it's bad for everyone" kind of striking and an interesting way to look at it. There's

00:50:25 ◼   ► a way in which, if you talk about the gossip there, there's a way that the gossip is bad

00:50:31 ◼   ► about the gossipy, but it's also bad for the gossiper. And if you end up getting trapped

00:50:39 ◼   ► in the loop where you're just talking about this stuff all the time, it's like I think

00:50:44 ◼   ► it starts to, for some people in particular, like it just takes up your whole brain. I

00:50:51 ◼   ► didn't mind having a big space of time kind of away from the internet and…

00:50:56 ◼   ► But what if all we learn from you is that you can't escape it, right?

00:51:02 ◼   ► That when you come back you just fall back into this pattern again and then we're all

00:51:05 ◼   ► f*cked.

00:51:06 ◼   ► Well, I mean, yeah, we might all be f*cked, Myke.

00:51:11 ◼   ► Because I don't know what a good solution necessarily is.

00:51:14 ◼   ► The biggest problem is that like, it is not all bad.

00:51:19 ◼   ► There are great things, fun things on social media that take us there every day.

00:51:23 ◼   ► The good of it is brilliant, but that also makes it worse in some ways because then it

00:51:29 ◼   ► means we have to take the bad.

00:51:33 ◼   ► That makes it so complicated.

00:51:35 ◼   ► I don't want to lose the good part.

00:51:39 ◼   ► It's very tricky.

00:51:41 ◼   ► And this is the idea that I expressed several times over the course of the year.

00:51:44 ◼   ► I really miss a sort of internet humor.

00:51:50 ◼   ► When the internet has produced something funny, it can be the funniest thing I've ever seen

00:51:54 ◼   ► in my life.

00:51:55 ◼   ► And in a deep way, like when you're really down deep in the lore of a thing, like someone

00:52:03 ◼   ► can make a joke that is incredibly funny and very difficult to articulate to others.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And it's like, it's a deep kind of humor.

00:52:13 ◼   ► And the internet is like aces at that.

00:52:15 ◼   ► Like it just only exists there.

00:52:17 ◼   ► It's beautiful.

00:52:19 ◼   ► It's really a thing of beauty.

00:52:22 ◼   ► So yeah, we do have all of these upsides, but there are just these downsides that are

00:52:28 ◼   ► very hard to grapple with for everyone.

00:52:33 ◼   ► And to sort of go back to it, the reason why I said this little bit of a forbidden topic

00:52:38 ◼   ► is this thing like you said of like, if you're a famous person talking about the difficulty

00:52:44 ◼   ► of fame, no one wants to hear that.

00:52:47 ◼   ► seem ungrateful. Right, yeah, and there is this weird way in which the inability to express

00:52:54 ◼   ► that makes a certain kind of problem more hidden and it's just like, it just becomes

00:53:00 ◼   ► this very strange thing. I still really advise, not for a year, but I think people should

00:53:08 ◼   ► take breaks from the internet, like this should be a regular thing and yeah, it's sort of

00:53:15 ◼   ► like almost a weird cliche now, but I think it's a good thing. And I keep coming back

00:53:21 ◼   ► to two analogies in my mind about this. And one of them is fasting from food. That the

00:53:28 ◼   ► first time I did this, it changes something in the way that you think about food that's

00:53:34 ◼   ► difficult to articulate but makes you sort of more aware and more mindful of food. And

00:53:42 ◼   ► And I think taking a break from the internet is sort of like that.

00:53:46 ◼   ► Or if that analogy doesn't work for you, the way everyone I know who's done hallucinogens

00:53:52 ◼   ► describes hallucinogens in the same way.

00:53:55 ◼   ► That oh, there's an experience that you have, but also there's something in your life that's

00:54:02 ◼   ► a little bit different about the way that you think about things that's hard to articulate,

00:54:07 ◼   ► you know, after the ayahuasca in the desert.

00:54:11 ◼   ► And so I really strongly suggest--

00:54:14 ◼   ► Hallucinogens?

00:54:15 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:54:18 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I'm very hallucinogen curious,

00:54:20 ◼   ► but that's a different story.

00:54:21 ◼   ► Yeah, something for another time.

00:54:23 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:54:25 ◼   ► But I strongly suggest that people

00:54:27 ◼   ► do try these little breaks, because I think

00:54:32 ◼   ► it's good for the audience.

00:54:34 ◼   ► It's good for individuals to do this.

00:54:36 ◼   ► And to be separated from these things

00:54:39 ◼   ► helps you think about them in a different way.

00:54:43 ◼   ► So don't do it for a year.

00:54:45 ◼   ► Even I think that that may have been too long.

00:54:48 ◼   ► But there were some reasons that I did end up extending it.

00:54:50 ◼   ► But it's like, do it, you know, do it for a week.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I think it's good to get in your head.

00:54:55 ◼   ► But yeah, so the internet is like awesome and also very

00:54:58 ◼   ► concerning.

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00:55:59 ◼   ► It's the end of October.

00:56:00 ◼   ► - Right.

00:56:01 ◼   ► - Which is the perfect time to talk about new iPhones.

00:56:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:56:06 ◼   ► It's only two months old at this point, but we have to do it.

00:56:10 ◼   ► Because I listened back to our last episode and you said, as long as there...

00:56:16 ◼   ► Again, I don't even know if it was the last episode.

00:56:19 ◼   ► I listened to an episode that we did.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Right, at some point in time.

00:56:22 ◼   ► At some point.

00:56:24 ◼   ► And you said, as long as it had more camera or a better camera.

00:56:30 ◼   ► I think better camera was what I said.

00:56:32 ◼   ► If it has a better camera, I'm going to buy it.

00:56:33 ◼   ► More is also the same.

00:56:35 ◼   ► more better camera that you would get a new iPhone.

00:56:38 ◼   ► So I am assuming that you have a new iPhone.

00:56:41 ◼   ► Yeah, got one.

00:56:42 ◼   ► Which one did you get?

00:56:43 ◼   ► OK, so Myke.

00:56:46 ◼   ► I got the regular sized.

00:56:50 ◼   ► iPhone 11 Pro.

00:56:51 ◼   ► That's fine. I doesn't I doesn't I don't mind.

00:56:53 ◼   ► OK, I've left the plus club Max crew.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Max crew doesn't bother me so much anymore

00:56:59 ◼   ► just because there's been so much fluctuation over time.

00:57:02 ◼   ► Like I'm less

00:57:04 ◼   ► held tightly to that really.

00:57:06 ◼   ► - I knew that for a while that I was

00:57:10 ◼   ► not going to get the plus size again.

00:57:13 ◼   ► And this summer was really the interesting breaking point.

00:57:17 ◼   ► While I do like the bigger phone and the bigger screen,

00:57:22 ◼   ► this sounds ridiculous to say,

00:57:24 ◼   ► but now that I professionally film

00:57:26 ◼   ► a surprising amount of stuff on my phone

00:57:28 ◼   ► that I'm actually gonna use at some point in time,

00:57:30 ◼   ► The bigger phone ends up being a kind of pain point for using it as an actual filming video

00:57:39 ◼   ► camera.

00:57:41 ◼   ► It's annoying if I ever want to attach anything to it, if I want to put it in a little clamp,

00:57:45 ◼   ► if I wanted to have a battery case on it, if I wanted to have like an attachable lens.

00:57:50 ◼   ► All these things exist, but they do become bigger and a little bit more cumbersome, I

00:57:55 ◼   ► understand.

00:57:56 ◼   ► exist but I always found that the big phone was perfect if you're using it just as the

00:58:03 ◼   ► phone but the moment I tried to have any audio-visual accoutrement attached to it, it was immediately

00:58:11 ◼   ► more hassle than it was worth. And since I don't see that use decreasing over the next

00:58:17 ◼   ► year I decided I'm going to go down to the smaller size phone.

00:58:21 ◼   ► What color did you get?

00:58:22 ◼   ► I got black but I have been wondering if I should have gotten the green. I still have

00:58:26 ◼   ► haven't seen the green in person. Oh, really? But look Myke, I haven't left my house in

00:58:31 ◼   ► like a month. You know what I actually, you know how you say that? I knew that. I knew

00:58:36 ◼   ► that about you. It's like when would I have seen the green phone? I have no idea. I'm

00:58:41 ◼   ► probably fine with the black but I have this little bit of a feeling that I'm going to

00:58:45 ◼   ► see the first green phone in real life and then be full of regret but I went with the

00:58:50 ◼   ► black. I was very anti green. Okay. But I have the midnight green. Oh you do do you?

00:58:56 ◼   ► Yeah and it's the right choice. Oh no don't tell me that Myke. It really is because most of

00:59:02 ◼   ► the time it just looks like a really dark gray. Yeah. And then you get like the

00:59:06 ◼   ► hint of green and I have it in a clear case. Mm-hmm. Which is not a great case.

00:59:12 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. But I want to be able to see the color of my phone. Mm-hmm. And I have an

00:59:17 ◼   ► awesome new popsocket. I have a really great new popsocket, Gray. What popsocket do you have?

00:59:22 ◼   ► Saw it on an Instagram ad. Like all good things these days. The top of it is made of enamel,

00:59:28 ◼   ► not plastic. Oh, you got a little solar system one. Yeah. Okay. So I love the green. I love the

00:59:32 ◼   ► clear case. Happy with the popsocket. Okay, so when I see you in person, I'm going to be filled

00:59:36 ◼   ► with regrets. That's going to make me sad. It's no different to usual. What case are you using?

00:59:45 ◼   ► I wish you hadn't asked me that right now.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Like my current situation is...

00:59:52 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know. Like, okay.

00:59:56 ◼   ► The phone is too slippery and I'm thinking about, again,

01:00:01 ◼   ► I'm going to be holding it in my hands and filming stuff.

01:00:05 ◼   ► So I'm currently using this like,

01:00:07 ◼   ► spark case which has all these little grippy ridges on the edges of it.

01:00:12 ◼   ► But then I discovered the grippy ridges don't allow me to put a normal pop socket on the back of it

01:00:17 ◼   ► because there's too much space between the little ridges, like it doesn't stick right.

01:00:20 ◼   ► Spark case.

01:00:21 ◼   ► I think that's what it's called.

01:00:23 ◼   ► Do you mean spec?

01:00:24 ◼   ► Maybe. I might mean spec.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you mean spec.

01:00:27 ◼   ► That's very possible that I mean spec.

01:00:29 ◼   ► Yeah, okay.

01:00:30 ◼   ► There's a case with a bunch of ridges on it.

01:00:32 ◼   ► I don't even know if I should tell you this.

01:00:35 ◼   ► But so then I wasn't able to get like a regular pop socket to fit on the back of it,

01:00:39 ◼   ► so I bought a bunch of the pop socket minis

01:00:42 ◼   ► And I've stuck three little popsocket minis on the back.

01:00:45 ◼   ► Okay, yeah, alright. I've wondered about that.

01:00:48 ◼   ► In this little semi-circle pattern that just fits in the spaces.

01:00:53 ◼   ► What do you think about the popsocket mini?

01:00:54 ◼   ► I sort of love it.

01:00:58 ◼   ► Okay.

01:00:58 ◼   ► But also it's noticeably harder to pop in and out.

01:01:03 ◼   ► Well and also you've got to un-pop multiple ones, right?

01:01:07 ◼   ► No, because I have one in the center which is the little one that I'm actually just using

01:01:11 ◼   ► if I'm grabbing the phone. There's two on the edges that are used entirely for if I want to put the phone in a little stand mode.

01:01:18 ◼   ► Which I actually do quite like.

01:01:21 ◼   ► You probably have it set up like how they have it set up on the page that I'm looking at here.

01:01:24 ◼   ► However you see it on the page, they put it in a little triangle.

01:01:28 ◼   ► I've done that except imagine that the point of the triangle is in the dead center of the phone.

01:01:34 ◼   ► So it's more like there's a little crescent on the side of the popsocket minis.

01:01:39 ◼   ► I don't know if I'm going to stick with this.

01:01:40 ◼   ► That feels like too much to me.

01:01:42 ◼   ► It does feel like a lot. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to save this configuration

01:01:47 ◼   ► for Grey on the Road. That's what this configuration is going to be.

01:01:50 ◼   ► How on earth are you wireless charging with three pop sockets?

01:01:54 ◼   ► You are not wirelessly charging with three pop sockets, that's for sure.

01:01:57 ◼   ► I just have to give up the dream of wireless charging in a pop socket.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Did you ever look at the OtterBox pop socket case?

01:02:06 ◼   ► Okay, you have one in the show notes, which looks different from the one that I got.

01:02:11 ◼   ► They make two. They make one called Pop Symmetry and then this like crazy rugged one.

01:02:17 ◼   ► Okay, if I got one of them, which is not the one that you have in the show notes.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Okay.

01:02:24 ◼   ► So I got I got a different one.

01:02:25 ◼   ► You got one where it's all smooth on the back, I bet.

01:02:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

01:02:29 ◼   ► Yeah, that's called Pop Symmetry. And then the one that I have in the show notes is Pop Defender.

01:02:35 ◼   ► I don't like this. This was way too aggressive for me, but...

01:02:38 ◼   ► Okay, so I got the other one.

01:02:40 ◼   ► All right.

01:02:41 ◼   ► And I had hopes of, "Oh wow, I'll be able to charge wirelessly with this integrated case."

01:02:49 ◼   ► And I also thought, "Case plus popsocket is a big pro because then it's like, it's more solid.

01:02:54 ◼   ► The probability of the popsocket coming out is less."

01:02:57 ◼   ► I'm going to rate the case that I got negative three stars out of five.

01:03:01 ◼   ► Oh boy.

01:03:02 ◼   ► is a terrible, terrible case and I hated everything about it. I wasn't able to wirelessly charge.

01:03:09 ◼   ► - Did you try taking, I mean this isn't a tenable solution in the long run,

01:03:14 ◼   ► but like did you try, did it wireless charge if you took the pop socket like thing off?

01:03:18 ◼   ► Did that work? - No, I refuse, that's dumb.

01:03:20 ◼   ► - I just wanted to know if it worked. - I never even tried.

01:03:23 ◼   ► - Okay. - I just threw it in the garbage.

01:03:25 ◼   ► - Because that's what it says, it says works of Qi wireless charging,

01:03:29 ◼   ► open bracket may need to remove pop top close bracket.

01:03:33 ◼   ► Okay well I would at very least have to remove it because it didn't work.

01:03:36 ◼   ► It didn't work.

01:03:36 ◼   ► Okay I hated it but I also hated that the way the pop socket was attached to the case it was like

01:03:43 ◼   ► behind a little bit of a curve I found it impossible to get the pop socket out.

01:03:48 ◼   ► It was also at the wrong spot for where I wanted with my hand.

01:03:52 ◼   ► It's way too low down.

01:03:54 ◼   ► I didn't like the feel of the case and I was filled with anger for having purchased it.

01:04:00 ◼   ► I was like this is maybe one of the worst cases I've ever had. Like it accomplishes nothing that

01:04:04 ◼   ► I wanted to do and is just taking up a bunch of space. It's a very ugly case. Yes it was also ugly

01:04:10 ◼   ► so that's why I gave it negative three stars out of five. It was absolutely absolutely terrible.

01:04:14 ◼   ► I'm pleased that we're starting to begin this uh we're calibrating a new gray star rating system.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's good to know when negative three begins on the rating system. Who knows

01:04:27 ◼   ► the real kind of swing of this system? How high and low can we get? We'll find out over time.

01:04:33 ◼   ► Yeah, so it was infuriating.

01:04:36 ◼   ► So the case situation is very not good for you right now. I wanted to get your opinion.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Have you ever used any of the moment stuff, the cases, the lenses, stuff like that?

01:04:47 ◼   ► So, yes, the other case I have, they have a super thin case that I have preordered,

01:04:56 ◼   ► which should be coming I think at the end of the month.

01:04:58 ◼   ► The iPhone thin photo case.

01:05:00 ◼   ► I think you had a black one of these, didn't you?

01:05:02 ◼   ► Okay, so I have, for my previous phone, my max phone, I had a Moment case, one of the

01:05:09 ◼   ► cases that's designed to be used with the lens.

01:05:12 ◼   ► But I have to say, forgetting the whole lens system, that case was fantastic.

01:05:17 ◼   ► I really, really liked the Moment case from my phone.

01:05:20 ◼   ► I thought it was just totally separate from the lenses.

01:05:23 ◼   ► It was a nicely made quality case,

01:05:26 ◼   ► which is why I pre-ordered one of their just super thin cases.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Like, let me give this one a shot.

01:05:32 ◼   ► So this could be the exact opposite of my rugged case with three pop sockets on it.

01:05:36 ◼   ► Like, I can try one of these super thin cases and see how that works.

01:05:39 ◼   ► So I'm going to highly rate Moment's stuff.

01:05:42 ◼   ► I think their stuff is really high quality.

01:05:44 ◼   ► And I do really like their swappable lenses as well.

01:05:47 ◼   ► There's a couple of shots in some of my videos that I use like the wide angle moment lens.

01:05:52 ◼   ► Yeah, would you need that now?

01:05:53 ◼   ► I don't know. I mean how wide can you go? Can you go minus 0.2 wide?

01:05:59 ◼   ► I sort of enjoy Apple's little notation there like this is 2x and this is 0.5x.

01:06:04 ◼   ► It's like I've never seen that notation used for a lens but sure that works.

01:06:09 ◼   ► So yeah I really like their stuff. I highly recommend it.

01:06:11 ◼   ► that I'm looking forward to seeing what this new case of theirs is like.

01:06:14 ◼   ► I'm not in like a great iPhone case situation right now,

01:06:19 ◼   ► so we'll have to see.

01:06:21 ◼   ► It looks like the new Moment case, you can only put their lenses on two of the lenses.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Hmm, interesting.

01:06:27 ◼   ► I'm assuming the wide angle they are not doing anything with.

01:06:31 ◼   ► I have a hard time with this terminology, because there's the telephoto...

01:06:35 ◼   ► Okay, super wide, sorry.

01:06:37 ◼   ► Or the ultra wide.

01:06:39 ◼   ► - Telephoto, wide, and ultra-wide

01:06:42 ◼   ► is what Apple wants you to say.

01:06:44 ◼   ► But I think they should just call them the telephoto,

01:06:46 ◼   ► the regular, and the wide.

01:06:47 ◼   ► - I know, it should just be called the regular, right?

01:06:50 ◼   ► - Just call it the regular one.

01:06:51 ◼   ► - I never used to call it the wide angle lens,

01:06:53 ◼   ► but now I have to.

01:06:55 ◼   ► Right, and it's just so confusing.

01:06:57 ◼   ► - No one's gonna call it that.

01:06:58 ◼   ► You have to completely give it up.

01:07:00 ◼   ► That's not gonna happen.

01:07:02 ◼   ► But yeah, so you're sticking with your clear case for now

01:07:04 ◼   ► to show off the green of your phone?

01:07:06 ◼   ► - Well, so here's the thing.

01:07:07 ◼   ► So the clear case, that's gonna remain my daily case.

01:07:12 ◼   ► I come fine with it.

01:07:13 ◼   ► It was originally really slippery,

01:07:15 ◼   ► but it has gotten more grippy,

01:07:17 ◼   ► even though it's a hard plastic,

01:07:18 ◼   ► which I assume is just my gross hand oils

01:07:20 ◼   ► that has done that.

01:07:21 ◼   ► - Possible.

01:07:22 ◼   ► - But also I use the pop socket,

01:07:23 ◼   ► and the pop socket adds to the grip anyway, right?

01:07:25 ◼   ► 'Cause even when I don't have it unpopped,

01:07:27 ◼   ► my hand still kind of naturally has something to grip onto,

01:07:31 ◼   ► even when it's closed down,

01:07:32 ◼   ► which is one of the things I really like

01:07:33 ◼   ► about pop sockets in general anyway.

01:07:37 ◼   ► But I have been really recently getting into taking photos on my phone.

01:07:44 ◼   ► Like this is before the new incredible cameras.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Like and I've been really enjoying like tinkering around and like editing them

01:07:51 ◼   ► and posting them like to Instagram or my Instagram stories a lot and stuff like that.

01:07:55 ◼   ► Like I've really been getting into that.

01:07:56 ◼   ► Like I've been enjoying that.

01:07:58 ◼   ► And so I've been thinking about looking at some of the Moment lenses

01:08:03 ◼   ► as an additional thing to play around with to get different kinds of photos.

01:08:08 ◼   ► So in that instance, that I would then buy a Moment case and a bunch of their lenses,

01:08:13 ◼   ► that if I was then going somewhere to take pictures, I would put that on.

01:08:16 ◼   ► So I then have the expandability of the different lenses,

01:08:19 ◼   ► but I'm just not sure what I would want.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Yeah, the other thing though, the other thing to consider,

01:08:28 ◼   ► which makes me wonder about those moment lenses,

01:08:32 ◼   ► is how much of an effect it will have to

01:08:36 ◼   ► block all the multiple lens stuff that Apple is doing.

01:08:40 ◼   ► The camera is going to be in an unexpected situation

01:08:44 ◼   ► if you're using one of those lenses. Because it could be blocking something out when it's trying

01:08:48 ◼   ► to get data. Yeah, and what Apple has done

01:08:52 ◼   ► with the multiple lenses is really fantastic. I had this interesting experience

01:08:56 ◼   ► So I talked last time about how I lost my phone to the rain out in the cemetery as one does as one does

01:09:02 ◼   ► And I had to go back from the XS to the X now remember when the XS came out

01:09:09 ◼   ► So please they've gone to numbers now, so I don't have to hear keep doing that

01:09:12 ◼   ► Brutal right, but I remember when the XS came out

01:09:17 ◼   ► I think on the show we had a conversation where because my main concern is the camera

01:09:21 ◼   ► I was asking you like has anything physically changed about the camera

01:09:25 ◼   ► because in that generation, that was the start of what Apple is now calling computational photography.

01:09:31 ◼   ► And so they were talking for the XS phones about, "Oh, the camera is so much better, the camera is so much better."

01:09:37 ◼   ► And I was doubtful because I thought, "But you haven't changed anything.

01:09:41 ◼   ► Like, the lens isn't any bigger, the sensor isn't any better. How much of a difference could this have made?"

01:09:45 ◼   ► And with the XS, I thought, "Oh, it's a little better, but it's not amazing."

01:09:51 ◼   ► However, having had the experience of, for a month and a half, having to go back from

01:09:58 ◼   ► the XS to the X, made me realize how much work in terms of computational photography

01:10:06 ◼   ► the XS was already doing.

01:10:08 ◼   ► And the number of times where I was filming something and I thought, "Oh, I can't get

01:10:13 ◼   ► the sky and the foreground at the same time on the X.

01:10:16 ◼   ► Like I have to pick between the two of these in video."

01:10:19 ◼   ► And the XS could get both of them.

01:10:21 ◼   ► It gets really quite impressive, even on the previous generation, what they were doing

01:10:26 ◼   ► with all of that stuff.

01:10:27 ◼   ► And the current phone is already clearly way better.

01:10:31 ◼   ► This camera is just incredible.

01:10:34 ◼   ► And it's not just how good each individual camera is now.

01:10:38 ◼   ► The flexibility of having an additional lens is just so much fun.

01:10:45 ◼   ► But the photos that it is capturing, it's just stunning.

01:10:50 ◼   ► Like unbelievable.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:52 ◼   ► But all of that stuff is the computational photography.

01:10:56 ◼   ► And so like I would just wonder if you're mounting something like a lens on the camera…

01:11:02 ◼   ► Would it make it worse?

01:11:03 ◼   ► Right.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Like you may be able to get a particular effect, but the question is the trade-off.

01:11:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

01:11:09 ◼   ► Do you want 4x zoom or do you want 2x zoom but 4x is clear?

01:11:17 ◼   ► That may be the trade-off that you're having to make.

01:11:19 ◼   ► I don't know but I would be concerned about it because of all of the great stuff that

01:11:23 ◼   ► this camera is able to do.

01:11:25 ◼   ► I'm thinking I would like to know the answer to that.

01:11:27 ◼   ► So I'm thinking about maybe picking up some of those lenses at some point.

01:11:31 ◼   ► But that is a very good point that I had not considered.

01:11:35 ◼   ► But just in general though, these cameras are incredible.

01:11:40 ◼   ► The first time I took a night time photo my mind was blown.

01:11:42 ◼   ► Oh the night photo.

01:11:44 ◼   ► Come on.

01:11:46 ◼   ► I sort of forgot about it for a long time.

01:11:48 ◼   ► I don't think I took one night time photo until two weeks after having the phone and

01:11:51 ◼   ► then I was out on the street one night and I thought "Oh let me see what that looks

01:11:54 ◼   ► like.

01:11:55 ◼   ► Oh my god it's amazing!"

01:11:56 ◼   ► I sent you this one picture that I posted on Instagram that I took of Adina which I

01:12:02 ◼   ► which I genuinely think is like the best photo I've ever taken.

01:12:04 ◼   ► And it had absolutely nothing to do with me.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:12:08 ◼   ► That's not you, Myke.

01:12:09 ◼   ► That's the phone.

01:12:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:10 ◼   ► I would say I edited it in VSCO.

01:12:12 ◼   ► I tweaked it to my own tastes, which helps.

01:12:14 ◼   ► OK, yes, I'm sure.

01:12:15 ◼   ► Very nice.

01:12:15 ◼   ► But like--

01:12:16 ◼   ► The phone's doing the heavy lifting there.

01:12:18 ◼   ► It really is.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Like the portrait mode stuff is so good now.

01:12:22 ◼   ► Because you-- like a lot of the portrait mode photos

01:12:24 ◼   ► that I take, I like--

01:12:26 ◼   ► I really kind of like pull the effect down, right?

01:12:28 ◼   ► Because you can adjust the effect.

01:12:30 ◼   ► make it way less blurry and it still looks good and hides some of the errors that these

01:12:35 ◼   ► things will do. But just like, you know, I see that many people have said this about

01:12:41 ◼   ► this picture and I keep thinking about pictures that I'm seeing. This could be any camera

01:12:45 ◼   ► now.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Yeah, 100% this could be any camera. And what I'm really shocked at is just its ability

01:12:51 ◼   ► to replicate a lot of this in video. Because like that's, when I say like I want a better

01:12:56 ◼   ► a lot of what I'm thinking of is like video that I'm going to be shooting on the phone.

01:13:01 ◼   ► Yeah that's the difference between me and you. Me it's all photo and you it's all video.

01:13:04 ◼   ► I barely take any video on my phone at all.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Yeah and I'm just I'm shocked because when I just think of the sheer

01:13:13 ◼   ► processing that needs to happen and I'll look sometimes and be like let me get this straight.

01:13:21 ◼   ► You're creating for me phone an HDR image that has the sky and the foreground and the person

01:13:30 ◼   ► all properly exposed and you're doing it at 4k 30 frames a second like just as I'm looking at it.

01:13:37 ◼   ► It's insane. It's really really impressive and more and more it's been interesting to see like

01:13:43 ◼   ► higher and higher professional end uses of the phone but one example where I thought this is

01:13:50 ◼   ► is an unbelievable demo of how the phone is actually better than video cameras, was the

01:13:55 ◼   ► demo of the feature that Filmic hasn't released yet but is coming, where they can shoot video

01:14:01 ◼   ► from multiple cameras on the phone at the same time.

01:14:05 ◼   ► And it's like, you've got to be kidding me!

01:14:08 ◼   ► All lenses, the three on the back, the one on the front, all of them.

01:14:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like you can see what all of them see, and I think you could pick two to record

01:14:16 ◼   ► simultaneously, I think was the limitation, but it was still shocking.

01:14:22 ◼   ► And you know, all I was thinking of there is, even just for doing a simple thing where

01:14:26 ◼   ► I'm trying to record myself walking, like in the Billup video.

01:14:30 ◼   ► It's like I'm on Billup Manor, and I'm trying to shoot a video where I'm like talking about

01:14:36 ◼   ► the experience as I'm walking away from the manor.

01:14:39 ◼   ► And then I have to remember a couple of times later to like, oh, make sure I get some front-facing

01:14:44 ◼   ► shots too so I can like cut between these two things and someone can see where I'm walking

01:14:48 ◼   ► too and where like...

01:14:50 ◼   ► I could do this on my phone and just have the front-facing camera and the rear-facing

01:14:54 ◼   ► camera going at the same time and see both of them at the same time on the screen so

01:14:58 ◼   ► that everything is properly framed.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Like it's unbelievable or even just the number of times I would want to be able to have the

01:15:07 ◼   ► option of switching between the regular lens or the ultra-wide if there was something that's

01:15:11 ◼   ► just slightly out of frame and be like "great just film both of them!"

01:15:14 ◼   ► And I'll figure it out later.

01:15:16 ◼   ► That demo just completely blew my mind and I think is a great example of like the low-end

01:15:22 ◼   ► technology eventually taking over the high-end technology.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Right around the corner from me here, there's a video that I was sort of thinking of making

01:15:31 ◼   ► which touches on this idea, but I bought like a proper DSLR camera this summer for one of

01:15:38 ◼   ► the projects that I was working on because I thought, oh, I definitely need the higher

01:15:42 ◼   ► quality that this thing can provide in a certain situation. And it's like, this thing's a piece

01:15:47 ◼   ► of junk compared to my phone. It is absurd how good the phones have become. And it's

01:15:54 ◼   ► like, man, that DSLR that I bought was one of the dumbest business purchases I've made

01:15:58 ◼   ► over the last year. It's like that thing is going to collect a bunch of dust. And guess

01:16:03 ◼   ► what, in the circumstances where I thought I was going to use it, phone was better most

01:16:08 ◼   ► of the time. So yeah, it's incredibly impressive how far these things have come.

01:16:12 ◼   ► The battery life's also really good.

01:16:14 ◼   ► I have to say, I'm glad to have a phone where I finally feel like the battery life has gotten better.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:18 ◼   ► I know Apple says the battery life has been better every year, but I haven't believed it since the 6.

01:16:23 ◼   ► It feels like I've had barely better battery every year ever since the 6, and I've always hated it.

01:16:30 ◼   ► And this one finally feels like this is what a battery life...

01:16:34 ◼   ► I would still want more, but it's way closer to being... I can actually use it for a whole day.

01:16:39 ◼   ► Well you always want more, right? But now, yes, you can get a whole day no matter what

01:16:45 ◼   ► you're doing by and large. As long as you're reviewing regular parameters, you can do it.

01:16:50 ◼   ► Which is kind of amazing, isn't it really?

01:16:53 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very impressive. I have to say, I've got to give this generation of phones

01:16:57 ◼   ► a big six stars out of five maybe? I don't know. It's pretty good. I'm ridiculously happy

01:17:05 ◼   ► with this generation of phones.

01:17:06 ◼   ► So it is a 5s, you are considering it a 5 scale rating?

01:17:10 ◼   ► I don't know, it's on the fly.

01:17:14 ◼   ► Should we re-record that?

01:17:15 ◼   ► I'll say I give it 7 stars out of 6.

01:17:17 ◼   ► That doesn't help, does it?

01:17:19 ◼   ► That didn't help.

01:17:20 ◼   ► Oh, by any stretch of the imagination.

01:17:22 ◼   ► Look it's good, it's good.

01:17:23 ◼   ► The phone gave 110% is what I'm trying to say.

01:17:26 ◼   ► What about Apple Watch?

01:17:28 ◼   ► Apple Watch is not such a universally loved story.

01:17:31 ◼   ► I am one of the people who's having horrific battery life problems on my Apple Watch.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Oh, you got a new one though.

01:17:37 ◼   ► I did get a new one.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Always on Face is amazing.

01:17:41 ◼   ► I have some things that I really want to complain about.

01:17:44 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm one of the people that the battery life is just

01:17:48 ◼   ► brutal for.

01:17:49 ◼   ► And I just sort of don't know what's going on with this.

01:17:52 ◼   ► And I still have my fingers crossed

01:17:55 ◼   ► for like maybe this is fixed in a software update.

01:17:59 ◼   ► But it's bad.

01:18:00 ◼   ► It's a bad battery life situation

01:18:01 ◼   ► with the new Apple Watch.

01:18:02 ◼   ► What does bad look like though?

01:18:04 ◼   ► Bad looks like I pretty reasonably have to charge it at some point in the afternoon if I've gone to the gym in the morning.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Huh, okay.

01:18:13 ◼   ► So like, if I go to the gym, that basically guarantees I need to do an extra charge.

01:18:19 ◼   ► And the other thing is, I used to have a watch, and I would wear the same watch for sleep tracking and during the day.

01:18:28 ◼   ► Like I would just charge it in the morning and charge it in the evening.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And that's totally impossible with the current watch.

01:18:34 ◼   ► Like, I've had to bust out my old watch and use that as the nighttime sleep tracking watch

01:18:41 ◼   ► so that this one charges up during the day and then can actually get me through the day if I don't go to the gym.

01:18:49 ◼   ► It's a very, very noticeable decrease in battery life.

01:18:54 ◼   ► And also, I don't know if it-- exactly what the situation is, but I think the battery must be bigger or it charges slower,

01:19:02 ◼   ► but there's that end of it too, that I can't pop it on the charger for a little bit in the morning and the evening and be okay.

01:19:10 ◼   ► It seems to charge up very slowly, and I presume that's because the battery is bigger to manage the always-on screen,

01:19:17 ◼   ► but I don't know. So it's bad enough that it's made me have to use two watches and made me very aware of

01:19:24 ◼   ► exercise days needing to find some other time to put it on the charger, which is not great situation.

01:19:31 ◼   ► So there are reports of the 6.1 beta helping some people who are having battery life issues

01:19:37 ◼   ► which you probably expect that there's some software stuff that they can do to maybe fix some edge case issues that they're having.

01:19:44 ◼   ► But you would naturally assume though that the screen being on all the time is going

01:19:49 ◼   ► to decrease the battery life.

01:19:51 ◼   ► I mean obviously you are seeing bad results, like more than you would have expected, because

01:19:57 ◼   ► it doesn't really seem like you're getting the 18 hours that Apple's saying you should

01:20:01 ◼   ► be getting, right?

01:20:02 ◼   ► Yeah, there's no way I'm getting anywhere close to 18 hours.

01:20:05 ◼   ► Not a chance on Earth that I'm getting 18 hours out of it.

01:20:09 ◼   ► It does make me wonder, like I know other people who are having the same issue, it seems

01:20:12 ◼   ► pretty prevalent among people I know who've gotten the new Apple Watch.

01:20:17 ◼   ► It makes me wonder this thing where people say, "Oh, there's a fix coming in a software

01:20:20 ◼   ► update."

01:20:21 ◼   ► And I just sort of wonder, like, what is Apple's process here?

01:20:24 ◼   ► Is Apple's software development six months ahead of their product releases?

01:20:30 ◼   ► And they're like, "Oh, it's going to be perfectly fine.

01:20:32 ◼   ► We just have to get this software update out, but it's going to take a while."

01:20:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:20:37 ◼   ► I just wonder.

01:20:38 ◼   ► I wonder what this situation is the result of.

01:20:42 ◼   ► I find it a little bit confusing.

01:20:44 ◼   ► Or if it's some sort of manufacturing variance

01:20:48 ◼   ► that was greater than they were expecting.

01:20:49 ◼   ► I don't know, but I just, it makes me wonder

01:20:52 ◼   ► what's going on with the process over at Apple,

01:20:55 ◼   ► 'cause it seems pretty dramatic

01:20:57 ◼   ► in terms of battery life difference.

01:21:00 ◼   ► But I mean, I do love the always on screen.

01:21:02 ◼   ► It's pretty nice.

01:21:03 ◼   ► And it's nice to have my brain slowly train out

01:21:07 ◼   ► of having to move my wrist.

01:21:09 ◼   ► Like I always felt like the watch was pretty good

01:21:11 ◼   ► picking up the flicking but you still did have to move your wrist a little bit.

01:21:15 ◼   ► And now it's much more like a normal watch, you know, like what you wear, Myke.

01:21:19 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

01:21:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:21 ◼   ► Isn't that right?

01:21:22 ◼   ► I've heard a rumor.

01:21:24 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

01:21:26 ◼   ► I've heard a rumor that you might be wearing an Apple Watch.

01:21:29 ◼   ► Is that rumor true?

01:21:30 ◼   ► That rumor is true.

01:21:31 ◼   ► What'd you get?

01:21:32 ◼   ► I fell in love with the ceramic.

01:21:34 ◼   ► Oh!

01:21:35 ◼   ► Okay.

01:21:36 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:21:37 ◼   ► Okay.

01:21:38 ◼   ► What color's ceramic?

01:21:39 ◼   ► White.

01:21:40 ◼   ► Oh, okay, interesting. The titanium comes in two colors. Oh, that's what I'm thinking

01:21:44 ◼   ► of. That's what I'm thinking of. The ceramic is just white. That's interesting. I've seen

01:21:48 ◼   ► a white ceramic one, the original one that they did years ago. Yep, love that one. And

01:21:52 ◼   ► I thought it was gorgeous. Is this along the same lines? It is, yes, it's stunning. Which

01:21:58 ◼   ► is why I own it, because I saw it and fell in love with it. Ah, okay. So this is a piece

01:22:05 ◼   ► of jewelry for your wrist. Is that what you're saying?

01:22:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I have very complex feelings towards the Apple Watch.

01:22:13 ◼   ► Okay, tell me.

01:22:14 ◼   ► They still remain. I am just not sure how to set it up still. I've been wearing it a

01:22:21 ◼   ► lot. I don't wear it all the time, but I've been wearing it a lot since I bought it. I

01:22:26 ◼   ► wear it with the white. It comes with a white sport band. That white on white look is very

01:22:30 ◼   ► Very nice. I find the always on screen to be good but the always on screen actually

01:22:35 ◼   ► makes some Apple Watch functions worse, which is kind of like a funny thing. Like for example,

01:22:42 ◼   ► if you have your hand on the table and you get a notification and you look down at your

01:22:46 ◼   ► wrist, nothing happens, which breaks the mental model of the Apple Watch, which is like when

01:22:53 ◼   ► I see it, something will happen. Or like for example, I'm looking at the screen and I swipe

01:22:58 ◼   ► down and nothing happens. Because it's not technically activated, which I think should

01:23:04 ◼   ► be something that they find a way to resolve. Like, the watch should know I touched it,

01:23:09 ◼   ► it didn't do what it was expecting, where I should one tap to wake up and then swipe

01:23:12 ◼   ► down. So like, there are things that the always on screen actually makes worse, which is a

01:23:17 ◼   ► kind of a funny thing.

01:23:18 ◼   ► Yeah, the one that really throws me is exercise apps, that when I'm exercising at the gym,

01:23:24 ◼   ► there's a little app that is on my watch that's running,

01:23:27 ◼   ► but Apple will then overlay a digital watch face

01:23:32 ◼   ► and blur out the background so that I can,

01:23:34 ◼   ► and like, I find it mentally confusing every single time.

01:23:38 ◼   ► - I really hate that little digital watch face.

01:23:40 ◼   ► - I don't expect this to be here,

01:23:42 ◼   ► and that feels like I need to dismiss this thing

01:23:45 ◼   ► to get back, it feels much more awkward and I hate it.

01:23:48 ◼   ► And it's just, yeah, it's a bad mental model

01:23:53 ◼   ► of like, what is this watch face that I never asked for

01:23:56 ◼   ► that's here?

01:23:57 ◼   ► Like, I'm perfectly fine if you need to conserve battery life

01:24:01 ◼   ► during a workout, just blank out the screen, you know,

01:24:04 ◼   ► it's fine or put a static image of the way

01:24:06 ◼   ► the exercise app looked the last time you checked.

01:24:09 ◼   ► But it's a very weird design decision

01:24:12 ◼   ► to show this other watch during exercise time.

01:24:16 ◼   ► - But I am also not surprised that the first version

01:24:19 ◼   ► of this technology is weird in places, right?

01:24:22 ◼   ► But like basically, you know in a nutshell the always on display has made the Apple watch a viable watch for me again

01:24:29 ◼   ► Mmm, because it was not like I it was my main source of frustration

01:24:33 ◼   ► And I was incredibly surprised that Apple added this feature. I had written it off

01:24:38 ◼   ► I thought they're never gonna do it

01:24:40 ◼   ► Because they hadn't done it and it didn't seem like it was set for this edition

01:24:45 ◼   ► Like it wasn't there were no rumors of it. Nothing. It was a big surprise

01:24:48 ◼   ► My main thing is I just feel like I can't set up the Apple watch the way that I want.

01:24:53 ◼   ► I cannot find a way to be happy with the way it notifies me.

01:24:58 ◼   ► Oh, oh my god. I thought you were talking about the faces, but if you're talking about notifications, I could scream.

01:25:07 ◼   ► I'm using the California face with black with the white numbers, with the white half Roman and white half Arabic.

01:25:14 ◼   ► And when this is one of the ones that I'm most happy with the transition from always on or that changes the color of the hands

01:25:22 ◼   ► Aside from that. I'm very happy with with like the look

01:25:26 ◼   ► the watch faces in general

01:25:28 ◼   ► And I'm unhappy with the customizability of them

01:25:32 ◼   ► But I'm I have one set up right now which works for me

01:25:37 ◼   ► Which is I have the California face the date and one complication

01:25:43 ◼   ► Which is a complication called Geneva moon, which is made by a friend of ours underscore

01:25:47 ◼   ► David Smith, which is just an accurate representation of the moon's phase. I just think that looks

01:25:53 ◼   ► Very classy and I'm very happy with the general look of that which is important to me because I care more about the way my watch

01:26:00 ◼   ► Looks even though it's a computer watch I can get to the computer functions if I want

01:26:04 ◼   ► I just swipe to the side and I have a very computer watch face

01:26:08 ◼   ► Set up then with like weather and like all that nonsense, right?

01:26:12 ◼   ► There's that's just there when I need it

01:26:14 ◼   ► But most of the time I don't want my watch to look that way anymore

01:26:17 ◼   ► And I can get to the information when I need it inside of the applications

01:26:21 ◼   ► But I am just I cannot find a way in which I am happy with notifications

01:26:25 ◼   ► What I'm trying right now my main thing right now is just to leave my watch in permanent. Do not disturb

01:26:33 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, so I can get to notifications

01:26:36 ◼   ► I can get to stuff if I need it, but then it doesn't send the notifications to the device anymore, right?

01:26:42 ◼   ► Yeah, which like I don't understand that because that's not how my phone works when my phone's in do not disturb

01:26:48 ◼   ► The notifications come through but they stay in notification center

01:26:52 ◼   ► What I want is for them to come to my watch and stay in notification center, but I don't

01:26:56 ◼   ► Read it's it's none of it is the way that I want it to be

01:27:00 ◼   ► But I'd really love the way this thing works. I like having access to the benefits an Apple watch can provide

01:27:06 ◼   ► Health tracking and all that kind of stuff. I like that

01:27:09 ◼   ► I can send a quick text message if I want to I like that I can control over carcinomas into a podcast

01:27:13 ◼   ► I like all of that. I

01:27:15 ◼   ► Don't love any of it, which is why I do not wear this every day

01:27:19 ◼   ► Like it is a watch in my rotation now, right?

01:27:23 ◼   ► Okay, right and because I think the look of this watch fits a particular style that I'm trying to go for sometimes

01:27:30 ◼   ► sometimes, in the same way that all of my watches do.

01:27:34 ◼   ► And so I wear it a lot when I'm at home because it's a comfortable watch to wear, but like

01:27:40 ◼   ► going out for dinner tonight and I will not be wearing this.

01:27:42 ◼   ► Okay, so it's not a dinner watch?

01:27:44 ◼   ► It can be, but it's all dependent on how I'm dressing.

01:27:48 ◼   ► Yeah, but that is also going to cause you more problems with how are you going to manage

01:27:54 ◼   ► your notifications, because then you're in an inconsistent state of "is the watch around?"

01:27:59 ◼   ► and you might want notifications to work differently when the watch is not around.

01:28:02 ◼   ► Yeah, the notification stuff...

01:28:05 ◼   ► We were talking about it like five years ago and it's still crazy to me that

01:28:13 ◼   ► what we thought of as the obvious feature in year two of the watch has still been basically

01:28:21 ◼   ► untouched for whatever it is now. It is absolutely infuriating. I may be feeling

01:28:29 ◼   ► this particularly sensitively because along with new watches and new phones we

01:28:34 ◼   ► do have this new operating system Catalina which brings downtime to the

01:28:39 ◼   ► Mac and I like I will tell you I have been losing my goddamn mind trying to

01:28:46 ◼   ► figure out how to set up everything. Okay this is gonna sound like a

01:28:51 ◼   ► crazy exaggeration. I think I may be the world's most power user of downtime that exists.

01:28:59 ◼   ► Okay.

01:29:00 ◼   ► Like, I really think that may actually be the case of I'm the person who's gone into

01:29:07 ◼   ► all of the notification settings, all of the screen time settings, all of the downtime

01:29:12 ◼   ► settings, all of the content restriction settings, which is a whole other old layer that still

01:29:18 ◼   ► exists that Apple has and tried every permutation and combination of every single fucking switch

01:29:25 ◼   ► that exists in all of these things and am unable to produce results that are sensical.

01:29:32 ◼   ► And I am convinced it's because these teams are not talking to each other because you

01:29:36 ◼   ► just get totally weird bugs, totally strange results, and I don't know how they expect

01:29:42 ◼   ► any normal person to try to manage any of this stuff.

01:29:46 ◼   ► I have not enjoyed the spread of downtime to the Mac because it's just increased a huge

01:29:53 ◼   ► number of problems for me.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Oh, can I tell you my favorite downtime problem?

01:29:59 ◼   ► In default by downtime, nothing is accessible except what you explicitly allow.

01:30:06 ◼   ► So you have to have a list of apps where you say these apps are allowable in downtime.

01:30:11 ◼   ► And when I first upgraded on my Mac, I had some entertaining moments where like you go

01:30:16 ◼   ► to unzip a file and it says "System archiver is not available during downtime." And it's

01:30:21 ◼   ► like, "Oh, haha!" Right, like, okay, yes, I'll whitelist the zipping app, you know,

01:30:27 ◼   ► to allow me to zip and unzip files during downtime. All right, because I'm just trying

01:30:30 ◼   ► to control notifications. I'm trying to use downtime as a layer to basically turn on and

01:30:36 ◼   ► off iMessage at different times of the day. So I'm like, "Okay, haha, isn't that entertaining.

01:30:42 ◼   ► I'll whitelist the zipping app." There's a couple of others that were sort of like that.

01:30:45 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, this is charmingly annoying.

01:30:47 ◼   ► I'm going to have to slowly whitelist a hundred tiny system utilities that I never think of

01:30:51 ◼   ► normally on my system."

01:30:53 ◼   ► Who?

01:30:54 ◼   ► Who?

01:30:55 ◼   ► Who?

01:30:56 ◼   ► Come on.

01:30:57 ◼   ► Like, really?

01:30:58 ◼   ► Like, who thought that made sense?

01:31:00 ◼   ► But this is it.

01:31:01 ◼   ► This is exactly it.

01:31:02 ◼   ► This is what I mean by like, "I may be the world's most power user."

01:31:04 ◼   ► Because like— No one's tried it.

01:31:05 ◼   ► Yeah, no one's tried this.

01:31:06 ◼   ► No.

01:31:07 ◼   ► No.

01:31:08 ◼   ► Okay?

01:31:09 ◼   ► So let me tell you my favorite thing.

01:31:10 ◼   ► So one morning, whatever it is, like Catalina 0.01 comes out, and I'm like, "Oh, let me

01:31:14 ◼   ► I'm making coffee, let me just run the update on my system while the coffee's running.

01:31:19 ◼   ► So I run the software update. Computer reboots.

01:31:22 ◼   ► You know what wasn't allowed by downtime? The system reinstaller.

01:31:27 ◼   ► So the computer boots up and the downtime alert comes on for like,

01:31:33 ◼   ► "Oh, the system boot reinstaller is not allowed."

01:31:39 ◼   ► I was like, "I'm sorry, what?"

01:31:41 ◼   ► So my computer

01:31:43 ◼   ► did not allow me

01:31:45 ◼   ► to upgrade my own system

01:31:47 ◼   ► to a .0 release

01:31:49 ◼   ► because of downtime.

01:31:51 ◼   ► So this little like

01:31:53 ◼   ► white thing comes on the screen

01:31:55 ◼   ► and says, "This isn't allowed.

01:31:57 ◼   ► This app isn't allowed."

01:31:59 ◼   ► But the computer's halfway through a reboot

01:32:01 ◼   ► and because very clearly

01:32:03 ◼   ► no one ever thought of this situation

01:32:05 ◼   ► the buttons

01:32:07 ◼   ► buttons to say, you know, "Whitelist this app" didn't work when the computer's not fully properly

01:32:14 ◼   ► booted up. And so I had to wait until 2pm when downtime turned off for the computer to reboot.

01:32:21 ◼   ► What is that?

01:32:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:24 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:32:25 ◼   ► Like, I was furious. Like, are you kidding? And this is just like, no one ever thought of this.

01:32:33 ◼   ► Like, I don't know what you guys did, but this is not an expected situation.

01:32:37 ◼   ► And it's like, hey, let the system reboot software work during downtime

01:32:42 ◼   ► if someone can update the system.

01:32:43 ◼   ► Matt>> No Mac utility should have ever been touched.

01:32:47 ◼   ► Gray>> Yeah, no Mac utility should have ever been touched.

01:32:49 ◼   ► Matt>> Because nobody is like, "I really don't want to unzip a file between..."

01:32:53 ◼   ► Gray>> I know, right?

01:32:55 ◼   ► Matt>> "...my three."

01:32:56 ◼   ► Gray>> Yeah.

01:32:56 ◼   ► Matt>> I, Gray, I cannot believe that.

01:32:58 ◼   ► Like, I am flabbergasted by that.

01:33:01 ◼   ► That was by far and away my favorite mistake.

01:33:04 ◼   ► If you were the type of person that thought, "I want to have my machine completely locked off,

01:33:12 ◼   ► so I will set downtime to be on all the time," maybe you give yourself a minute a day,

01:33:18 ◼   ► you would not be able to update your system. You would be stuck.

01:33:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it was absurd.

01:33:24 ◼   ► I cannot believe that.

01:33:28 ◼   ► Yeah, that was the best one. But yeah, there's a ton of stuff in here which is like,

01:33:32 ◼   ► nobody thought this through, I don't think anybody has used this, or if they've used it,

01:33:37 ◼   ► they haven't used it on a system with multiple devices. I'm getting all kinds of like weird

01:33:42 ◼   ► syncing errors and like it's, it is a crazy making system. I genuinely think I may have to turn off

01:33:49 ◼   ► the entire downtime and notification system. Like it's just, it is borderline unusable at this

01:33:57 ◼   ► And there's all sorts of things like there's one thing that I was never able to really articulate until it came to the Mac of like

01:34:03 ◼   ► here's the kind of thing that somebody just doesn't think about so I

01:34:07 ◼   ► Have an iPad that I want to use as my research assistant that iPad I would like to have

01:34:13 ◼   ► Blocked off in the morning from a bunch of stuff. So it's gonna be downtime in the morning now on on the device

01:34:21 ◼   ► you can whitelist a whole bunch of stuff.

01:34:24 ◼   ► As far as I can tell,

01:34:25 ◼   ► there is only a single app

01:34:28 ◼   ► that you are not allowed to whitelist.

01:34:31 ◼   ► The name of that app is Safari.

01:34:35 ◼   ► So if your device is in downtime,

01:34:40 ◼   ► Safari is not able to be whitelisted.

01:34:42 ◼   ► Now you can open Safari,

01:34:44 ◼   ► but every single page you go to

01:34:47 ◼   ► will tell you you're in downtime.

01:34:50 ◼   ► Now, while you can do something like whitelist a Wikipedia app, you can't whitelist the concept of Wikipedia.

01:35:01 ◼   ► So there's there's no way to say anywhere on the internet that you access through Safari is okay to use during downtime.

01:35:11 ◼   ► And all I keep thinking of is like, okay, if you're a parent, and you want to put your kids app into downtime so that they focus on their homework.

01:35:18 ◼   ► This is the modern world, right? Like, there's gonna be schools are going to have websites.

01:35:22 ◼   ► There's going to be things that kids need to go to. Like, how, what is the concept of how this is

01:35:27 ◼   ► supposed to be used at this point of time? This was not the application I thought you

01:35:32 ◼   ► were going to say you were having problems with. Okay, what did you think I was going to say?

01:35:36 ◼   ► Something esoteric. Yeah, no. "Safari."

01:35:41 ◼   ► Like one of the three main tenets of the iPhone, right?

01:35:45 ◼   ► Like the idea of this product existing,

01:35:49 ◼   ► the internet communicator portion.

01:35:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, so all of my dreams of the new version of iOS

01:35:55 ◼   ► where I was like, these new features of Safari

01:35:58 ◼   ► are gonna be a huge deal for me

01:35:59 ◼   ► because it allows me to organize the research for videos

01:36:02 ◼   ► in a different way on my iPad,

01:36:04 ◼   ► none of that can be used during the time

01:36:06 ◼   ► where I wish to be most productive.

01:36:08 ◼   ► And if I try to use it, I have to manually approve every single day, every website that I want to use,

01:36:16 ◼   ► and I can only approve it for that day.

01:36:19 ◼   ► So it's like, "Oh, I just want to look at something quick. Let me go to Google."

01:36:22 ◼   ► "Google's not available. Would you like to whitelist it for the rest of the day?"

01:36:25 ◼   ► "Uh, okay, yes. I'm going to forget this tomorrow, but you can use it for today."

01:36:29 ◼   ► And then I type in a Google search result, and the first thing that I want to click on,

01:36:32 ◼   ► it's like, "You can't go to this website because you're in downtime."

01:36:35 ◼   ► Now, hilariously, you can do things like say Twitter isn't allowed during downtime and

01:36:41 ◼   ► it'll try to block the Twitter apps.

01:36:44 ◼   ► It's like, okay, cool.

01:36:48 ◼   ► It tries to know that Twitter is not available in Safari and puts up like this weird extra

01:36:53 ◼   ► layer of blockage.

01:36:55 ◼   ► But what you can do is you can just download Chrome or Firefox and browse the whole f***ing

01:37:00 ◼   ► internet without any restrictions at all.

01:37:03 ◼   ► Right?

01:37:04 ◼   ► And it is the same thing on the Mac.

01:37:07 ◼   ► And it's like, I almost don't want to say it's like I'm closing off kids' ways to get around like their parents' authoritarian regimes.

01:37:14 ◼   ► But the downtime thing is just so trivial to get around if you are even the slightest bit technical.

01:37:24 ◼   ► And it's like the only place where this is really locked off is like, it is absolutely crazy making.

01:37:31 ◼   ► And so I thought, "Oh, well, I know what I'll do.

01:37:33 ◼   ► Let me just disable downtime on my iPad

01:37:37 ◼   ► so I can try to use this in the morning as a research device on Safari."

01:37:41 ◼   ► But it's like, "Oh, but then it disables downtime on every single device that you have."

01:37:44 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh, okay."

01:37:45 ◼   ► So the settings on every single machine all have to be the same,

01:37:50 ◼   ► or there's nothing.

01:37:51 ◼   ► It is insanity. It is totally insane.

01:37:54 ◼   ► I can't understand why Safari is unwhitelistable.

01:38:00 ◼   ► [laughs]

01:38:01 ◼   ► I would understand if it was un-blacklistable.

01:38:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:06 ◼   ► Because you could say, well, you can't blacklist Safari because it's too tied into the underpinnings

01:38:13 ◼   ► of the system.

01:38:15 ◼   ► But I can't work out why you cannot whitelist it when you also have independent controls

01:38:22 ◼   ► over websites.

01:38:23 ◼   ► Yeah, it's crazy making.

01:38:25 ◼   ► You can say yes or no to Google.

01:38:28 ◼   ► It's very—I can't wrap my head around this one.

01:38:32 ◼   ► This is one of my favorite bugs, which shows me again, like, nobody's looking at this stuff,

01:38:36 ◼   ► is, okay, you're just going to start all over. Apple has this old system called

01:38:40 ◼   ► Content Restrictions, and say, "I'm not going to use

01:38:44 ◼   ► any of the new stuff. Let me just use the old stuff that they used to try to use for parental controls."

01:38:48 ◼   ► So if you turn off everything else, but you turn on

01:38:52 ◼   ► Content Restrictions, there's a bunch of apps

01:38:56 ◼   ► that it says, "Do you want to enable or disable these apps?"

01:38:59 ◼   ► One of these is Safari. Whether that toggle is set to enable or disable, Safari totally disappears

01:39:07 ◼   ► if you have any other content restriction set for your device at all. And that one, there's no way

01:39:12 ◼   ► to get around it. So it's like, if you want to turn on content restrictions so that your kid can't

01:39:18 ◼   ► listen to explicit music, guess what? Safari disappears on that device. It's like, I don't

01:39:24 ◼   ► know what is going on, but these three layers are just working together in very strange

01:39:30 ◼   ► ways. And my notification and usage life is a total nightmare and I just, I don't know

01:39:39 ◼   ► what I'm going to do, Myke. I have no idea.

01:39:41 ◼   ► [laughs]

01:39:42 ◼   ► Seems like you are battling against the system.

01:39:45 ◼   ► Yeah, that's totally what it is. Like 100% I'm battling against the system. All of this

01:39:50 ◼   ► was just to say, like, what you said about notifications in the beginning, it's like,

01:39:53 ◼   ► I am trying to do the most trivial of thing.

01:39:57 ◼   ► Hey, iMessage, don't bother me in the morning.

01:40:00 ◼   ► That's all I'm trying to achieve.

01:40:02 ◼   ► Like, I don't wanna see your little badge when I wake up

01:40:04 ◼   ► and know that I have 27 messages from people overnight.

01:40:06 ◼   ► That's all I'm asking for.

01:40:08 ◼   ► And like the amount of effort to try to get this to happen

01:40:11 ◼   ► is like Herculean, even though it should be a thing

01:40:15 ◼   ► that these tools allow to happen,

01:40:18 ◼   ► but they all have weird bugs

01:40:19 ◼   ► or totally unacceptable side effects

01:40:22 ◼   ► that don't even make sense, even if you're just a parent trying to get your kid to use the device less.

01:40:28 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm 100% fighting against the system. I may have to just give it up and

01:40:35 ◼   ► get notified by iMessage whenever anyone all over the world messages me.