Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 383.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Setapp, and Membrful.

00:00:16 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Hi Jason.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Hi Myke, how are you?

00:00:21 ◼   ► I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good.

00:00:23 ◼   ► I'm looking out a window. I sat here before at this window.

00:00:26 ◼   ► I've got hills and palm trees and all kinds

00:00:29 ◼   ► because I'm back again in Beverly Hills today.

00:00:32 ◼   ► - Is it the same window?

00:00:33 ◼   ► Did you get the same room or are you using the same?

00:00:35 ◼   ► - We actually got the exact same room

00:00:38 ◼   ► since the last time we stayed here.

00:00:39 ◼   ► So I'm feeling pretty happy about that.

00:00:41 ◼   ► So I have a hashtag snow talk question for you, Jason,

00:00:43 ◼   ► which is how did you enjoy brunch on Saturday?

00:00:46 ◼   ► - I had a great time at brunch on Saturday,

00:00:47 ◼   ► but that's because, well, I mean, first off,

00:00:50 ◼   ► it's Southern California in late November,

00:00:53 ◼   ► which means it was sunny and warm, just a breeze.

00:00:58 ◼   ► It was a Saturday, late Saturday morning,

00:01:01 ◼   ► and you're sitting outside at a cafe

00:01:05 ◼   ► that does like breakfast all day.

00:01:07 ◼   ► And that alone, it would have been pretty great.

00:01:12 ◼   ► But who was across the table from me?

00:01:15 ◼   ► Myke Hurley.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Well, technically Adina Hurley

00:01:17 ◼   ► was across the table from me.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:01:21 ◼   ► - And Myke was kind of diagonal.

00:01:23 ◼   ► And it was lovely.

00:01:24 ◼   ► It was great to see you after two years, right?

00:01:27 ◼   ► Two plus years.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Yeah, we worked out that the last time we'd spent any time together was August 2019.

00:01:33 ◼   ► At the Relay 5th anniversary event in San Francisco. That was it. That was the last

00:01:37 ◼   ► time. So it has been a historically horrifically

00:01:40 ◼   ► long time. So I found it like you. Pretty wonderful to spend time with you and your

00:01:46 ◼   ► lovely family. So yeah, we had a great time. It was. It was. And I had some French toast,

00:01:51 ◼   ► you know. I would like to thank myself for that #StarTalk

00:01:54 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question you can even write it directly in our

00:01:58 ◼   ► document if you have such powers, very few do, or you can send in a tweet with a

00:02:03 ◼   ► hashtag SnowTalk or use question mark snow talk in the Relay FM members

00:02:06 ◼   ► discord which I'll mention now actually if you want to become a Relay FM member

00:02:11 ◼   ► maybe you want to support this show usually you would go to getupgradeplus.com

00:02:15 ◼   ► but if you or someone you know wants to join Relay FM for a whole year now is a

00:02:21 ◼   ► great time to do so because until December 17th all of our annual plans

00:02:25 ◼   ► are 22% off for new subscribers so if you're a new subscriber go to giverelay.com

00:02:30 ◼   ► this would include Upgrade Plus so you can get a year of ad-free episodes

00:02:35 ◼   ► and more content for just $39 go to giverelay.com and you can find out more

00:02:40 ◼   ► about how to do that so you know this is our...

00:02:43 ◼   ► Deals!

00:02:45 ◼   ► Cyber Monday!

00:02:46 ◼   ► Yeah!

00:02:47 ◼   ► It is Cyber Monday today!

00:02:48 ◼   ► Monday happy happy cyber Monday to those who celebrate and

00:02:52 ◼   ► you on cyber Monday is the ability to get 22% off an annual plan and you can get

00:03:01 ◼   ► you become a relay for member and you support the show and you also get bonus

00:03:05 ◼   ► content too so we have some follow-up on airplay and music on the Mac right yes

00:03:12 ◼   ► listener Sam wrote in last week we I was complaining about trying to use home

00:03:17 ◼   ► as my external, my music playback speakers on,

00:03:22 ◼   ► or my Sonos's actually, either one,

00:03:25 ◼   ► instead of wired connection to my iPod Hi-Fi.

00:03:28 ◼   ► And Sam wrote in to point out,

00:03:30 ◼   ► and this is very much what you can do on iOS,

00:03:33 ◼   ► and you can do it on the Mac too,

00:03:35 ◼   ► which is you can do a remote control

00:03:38 ◼   ► where you're basically controlling

00:03:39 ◼   ► what the HomePod is playing.

00:03:40 ◼   ► And since there's native Apple Music support in the HomePod,

00:03:44 ◼   ► What you do is in the AirPlay menu,

00:03:48 ◼   ► Sam wrote in the music app,

00:03:49 ◼   ► AirPlay devices should appear at the bottom of the list

00:03:52 ◼   ► under the heading switch to.

00:03:53 ◼   ► And if you click that,

00:03:54 ◼   ► you are now controlling what the HomePod is playing

00:03:56 ◼   ► without AirPlay and the keyboard media keys still work,

00:04:00 ◼   ► he says, more on that in a second.

00:04:02 ◼   ► If you shut down the Mac,

00:04:03 ◼   ► the music will continue because no AirPlay is involved.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Yeah, so this is true when you can do this on iOS too.

00:04:09 ◼   ► I actually think this is one of the very confusing things

00:04:12 ◼   ► about music playback on all of Apple's devices

00:04:15 ◼   ► is that you have two ways of doing it.

00:04:17 ◼   ► You can do AirPlay or you can do this like

00:04:19 ◼   ► play via remote control.

00:04:21 ◼   ► And sometimes I find that that is handed off.

00:04:26 ◼   ► And so you get in weird device states.

00:04:28 ◼   ► I mentioned this last week where you've used,

00:04:31 ◼   ► you've AirPlayed music to the HomePod.

00:04:34 ◼   ► And now all of a sudden you realize that it's on the HomePod

00:04:37 ◼   ► and not on your phone anymore.

00:04:39 ◼   ► And your phone maybe sometimes gets confused.

00:04:42 ◼   ► And so then you press play and it plays the same thing

00:04:46 ◼   ► on your phone instead of what it's already playing.

00:04:49 ◼   ► It's very confusing.

00:04:50 ◼   ► So I don't know what the solution is there,

00:04:52 ◼   ► but I think it's very strange

00:04:54 ◼   ► that Apple has these two different modes

00:04:55 ◼   ► to do what is effectively the same thing

00:04:57 ◼   ► when it comes to something like playing music

00:04:59 ◼   ► from the music app.

00:05:00 ◼   ► - I mean, honestly, that is not surprising to me

00:05:02 ◼   ► with some of the stuff on the Mac, right?

00:05:03 ◼   ► Like I feel like there are a lot of things

00:05:05 ◼   ► like, hey, you can do it this way.

00:05:06 ◼   ► - But this is true on iOS too.

00:05:07 ◼   ► It's true on iOS.

00:05:08 ◼   ► The same thing applies on iOS, right?

00:05:09 ◼   ► You can AirPlay to that or you can switch to that.

00:05:12 ◼   ► And so you end up in this weird position

00:05:13 ◼   ► where you can like, you can play music on a HomePod

00:05:16 ◼   ► and then also switch where your current device is output to.

00:05:20 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:05:21 ◼   ► - Right, and it's for a company

00:05:23 ◼   ► that doesn't wanna give people sound settings on iOS,

00:05:26 ◼   ► Apple has given people very complex sound modes on iOS.

00:05:31 ◼   ► So I don't know what's going on there.

00:05:33 ◼   ► I wanna zero in on,

00:05:34 ◼   ► and the keyboard media key still work though,

00:05:36 ◼   ► because this sent me down a rabbit hole this morning.

00:05:41 ◼   ► On the Mac, so you go to this mode where you switch to,

00:05:44 ◼   ► and basically the music app is controlling the HomePod,

00:05:48 ◼   ► but it's doing it remotely.

00:05:50 ◼   ► And like the HomePod is the one streaming the music

00:05:52 ◼   ► at that point, essentially,

00:05:53 ◼   ► which means if you shut down your Mac, as Sam said,

00:05:56 ◼   ► you, the music keeps going, great.

00:05:59 ◼   ► Your Mac crashes, whatever you need to restart,

00:06:00 ◼   ► you don't lose your playlist, great, theoretically.

00:06:02 ◼   ► But for example, I use the volume up and down keys

00:06:07 ◼   ► on my keyboard,

00:06:08 ◼   ► and they don't adjust the volume of the music,

00:06:11 ◼   ► they adjust my system volume.

00:06:13 ◼   ► I think Play/Pause will do the right thing,

00:06:16 ◼   ► but I'm not 100% sure about that

00:06:18 ◼   ► because as I mentioned in a previous episode,

00:06:20 ◼   ► I've turned that hardware keyboard off

00:06:22 ◼   ► because it kept getting bumped.

00:06:24 ◼   ► So I got better touch tool and literally I just said,

00:06:28 ◼   ► the Play/Pause next and previous just don't work anymore.

00:06:32 ◼   ► Please stop.

00:06:33 ◼   ► 'Cause it was every time I pushed my keyboard tray in,

00:06:37 ◼   ► I was messing up my music.

00:06:39 ◼   ► It was not good.

00:06:40 ◼   ► So I have a bunch of keyboard maestro shortcuts

00:06:42 ◼   ► that do this instead, right?

00:06:43 ◼   ► Using those preferred keys that I've been using

00:06:45 ◼   ► since the 90s.

00:06:46 ◼   ► And they use AppleScript to control the music app.

00:06:49 ◼   ► And it works great.

00:06:50 ◼   ► You say, you know, you press, what is it?

00:06:52 ◼   ► Command + Option + Space, and it gets the mode.

00:06:56 ◼   ► It basically does a play/pause.

00:06:57 ◼   ► If it's playing, it pauses.

00:06:58 ◼   ► If it pauses, it plays.

00:07:00 ◼   ► And I also have ones for volume that say,

00:07:02 ◼   ► set the volume up five or down five.

00:07:05 ◼   ► and those work great.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Guess what happens when music's in airplane mode?

00:07:11 ◼   ► When music is in airplane mode,

00:07:13 ◼   ► none of the Apple script features work anymore

00:07:16 ◼   ► because they say music isn't playing.

00:07:19 ◼   ► What's happening?

00:07:20 ◼   ► Well, the music app is looking at the target,

00:07:23 ◼   ► which is the AirPlay device, the HomePod in this case,

00:07:27 ◼   ► and is remote controlling it.

00:07:29 ◼   ► But the scripting interface, as far as it's concerned,

00:07:34 ◼   ► the Mac isn't playing music,

00:07:36 ◼   ► so therefore it's not happening.

00:07:38 ◼   ► It's like this completely weird case.

00:07:40 ◼   ► And there is a way I found,

00:07:43 ◼   ► I looked around in script debugger

00:07:45 ◼   ► and found a way you could get the volume

00:07:49 ◼   ► of the target AirPlay device.

00:07:52 ◼   ► But if, and you can set that volume,

00:07:55 ◼   ► but it doesn't do anything.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Nothing happens when you set the volume.

00:07:59 ◼   ► It doesn't actually change.

00:08:01 ◼   ► The volume doesn't change, it remains the same.

00:08:02 ◼   ► Now, if I go to the slider in the music interface,

00:08:05 ◼   ► the music app interface itself,

00:08:07 ◼   ► and slide it up a little bit, it gets louder.

00:08:09 ◼   ► And if I run that script again

00:08:11 ◼   ► to tell me what the volume is,

00:08:13 ◼   ► it will show that it's louder,

00:08:14 ◼   ► but I can't actually set that.

00:08:16 ◼   ► So it's one of those cases where I can have,

00:08:20 ◼   ► I can choose between two different frustrating experiences

00:08:23 ◼   ► with HomePods on my Mac,

00:08:25 ◼   ► but neither of them is satisfactory.

00:08:27 ◼   ► And despite what Sam said,

00:08:29 ◼   ► essentially controlling everything easily

00:08:32 ◼   ► from the keyboard in that mode doesn't work

00:08:36 ◼   ► so far as I can tell.

00:08:38 ◼   ► So it may be more reliable,

00:08:41 ◼   ► although I did notice the first time I tried this

00:08:43 ◼   ► this morning using this different mode,

00:08:46 ◼   ► one of the HomePod still started playing the track

00:08:49 ◼   ► for a second just by itself.

00:08:50 ◼   ► And then the stereo pair popped in.

00:08:53 ◼   ► So some of this stuff is not any better,

00:08:56 ◼   ► but I would imagine it's probably more reliable.

00:08:58 ◼   ► The problem I have where I pause the music on my Mac

00:09:01 ◼   ► and then I come back 30 minutes later and press play

00:09:03 ◼   ► and it gets really confused about where the music

00:09:06 ◼   ► is supposed to go and sort of plays it into the void

00:09:08 ◼   ► or doesn't know how to play it

00:09:10 ◼   ► or plays it on the Mac speakers,

00:09:13 ◼   ► that would probably not happen

00:09:14 ◼   ► because once it's handed off to the HomePod,

00:09:16 ◼   ► I would imagine the HomePod is pretty resilient.

00:09:19 ◼   ► But if I can't control my music playback

00:09:23 ◼   ► including immediate volume control

00:09:26 ◼   ► and play and pause the next track

00:09:28 ◼   ► from the keyboard of my Mac,

00:09:30 ◼   ► it's not gonna work, like I'm not gonna do that.

00:09:32 ◼   ► So this is just a separate way to be frustrated,

00:09:36 ◼   ► an alternate path of frustration for playing back music

00:09:40 ◼   ► via two AirPlay devices on the Mac.

00:09:42 ◼   ► So hooray.

00:09:43 ◼   ► - There's no, it doesn't feel like there's a resolution

00:09:45 ◼   ► to this, there isn't, they don't feel like

00:09:47 ◼   ► anything's improved for you.

00:09:49 ◼   ► - No, not, this method does not improve things at all.

00:09:53 ◼   ► It's a non-starter as long as I can't control it via keyboard.

00:09:57 ◼   ► So the other method is probably

00:09:59 ◼   ► what I will keep trying to use.

00:10:00 ◼   ► and hoping maybe it gets a little better or at least that it is not entirely annoying.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Just for those who didn't hear me say this last time, I'm not interested in putting bookshelf

00:10:09 ◼   ► speakers on my desk and running a cable. If I wanted to do that, I'd just go back to the iPod

00:10:15 ◼   ► HiFi, honestly. My goal here is to get some speakers that are probably off my desk on either

00:10:21 ◼   ► side of the room, which is where the Sonos' are, and use wireless technology to get a nice separate

00:10:26 ◼   ► thing. Adding more wires to the audio setup in my office is something I desperately do not want to do.

00:10:33 ◼   ► So, you know, but then that said, it's not great. And it has to be Apple Music, right? You don't

00:10:39 ◼   ► want to switch to Spotify or something. Yeah, that's not going to happen. It's going to be

00:10:43 ◼   ► Apple Music. And in fact, I'm also not going to wire up the Sonos Player app on my Mac and start

00:10:51 ◼   ► using that full time to play music to the Sonos speakers. I'm not going to do that either. I'm

00:10:54 ◼   ► I'm gonna use the music app because that's what I'm comfortable with. So we'll see if

00:10:59 ◼   ► it gets better, but right now it's just, you know, I was excited about this. I'm like,

00:11:05 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, that is a different mode. I wonder how that works." And, you know, the solution

00:11:08 ◼   ► here is that that should be controllable. It shouldn't be any different because you're

00:11:14 ◼   ► literally, it's the active device in the music app. You should be able to say pause. You

00:11:19 ◼   ► should be able to say volume up and have it work. And they wired it into the interface,

00:11:24 ◼   ► but it's not wired into the remote control, the scripting interface.

00:11:27 ◼   ► That functionality is really reliable when you do it from the iPhone.

00:11:31 ◼   ► Like using the iPhone's up and down volume controls then controls the HomePod's volume.

00:11:38 ◼   ► For as long as it lasts.

00:11:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean it can disconnect sometimes and get frustrating, but yeah, it's pretty reliable.

00:11:47 ◼   ► And all I want is I want my keyboard controls, which are not the standard controls, but as

00:11:52 ◼   ► As I said, the volume doesn't actually change the volume of the speakers.

00:11:55 ◼   ► It changes the volume coming out of my iMac speaker, which is not helpful because there's

00:12:01 ◼   ► no music coming out of the iMac speaker.

00:12:04 ◼   ► Just on like a tangential thing, the hotel that we're in, the TVs have built in Chromecast

00:12:09 ◼   ► support.

00:12:10 ◼   ► I really like the way Chromecast works.

00:12:12 ◼   ► I much prefer it to AirPlay because your device doesn't need to be doing anything.

00:12:17 ◼   ► You can just continue using your device as normal, and then the app that you're casting

00:12:21 ◼   ► from just has some like we use in Netflix.

00:12:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:24 ◼   ► And you just basically what you're saying is like, "Hey, TV, just go and get this Netflix

00:12:28 ◼   ► thing."

00:12:29 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:12:30 ◼   ► But it's just so much easier than like needing to sign in or anything.

00:12:32 ◼   ► And then the Netflix app just gets some play/pause controls.

00:12:35 ◼   ► I really like it.

00:12:36 ◼   ► Like AirPlay I've always found a bit like, "Am I allowed to use my device anymore when

00:12:41 ◼   ► I'm AirPlaying?"

00:12:42 ◼   ► See, that's—I will say I think that that's gotten a lot better on AirPlay because I've

00:12:45 ◼   ► had a couple of cases recently where I've used AirPlay because I've been in places where

00:12:49 ◼   ► there's an AirPlay TV because so many TVs now have AirPlay support. And this happened

00:12:54 ◼   ► this weekend at my in-laws place. Like, they have a TCL TV, kind of like mine, it's a Roku,

00:13:00 ◼   ► and it's got AirPlay support. And so I was able to take my Fubo TV, so my over-the-top

00:13:07 ◼   ► streaming to like a cable channel that they didn't get, and just put it on their TV, and

00:13:13 ◼   ► it worked fine. And I was able to do that and still use my iPad, and it ran for, you

00:13:18 ◼   ► know an hour plus and it wasn't a problem. So I think that that can get

00:13:23 ◼   ► better. You know there's more going on there but I agree the

00:13:28 ◼   ► either way the the ideal scenario and we're getting toward it especially if

00:13:33 ◼   ► you're in a place where there's a TV and you want to put things from your

00:13:36 ◼   ► computer on your or your device on your TV to watch it you should be able to do

00:13:42 ◼   ► that without logging into something on the TV without like you should just be

00:13:47 ◼   ► able to go put this there and Chromecast and I think Airplay are getting closer to that

00:13:52 ◼   ► goal.

00:13:53 ◼   ► The upgrade is, Jason.

00:13:56 ◼   ► It's almost December, which means we are entering upgradey, peak upgradey season, peak.

00:14:03 ◼   ► It's always upgradey season.

00:14:04 ◼   ► In the past couple of days, I've discovered how difficult it is to spell the word eighth.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Yes.

00:14:11 ◼   ► That's a tricky one because we are doing the 8th annual Upgradies and the voting is open.

00:14:17 ◼   ► Go to Upgradies.vote and you can submit your nominations, your votes

00:14:21 ◼   ► for the Upgradies award winners for 2021 in the 8th annual Upgradies.

00:14:29 ◼   ► If you want to find previous winners and maybe get some inspiration,

00:14:32 ◼   ► we have a history of every single Upgrady award given over at Upgradies.com,

00:14:38 ◼   ► which is managed and maintained by the wonderful Zach Knox of Moderator and our Discord.

00:14:43 ◼   ► But you can go to, if you want to vote, there's a Google form. Go to Upgradies.Vote.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Voting will close on Tuesday, December 21st, and the episode will be released,

00:14:53 ◼   ► the eighth annual Upgradies episode will be released on December 27th.

00:14:57 ◼   ► So between the 21st and the 27th, we will be tabulating your results and we will be using,

00:15:02 ◼   ► and as I mentioned it again, we'll mention it many times, your nominations,

00:15:06 ◼   ► they are guides, they are help, they are indicators for us.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Me and Jason ultimately pick the award winners

00:15:13 ◼   ► for each category, but we very much need your help

00:15:16 ◼   ► sometimes to break a tie, and often,

00:15:18 ◼   ► because there are some categories where we don't have any,

00:15:22 ◼   ► like I was looking through it, so in case you're familiar,

00:15:25 ◼   ► one of our categories is best movie, and I'm thinking like,

00:15:28 ◼   ► I don't know if I've seen a movie this year.

00:15:30 ◼   ► - Right, well, so yeah, the upgrade is nominees

00:15:33 ◼   ► from the listeners serve a couple of purposes.

00:15:35 ◼   ► One is to remind us or point out something

00:15:38 ◼   ► we should check out, right?

00:15:39 ◼   ► Like that's very helpful because you always,

00:15:42 ◼   ► I'll tell you, I get to the end of this process

00:15:44 ◼   ► and then I listen to some other podcasts awards

00:15:47 ◼   ► or I read Federico's awards on Mac stories, you know,

00:15:50 ◼   ► and I'll be like, oh, right, I forgot that one, right?

00:15:55 ◼   ► And that's terrible.

00:15:56 ◼   ► So we instituted this nomination process

00:15:58 ◼   ► and the collective wisdom of the upgradients

00:16:02 ◼   ► helps a great deal.

00:16:03 ◼   ► And then the second part of the process,

00:16:04 ◼   ► which you mentioned in passing,

00:16:06 ◼   ► is this makes the listeners basically the third person

00:16:11 ◼   ► in the room to discuss who wins.

00:16:15 ◼   ► We include the preferences of the listeners

00:16:17 ◼   ► as part of what we're doing.

00:16:19 ◼   ► And so that is very helpful

00:16:23 ◼   ► 'cause sometimes we disagree

00:16:25 ◼   ► or we don't have a strong opinion

00:16:26 ◼   ► and the opinion of the listeners can be very, very helpful.

00:16:31 ◼   ► - So don't forget, you wanna get your nominations in

00:16:34 ◼   ► Sooner the better, why not? Go to Upgradies.vote and you can get your nominations in and we'll be

00:16:39 ◼   ► recording and publishing an episode. I think it's going to be our last episode of the year this year.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Well, unless there's a surprise Apple event later that week or something. So that's literally the

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00:18:39 ◼   ► All right, so Apple put out a press release kind of thing

00:18:44 ◼   ► where they're talking about the fact

00:18:46 ◼   ► that they're going to be suing the NSO Group.

00:18:50 ◼   ► The NSO Group makes the Pegasus software,

00:18:53 ◼   ► I don't know if you call it software,

00:18:54 ◼   ► I can't think of the right term for this.

00:18:56 ◼   ► - It's like spyware, but it is software.

00:18:58 ◼   ► spyware. This was being used by a number of governments to spy on people in the media

00:19:03 ◼   ► and political opponents. This is a big news story from a few months ago. Apple has decided

00:19:10 ◼   ► to take legal action against them because of these exploitation of security flaws. They

00:19:17 ◼   ► want to make the NSO group take responsibility for how their software is misused, even though

00:19:21 ◼   ► they claim it's provided only to trustworthy government bodies.

00:19:28 ◼   ► there are lots of governments that have used it to do these terrible things.

00:19:31 ◼   ► Apple's able to go after the NSO group because they broke Apple's terms and

00:19:37 ◼   ► conditions by creating a bunch of fake iCloud accounts to test their exploits,

00:19:41 ◼   ► which is a really interesting way. It's like they need grounds, right, to try and

00:19:45 ◼   ► sue them. This is the case that they're building and they've broken the terms

00:19:49 ◼   ► and conditions so they're going to take them to court, but this is just a way in

00:19:53 ◼   ► in for them to go after them, right? That's what it is.

00:19:56 ◼   ► Yeah, this is, uh, you agree, uh, when you sign up for an iCloud account, you agree to

00:20:01 ◼   ► very many things, including, um, having the core, like abiding by California law, uh,

00:20:07 ◼   ► all sorts of stuff like that. Uh, Apple, uh, will be also donating $10

00:20:12 ◼   ► million as well as any of the damages from the lawsuit to organizations pursuing cyber

00:20:16 ◼   ► surveillance research and advocacy, like Citizen Lab and Amnesty Tech. Uh, I thought this was

00:20:22 ◼   ► really interesting because NSO I was reading it and so apparently already in

00:20:25 ◼   ► some financial trouble right my expectation is Apple's just attempting

00:20:29 ◼   ► to bankrupt them like that's the yeah the path and my my take on it when this

00:20:34 ◼   ► first happened I posted something really quick to six colors and what I said was

00:20:40 ◼   ► this feels to me like Apple has the ability because they have all the money

00:20:44 ◼   ► to just spend lots of money on very expensive very good lawyers to make to

00:20:51 ◼   ► inflict as much pain in NSO group as possible. And this is like one of those cases where,

00:20:57 ◼   ► you know, so often the story is, "Oh, the deep-pocketed corporation is impervious to your

00:21:03 ◼   ► claims as a consumer because they can just pay their lawyers and it's not worth it for you to

00:21:10 ◼   ► sue them or you need to settle or whatever." This is a case where it's sort of the reverse kind of

00:21:15 ◼   ► story where they can just keep this going and inflict maximum harm in the legal system

00:21:23 ◼   ► on this company. And that seems to be my view from that press release and all that is that's

00:21:29 ◼   ► what is going to happen here. They're going to make life as difficult as possible for

00:21:33 ◼   ► NSO Group.

00:21:34 ◼   ► - And you know what, I say good.

00:21:37 ◼   ► This stuff shouldn't exist.

00:21:39 ◼   ► This stuff just should not exist.

00:21:40 ◼   ► - This is a company, yeah, it's had trouble.

00:21:42 ◼   ► It's an Israel-based company,

00:21:46 ◼   ► but the whole idea here is at some point,

00:21:49 ◼   ► if there's a corporation that literally

00:21:50 ◼   ► their entire business is to find exploits

00:21:54 ◼   ► in popular computer operating systems

00:21:57 ◼   ► and sell them to the highest bidder

00:21:59 ◼   ► to do awful things with them,

00:22:02 ◼   ► It's hard to see how a company like that

00:22:06 ◼   ► is allowed to stay in business outside of a country

00:22:11 ◼   ► that is itself lawless, right?

00:22:14 ◼   ► And so it's hard to see how that's gonna happen

00:22:18 ◼   ► with an MSO group.

00:22:20 ◼   ► - I remember at the time when this was happening,

00:22:24 ◼   ► I had this kind of thought in my mind of like,

00:22:25 ◼   ► why isn't Apple doing anything about this?

00:22:28 ◼   ► And I guess they had to try and find a way, right?

00:22:30 ◼   ► Like, maybe what they're doing is not necessarily inherently illegal, right?

00:22:35 ◼   ► They had to find some kind of grounds to pursue them.

00:22:40 ◼   ► And I'm pleased that they found them.

00:22:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:42 ◼   ► And, you know, it's complicated.

00:22:44 ◼   ► It's complicated.

00:22:45 ◼   ► And there are other cases where this exact same strategy would make us feel uncomfortable.

00:22:50 ◼   ► But this is a company that literally profits on selling security exploits to awful governments

00:22:57 ◼   ► who want to expose people who are opposed

00:23:01 ◼   ► to their authoritarian regime, right?

00:23:04 ◼   ► It's dissidents and opponents in other countries

00:23:09 ◼   ► and it's just, it's ugly and makes devices less secure.

00:23:14 ◼   ► So I'm up for this.

00:23:17 ◼   ► - There's no way to do the ideal, right?

00:23:21 ◼   ► Like the ideal is like, oh, this software

00:23:22 ◼   ► is only used to find terrorists, right?

00:23:25 ◼   ► Like, there's an ideal idea in that.

00:23:28 ◼   ► It's like, oh, if that was the case, sure, okay,

00:23:30 ◼   ► I'll allow it.

00:23:31 ◼   ► But that's just not the way that these things are done.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Like, you create any tools and someone's gonna misuse it.

00:23:37 ◼   ► And the way that this can be misused is pretty terrible.

00:23:39 ◼   ► So.

00:23:41 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:23:41 ◼   ► - When, moving on, when the Apple Silicon Macs were coming

00:23:47 ◼   ► out, we were all wondering what the future of Bootcamp was

00:23:49 ◼   ► because it didn't seem like Apple was going to continue

00:23:52 ◼   ► making Bootcamp.

00:23:53 ◼   ► And also, right, like we needed Windows on ARM

00:23:56 ◼   ► and it kind of wasn't Windows on ARM at the time.

00:23:59 ◼   ► And that started to change Windows's running

00:24:01 ◼   ► on more and more ARM machines,

00:24:02 ◼   ► but there was no kind of indication

00:24:05 ◼   ► that we would be able to get a native version

00:24:07 ◼   ► of Windows running on Apple Silicon.

00:24:09 ◼   ► There was a quote that Craig Federighi gave

00:24:11 ◼   ► like in an interview where they kind of just like,

00:24:12 ◼   ► yeah, we're fine with it,

00:24:14 ◼   ► but it's up to Microsoft. - Up to Microsoft.

00:24:16 ◼   ► - And it seemed like a kind of a weird thing

00:24:19 ◼   ► for Microsoft to be dragging their heels over, right?

00:24:21 ◼   ► Like this is their whole business,

00:24:22 ◼   ► Like why not just sell it to more people?

00:24:24 ◼   ► Well, it turns out that Qualcomm

00:24:26 ◼   ► currently has an exclusive agreement with Microsoft.

00:24:29 ◼   ► - Turns out that part of the deal

00:24:33 ◼   ► to get Microsoft Windows to run on Qualcomm's ARM processors

00:24:38 ◼   ► was an exclusivity window,

00:24:41 ◼   ► which leads me to believe that Qualcomm

00:24:44 ◼   ► basically paid Microsoft or cut a deal with Microsoft

00:24:49 ◼   ► that involved a discount.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Money changed hands.

00:24:52 ◼   ► - Or did the work for Microsoft.

00:24:54 ◼   ► - Or did the work for Microsoft.

00:24:55 ◼   ► So money changed hands, I think for sure.

00:24:57 ◼   ► And that's fair.

00:24:59 ◼   ► That's perfectly reasonable.

00:25:00 ◼   ► It actually reminds me a little bit

00:25:01 ◼   ► of the whole iPhone exclusivity with AT&T, right?

00:25:04 ◼   ► That it was a, we're getting this off the ground

00:25:08 ◼   ► and we need you as a partner.

00:25:09 ◼   ► So we're gonna give you an exclusivity arrangement.

00:25:12 ◼   ► But this report that's out there,

00:25:15 ◼   ► which is lightly sourced,

00:25:19 ◼   ► It's from xdadevelopers.com,

00:25:23 ◼   ► but this report says that it is expiring soon.

00:25:29 ◼   ► That's all we really know.

00:25:33 ◼   ► And I've said all along, and I continue to say

00:25:36 ◼   ► that I think it is inevitable

00:25:38 ◼   ► that Windows 4 ARM processors will run on Apple Silicon.

00:25:43 ◼   ► I don't know about bootcamp.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Bootcamp's not impossible because of the way

00:25:48 ◼   ► that Apple architected bootcamp on Macs

00:25:51 ◼   ► with the T2 chip in them.

00:25:53 ◼   ► There's a secure signed operating system process

00:25:56 ◼   ► and they support Windows secure signed boot

00:26:00 ◼   ► just as they do Mac OS.

00:26:02 ◼   ► So like, I think Apple is fine with it, essentially.

00:26:06 ◼   ► Like if you wanna do that, go right ahead.

00:26:08 ◼   ► So if there's a way to technically make it work

00:26:10 ◼   ► on Apple Silicon in bootcamp, great.

00:26:12 ◼   ► But I think that more broadly, this is that moment

00:26:15 ◼   ► where Microsoft can finally make available

00:26:18 ◼   ► an official version of Windows

00:26:21 ◼   ► that runs natively on ARM processors

00:26:23 ◼   ► to be used with something like Parallels or VMware

00:26:27 ◼   ► on Apple Silicon Mac so it runs at full speed.

00:26:30 ◼   ► Now keep in mind, it is the ARM version of Windows,

00:26:33 ◼   ► not the regular Intel version of Windows.

00:26:36 ◼   ► I think Apple, the,

00:26:39 ◼   ► oh no, it was a VMware.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Somebody said basically,

00:26:43 ◼   ► we're gonna let Microsoft handle the translation layer,

00:26:46 ◼   ► right, but Microsoft has to build

00:26:47 ◼   ► an Intel translation layer for Windows itself,

00:26:49 ◼   ► and so that would run,

00:26:51 ◼   ► and so you should be able to run Intel stuff

00:26:53 ◼   ► on Windows for ARM.

00:26:55 ◼   ► So it's all kind of coming together,

00:26:58 ◼   ► and I think this will be,

00:27:00 ◼   ► I think it'll be a real thing.

00:27:01 ◼   ► Right now you can sign up for like the test version

00:27:06 ◼   ► through their like early release program,

00:27:08 ◼   ► and then just put that in Parallels

00:27:10 ◼   ► on an Apple Silicon Mac, and it works fine.

00:27:13 ◼   ► it works just fine.

00:27:14 ◼   ► But I think Microsoft is not allowed, it looks like,

00:27:18 ◼   ► from this deal to do anything but bundle it

00:27:21 ◼   ► with ARM systems running Qualcomm processors.

00:27:26 ◼   ► And when that deal ends, we may see this resolved quickly.

00:27:30 ◼   ► And that's the goal.

00:27:31 ◼   ► I mean, ideally what you want is the ability

00:27:33 ◼   ► to get VMware Fusion or Parallels desktop

00:27:36 ◼   ► and even potentially just buy ARM windows from them

00:27:42 ◼   ► or from Microsoft directly.

00:27:44 ◼   ► And I think it will happen.

00:27:46 ◼   ► And this is just another sign of why it hasn't yet,

00:27:48 ◼   ► but it just feels inevitable to me

00:27:50 ◼   ► because you look at what Apple wants

00:27:51 ◼   ► and what Microsoft wants,

00:27:52 ◼   ► and like there's no reason that they would

00:27:54 ◼   ► not want their customers to be happy, right?

00:27:58 ◼   ► Their joint customers to get what they need,

00:28:02 ◼   ► which is the ability to run Microsoft's operating system

00:28:05 ◼   ► on a piece of Apple hardware.

00:28:06 ◼   ► Like everybody wins in that scenario.

00:28:08 ◼   ► I mean, except for Qualcomm and Intel,

00:28:11 ◼   ► but that's okay, they don't care.

00:28:13 ◼   ► - I mean, Qualcomm's fine.

00:28:15 ◼   ► Intel's, you know, like Qualcomm's still gonna

00:28:17 ◼   ► make the chips, right?

00:28:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I meant, you know,

00:28:19 ◼   ► Microsoft and Apple don't care,

00:28:20 ◼   ► I guess is what I'm saying. - No.

00:28:21 ◼   ► - It's like in the end, Microsoft and Apple

00:28:23 ◼   ► just wanna make their customers happy,

00:28:25 ◼   ► and this makes them happy.

00:28:26 ◼   ► And I know that people who are thinking about

00:28:28 ◼   ► the old days of Apple and Microsoft

00:28:29 ◼   ► may think differently about this,

00:28:31 ◼   ► but it's, everybody is gonna want this,

00:28:35 ◼   ► and so they'll give it to them.

00:28:38 ◼   ► - That is Microsoft's business model now.

00:28:41 ◼   ► Like let's give everything to everybody

00:28:43 ◼   ► all of the time, make them pay for it.

00:28:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and we already have seen,

00:28:46 ◼   ► I mean, you could say, well, they don't want,

00:28:47 ◼   ► Qualcomm doesn't want those benchmark tests

00:28:50 ◼   ► that are disappointing 'cause they show how far ahead

00:28:53 ◼   ► Apple is with their own processors than Qualcomm is.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Well, that's true, but there already been stories,

00:28:59 ◼   ► you know, using VMware or using Parallels on Apple Silicon.

00:29:04 ◼   ► There already been those stories.

00:29:05 ◼   ► So, you know, it's an Apple is ahead of them.

00:29:09 ◼   ► So, you know, that's just how it is.

00:29:12 ◼   ► So anyway, yeah, I'm not super excited about this

00:29:15 ◼   ► because there's not a lot I use Windows for,

00:29:17 ◼   ► even though I do have bootcamp on my iMac,

00:29:19 ◼   ► but I know it will be meaningful for a bunch of people.

00:29:23 ◼   ► - So I've done something that I haven't done for a while.

00:29:25 ◼   ► A lot of people haven't done for a while,

00:29:27 ◼   ► which is travel, like big travel.

00:29:28 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:29:30 ◼   ► - So across the globe travel.

00:29:32 ◼   ► And I have some tech travel observations.

00:29:35 ◼   ► I remember when people talked about tech travel.

00:29:39 ◼   ► - We used to do this. - What?

00:29:40 ◼   ► - We haven't done this in a long time.

00:29:42 ◼   ► And a lot of my technology has changed.

00:29:44 ◼   ► So one MacBook Pro, 14 inch MacBook Pro,

00:29:48 ◼   ► go to sitting right here in front of me today.

00:29:50 ◼   ► I love all the power.

00:29:51 ◼   ► I'm excited to edit on this afterwards

00:29:53 ◼   ► 'cause I'm not gonna be able to get things done quickly,

00:29:55 ◼   ► actually faster than my M1 iMac at the studio.

00:30:00 ◼   ► I'm enjoying the additional screen space.

00:30:02 ◼   ► What I will say is this is a big thick bulky laptop.

00:30:05 ◼   ► It is, I notice it in my bag.

00:30:08 ◼   ► My bag is a little tight with this thing in it.

00:30:10 ◼   ► - We talked about this when we saw each other on Saturday.

00:30:13 ◼   ► I said, I got the MacBook Pro with me

00:30:17 ◼   ► and I got to send it back.

00:30:18 ◼   ► Actually, probably in the next week or so,

00:30:20 ◼   ► I got to send that back to Apple.

00:30:21 ◼   ► It's my review unit.

00:30:22 ◼   ► I asked them for an extension

00:30:24 ◼   ► so that I could travel with it a little bit.

00:30:25 ◼   ► I took it to Arizona and I took it with me

00:30:27 ◼   ► to Southern California this week or last week.

00:30:29 ◼   ► So yeah, it's big and heavy.

00:30:33 ◼   ► It's so great.

00:30:34 ◼   ► but as somebody who has traveled with a MacBook Air

00:30:36 ◼   ► for a very long time and then an iPad

00:30:39 ◼   ► when I wasn't traveling with a MacBook Air, it's a lot.

00:30:42 ◼   ► That said, it is also all the power of a desktop,

00:30:47 ◼   ► basically, in that thing.

00:30:49 ◼   ► And that is, you look at, and this is the,

00:30:52 ◼   ► this is ultimately, this is the trade-off

00:30:55 ◼   ► between MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, is this,

00:30:57 ◼   ► which is, do you want it to be lighter and thinner

00:31:01 ◼   ► and just not take up as much space

00:31:03 ◼   ► and not weigh down your bag and are willing to have it not be the full-on high-performance

00:31:11 ◼   ► desktop experience? Or do you not care about the size and the weight because you just really

00:31:16 ◼   ► want to have the high-performance desktop experience everywhere you go? And that's the

00:31:20 ◼   ► trade-off. And I was talking to you about how, as we were leaving, it was sort of like

00:31:25 ◼   ► I keep telling myself reasons why I can't buy the MacBook Pro, including the fact that

00:31:31 ◼   ► My son's going to college next year, and so I'm going to buy him a brand new laptop then.

00:31:36 ◼   ► So I can't even do my "Oh, I'll roll down my existing MacBook Air to other members of

00:31:41 ◼   ► my family" trick.

00:31:42 ◼   ► That's not going to work because I'm going to still have to buy him a new laptop.

00:31:46 ◼   ► But the truth is that for me, which is it is kind of a load, and I'm not sure I really

00:31:52 ◼   ► need it when I'm traveling because my needs when I'm traveling are not that intense.

00:31:56 ◼   ► But it is great, like having spent this time with it.

00:32:02 ◼   ► The screen is great.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Again, I keep saying we don't pay attention to the screen because we got that processor,

00:32:08 ◼   ► the M1 Pro and M1 Max, and it makes such a huge difference.

00:32:13 ◼   ► And the look of it is different.

00:32:15 ◼   ► And there's a notch that we can all talk about.

00:32:17 ◼   ► But that screen is just gorgeous.

00:32:20 ◼   ► So I do love it, even though I'm almost certainly not getting one as much as it would be fun

00:32:26 ◼   ► to get one. This has also been my first trip with my iPad mini. This is the only iPad that

00:32:32 ◼   ► I brought with me. This is my iPad now and it didn't bring any of the larger ones. I found the

00:32:37 ◼   ► iPad mini to be excellent for watching movies on a plane because it's really small and it fits onto

00:32:41 ◼   ► any tray table, any space, right? And also my iPad Pro always had the magic keyboard and I wouldn't

00:32:48 ◼   ► bring an extra smart cover, so that was just the cover. And the magic keyboard would make the iPad

00:32:53 ◼   ► pro like difficult to place on a plane sometimes, but because the iPad mini just has the smart

00:32:58 ◼   ► cover it's perfect and smart covers are so good for video watching and just make the iPad mini

00:33:03 ◼   ► really great for that. I'm surprised when I've heard several people say this but especially you

00:33:09 ◼   ► about the smart cover because I always use a smart cover and I only use the keyboard when I want to

00:33:17 ◼   ► use the keyboard and the this is the reason is that the smart cover for most use if you're not

00:33:22 ◼   ► typing is really nice and it's light and it lets you put it in all the right little angles

00:33:30 ◼   ► and it's great. So, and I agree the smart cover on the mini is nice too.

00:33:34 ◼   ► And what I will say the 256 gig that's what I got. I got tons of content on that which

00:33:39 ◼   ► is awesome. I'm very pleased that I got the larger one because I've just put like loads

00:33:43 ◼   ► and loads of video stuff on there. The mini is difficult for using outside in the sun.

00:33:50 ◼   ► screen doesn't get as bright. Like it's tricky for me to be able to read on it, especially

00:33:55 ◼   ► if I'm wearing sunglasses. And my iPhone I can deal with, but the mini just doesn't seem

00:33:59 ◼   ► to get bright enough for me. Which, you know, if you want to read, you know, it can be tricky,

00:34:05 ◼   ► but I think this still kind of reinforces like if reading, if you're going to read a

00:34:09 ◼   ► book, you're going to get an e-reader, right? Like that's the, it's probably still going

00:34:12 ◼   ► to be the thing for a very, very, very long time.

00:34:14 ◼   ► That you want to read outside, e-reader is the way to do. Go read my review of e-readers

00:34:19 ◼   ► on sixcolors.com.

00:34:20 ◼   ► - We're gonna get to that at some point.

00:34:21 ◼   ► I wanna talk about easy readers of you at some point.

00:34:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:34:24 ◼   ► - But yeah, it's the glossy screens too.

00:34:26 ◼   ► They just reflect the light and it just makes it

00:34:29 ◼   ► not an awesome experience for using outside.

00:34:31 ◼   ► I've also, this is the longest trip that I've taken

00:34:35 ◼   ► with my AirPods Max.

00:34:36 ◼   ► I continue to love the way that they sound.

00:34:40 ◼   ► They're great, like the noise cancellation is excellent

00:34:44 ◼   ► on an airplane, like it just cuts all the noise out.

00:34:47 ◼   ► And I wore them basically the entire 11 hours of the flight and found it very comfortable.

00:34:52 ◼   ► The only problem is they take up a ton of space. Like they don't close down. Like Adina has those

00:34:59 ◼   ► Sony ones, like the over-ear Sony ones that everybody loves. And the case is really small

00:35:03 ◼   ► because they fold up. But the AirPods Pro don't do that. And plus the case that they come with,

00:35:08 ◼   ► I'm not comfortable with the protection that they provide. So Underscore David Smith had this case,

00:35:14 ◼   ► I saw it and I bought it, it was on Amazon.

00:35:17 ◼   ► It's like a hard shell case, which is great

00:35:19 ◼   ► because then you also, it has a little space.

00:35:21 ◼   ► I put the ridiculously expensive cable in there

00:35:24 ◼   ► if you want to plug it into a headphone jack

00:35:25 ◼   ► that it goes into, but it's huge.

00:35:28 ◼   ► It's just so big.

00:35:30 ◼   ► And so it works for what I want,

00:35:32 ◼   ► but it takes up tons of space in my bag.

00:35:35 ◼   ► That's kind of my only knock on them.

00:35:37 ◼   ► I wish they would have made them more foldable

00:35:40 ◼   ► and more compact as a way to travel with them.

00:35:42 ◼   ► I get the feeling that AirPods Max is gonna get a revision at some point here that addresses

00:35:47 ◼   ► a whole lot of things that are not quite right with the first version.

00:35:51 ◼   ► I would expect so.

00:35:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:54 ◼   ► And I'm using them for podcast recording today.

00:35:55 ◼   ► I have the little cable, the lightning to audio cable.

00:35:59 ◼   ► I find it very weird.

00:36:01 ◼   ► So transparency, I hate transparency mode for recording, I found out, because I hear

00:36:06 ◼   ► myself way too much.

00:36:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:08 ◼   ► - Well, and you've got your voice feeding back to you anyway

00:36:11 ◼   ► so you don't need to hear it again.

00:36:15 ◼   ► - Which is why it's weird because, you know,

00:36:18 ◼   ► which I said the way you set it up,

00:36:19 ◼   ► like I hear my own microphone a little bit in my ears,

00:36:22 ◼   ► which is helpful for recording.

00:36:24 ◼   ► So I also, then I get a double, which it doesn't sound right.

00:36:28 ◼   ► Noise cancellation doesn't work.

00:36:30 ◼   ► I don't know why it feels strange.

00:36:31 ◼   ► So I've got it set to off,

00:36:33 ◼   ► but these, it just feels different.

00:36:37 ◼   ► the seal is much more intense than the seal on my usual headphones.

00:36:41 ◼   ► And so it feels a bit disorienting today to record these on.

00:36:44 ◼   ► Alright, that's what it sounds like me all the time because I got the in-ear monitor

00:36:47 ◼   ► so they're completely blocks off the sound and so the world is kind of dropped off other

00:36:52 ◼   ► than what I can hear of my own voice through the microphone.

00:36:55 ◼   ► But my usual headphones, I use the Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro, that's the headphones that I use.

00:37:00 ◼   ► They also have a good seal to them.

00:37:01 ◼   ► It's just different.

00:37:02 ◼   ► I think it's just because it feels different.

00:37:03 ◼   ► I'm finding it like a little disorientating, but I'm happy with it.

00:37:07 ◼   ► Because I didn't want to pack two pairs of headphones to travel with.

00:37:10 ◼   ► And you haven't done a lot of remote recording the last couple of years.

00:37:13 ◼   ► So this would be the first one.

00:37:16 ◼   ► I also, this is not exciting for anyone, maybe except me and you.

00:37:20 ◼   ► I upgraded some of my audio gear.

00:37:22 ◼   ► I got a new, better travel stand and a really small XLR cable.

00:37:26 ◼   ► That was a life hack for me.

00:37:28 ◼   ► Because I usually take like one of my, yes, a tiny one.

00:37:31 ◼   ► It's a tiny little XLR cable.

00:37:32 ◼   ► I would usually bring like a big full, I don't know,

00:37:35 ◼   ► couple of meter one or whatever.

00:37:36 ◼   ► Just one of the ones I had in my audio gear kind of closet,

00:37:39 ◼   ► but I bought a really tiny XLR cable this time,

00:37:41 ◼   ► which is making cable management.

00:37:43 ◼   ► - I have one of those and it's great.

00:37:45 ◼   ► Cause yeah, you don't have this giant cable

00:37:46 ◼   ► that you don't need because you only need to record,

00:37:48 ◼   ► connect two little tiny things together.

00:37:51 ◼   ► I've done that.

00:37:52 ◼   ► I've got some short USB-C cables too, same thing,

00:37:55 ◼   ► which like this doesn't need to be,

00:37:56 ◼   ► I don't need to carry all that wire.

00:37:59 ◼   ► - Speaking of USB-C,

00:38:01 ◼   ► I have an observation.

00:38:03 ◼   ► The international charging is becoming more complicated

00:38:06 ◼   ► because all of my cables are USB-C cables now,

00:38:10 ◼   ► but hotels have USB-A ports in them.

00:38:12 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:38:16 ◼   ► - So like I previously I had USB to USB-C, right?

00:38:20 ◼   ► 'Cause that's what Apple was shipping with everything

00:38:22 ◼   ► or USB to Lightning.

00:38:23 ◼   ► Now it's all USB-C to USB-C or USB-C to Lightning.

00:38:27 ◼   ► So I can't plug my newer cables

00:38:29 ◼   ► into any of the wall sockets

00:38:30 ◼   ► unless I have the full on wall thing

00:38:32 ◼   ► with the adapters and stuff,

00:38:33 ◼   ► which I don't bring as many of those

00:38:35 ◼   ► 'cause they're too bulky.

00:38:36 ◼   ► And so I go, I've arrived and I'm like,

00:38:38 ◼   ► "Ah, I don't have the right cables anymore."

00:38:40 ◼   ► So I feel like I need USB,

00:38:42 ◼   ► like some kind of USB-A to USB-C dongle for hotels now.

00:38:47 ◼   ► - Dongle town hotel, you can check in anytime you like,

00:38:51 ◼   ► but you can never--

00:38:52 ◼   ► - 'Cause I thought that like,

00:38:53 ◼   ► oh, I will change all my cables to USB-C cables now,

00:38:57 ◼   ► because now I only have to have one cable type.

00:39:00 ◼   ► but then it's great for if I have using the power bricks,

00:39:03 ◼   ► but I can't always use all the power bricks.

00:39:05 ◼   ► So there we go.

00:39:07 ◼   ► - I have a footnote here too.

00:39:08 ◼   ► One is I always travel with a, an adapter,

00:39:13 ◼   ► USB adapter thing of some kind,

00:39:15 ◼   ► but I realized that for you, it's a bigger challenge

00:39:17 ◼   ► because you don't have the right plug type.

00:39:19 ◼   ► So it gets even more complicated for international travel.

00:39:22 ◼   ► I will say I recently changed my,

00:39:27 ◼   ► And my method was I actually have the same adapter

00:39:30 ◼   ► by my bed and I just unplug it and take it with me

00:39:35 ◼   ► when I travel.

00:39:38 ◼   ► That's been a method that I've enjoyed a lot

00:39:40 ◼   ► because it means that I always know exactly what it is

00:39:43 ◼   ► and where it is and what it's plugged into.

00:39:45 ◼   ► I recently bought a new thing that I traveled with

00:39:50 ◼   ► the last couple of times that's pretty great.

00:39:55 ◼   ► It's a, it's a, it's a gallium, you know,

00:39:58 ◼   ► it's a GaN charger.

00:39:59 ◼   ► So it's super tiny.

00:40:02 ◼   ► It's got all the GaNs in there.

00:40:04 ◼   ► And it's two USB and a U, two USB-C and a USB-A.

00:40:09 ◼   ► - Is that from an Anker product?

00:40:10 ◼   ► - This one is TechNet.

00:40:13 ◼   ► - TechNet.

00:40:14 ◼   ► - So who knows what that is?

00:40:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:40:19 ◼   ► But it is,

00:40:24 ◼   ► you know, it's real small.

00:40:25 ◼   ► I mean, I guess that's my point is that the other ones

00:40:27 ◼   ► I've used have been like an anchor one,

00:40:29 ◼   ► and it's a big block with a long cable

00:40:31 ◼   ► snaking out of it to go somewhere.

00:40:33 ◼   ► And this one is a flip down 'cause it's the US, right?

00:40:37 ◼   ► So it's a flip down the two prongs, plug it in,

00:40:39 ◼   ► and you get two USB-C and a USB-A.

00:40:42 ◼   ► And that, for my purposes, that's all I really need

00:40:46 ◼   ► in terms of like iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch.

00:40:51 ◼   ► And so that's been a nice little addition too,

00:40:54 ◼   ► to my little travel.

00:40:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe I just need to get,

00:40:57 ◼   ► I have one of these, I have an Anker one for the UK.

00:41:00 ◼   ► It's really great.

00:41:01 ◼   ► I use it in the studio to charge those things, right?

00:41:03 ◼   ► Like to have a iPhone and iPad,

00:41:06 ◼   ► I found an Apple Watch dock I have on my desk.

00:41:09 ◼   ► And then I have just like an extra port

00:41:10 ◼   ► for like a cable to plug stuff in.

00:41:12 ◼   ► Maybe I need a US version of one of those.

00:41:14 ◼   ► And then that will just be everything that I need.

00:41:16 ◼   ► - I was gonna say,

00:41:18 ◼   ► invest in your future return to the US, get one of those.

00:41:23 ◼   ► You should get one of those and just ship it to yourself

00:41:25 ◼   ► while you're here in America.

00:41:27 ◼   ► - I might do that actually.

00:41:28 ◼   ► - And use it for the rest of your trip.

00:41:30 ◼   ► But-

00:41:31 ◼   ► - But I kind of have enough for now,

00:41:33 ◼   ► but it's just like, I was, yeah,

00:41:36 ◼   ► I had it all set before COVID, right?

00:41:38 ◼   ► Like because we were USB-A everywhere and now-

00:41:41 ◼   ► - If the hotels have taught us anything,

00:41:45 ◼   ► if Hotel D'Angleton has taught us anything,

00:41:47 ◼   ► It's that we can convert our lives to a new cable standard,

00:41:52 ◼   ► but the hotels will always be five to seven years behind.

00:41:56 ◼   ► Right?

00:41:57 ◼   ► - It's like, how long did we see the 30 pin connector

00:41:59 ◼   ► around in hotels?

00:41:59 ◼   ► - I stayed in a hotel in Colorado a couple months ago

00:42:04 ◼   ► that still had a dock connector.

00:42:06 ◼   ► And I was like, what is happening?

00:42:10 ◼   ► It's like a horror movie, right?

00:42:12 ◼   ► It's like the dock connector is in the building.

00:42:17 ◼   ► So yeah, it's uh, it's we can control our own lives, but we can't control what the what's in the hotels

00:42:22 ◼   ► So that's why I always travel with so because yeah, the last thing you want to do is then

00:42:25 ◼   ► Carry a bunch of usb ac

00:42:28 ◼   ► Connector dongle-y things with you. That's no good

00:42:31 ◼   ► No good

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00:44:54 ◼   ► Let's talk about shortcuts for the Macintosh OS.

00:44:57 ◼   ► So you have published article after article about this and I've been saving them all up

00:45:03 ◼   ► because I wanted to talk about it probably this week

00:45:05 ◼   ► because didn't wanna spend a ton of time

00:45:08 ◼   ► trawling through all the news this week

00:45:09 ◼   ► because I am on holiday.

00:45:11 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:45:11 ◼   ► - So we're gonna talk about shortcuts.

00:45:13 ◼   ► Can we talk about like kind of like an overall perspective?

00:45:18 ◼   ► What have you been trying out with macOS?

00:45:21 ◼   ► Like you're trying to make some of your shortcuts

00:45:23 ◼   ► go across platform, right?

00:45:24 ◼   ► That you're using on iOS as well?

00:45:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it's a couple of things going on there.

00:45:28 ◼   ► One is, can I,

00:45:30 ◼   ► Some of the things that I've built for iOS

00:45:33 ◼   ► are really convenient and I'd like to replicate them.

00:45:36 ◼   ► And I've tried to replicate some of them using

00:45:38 ◼   ► different means using services and keyboard maestro

00:45:43 ◼   ► and things like that.

00:45:44 ◼   ► And I wanted to see, could I make one version of this

00:45:47 ◼   ► that runs on my iPad, my iPhone and my Mac?

00:45:51 ◼   ► And so I've done that a little bit,

00:45:52 ◼   ► which has challenges, right?

00:45:55 ◼   ► Because there are just kind of holes in macOS

00:45:59 ◼   ► in Mac OS actually, where there are actions

00:46:04 ◼   ► that are not available.

00:46:05 ◼   ► And I know you talked about this with Federico on connected.

00:46:10 ◼   ► They're like Safari especially, but like the share sheet

00:46:17 ◼   ► on Mac OS is not a real share sheet.

00:46:20 ◼   ► And so you end up having to do these things

00:46:23 ◼   ► that I've been doing, where it's sort of like,

00:46:25 ◼   ► If device is Mac, do this, otherwise do that.

00:46:29 ◼   ► And it would be taken to its most ridiculous extreme.

00:46:32 ◼   ► You'd literally have two totally separate things

00:46:35 ◼   ► in the if and else statements.

00:46:37 ◼   ► And at that point, why are you even doing it?

00:46:40 ◼   ► But the truth is that a lot of the work is the same.

00:46:44 ◼   ► And they're just very specific actions where you go,

00:46:47 ◼   ► "Oh, I can't do this on the Mac," in shortcuts.

00:46:52 ◼   ► So you end up doing, if it's on the Mac,

00:46:54 ◼   ► you run this Apple script,

00:46:57 ◼   ► you know, do this other thing, get the result.

00:47:00 ◼   ► And then on iOS, it just runs these actions

00:47:02 ◼   ► and gets the result and then continue

00:47:03 ◼   ► with whatever that result is on whichever platform

00:47:06 ◼   ► you get it to, you kind of build it to have that little block

00:47:10 ◼   ► throw out the same bit of information

00:47:13 ◼   ► by two totally different means.

00:47:15 ◼   ► So you can do that.

00:47:17 ◼   ► So that was my first step was really like,

00:47:20 ◼   ► can I take my shortcuts and make them

00:47:24 ◼   ► run my iOS shortcuts and make them run on the Mac.

00:47:26 ◼   ► And that was pretty successful, I have to say.

00:47:29 ◼   ► I was able to do that in a fairly short amount of time

00:47:32 ◼   ► once I figured out some methods of working around

00:47:35 ◼   ► some of the peculiarities of the Mac,

00:47:37 ◼   ► especially of Safari, not wanting to give me information.

00:47:41 ◼   ► And then I moved on to the second step,

00:47:42 ◼   ► which is could I take my automations

00:47:44 ◼   ► that I built in AppleScript and Automator on the Mac

00:47:47 ◼   ► and make shortcuts out of that?

00:47:49 ◼   ► That was step two.

00:47:50 ◼   ► - So you're saying about some of the things

00:47:52 ◼   ► that are missing, 'cause it's easy to think

00:47:54 ◼   ► that it's apps that are missing.

00:47:56 ◼   ► You know, like certain apps use an iOS

00:47:58 ◼   ► that don't have Mac components,

00:47:59 ◼   ► or they haven't integrated shortcuts for the Mac.

00:48:02 ◼   ► But as you mentioned, there is also stuff

00:48:03 ◼   ► that just isn't in this operating system.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Like there's things you can't do with Safari.

00:48:08 ◼   ► But I did wanna know, are you having to get any workarounds

00:48:12 ◼   ► for applications that aren't available?

00:48:14 ◼   ► Like are you having to rewrite some shortcuts

00:48:17 ◼   ► to use different methods?

00:48:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, that happens, right?

00:48:22 ◼   ► There are things that you can do in a particular app on iOS

00:48:27 ◼   ► and that app's not on the Mac,

00:48:28 ◼   ► or I don't use that app on the Mac.

00:48:30 ◼   ► But a lot of it is,

00:48:32 ◼   ► I mean, that's the brilliance of user automation on the Mac,

00:48:35 ◼   ► is that most of the stuff you can get

00:48:39 ◼   ► via command line or Apple script, right?

00:48:43 ◼   ► Not everything, but a lot of things you can get.

00:48:45 ◼   ► And so on iOS, you have to have an,

00:48:48 ◼   ► give me an action that does this.

00:48:50 ◼   ► So when you're converting iOS actions,

00:48:52 ◼   ► it's actually pretty straightforward because anything

00:48:55 ◼   ► that's got an action on iOS,

00:48:57 ◼   ► pretty much you can do it on the Mac.

00:48:58 ◼   ► You may have to do it via a script,

00:49:01 ◼   ► but it's not an outlandish action that's locked down, right?

00:49:04 ◼   ► Because you're coming from the locked down interface,

00:49:08 ◼   ► the lockdown operating system

00:49:10 ◼   ► to the anything goes operating system.

00:49:12 ◼   ► So if you start with iOS and then move it to macOS,

00:49:15 ◼   ► you're pretty much gonna be able

00:49:16 ◼   ► to figure out a way to do it.

00:49:18 ◼   ► The challenge that I've found is with the second thing,

00:49:22 ◼   ► which is if you wanna do it on the Mac

00:49:26 ◼   ► based on what you're doing

00:49:27 ◼   ► with current automation technologies on the Mac

00:49:29 ◼   ► versus this new one, then can you do it?

00:49:34 ◼   ► Because sometimes you could ultimately

00:49:36 ◼   ► just build a shortcut that is just run the script.

00:49:39 ◼   ► It's like, okay, you could do that.

00:49:41 ◼   ► But what I would like to do ultimately is use a shortcut

00:49:45 ◼   ► and not go out to scripts except when I have to.

00:49:51 ◼   ► 'cause I've definitely done the shortcut

00:49:53 ◼   ► that is literally run this script.

00:49:55 ◼   ► It's like, well, that's great.

00:49:57 ◼   ► It's technically, it's a shortcut,

00:49:59 ◼   ► but it's not any different than what I had before.

00:50:02 ◼   ► So what you wanna do is then say,

00:50:04 ◼   ► can I do this with what actions are available

00:50:07 ◼   ► and shortcuts on the Mac?

00:50:08 ◼   ► And sometimes you can and sometimes you can't.

00:50:10 ◼   ► - And you did that with a pretty complicated one, right?

00:50:13 ◼   ► Like I kind of gave you a bit of a challenge

00:50:16 ◼   ► 'cause you have a thing that I think you called

00:50:18 ◼   ► the template gun, right?

00:50:19 ◼   ► which was create, every time you saw a podcast,

00:50:22 ◼   ► you would run a script

00:50:23 ◼   ► and it would create a bunch of files for you,

00:50:24 ◼   ► like unzip some files, put them on your desktop,

00:50:27 ◼   ► name them correctly.

00:50:28 ◼   ► And it would be like, so you could edit, say,

00:50:30 ◼   ► an episode of The Incomparable.

00:50:31 ◼   ► And I thought that was really cool.

00:50:33 ◼   ► And I was like, hey,

00:50:35 ◼   ► why don't you try and make a shortcut of it?

00:50:36 ◼   ► And you did.

00:50:37 ◼   ► How was that?

00:50:38 ◼   ► - You did, you sort of challenged me to do it.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And I wrote a post about it and I shared the shortcut.

00:50:43 ◼   ► Basically, I ended up with a,

00:50:45 ◼   ► I think it's a 54 step shortcut, which sounds like a lot,

00:50:50 ◼   ► but actually if you know Federico Vatici, it's not.

00:50:54 ◼   ► - I was gonna, so the 50, yeah, I know Federico's hundreds,

00:50:57 ◼   ► but the 54 steps coming from it being an Apple,

00:51:01 ◼   ► it was an Apple script before, right?

00:51:03 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:51:03 ◼   ► - Does 54 steps seem like a lot compared

00:51:06 ◼   ► to how long the Apple script was?

00:51:08 ◼   ► - It is, I mean, no, honestly.

00:51:14 ◼   ► It's hard to say, 'cause the AppleScript thing,

00:51:16 ◼   ► it's written in like a language

00:51:19 ◼   ► and shortcuts isn't a language.

00:51:23 ◼   ► It's a series of blocks attached to each other.

00:51:27 ◼   ► The AppleScript is 220 lines.

00:51:29 ◼   ► So it is- - Seems like a lot of lines

00:51:32 ◼   ► to me, but what do I know?

00:51:33 ◼   ► - It is.

00:51:34 ◼   ► Well, and one of the challenges,

00:51:35 ◼   ► one of the things that I actually have realized

00:51:37 ◼   ► in doing this, and this is,

00:51:38 ◼   ► I'm sure Federico has been saying this for years now,

00:51:41 ◼   ► but one of the things that is frustrating about shortcuts

00:51:43 ◼   ► is that it doesn't have subroutines.

00:51:46 ◼   ► So if you build a thing that can do this very certain thing

00:51:49 ◼   ► over and over again,

00:51:50 ◼   ► and you need it in different places in your script,

00:51:52 ◼   ► you can't, you would have to make a separate shortcut

00:51:59 ◼   ► and then run that shortcut.

00:52:01 ◼   ► And the problem with that is then when you say,

00:52:03 ◼   ► I wanna share this, you have to say,

00:52:04 ◼   ► actually you need to install these five shortcuts.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And when you send out an update,

00:52:10 ◼   ► you have to update all five shortcuts.

00:52:12 ◼   ► This happened when I borrowed that Tesla for spring break,

00:52:16 ◼   ► and he had written a bunch of really great shortcuts

00:52:19 ◼   ► for the Tesla, but they were,

00:52:21 ◼   ► it was like eight different shortcuts

00:52:24 ◼   ► that all were interconnected, and you needed them all.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And some of that was subroutine kind of stuff.

00:52:29 ◼   ► So I wish I could do that,

00:52:30 ◼   ► but I did take the template gun and tried to re-imagine

00:52:34 ◼   ► how it would work in shortcuts.

00:52:35 ◼   ► And I managed to get it to work entirely in shortcuts,

00:52:38 ◼   ► no scripts used at all,

00:52:42 ◼   ► which required me to rethink a bunch of stuff

00:52:46 ◼   ► because Shortcuts behaves differently.

00:52:50 ◼   ► It doesn't have subroutines.

00:52:51 ◼   ► It interacts, Shortcut interacts with files

00:52:54 ◼   ► in this really weird way because it came from iOS.

00:52:57 ◼   ► This is the best example I can give,

00:52:58 ◼   ► which is in macOS, if you want,

00:53:03 ◼   ► and even if you're not a scripter,

00:53:04 ◼   ► I hope this will explain how weird this is.

00:53:07 ◼   ► In macOS, AppleScript really is a remote control language

00:53:10 ◼   ► for apps.

00:53:12 ◼   ► And so you can do flow, subroutines and if-then's

00:53:18 ◼   ► and all of that.

00:53:19 ◼   ► But really what AppleScript was made for is,

00:53:22 ◼   ► tell this app to do something,

00:53:24 ◼   ► run this command on this app,

00:53:25 ◼   ► or tell me what this app is doing

00:53:27 ◼   ► and then change something about it.

00:53:28 ◼   ► That's what AppleScript is for.

00:53:30 ◼   ► And so if you wanna take, say, a zip archive

00:53:33 ◼   ► from your Dropbox, which is what I wanna do,

00:53:36 ◼   ► and unzip it, the way you do that

00:53:38 ◼   ► in traditional AppleScript form is you tell the finder

00:53:43 ◼   ► to take that file and copy it to the desktop

00:53:47 ◼   ► and then tell, I think, the archive utility to unzip it.

00:53:52 ◼   ► And then you tell the finder to throw away the zip file

00:53:56 ◼   ► because now you've got this folder.

00:53:58 ◼   ► And then you tell the finder to act on all the files

00:54:01 ◼   ► that are in that folder and rename them and all of that.

00:54:05 ◼   ► That's how you do it on AppleScript.

00:54:07 ◼   ► Shortcuts is so weird because it comes

00:54:11 ◼   ► from the fileless operating system of iOS.

00:54:14 ◼   ► Shortcuts, I did this, I started this and I'm like,

00:54:16 ◼   ► okay, get the file and extract it.

00:54:21 ◼   ► There's an extract action.

00:54:22 ◼   ► You can just unzip it right there.

00:54:24 ◼   ► It's great.

00:54:25 ◼   ► So I just ran that and nothing happened.

00:54:28 ◼   ► What's going on?

00:54:29 ◼   ► And I looked at the shortcut and the shortcut said,

00:54:30 ◼   ► "Result all of these files."

00:54:33 ◼   ► And I looked for them on my Mac.

00:54:34 ◼   ► I'm like, where are they?

00:54:36 ◼   ► They're nowhere.

00:54:37 ◼   ► They're nowhere.

00:54:38 ◼   ► They are in the shortcuts phantom zone where...

00:54:42 ◼   ► - Wait, what?

00:54:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:46 ◼   ► What's that?

00:54:47 ◼   ► - So, this is the thing is until you tell shortcuts

00:54:52 ◼   ► to put those files somewhere, they don't exist.

00:54:55 ◼   ► When you extract an archive, what it does is shortcuts

00:54:57 ◼   ► is okay, here's what's in the archive.

00:54:59 ◼   ► What would you like to do with them?

00:55:01 ◼   ► So in shortcuts to take a zip file and save it

00:55:04 ◼   ► to the desktop, what you need to do is say,

00:55:07 ◼   ► extract to the archive,

00:55:09 ◼   ► create a folder with that name on the desktop,

00:55:13 ◼   ► and then repeat through all the items that you extracted

00:55:16 ◼   ► and save them into that folder.

00:55:19 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:55:20 ◼   ► - Because it's not remote controlling an app.

00:55:24 ◼   ► It is doing it entirely itself.

00:55:27 ◼   ► And that's just really different

00:55:30 ◼   ► from the way that Apple script works.

00:55:32 ◼   ► I think in a great way, right?

00:55:33 ◼   ► Like there's something freeing about saying,

00:55:36 ◼   ► no, no, my automation system has powers of its own

00:55:40 ◼   ► instead of is completely dependent on other apps

00:55:44 ◼   ► to do all of its work.

00:55:45 ◼   ► In fact, one of the big failures of AppleScript, I think,

00:55:47 ◼   ► and one of the reasons why it isn't more broadly popular

00:55:49 ◼   ► and never was more broadly popular

00:55:51 ◼   ► is that while they talked a good game

00:55:53 ◼   ► about everything being natural language

00:55:54 ◼   ► and all of those things,

00:55:56 ◼   ► every single app had its own language, basically.

00:56:00 ◼   ► The way, and they were often impenetrable.

00:56:03 ◼   ► It's like, how do I script the finder?

00:56:04 ◼   ► And I still have to Google search

00:56:07 ◼   ► and use script debuggers, weird sort of debugging modes

00:56:10 ◼   ► in order to figure out how to script applications.

00:56:13 ◼   ► And that's where it failed,

00:56:14 ◼   ► is if every single app behaves differently

00:56:18 ◼   ► when you try to control it,

00:56:20 ◼   ► how are you gonna figure that out?

00:56:22 ◼   ► And so having shortcuts say,

00:56:24 ◼   ► no, most of the stuff I can just do it.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Like you don't have to figure it out.

00:56:27 ◼   ► I will take care of it,

00:56:29 ◼   ► either internally or I will tell the app what to do.

00:56:32 ◼   ► There's something really powerful about that.

00:56:34 ◼   ► - It has like its own inbuilt,

00:56:36 ◼   ► I don't wanna use the word language

00:56:38 ◼   ► 'cause I think that complicates the matter,

00:56:39 ◼   ► but you understand what I'm,

00:56:40 ◼   ► like it's, it is doing things in a certain way to the user,

00:56:45 ◼   ► it's always doing them the same way,

00:56:46 ◼   ► and then you can just build from that, right?

00:56:48 ◼   ► - Right, right, because you're just building the blocks.

00:56:49 ◼   ► - Or just this and this,

00:56:51 ◼   ► like every block looks similar, right?

00:56:53 ◼   ► - Exactly, right.

00:56:54 ◼   ► - It's just like here's the block

00:56:55 ◼   ► and you've got the ins and the outs, right?

00:56:56 ◼   ► Like, yeah.

00:56:57 ◼   ► - And if it says get this file,

00:56:59 ◼   ► you don't have to be like,

00:57:00 ◼   ► oh, but where am I getting it?

00:57:02 ◼   ► how does that app look at files?

00:57:04 ◼   ► You can just say, get this file or do this thing.

00:57:07 ◼   ► And shortcuts--

00:57:08 ◼   ► - And what they like to,

00:57:09 ◼   ► they're just like sometimes ask,

00:57:11 ◼   ► you know, like they ask for input, you know,

00:57:13 ◼   ► like it's just all very easy.

00:57:14 ◼   ► - Right, so, but the shortcut Phantom Zone thing

00:57:18 ◼   ► was a real moment of realization for me,

00:57:21 ◼   ► which is like, right.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Just because I said extract the archive

00:57:26 ◼   ► doesn't mean that shortcuts went to the finder

00:57:30 ◼   ► and said, extract this archive, right?

00:57:32 ◼   ► That didn't happen.

00:57:33 ◼   ► It's doing it itself.

00:57:35 ◼   ► And so from there, I was able to build it up

00:57:37 ◼   ► and then I've got a bunch of like repeat statements

00:57:40 ◼   ► and I had to, I built it using what's called a dictionary,

00:57:43 ◼   ► which basically in my Apple script,

00:57:46 ◼   ► I literally have like, if the podcast is named this,

00:57:51 ◼   ► or if the archive is named this, do this.

00:57:53 ◼   ► I have this, it's cheating, right?

00:57:55 ◼   ► I'm literally, every time I add a podcast,

00:57:57 ◼   ► I have to write more lines of code in Apple script

00:58:00 ◼   ► in order to get it to work.

00:58:02 ◼   ► And in a shortcut, there's just a dictionary at the top

00:58:05 ◼   ► that says you put in an item for each podcast that you want

00:58:09 ◼   ► with a couple of preferences for how you want it to behave,

00:58:12 ◼   ► because it does some different things in terms of renaming

00:58:15 ◼   ► based on what podcast network it's on

00:58:18 ◼   ► and based on what kind of show it is.

00:58:22 ◼   ► And what this also means is that this is far more portable.

00:58:26 ◼   ► I, not only did I share this with the world via Six Colors,

00:58:29 ◼   ► but like I can give this to you.

00:58:31 ◼   ► And the only support you're probably gonna need for me

00:58:34 ◼   ► is asking me exactly what you should put in your dictionary.

00:58:38 ◼   ► But I even was able to write a comment that says,

00:58:41 ◼   ► "Here is how to do the dictionary."

00:58:42 ◼   ► So it's much more kind of usable by other people

00:58:46 ◼   ► because of the way it's structured in shortcuts.

00:58:51 ◼   ► - Same, portable, it's also portable for you, right?

00:58:53 ◼   ► 'Cause it syncs to iCloud, so it's on your laptop

00:58:56 ◼   ► when you travel, it's perfect.

00:58:58 ◼   ► This is what happened to me last week is I did a podcast

00:59:02 ◼   ► and I needed to post it.

00:59:04 ◼   ► And I was thinking, oh, I didn't bring the template gun app,

00:59:08 ◼   ► the say Apple script saved as an app

00:59:10 ◼   ► that I have in my application folder on my iMac.

00:59:12 ◼   ► And my iMac is shut down because I'm gone.

00:59:14 ◼   ► And I don't have that.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Do I have to dig into a time machine backup?

00:59:17 ◼   ► And what do I wanna do?

00:59:18 ◼   ► And then I thought, well, wait a second.

00:59:20 ◼   ► I rebuilt that as a shortcut.

00:59:22 ◼   ► And I went up to the menu bar

00:59:23 ◼   ► and looked in the little shortcuts menu in the menu bar.

00:59:26 ◼   ► Having never thought about this,

00:59:27 ◼   ► about needing to do this on the laptop.

00:59:30 ◼   ► And it was there and I ran it and it ran

00:59:35 ◼   ► and it worked perfectly.

00:59:37 ◼   ► And that was a moment where I thought,

00:59:39 ◼   ► oh, you know, Apple could have added iCloud syncing

00:59:43 ◼   ► of services and Apple scripts and stuff

00:59:48 ◼   ► into the OS years ago,

00:59:50 ◼   ► but that technology was ignored

00:59:53 ◼   ► and basically treated as dead.

00:59:54 ◼   ► And so they would never prioritize like,

00:59:57 ◼   ► your scripts can be in iCloud,

00:59:59 ◼   ► your services, your finder commands can be in iCloud.

01:00:02 ◼   ► And so they never did.

01:00:04 ◼   ► They could have, it's not like they couldn't have worked,

01:00:06 ◼   ► but they never bothered.

01:00:08 ◼   ► And Shortcut syncs via iCloud.

01:00:11 ◼   ► And I hate to say it, but it just works, right?

01:00:14 ◼   ► Like it was able to run Template Gun

01:00:17 ◼   ► and since I have those files in my Dropbox

01:00:20 ◼   ► and I had Dropbox installed on this laptop,

01:00:22 ◼   ► those files were right where they thought they were.

01:00:25 ◼   ► And it happened.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And what it's doing is it's unzipping

01:00:29 ◼   ► and it's looking at that podcast RSS feed

01:00:31 ◼   ► to find what the latest episode number is

01:00:33 ◼   ► and incrementing it by one

01:00:35 ◼   ► and then renaming a bunch of stuff to be the episode number

01:00:39 ◼   ► so I don't have to look up the episode number.

01:00:40 ◼   ► It knows it and it's already labeled.

01:00:43 ◼   ► It's a lot of fun.

01:00:44 ◼   ► So that was a great, every one of these,

01:00:47 ◼   ► and the reason I've written about this a lot

01:00:48 ◼   ► is not only it's fun new Mac stuff that didn't exist before

01:00:51 ◼   ► and it's user automation, which I love.

01:00:53 ◼   ► But also every one of these little projects I do

01:00:55 ◼   ► teaches me something about how I think about user automation

01:01:01 ◼   ► or about how shortcuts works

01:01:02 ◼   ► and how shortcuts is philosophically different.

01:01:05 ◼   ► It makes me kind of grapple with what's missing

01:01:08 ◼   ► in shortcuts on the Mac and in shortcuts in general

01:01:10 ◼   ► and what is there and where they need to go next.

01:01:12 ◼   ► I'm learning a lot with every single one of these I'm trying

01:01:16 ◼   ► because every one of them seems to have some sort

01:01:19 ◼   ► of challenge that gives me another insight.

01:01:22 ◼   ► Even if it's as simple as,

01:01:23 ◼   ► right, iCloud syncing automations, that's powerful.

01:01:27 ◼   ► - Are you building these on the Mac?

01:01:29 ◼   ► I know like, there's been a lot of talk

01:01:31 ◼   ► about the Mac version not being that great.

01:01:33 ◼   ► Are you dealing with it?

01:01:34 ◼   ► Is it getting better?

01:01:35 ◼   ► What is your experience?

01:01:36 ◼   ► - The app is super weird

01:01:38 ◼   ► and does things that don't make sense.

01:01:40 ◼   ► And you have to do a lot of,

01:01:41 ◼   ► there's a lot of right clicking or, you know,

01:01:43 ◼   ► in the case of, cause I got a track pad, right?

01:01:45 ◼   ► Two finger clicking.

01:01:46 ◼   ► We have to two finger click into various places

01:01:49 ◼   ► in order to get a menu that does the thing you want.

01:01:51 ◼   ► It's not very Mac-like, I would say,

01:01:53 ◼   ► but that's just sort of how it is right now.

01:01:54 ◼   ► I think that that is a combination of them building the app

01:01:57 ◼   ► in SwiftUI and coming from iOS and sort of not thinking

01:02:01 ◼   ► about how the Mac equivalent is going to work.

01:02:03 ◼   ► But it is, you know, it's improving.

01:02:08 ◼   ► I'm actually on the macOS betas right now still,

01:02:15 ◼   ► which I normally wouldn't be, because every beta,

01:02:19 ◼   ► it seems to get a little bit better.

01:02:21 ◼   ► I'm in the 12.1 beta now and they keep fixing things.

01:02:24 ◼   ► It seems like shortcuts for Mac

01:02:28 ◼   ► is still in active development,

01:02:29 ◼   ► which is exactly what I want, right?

01:02:31 ◼   ► The last thing that this thing needs

01:02:32 ◼   ► is to be kind of broken for a year and then be better.

01:02:36 ◼   ► They need to just keep making it better.

01:02:38 ◼   ► I know that there's a dedicated team working on shortcuts.

01:02:41 ◼   ► Every OS release, every beta, it should keep getting better

01:02:45 ◼   ► because it needs to, and it is getting better.

01:02:48 ◼   ► And there's still a bunch of stuff missing.

01:02:51 ◼   ► There's still, like in the short term,

01:02:56 ◼   ► what I really want is a clever developer

01:03:00 ◼   ► to write the equivalent of Toolbox Pro for the Mac.

01:03:03 ◼   ► Toolbox Pro is an app on iOS,

01:03:05 ◼   ► maybe on Mac OS too now, I don't know,

01:03:07 ◼   ► that adds a bunch of functionality.

01:03:09 ◼   ► Where basically like it doesn't do anything

01:03:11 ◼   ► except add a bunch of functionality to shortcuts.

01:03:13 ◼   ► That's its only purpose.

01:03:14 ◼   ► 'cause apps can contribute actions to shortcuts.

01:03:17 ◼   ► So Toolbox Pro just adds a bunch of stuff

01:03:21 ◼   ► that shortcuts doesn't do to shortcut.

01:03:23 ◼   ► And the shortcuts should do, but it doesn't.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And I was thinking about this because so many things

01:03:28 ◼   ► that I do and that Federico is doing

01:03:29 ◼   ► and that John Voorhees is doing,

01:03:31 ◼   ► anybody who's playing with this stuff is doing,

01:03:32 ◼   ► Matt Casanelli, like we're all doing this stuff

01:03:35 ◼   ► where it's like, oh, here's how you get a selection

01:03:37 ◼   ► in Safari, you have it do a JavaScript.

01:03:39 ◼   ► Like, okay, short term, what I really want is,

01:03:42 ◼   ► I want a clever developer to sweep a bunch of these common

01:03:45 ◼   ► things up together and make an app that just contributes

01:03:49 ◼   ► them all as actions, if that's possible, right?

01:03:53 ◼   ► The idea is like, 'cause I would rather just say,

01:03:55 ◼   ► get the selection from Safari and have embedded in there

01:04:00 ◼   ► the whatever workaround is necessary to get that to happen

01:04:04 ◼   ► so that I don't have to go look up the Apple script code

01:04:07 ◼   ► and paste it in every time or the JavaScript.

01:04:10 ◼   ► In the long run, and this is a future,

01:04:13 ◼   ► you know, next gen 2022, 2023 kind of thing,

01:04:18 ◼   ► I want, the thought occurred to me that AppleScript

01:04:21 ◼   ► has had plugins for different functionality for a long time.

01:04:24 ◼   ► I would love it, especially on the Mac,

01:04:27 ◼   ► that we had the equivalent for shortcuts,

01:04:29 ◼   ► that like, if I, I can share a shortcut,

01:04:33 ◼   ► but what I really want to do is like,

01:04:35 ◼   ► if I can come up with a clever way

01:04:37 ◼   ► to do something in shortcuts or AppleScript

01:04:39 ◼   ► or some combination thereof,

01:04:41 ◼   ► it's a little like a subroutine.

01:04:43 ◼   ► That is, it takes an input, it does a thing,

01:04:45 ◼   ► and it outputs something.

01:04:47 ◼   ► I'd love to be able to share that with people,

01:04:49 ◼   ► including myself, as an action, right?

01:04:52 ◼   ► This is now an action.

01:04:53 ◼   ► This is Jason's action that does this thing,

01:04:55 ◼   ► and share it with people, and include it,

01:04:58 ◼   ► and say, "This shortcut requires Jason's action to do this,

01:05:02 ◼   ► and you can get it."

01:05:03 ◼   ► I think that's gotta be a direction for them, right?

01:05:06 ◼   ► - Right, okay.

01:05:07 ◼   ► - Because it's really a drag to say,

01:05:10 ◼   ► "Okay, to do this, you need to do this same Apple script

01:05:13 ◼   ► that you use 90 different times in 90 different places.

01:05:16 ◼   ► I'd rather write it once and save it and say,

01:05:19 ◼   ► "It does this."

01:05:20 ◼   ► And it shows up in the list of actions and shortcuts

01:05:22 ◼   ► and you drag it in and it does what it says it does,

01:05:25 ◼   ► just like it does for shortcut actions

01:05:27 ◼   ► and actions from apps.

01:05:28 ◼   ► I would love to be able to do that.

01:05:29 ◼   ► - But I guess the ultimate goal though, right,

01:05:31 ◼   ► is that you would never need a script.

01:05:34 ◼   ► - Yes. I mean, the scripting,

01:05:36 ◼   ► You could make it that the ultimate goal is

01:05:38 ◼   ► that the only time you use scripting

01:05:39 ◼   ► is to build a custom action for yourself,

01:05:43 ◼   ► and then you use it,

01:05:44 ◼   ► and then people don't have to do that,

01:05:46 ◼   ► but if you can write a script that does that,

01:05:48 ◼   ► then you do it.

01:05:49 ◼   ► But yes, the ultimate goal is

01:05:50 ◼   ► you never need to reach for that.

01:05:52 ◼   ► But on the Mac, I'm realizing now

01:05:54 ◼   ► that there's actually probably a place for that

01:05:56 ◼   ► where I could write a complex script and say,

01:06:01 ◼   ► like you can save things as apps out of AppleScript,

01:06:05 ◼   ► Like, save this as an action.

01:06:07 ◼   ► It takes an input, it generates an output,

01:06:09 ◼   ► it does something, save this as an action.

01:06:12 ◼   ► And now I can give that to people and I can use it myself

01:06:14 ◼   ► and I never need to look at the code.

01:06:16 ◼   ► It's just another action inside shortcuts.

01:06:20 ◼   ► It's just another little block to drag into the shortcut.

01:06:23 ◼   ► That would be great.

01:06:24 ◼   ► And I think on iOS, I never really considered it

01:06:26 ◼   ► because there isn't scripting support and stuff on iOS.

01:06:28 ◼   ► But on macOS, you could do it.

01:06:30 ◼   ► And I think that would expand things a lot.

01:06:32 ◼   ► I mean, Apple needs to do a bunch of this stuff itself.

01:06:34 ◼   ► Like the idea that we would write some app

01:06:37 ◼   ► that says, get a selection in Safari,

01:06:39 ◼   ► like, come on, Apple needs to do that, right?

01:06:42 ◼   ► Safari needs that.

01:06:43 ◼   ► And there's a broader context

01:06:46 ◼   ► that Apple needs to do a better job

01:06:47 ◼   ► of evangelizing user automation

01:06:50 ◼   ► and shortcuts inside its team.

01:06:52 ◼   ► This is the modern version

01:06:54 ◼   ► of why aren't Apple's apps scriptable

01:06:56 ◼   ► is why do Apple's apps not have good support?

01:07:01 ◼   ► Federico talked about this.

01:07:03 ◼   ► Like there are new features in Apple's apps

01:07:05 ◼   ► and there's no shortcut support for them.

01:07:07 ◼   ► It's like, if you do a new feature,

01:07:09 ◼   ► why is there no shortcut support?

01:07:11 ◼   ► Focus mode, big brand new feature this fall,

01:07:16 ◼   ► no shortcut support.

01:07:18 ◼   ► Can't detect focus mode, can't change focus mode,

01:07:21 ◼   ► can't trigger on when a focus mode changes.

01:07:24 ◼   ► It's very frustrating.

01:07:27 ◼   ► So there's a lot more work to do here.

01:07:28 ◼   ► - 'Cause you can do some of that on iOS though, right?

01:07:30 ◼   ► You can't do it on iOS. - You can do some of that

01:07:32 ◼   ► on iOS, although not all of it.

01:07:33 ◼   ► And then on the Mac, like good luck,

01:07:36 ◼   ► good luck detecting there's a way to do it,

01:07:38 ◼   ► but you have to like read a P list file somewhere

01:07:41 ◼   ► using a script in order to figure out

01:07:43 ◼   ► what focus mode you're in and you can't change it.

01:07:46 ◼   ► So it's, you know, my overview of this is

01:07:51 ◼   ► for something that is rightly criticized

01:07:54 ◼   ► because it's kind of half baked,

01:07:56 ◼   ► the truth is enough of it is there

01:08:00 ◼   ► for it to make a big difference

01:08:02 ◼   ► and show the potential of the future for this technology.

01:08:04 ◼   ► They just need to keep improving it.

01:08:06 ◼   ► And that is making shortcuts itself better

01:08:09 ◼   ► and more reliable and evangelizing within Apple.

01:08:13 ◼   ► They need to have the leverage with all the other teams

01:08:16 ◼   ► working on products within Apple.

01:08:17 ◼   ► It needs to be clear that it's a company priority

01:08:20 ◼   ► that you have to work with the shortcuts team

01:08:23 ◼   ► and put proper actions in your shortcuts,

01:08:25 ◼   ► whether you're the OS building focus mode

01:08:28 ◼   ► or whether you're notes and reminders.

01:08:30 ◼   ► This is like a thing that you have to do

01:08:32 ◼   ► to get your feature out of the door.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Like this is just one of the parts of the checklist.

01:08:37 ◼   ► - If you add a new feature to Notes,

01:08:40 ◼   ► you need to add support for that.

01:08:41 ◼   ► One of the check boxes needs to be,

01:08:43 ◼   ► also this is implementable via a shortcut action.

01:08:46 ◼   ► And you have to put the shortcut action in there.

01:08:48 ◼   ► You can't just add a whole new feature to Notes

01:08:51 ◼   ► and say, no, you can't, it's not scriptable,

01:08:53 ◼   ► it's not accessible, it's not...

01:08:54 ◼   ► And that goes across iOS and Mac, right?

01:08:57 ◼   ► You just, at Apple, if you're in charge of an app like that,

01:08:59 ◼   ► you can't skate away from shortcuts.

01:09:03 ◼   ► It's part of what you need to ship.

01:09:05 ◼   ► And right now, that's just not the case.

01:09:07 ◼   ► And so that's got to change.

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01:10:51 ◼   ► Let's do some #AskUpgradeQuestions.

01:10:54 ◼   ► [imitates air horn]

01:10:55 ◼   ► The first one is actually going to tie into what we were just talking about.

01:10:58 ◼   ► This comes from Henry, who says, "One of the big advantages of Focus modes

01:11:01 ◼   ► is that they can activate automations on new devices,

01:11:04 ◼   ► but the Mac doesn't have it."

01:11:05 ◼   ► So on iOS and on iPadOS, you can set a Focus mode,

01:11:10 ◼   ► and that Focus mode will set off a shortcut by the personal automations thing.

01:11:14 ◼   ► -Yep.

01:11:15 ◼   ► But Mac doesn't have them.

01:11:16 ◼   ► So he's got two questions about this.

01:11:18 ◼   ► One, do you think that they will add

01:11:20 ◼   ► some kind of personal automations thing to Mac OS?

01:11:23 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:11:25 ◼   ► It doesn't, obviously they just haven't gone to it.

01:11:28 ◼   ► I guess they said it's a multi-year transition, right?

01:11:30 ◼   ► I think it's clear that Mac already has

01:11:33 ◼   ► all this automation technology in terms of things

01:11:36 ◼   ► like when this launches,

01:11:37 ◼   ► when this file is added to this folder.

01:11:39 ◼   ► I think it's only a matter of time

01:11:41 ◼   ► before they implement that.

01:11:42 ◼   ► It's just not, they just weren't ready.

01:11:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and this is like, all of this stuff lives inside

01:11:46 ◼   ► of the Shortcuts app, and it's like this weird mixture

01:11:49 ◼   ► of Shortcuts and the Home app, like they kind of go together

01:11:53 ◼   ► but Henry also wanted to know if either of us

01:11:56 ◼   ► have any automated, like Shortcuts automations

01:11:59 ◼   ► on our devices, like what we're using it for.

01:12:02 ◼   ► I do have a few, if you'd like to hear that.

01:12:05 ◼   ► So I have a fitness focus mode,

01:12:09 ◼   ► but I only want it to activate

01:12:12 ◼   ► when I'm doing two types of workouts.

01:12:14 ◼   ► So if I'm doing strength or if I'm doing the rowing machine,

01:12:18 ◼   ► which is what I would tend to do one of those two,

01:12:21 ◼   ► then I want it to activate.

01:12:22 ◼   ► I don't want it to activate when the Apple Watch

01:12:24 ◼   ► detects I'm walking or something, right?

01:12:26 ◼   ► Because then it shuts everything off.

01:12:28 ◼   ► So in shortcuts, you can set that up,

01:12:31 ◼   ► which is not a feature that focus modes has,

01:12:33 ◼   ► which is so weird, but there you go.

01:12:36 ◼   ► I have some kind of home kit related ones

01:12:39 ◼   ► where when I arrive at my studio or leave at my studio,

01:12:44 ◼   ► it can adjust the lighting and the heating.

01:12:47 ◼   ► And we also have some like lighting stuff for my home.

01:12:51 ◼   ► So if we're not at home,

01:12:52 ◼   ► the lights go on and lights turn off at different times.

01:12:56 ◼   ► That's the stuff that I have set up.

01:12:57 ◼   ► - Love it.

01:12:58 ◼   ► I don't have any shortcuts based automations right now.

01:13:01 ◼   ► I do have one that I run sometimes.

01:13:05 ◼   ► I actually need to check

01:13:08 ◼   ► 'cause I may do a version of it for the winter too,

01:13:10 ◼   ► but it's this, I've talked about it before.

01:13:12 ◼   ► It's the idea of sensing temperature or humidity

01:13:15 ◼   ► and then running some, their home automations.

01:13:19 ◼   ► They're not like in the shortcuts,

01:13:20 ◼   ► but you know, running some things that adjust

01:13:22 ◼   ► stuff that happens in the house.

01:13:23 ◼   ► But in terms of like just pure,

01:13:25 ◼   ► I'm running a shortcut to change my status

01:13:27 ◼   ► or stuff like that, no, not yet.

01:13:30 ◼   ► - Brant wants to know,

01:13:32 ◼   ► "Is now a good time to buy an Apple Watch SE,

01:13:35 ◼   ► or is it better to wait until September

01:13:37 ◼   ► for a hopefully likely Apple Watch SE refresh.

01:13:41 ◼   ► - Ooh.

01:13:43 ◼   ► - I mean, look, I don't mean to sound mean,

01:13:47 ◼   ► but I don't think there's ever a good time

01:13:49 ◼   ► to buy the current Apple Watch SE.

01:13:50 ◼   ► I do not think it is a worthwhile product for the price.

01:13:53 ◼   ► I would, honestly, if this is the watch that you want,

01:13:57 ◼   ► I would recommend waiting.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Maybe they'll have a new one in September,

01:14:01 ◼   ► but I don't know.

01:14:02 ◼   ► - Or maybe they'll get rid of the Series 3

01:14:04 ◼   ► and cut its price. (laughs)

01:14:05 ◼   ► - Yes. - Who knows?

01:14:06 ◼   ► - I do not think that the Apple Watch SE is a good value.

01:14:11 ◼   ► I really don't.

01:14:13 ◼   ► I think it's missing a few features,

01:14:14 ◼   ► especially the always on display.

01:14:16 ◼   ► That at that price, I don't think it's worth it.

01:14:19 ◼   ► - And it's a year old now, right?

01:14:20 ◼   ► So there might've been a good time to buy it

01:14:23 ◼   ► when it was brand new, but now it's--

01:14:24 ◼   ► - Is it over?

01:14:25 ◼   ► It's like over a year old now, right?

01:14:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's now a pace behind.

01:14:28 ◼   ► - Like nearly 18 months or something?

01:14:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I would wait.

01:14:30 ◼   ► Like if you don't need it, I would wait.

01:14:32 ◼   ► I mean, alternately, I would try and maybe find

01:14:34 ◼   ► refurbished series four or series five as I think would be better honestly than a new SE.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Because really if I'm remembering right the Apple Watch SE is like a series four-ish with no always

01:14:51 ◼   ► on. And I'm not, I don't think that's worth the price, I just don't. I think it's an overpriced

01:14:57 ◼   ► product for what you get from it.

01:14:59 ◼   ► It wasn't very helpful at Airbrants, but sorry.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Mark wants to know, we don't always promise answers

01:15:06 ◼   ► in Ask Upgrade.

01:15:07 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, you got a clear answer,

01:15:09 ◼   ► which is you think don't buy it.

01:15:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

01:15:12 ◼   ► Wait, wait or pursue a refurbished other model.

01:15:17 ◼   ► Mark asks, when setting up a new iPad,

01:15:20 ◼   ► do you prefer to restore from a current backup

01:15:22 ◼   ► of your iPhone so that your iPad experience

01:15:25 ◼   ► mirrors your iPhone?

01:15:26 ◼   ► do you start fresh or like in create a completely separate

01:15:29 ◼   ► iPad experience or I guess if you're coming from another

01:15:32 ◼   ► iPad, set it up to mirror another iPad.

01:15:34 ◼   ► What do you do for iPads?

01:15:36 ◼   ► - My iPad line and my iPhone line are completely different

01:15:40 ◼   ► and I set up new iPhones based on my iPhone

01:15:42 ◼   ► and I set up new iPads based on my iPad.

01:15:45 ◼   ► And that for me includes the iPad mini,

01:15:47 ◼   ► which I set up as an iPad.

01:15:50 ◼   ► I actually regretted setting it up blank

01:15:52 ◼   ► and I went back and erased it and set it up as my iPad.

01:15:55 ◼   ► - The dock, the dock is ridiculous.

01:15:57 ◼   ► - But it is, but it's like, it is an iPad

01:16:00 ◼   ► and the stuff I do on it is still iPad stuff.

01:16:02 ◼   ► And so why would I not want my iPad stuff on it?

01:16:05 ◼   ► So that's putting iPhone stuff on an iPad,

01:16:09 ◼   ► I guess if it's your first iPad

01:16:11 ◼   ► and you wanna have it be just like your iPhone,

01:16:14 ◼   ► but for me, the iPad and the iPhone

01:16:17 ◼   ► are just completely diverged and that's how I like it.

01:16:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I recommend doing like what you did

01:16:22 ◼   ► is having like, they're distinct.

01:16:25 ◼   ► - Yes. - Right?

01:16:26 ◼   ► So I wouldn't do that.

01:16:27 ◼   ► I wouldn't set up my first iPad mirroring my iPhone.

01:16:30 ◼   ► I would just set it up new.

01:16:31 ◼   ► But for me, I have backups for each line.

01:16:36 ◼   ► So the Mini is new.

01:16:38 ◼   ► And if I get a new Mini, it will come from the Mini.

01:16:40 ◼   ► If I get a new iPad Pro, it will come from the old iPad Pro.

01:16:43 ◼   ► 'Cause I use them so differently.

01:16:44 ◼   ► - Right, that's true. - That it doesn't make sense

01:16:46 ◼   ► to me to have all of the apps that I would use on my iPad.

01:16:49 ◼   ► For me, it's like, if it was even possible,

01:16:52 ◼   ► would I set up my iPad mini as a backup from a MacBook?

01:16:55 ◼   ► No, because they're completely different to me

01:16:57 ◼   ► and that's kind of how I see the difference

01:16:59 ◼   ► between my iPad mini and my iPad Pro.

01:17:01 ◼   ► Like there are apps on my iPad Pro

01:17:03 ◼   ► that I do not have on my mini and never will

01:17:05 ◼   ► 'cause if I don't have a keyboard and mouse,

01:17:08 ◼   ► for me there's no point using them on an iPad,

01:17:10 ◼   ► I would just use it on a Mac, right?

01:17:12 ◼   ► Like because the iPad mini you just,

01:17:15 ◼   ► like I'm not gonna have big writing apps on the iPad mini,

01:17:17 ◼   ► like it's just not a thing that I'm gonna do

01:17:19 ◼   ► 'cause it doesn't really feel great to do that,

01:17:22 ◼   ► to be honest, 'cause there's no keyboard.

01:17:24 ◼   ► And Matthew asks, do you use live photos still?

01:17:30 ◼   ► - Some. - Okay.

01:17:31 ◼   ► - I remember when I remember to turn it on,

01:17:33 ◼   ► sometimes then I turn it off and I forget,

01:17:36 ◼   ► and then I just don't use it for a while,

01:17:37 ◼   ► and then I turn it on for some reason.

01:17:39 ◼   ► The place that I have found the best thing,

01:17:44 ◼   ► and I know that I'm stealing your thunder here

01:17:47 ◼   ► 'cause you put this in the notes document,

01:17:48 ◼   ► but I swear I have the exact same feeling,

01:17:50 ◼   ► which is the new memories feature in iOS 15,

01:17:54 ◼   ► it uses the memory movies as part of the memories

01:17:58 ◼   ► that it builds.

01:17:59 ◼   ► And it's so great at unearthing.

01:18:01 ◼   ► You have this photo that you like,

01:18:03 ◼   ► and you may never watch the memory movie or the live photo,

01:18:07 ◼   ► but all of a sudden there it is.

01:18:09 ◼   ► And that photo that is so familiar,

01:18:11 ◼   ► suddenly is a short video.

01:18:14 ◼   ► When that works, it's magic. - You hear a laugh

01:18:15 ◼   ► in the background. - Yeah.

01:18:16 ◼   ► - Like this kind of thing that I like.

01:18:17 ◼   ► like watching the video and it's like it's an image

01:18:20 ◼   ► that you know well, but when you hear it,

01:18:21 ◼   ► you hear people laughing and it puts a sense of that time.

01:18:24 ◼   ► I think Live Photos is one of the best things

01:18:26 ◼   ► Apple has ever added to iOS.

01:18:28 ◼   ► Like I think it is absolutely a fantastic feature

01:18:33 ◼   ► that unearths joy in moments.

01:18:38 ◼   ► Like I love swiping through my photo library

01:18:42 ◼   ► and seeing things move because it immediately

01:18:45 ◼   ► transports me back to, like I can actually give you an example of something that

01:18:49 ◼   ► happened about 15 minutes ago. So I'm sitting here looking outside of a window

01:18:54 ◼   ► right and I just saw Adina walk past the window and she looked at me and she

01:19:00 ◼   ► waved and I got my phone out and took a picture of her because it was funny

01:19:03 ◼   ► right yeah and now in that live photo because I looked at it I have her

01:19:08 ◼   ► actively waving and that makes that image so much better so when I'm

01:19:12 ◼   ► scrolling through in the future of this holiday, I will see this moment and it's

01:19:18 ◼   ► not just her of her hand up, she's waving at me and like that is just amazing I

01:19:23 ◼   ► love it. I actually found a couple of days ago I had accidentally turned off

01:19:28 ◼   ► live photos for like three days and I was so upset about it because now I have

01:19:32 ◼   ► these images that don't have a live component to them. I think I was messing

01:19:35 ◼   ► around with photo styles, those buttons are too close to each other but I

01:19:39 ◼   ► I love the feature.

01:19:40 ◼   ► I have so many little moments that are so much better

01:19:45 ◼   ► because there's a live photo attached to them.

01:19:48 ◼   ► And also like using live photos

01:19:50 ◼   ► can sometimes help you improve an image

01:19:52 ◼   ► because you might get an image where like two people,

01:19:54 ◼   ► one person's blinking.

01:19:55 ◼   ► With live photos, you can go in and choose a new key frame.

01:19:58 ◼   ► You might get a better image out of it.

01:20:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, for me, the definitive one is we took that photo

01:20:04 ◼   ► in Indianapolis, that was the selfie with the selfie flash.

01:20:08 ◼   ► And the selfie flash, I think we hadn't used before,

01:20:11 ◼   ► and it was super bright.

01:20:13 ◼   ► And so the photo, there's a photo of us

01:20:16 ◼   ► that's just a selfie, which is fine,

01:20:18 ◼   ► but the live photo is us smiling,

01:20:21 ◼   ► having this bright light flash in our eyes,

01:20:23 ◼   ► and then you look like you are gonna die

01:20:26 ◼   ► because the light was so bright.

01:20:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause I was not prepared

01:20:29 ◼   ► for how bright the light was gonna be.

01:20:31 ◼   ► - It's so great, and that wouldn't exist

01:20:34 ◼   ► if it were not for the live photo.

01:20:37 ◼   ► Exactly. So I really love this feature. I think it's really great. I have some problems

01:20:44 ◼   ► with the new memories feature. I think it's a regression in some way. But the memory movies

01:20:50 ◼   ► are really great and they are enhanced by the live photos. I just wish it was easier

01:20:55 ◼   ► to get to the actual images that a memory movie is presenting. Sometimes I just want

01:21:01 ◼   ► to see, show me the photos, I don't necessarily want a video. And also the music is so bad

01:21:06 ◼   ► for me. Like, I know different people have had different, like, experiences of this.

01:21:12 ◼   ► The music feels like I don't know who it's picking it from. Just pick stuff from my library.

01:21:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, sometimes I think it works, most times I think it doesn't, but the truth is, I generally

01:21:22 ◼   ► keep, this is like an answer to a stealthy question that hasn't been asked, but I generally

01:21:26 ◼   ► keep my volume on my iPad at nothing. So I don't hear that music at all, and I only increase

01:21:33 ◼   ► the volume when there's something that I actually want to hear and then I put it

01:21:35 ◼   ► back down. Yeah me too. So if you would like to send in a #AskUpgrade

01:21:41 ◼   ► question for us to answer on the show just send out a tweet with the #AskUpgrade

01:21:45 ◼   ► or you can use ?askupgrade in the Relay FM members

01:21:49 ◼   ► Discord which you have access to if you're an Upgrade+ subscriber. You can go

01:21:52 ◼   ► to getupgradeplus.com to sign up but don't forget if you're a new subscriber you can

01:21:55 ◼   ► get a 22% discount by going to giverelay.com giverelay.com yeah or if

01:22:02 ◼   ► Basically the reason we did this by the way, I don't think I mentioned it,

01:22:05 ◼   ► is because the holidays are coming up. If you wanted a membership and haven't been

01:22:09 ◼   ► able to get one this can be a gift that you can put on your list for somebody

01:22:12 ◼   ► that you love to buy it for you. So there you go, go to GiveRelay.com.

01:22:17 ◼   ► I would like to thank our sponsors for this episode that is Squarespace,

01:22:20 ◼   ► Membrful and Setapp for their support of the show. If you want to find

01:22:26 ◼   ► Jason online you can go to SixColors.com he is @jsnell, J S N E double L. You can

01:22:32 ◼   ► find me I'm @imike and we'll be back next time well I won't actually I'm

01:22:39 ◼   ► gonna be off next week Jason's gonna be getting a guest surprise guest next week

01:22:44 ◼   ► next week but there will be a new number of us next week I just won't be here

01:22:50 ◼   ► until then say goodbye Jason Snell goodbye Myke Hurley

01:22:55 ◼   ► [ Music ]

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