Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected episode 384.

00:00:13 ◼   ► It's made possible this week by our sponsors,

00:00:15 ◼   ► Bombas, Fitbod, and New Relic.

00:00:19 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I am joined by Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:22 ◼   ► - Hello, hi.

00:00:23 ◼   ► - Hello, we're back.

00:00:25 ◼   ► And we're back with our friend Myke Hurley.

00:00:27 ◼   ► - Ah, hi.

00:00:29 ◼   ► How is everybody?

00:00:30 ◼   ► I'm exhausted. I feel super weird. I apologize already.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Why are you exhausted? Tell us more about it.

00:00:36 ◼   ► I recorded a really, really long thing before.

00:00:39 ◼   ► So today as we recorded this, we did two things for The Panadict.

00:00:44 ◼   ► It is our 500th episode and also today is our 10th anniversary of working together on the show too.

00:00:52 ◼   ► They just ended up incredibly just lining up.

00:00:56 ◼   ► We didn't do anything special for it. They just lined up.

00:00:59 ◼   ► We recorded a three-hour episode, which was like a very listener intensive feedback show.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Like people wrote in a bunch of stuff to us and we promised we'd read every message.

00:01:10 ◼   ► I finished recording that show like 20 minutes before we started recording.

00:01:19 ◼   ► So I'm a little bit all over the place in the moment.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Congrats though. I mean that's an incredible milestone.

00:01:26 ◼   ► I can't believe you haven't blogged about this.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Like, I can see the headline already on, like, a Medium blog or something.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Like, I recorded 500 episodes for a podcast about pants.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Here's everything I learned.

00:01:39 ◼   ► -Here's everything I learned. -Like, super click-baity, you know?

00:01:42 ◼   ► Yeah. I'm not really sure what I've learned yet, though.

00:01:44 ◼   ► I have to think about that.

00:01:46 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:01:46 ◼   ► Nothing. Nothing.

00:01:48 ◼   ► -It's just a blank post. -It's what I learned.

00:01:51 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:01:53 ◼   ► Well, congratulations.

00:01:54 ◼   ► I remember it I cannot I refuse it's not that I can't I refuse to believe that it's been 10 years I

00:02:01 ◼   ► Don't I don't understand how that's possible at all

00:02:06 ◼   ► Well, we started the show in 2012. No, I understand how math works but like holy crap decade

00:02:12 ◼   ► Unbelievable. Yeah, it's crazy, right? Yes. Congratulations. Thank you. All right, so here on the non pin show

00:02:21 ◼   ► We were on episode 384. It would be episode

00:02:24 ◼   ► 441 if you count the prompt that gives you some context of how long you've been doing the pen addict

00:02:29 ◼   ► It's over a year. Yep more episodes than we've been doing this show

00:02:32 ◼   ► but for now

00:02:35 ◼   ► 384 episodes we start with follow-up two things about the

00:02:39 ◼   ► Jeremy's the game that we played last week cannot believe we forgot and says on me because actually have it further down in the show notes

00:02:46 ◼   ► where like my Jeremy's template is. I just missed it. We didn't tell people about the

00:02:50 ◼   ► website. So you can go to thejeremys.herokuapp.com, link is in the show notes, and there is put

00:03:00 ◼   ► together here all of the picks for the Jeremy's over the last many years. You can see all

00:03:07 ◼   ► the guesses Federico made and if he eventually got it right or eventually got it wrong. It's

00:03:13 ◼   ► amazing and you should go check it out.

00:03:15 ◼   ► The good thing about this page specifically and why it's worth looking at it sometime

00:03:20 ◼   ► afterwards which I always enjoy doing is that Jason lists every guess Federico makes, not

00:03:27 ◼   ► just the one that was correct.

00:03:30 ◼   ► That's the best part about this which is always fun to look back on.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Beans has been in my head a lot recently.

00:03:42 ◼   ► sent in the PDF for the proposal for biting lip emoji.

00:03:47 ◼   ► Okay.

00:03:48 ◼   ► And I just want to read some of this.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Please.

00:03:51 ◼   ► This is from the introduction.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Humans have a long experience with nonverbal communication.

00:03:57 ◼   ► Before we had words, we needed to try to rely on groaning and gesturing.

00:04:00 ◼   ► These old habits stuck...

00:04:02 ◼   ► Whoa!

00:04:03 ◼   ► Wait, what?

00:04:04 ◼   ► Okay.

00:04:05 ◼   ► These old habits stuck.

00:04:06 ◼   ► This is an interesting energy.

00:04:07 ◼   ► And it's hardwired in our brain that we even just, just, we even gesticulate while speaking

00:04:15 ◼   ► on the phone or while on a podcast, while obviously the other person can't see us.

00:04:21 ◼   ► And then they go on to, "Biting and chewing lip can indicate a range of emotions, including

00:04:25 ◼   ► fear, anxiety, and discomfort in a situation, or perhaps the person is worried or insecure."

00:04:32 ◼   ► but also lip biting can be iconic of flirtation

00:04:36 ◼   ► and exercising restraint.

00:04:38 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:04:40 ◼   ► - So, and it goes on and on with Google search results,

00:04:44 ◼   ► multiple usages.

00:04:46 ◼   ► This person who put this together really puts flirtation

00:04:49 ◼   ► and fear and anxiety sort of on the same level

00:04:51 ◼   ► throughout this document.

00:04:52 ◼   ► So, you know, maybe they've been burned in the area of love

00:04:56 ◼   ► and it comes coming out in their PDF, but here you go.

00:04:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's tons of examples for pain,

00:05:02 ◼   ► anticipation, excitement, arousal,

00:05:06 ◼   ► which is another category.

00:05:08 ◼   ► - Okay, so my least favorite thing about this,

00:05:11 ◼   ► I have two least favorite things.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Least favorite thing number one is

00:05:16 ◼   ► in the introduction thing,

00:05:17 ◼   ► they've put in a bunch of imagery as like examples

00:05:20 ◼   ► and there's three stock images

00:05:22 ◼   ► and then there's an image of Harry and Megan

00:05:25 ◼   ► on their wedding day.

00:05:26 ◼   ► And it's just like, I'm not really sure why.

00:05:29 ◼   ► He's buying his lip.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Yeah, but like why this image

00:05:32 ◼   ► and then three random stock images, you know?

00:05:35 ◼   ► Like I don't understand the--

00:05:37 ◼   ► The first one gives, you know.

00:05:40 ◼   ► Like popular context, but I feel like

00:05:43 ◼   ► there are probably a million movie scenes

00:05:45 ◼   ► that you could pick from.

00:05:47 ◼   ► Also the zwidge that they suggested

00:05:49 ◼   ► was a mouth plus a tooth,

00:05:50 ◼   ► and I don't like that as a thing.

00:05:53 ◼   ► And also just this, I just still cannot believe this emoji.

00:05:57 ◼   ► I just can't believe this emoji is a thing.

00:05:59 ◼   ► - It's the best one.

00:06:01 ◼   ► - You know, there's a lot of other emoji in this document.

00:06:05 ◼   ► - Biting lip is expected to have high usage.

00:06:08 ◼   ► - Right.

00:06:09 ◼   ► - When it comes to Google, biting lip greatly outperforms

00:06:11 ◼   ► the median smiley emoji dueling face.

00:06:14 ◼   ► - This is a very formal, this is a very formal proposal.

00:06:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, you're submitting it

00:06:21 ◼   ► to like a consortium committee type thing, right?

00:06:23 ◼   ► You've got to try and make it, even though,

00:06:25 ◼   ► even though like, look, this is what's kind of funny to me really about this proposal

00:06:29 ◼   ► is like, the people that made this proposal, what they're looking for is a sexting emoji,

00:06:35 ◼   ► right? It's justification for... But they have to present it in such an official way.

00:06:42 ◼   ► That duality is very entertaining for me. Exactly, it's so professional, but done in

00:06:47 ◼   ► a way to justify the thirst behind this emoji, which makes it so perfect. It's like from

00:06:54 ◼   ► From the dawn of time, human beings have commuted.

00:06:57 ◼   ► It's like, alright, okay.

00:06:59 ◼   ► Don't you know that biting a lip is like, look, I get it.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Also I enjoy, right, like, the way they've stacked this.

00:07:06 ◼   ► Lip biting can be a trademark of insecure shy types, but also lip biting can be iconic

00:07:11 ◼   ► of flirtation or exercising restraint.

00:07:13 ◼   ► No, not also.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Not also.

00:07:16 ◼   ► I was like, oh, I'm so nervous right now, lip bite emoji.

00:07:19 ◼   ► No one's gonna do that.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Under the section labeled "Breaking New Ground," the author is right.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Other than "Smirking Face" (aka Sexual Face, Smug Face, and Suggestive Smile), there aren't

00:07:32 ◼   ► any other emojis effective at communicating the tension that comes with flirtation.

00:07:37 ◼   ► Water droplet guy, peach, heart eyes, eggplant, but none that convey the emotional complexity

00:07:43 ◼   ► that comes with relationships.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:07:49 ◼   ► But the biting lip does.

00:07:51 ◼   ► The biting lip really speaks to emotional complexity.

00:07:54 ◼   ► Anyway, that's enough of that.

00:07:56 ◼   ► - You took that further than I was expecting, Steven.

00:08:02 ◼   ► - Just the whole document, it's just--

00:08:03 ◼   ► - I'm a sophisticated person.

00:08:06 ◼   ► I don't send the peach emoji, I send the biting lip one.

00:08:09 ◼   ► - I'm gonna read the next piece of follow-up

00:08:12 ◼   ► because I feel like I put this out into the world,

00:08:14 ◼   ► so I should just continue pulling it out.

00:08:16 ◼   ► - No, no, no, please don't, no, no.

00:08:17 ◼   ► - It doesn't feel fair.

00:08:18 ◼   ► It doesn't feel fair for other people

00:08:20 ◼   ► clear it out to have to read it no there is no clearing up I was right the first

00:08:24 ◼   ► time and this is just more information from Rafi indeed the pupil of the eye is

00:08:28 ◼   ► a hole no which lets light in and the image is then projected on the back of

00:08:34 ◼   ► the eye just like in a camera also like a camera the pupil gets smaller when

00:08:38 ◼   ► there's more lights and like smaller larger you know the pupil is black

00:08:41 ◼   ► because it's dark inside the eyeball because it's a hole and you're looking

00:08:45 ◼   ► inside the eye. This is also why you get red eyes when taking picture with a flash right

00:08:52 ◼   ► in front of the eyes. The flash simply lights the inside of your eyeball showing the red

00:08:59 ◼   ► color inside our head. This comes from Rafi, who I can only assume is a very well known

00:09:07 ◼   ► ophthalmologist. No, I don't care. Why send this piece of follow up? Kate's asked a great

00:09:13 ◼   ► question. Kate asked a really great question. Why are we doing this again? The reason is

00:09:17 ◼   ► Stephen put this in a document and I just decided to read it. Holes. Just holes. Holes

00:09:25 ◼   ► in the eyes. Moving on. Let's talk about feet. If you think about it, the pupils are just

00:09:31 ◼   ► like the nostrils of the eyes. You know? Enough about holes. Feet. Right? Much better. From

00:09:41 ◼   ► Lip bike. Let's go to feet now. We're doing the whole anatomy thing today.

00:09:48 ◼   ► That's the theme of today's episode is we're covering the entire anatomy.

00:09:52 ◼   ► The gang discovers the human body. This is what we're doing today.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Friend of the show, Matt Van Ormer. Let's talk about Matt's feet.

00:10:04 ◼   ► aka the foot mod, has bought and reviewed the Steam Deck pedal.

00:10:10 ◼   ► Ultimately, there's kind of nothing surprising from this, like it is what we thought it was.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Matt did note that it was very well made, like the hardware is very well made and in use was

00:10:21 ◼   ► really enjoyed. It's got three buttons on it kind of, right? Three pedals.

00:10:26 ◼   ► Two on each side are raised higher than the one in the middle, which you can kind of see from

00:10:31 ◼   ► from the imagery, but this helps you,

00:10:34 ◼   ► no, or is the one in the middle raised?

00:10:36 ◼   ► There's a difference in height between the two

00:10:38 ◼   ► on either side and the one in the middle.

00:10:40 ◼   ► And this helps you kind of feel with your feet

00:10:44 ◼   ► which button you're pressing.

00:10:45 ◼   ► So it's very useful in use.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Did either of you buy one of these, by the way?

00:10:50 ◼   ► - No, no, but there's a section of this post

00:10:55 ◼   ► called Alto Automation.

00:10:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:00 ◼   ► - It's sold out basically immediately.

00:11:05 ◼   ► So a lot of people are into foot automation.

00:11:07 ◼   ► - Or toe-mation.

00:11:09 ◼   ► - Toe-nation.

00:11:10 ◼   ► - All toe-mation.

00:11:12 ◼   ► - All toe-mation.

00:11:13 ◼   ► - Oh, did he use it barefoot?

00:11:15 ◼   ► Do we know?

00:11:17 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:11:17 ◼   ► Matt is in the Discord.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Matt, did you use it barefoot or with socks or with shoes?

00:11:21 ◼   ► We would like to know.

00:11:22 ◼   ► This is a very important follow-up.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Do you like the pictures that Matt included

00:11:26 ◼   ► with his dog in there?

00:11:28 ◼   ► - I do, very good, especially good dog.

00:11:31 ◼   ► - Mostly socked, but sometimes barefoot, so there you go.

00:11:36 ◼   ► - Very good, very good, okay, okay.

00:11:39 ◼   ► Yeah, one of the best dogs I've seen

00:11:41 ◼   ► from the follow-up segment.

00:11:43 ◼   ► We've seen a few over the years.

00:11:45 ◼   ► It's an extremely good dog.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Look at those eyes, yeah.

00:11:49 ◼   ► Look at the gracious pose, yeah.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Very good dog, very good dog.

00:11:53 ◼   ► - Do you think dogs have holes in their eyes?

00:11:55 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Can you please, no.

00:11:57 ◼   ► I'm quitting how do you quit zoom close a call you can never quit zoom okay

00:12:09 ◼   ► should I consider the steam deck pedal should I you already have one considered

00:12:15 ◼   ► it like it's only a matter of time until you get it quote unquote for your work

00:12:20 ◼   ► so it's like one shortcuts for serious shortcuts no maybe stop oh my god maybe

00:12:29 ◼   ► you could program one of the pedals to quit zoom you know so if I keep talking

00:12:37 ◼   ► about things you don't like bang and then you're gone I could check it out at

00:12:41 ◼   ► the podcast yeah I could look into that yeah I may added a role in discord just

00:12:47 ◼   ► for Matt named foot mod.

00:12:49 ◼   ► - Accurate.

00:12:49 ◼   ► - That's there for all time.

00:12:51 ◼   ► Just as like a related plug in, I think two weeks from now,

00:12:56 ◼   ► now this, not the next episode,

00:12:57 ◼   ► but the one after that on MPU,

00:12:59 ◼   ► we're getting deep into the stream deck.

00:13:01 ◼   ► So I'm like, I like burned down my whole stream deck set up,

00:13:04 ◼   ► have rebuilt it.

00:13:04 ◼   ► I wanted to check out the foot pedal, but it was sold out.

00:13:07 ◼   ► So if you're stream deck curious,

00:13:09 ◼   ► we have an MPU coming that I think you will like a lot.

00:13:11 ◼   ► - I am actually, so I will look forward to that.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you didn't have, you know, don't have one.

00:13:18 ◼   ► You've never had one.

00:13:18 ◼   ► - I do have one.

00:13:19 ◼   ► I had one before you.

00:13:20 ◼   ► I set it up again and I've never used it.

00:13:22 ◼   ► I set it up with it.

00:13:23 ◼   ► I spent an afternoon setting it up

00:13:25 ◼   ► and I just don't ever press it.

00:13:26 ◼   ► I never think to press the button.

00:13:28 ◼   ► I think maybe I'm just not a Stream Deck person,

00:13:29 ◼   ► but I will listen to that Mac Power Users episode

00:13:31 ◼   ► and then make my final decision.

00:13:34 ◼   ► - This episode of Connected is brought to you by Bombas.

00:13:37 ◼   ► With Bombas, everyone can be a foot mod

00:13:40 ◼   ► because they make super comfortable clothes.

00:13:45 ◼   ► - Stop that now, that is unacceptable.

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00:13:51 ◼   ► and what's really cool, for every item they sell,

00:13:55 ◼   ► an equal item is donated.

00:13:57 ◼   ► So you get comfortable socks and shirts and underwear

00:13:59 ◼   ► and you're helping someone in need.

00:14:02 ◼   ► Everything they make is soft, seamless, tagless,

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00:14:15 ◼   ► They make perfect cozy winter layers.

00:14:18 ◼   ► There's a pair of Bombas socks for everything you do.

00:14:20 ◼   ► I'm wearing my podcasting socks right now.

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00:14:26 ◼   ► Bombas has socks for everyone.

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00:14:34 ◼   ► They're made with thoughtful design features

00:14:35 ◼   ► like invisible seams, soft fabrics,

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00:14:43 ◼   ► They may make you forget you're even wearing them,

00:14:46 ◼   ► but in a good way, the biting lip emoji way.

00:14:49 ◼   ► See, I've tied it into two topics in the show.

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00:14:52 ◼   ► Go to bombas.com/connected.

00:14:54 ◼   ► There you will get 20% off your first purchase,

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00:15:03 ◼   ► That's bombas.com/connected, B-O-M-B-A-S,

00:15:07 ◼   ► bombus.com/connected.

00:15:09 ◼   ► Our thanks to Bombus for their support of the show

00:15:11 ◼   ► and Relay FM.

00:15:13 ◼   ► - So Apple has announced a new thing called Tap to Pay

00:15:17 ◼   ► on the iPhone.

00:15:18 ◼   ► This is kind of like somebody reminded me on Twitter

00:15:21 ◼   ► about this, about, you remember they did the Find My Network

00:15:25 ◼   ► before they announced AirTags?

00:15:26 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:15:27 ◼   ► - I think it might be something similar here.

00:15:29 ◼   ► They're announcing they're doing this thing

00:15:30 ◼   ► and then maybe they're gonna announce something else,

00:15:32 ◼   ► probably like NFC and an iPad or whatever, right?

00:15:35 ◼   ► maybe I'm just gonna make some kind of accessory to put an iPad in, whatever, so you can make

00:15:39 ◼   ► like a point of sale terminal. Basically what it's doing is unlocking the functionality

00:15:44 ◼   ► inside of the NFC chips in iPhones so that an iPhone can be used like a contactless payment

00:15:51 ◼   ► terminal. So instead of using one of those big things on a desk or you know you've got

00:15:56 ◼   ► like the little square reader or whatever, it's just bang straight on the iPhone, easy

00:16:01 ◼   ► to go. Now Federico, I see you have a bunch of questions in the document. Yes I do. I

00:16:05 ◼   ► think I might be able to answer for you, so maybe as a better way to talk about this,

00:16:09 ◼   ► why don't you ask these questions to me? I am glad you are here to provide answers to

00:16:13 ◼   ► my questions. My questions are developed on two separate fronts. There's the more, the

00:16:22 ◼   ► questions about this announcement and then in a broader context of payments in America.

00:16:28 ◼   ► But in the context of Tap to Pay on the iPhone, can you explain to me why this is a big deal

00:16:34 ◼   ► according to a lot of people? Because when I shop here in Italy, I have never, and I'm

00:16:39 ◼   ► not, this is not an exaggeration or anything, I have never seen the, like, the things that

00:16:45 ◼   ► I've seen in America, like those iPads in coffee shops or something. Everybody here

00:16:50 ◼   ► as a standard POS, point of sale terminal, that accepts contactless payments or the chip-based cards.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Literally everyone has it.

00:17:03 ◼   ► See, the reason I think I can help you specifically is because the UK has a kind of a hybrid system,

00:17:09 ◼   ► where we are, like Europe, everywhere has contactless payments and you can use anything.

00:17:17 ◼   ► It's not like there are places in America where it's like,

00:17:19 ◼   ► "Oh, you can do contactless,

00:17:21 ◼   ► but you sometimes have to put your card in."

00:17:22 ◼   ► And sometimes Apple Pay works, and we're the same as you.

00:17:25 ◼   ► But something that I see here that I also see in America

00:17:28 ◼   ► is small businesses with these more modern systems

00:17:32 ◼   ► that either look like an iPad or are an iPad,

00:17:34 ◼   ► or they use these little things that plug into an iPad.

00:17:37 ◼   ► And this tends to be relatively new or small businesses

00:17:40 ◼   ► or people that are setting up, say,

00:17:43 ◼   ► you have like a farmer's market kind of thing or whatever, right? Where it's like you can't

00:17:49 ◼   ► have a checkout system because you're outside and there's nowhere to plug in or whatever.

00:17:54 ◼   ► So you'll see a lot of the time.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Maybe I've just been to the wrong places then.

00:17:57 ◼   ► I don't know. Like it depends what's around you, what's local to you. I mean, my expectation

00:18:02 ◼   ► probably is a lot of the businesses that you frequent have been around for a long time.

00:18:07 ◼   ► You know what I mean? So like they're just more established. I don't know. Like I've

00:18:11 ◼   ► There's a lot of places that I frequent in the UK that are more artsy places and they're

00:18:16 ◼   ► new and they're trying to make it work and they've only been in their business for three

00:18:21 ◼   ► weeks and they've got a little square reader kind of thing.

00:18:24 ◼   ► So the benefit to what Apple's doing here is you don't have to use the hardware provided

00:18:33 ◼   ► by the company, which I'm sure comes with some kind of fee.

00:18:37 ◼   ► This would remove that, so you don't need to worry about that anymore.

00:18:41 ◼   ► And also for a lot of people, especially in very constrained environments, or as I say,

00:18:48 ◼   ► like a farmer's market or something, they don't need another piece of hardware.

00:18:52 ◼   ► So like for example, when I used to help Brad out at the pen shows, we would always need

00:18:57 ◼   ► to use his phone because it was the only one that had the Square Reader in it.

00:19:02 ◼   ► But if we could all just sign into an account, which would be his account, and just use say

00:19:07 ◼   ► the Square app and then it can just take the payment because it's on anyone's phone, that's

00:19:12 ◼   ► going to be way better as a system for a lot of people. This isn't going to be the case

00:19:17 ◼   ► for everybody. I'm sure in a lot of coffee shops they're still going to want a dedicated

00:19:21 ◼   ► terminal. There's a company that I see a lot now called Clover. I see those in the UK,

00:19:27 ◼   ► I've seen them in America as well, where they make a really nice thing. And it's just a

00:19:31 ◼   ► point of sale system, but it's modern looking. It looks like those kind of iPad focused ones,

00:19:35 ◼   ► like it's an actual contained unit, people are still going to use that. But this would

00:19:39 ◼   ► allow for small businesses, new businesses especially, to not have to get these like

00:19:46 ◼   ► any point of sale hardware, whether cheap or expensive, they could just use their phone

00:19:53 ◼   ► or their probably an iPad instead.

00:19:55 ◼   ► Okay, that's cool. I'm never going to see this in Italy, but okay, that's...

00:20:01 ◼   ► - You might, you might, because honestly,

00:20:03 ◼   ► there might be some companies that want

00:20:05 ◼   ► a different experience and this is gonna be

00:20:08 ◼   ► probably free to them to use,

00:20:11 ◼   ► if it comes outside of the US.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Which I reckon it will, 'cause like they're working,

00:20:15 ◼   ► one of the people they're working with,

00:20:17 ◼   ► I think the only company they've announced

00:20:18 ◼   ► they're working with so far is Stripe.

00:20:21 ◼   ► And Stripe is very international, so considering

00:20:24 ◼   ► Stripe will be the facilitator of the payments here,

00:20:28 ◼   ► I don't see why they couldn't roll this out.

00:20:30 ◼   ► This isn't like Apple Pay Cash, where Apple's working with a specific bank or whatever to

00:20:35 ◼   ► make that work.

00:20:36 ◼   ► I could imagine that this would roll out faster than say the peer-to-peer payment stuff would.

00:20:41 ◼   ► And my second question, not related to, what's it called, Tap to Pay?

00:20:47 ◼   ► Tap to Pay.

00:20:48 ◼   ► Not related to Tap to Pay, but more in the broader context of like all these apps and

00:20:54 ◼   ► services that let you do person-to-person payments, usually in America. Like, they seem

00:21:00 ◼   ► to be a big deal for American users, like CashApp and Venmo, like everybody's using

00:21:07 ◼   ► them. And I saw a video on Twitter a while back that was actually a TikTok video that

00:21:13 ◼   ► a friend of the show, Rob, found again for me today, so thank you, Rob. So it's basically

00:21:20 ◼   ► video of someone explaining why these services are so popular in America to do the peer-to-peer

00:21:28 ◼   ► payments and explaining the difference between the American bank system and the European

00:21:34 ◼   ► bank system where in Europe I can send money to someone basically for free in two seconds.

00:21:42 ◼   ► But like this thing with like these services like Cash App and Venmo, that's just not a

00:21:48 ◼   ► thing here.

00:21:49 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like we have it too. It's like imagine if your bank worked as easily as Venmo,

00:21:55 ◼   ► because that's what it's like in Europe and in the UK as well. And I'm sure in a lot of

00:22:00 ◼   ► other places. We don't have fees for these transfers and they happen immediately across

00:22:05 ◼   ► banks. It's not even for the same bank.

00:22:08 ◼   ► But this is not true in America, hence why they are popular, these services.

00:22:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's filling, it's like filling a hole left open by our bad, like our bad system,

00:22:20 ◼   ► right?

00:22:21 ◼   ► If we had what y'all have in Europe, this wouldn't be as exciting to us.

00:22:25 ◼   ► This could be a reason why maybe Apple's never really pushed on Apple Pay Cash, because there

00:22:29 ◼   ► isn't really that much of a need for it.

00:22:31 ◼   ► Whereas this one specifically could be used in other countries, because it's not really

00:22:36 ◼   ► about a failure of the banking system as such.

00:22:40 ◼   ► more that just like these days small businesses would just prefer much more flexibility and

00:22:46 ◼   ► this would enable even more flexibility because there's always an iPhone in the middle of

00:22:50 ◼   ► these square transactions or whatever and now you don't need to have that hardware that

00:22:56 ◼   ► gets between the phone and the customer. So it's pretty cool I'm pleased that they've

00:23:00 ◼   ► done this. I think this is an interesting thing. I am just wondering is there another

00:23:05 ◼   ► shoe to drop here? Exactly like it can be iPhone only right?

00:23:10 ◼   ► So it definitely seems like this is something

00:23:12 ◼   ► that future iPads will support.

00:23:14 ◼   ► So you can like have, be that person, right?

00:23:16 ◼   ► We have like an iPad.

00:23:18 ◼   ► I mean, my favorite coffee shop,

00:23:20 ◼   ► like they use iPads with like the square reader,

00:23:22 ◼   ► but I've even been other places,

00:23:23 ◼   ► like if you go to, especially like a temporary store

00:23:28 ◼   ► or like a festival or something,

00:23:29 ◼   ► it's like iPad minis and those little credit card readers.

00:23:32 ◼   ► It's like, man, all that could just go away.

00:23:34 ◼   ► So I would bet good money,

00:23:37 ◼   ► and maybe this will be a prediction

00:23:38 ◼   ► in a future Ricky's episode that future iPads will support

00:23:42 ◼   ► whatever hardware is needed to make this work.

00:23:45 ◼   ► - I think I saw on six colors,

00:23:46 ◼   ► I think Dan wrote the article that like, and it's true.

00:23:49 ◼   ► I had a vague memory of this and I was pleased

00:23:51 ◼   ► somebody found it.

00:23:52 ◼   ► Like iPads have had NFC chips in them before,

00:23:54 ◼   ► they've just not been turned on.

00:23:56 ◼   ► But like, it just seems like it was like,

00:23:59 ◼   ► it was cheaper for them to put them in

00:24:01 ◼   ► than not put them in kind of thing.

00:24:03 ◼   ► You know, sometimes you get like weird hardware in a device.

00:24:05 ◼   ► It's like, why is this sensor here?

00:24:07 ◼   ► Like there's that weird sensor in the HomePod mini, right?

00:24:09 ◼   ► That doesn't do anything, right?

00:24:11 ◼   ► It's like a temperature sensor or something.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Am I losing my mind here?

00:24:15 ◼   ► It seems like nobody's on board with me.

00:24:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got nothing.

00:24:18 ◼   ► - Okay, well, anyway, someone knows what I'm talking about.

00:24:23 ◼   ► - Anyway, payments, right?

00:24:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:24:27 ◼   ► - I'm off in like my little fever dream over here.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Have you not heard about the secret chips

00:24:32 ◼   ► nobody knows about?

00:24:33 ◼   ► - It's just your body, it's fine.

00:24:35 ◼   ► - They're hiding them in there, Federico.

00:24:36 ◼   ► There's NFC everywhere, man.

00:24:38 ◼   ► It's fine. You go play over there with your chips.

00:24:42 ◼   ► All right, so cool.

00:24:44 ◼   ► So payments, huh?

00:24:45 ◼   ► Money, money, money.

00:24:47 ◼   ► It's important these days.

00:24:48 ◼   ► Makes the world go round, is what I say.

00:24:50 ◼   ► That's why Apple is doing it.

00:24:52 ◼   ► Oh, Matt in the foot mod came up

00:24:54 ◼   ► with the Bloomberg article about a humidity

00:24:58 ◼   ► and temperature sensor from a HomePod mini.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Believe it now, Bloomberg said it.

00:25:02 ◼   ► He don't believe it when I said it.

00:25:03 ◼   ► Mark Gorman says it.

00:25:04 ◼   ► He like, "Oh, it's so true."

00:25:05 ◼   ► when Myke says it, it's like you're--

00:25:07 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, when has Bloomberg ever been in trouble

00:25:10 ◼   ► for a story that may or may not have been super accurate?

00:25:12 ◼   ► - Footnote, Bloomberg was responsible for the--

00:25:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:25:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, boy! - We're not doing that.

00:25:18 ◼   ► No, we're not doing that, no.

00:25:20 ◼   ► That's worse than the pupil, I'm sorry.

00:25:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:25:25 ◼   ► - Everyone has a hole in their foot where the light comes in.

00:25:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:25:30 ◼   ► - God, okay.

00:25:32 ◼   ► Oh my God. - Oh, God.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Please keep talking about banks and payments.

00:25:39 ◼   ► Let's talk about betas.

00:25:40 ◼   ► OK.

00:25:40 ◼   ► Let's talk about that.

00:25:41 ◼   ► I can actually tie all this together if you want.

00:25:43 ◼   ► iOS 15.4 beta 2 includes the functionality for the tap

00:25:48 ◼   ► to pay.

00:25:49 ◼   ► So that's one thing.

00:25:50 ◼   ► And second, just in general, I'm really

00:25:53 ◼   ► excited about this face ID of mask.

00:25:55 ◼   ► I'm not running the betas.

00:25:56 ◼   ► I'm just going to wait.

00:25:58 ◼   ► But because I-- now when I have to use Apple Pay in the local

00:26:03 ◼   ► coffee shop and I have to put my code in right I'm like oh man I can't wait

00:26:08 ◼   ► until I don't have to do this anymore or like a couple of days. You don't have to do it now.

00:26:12 ◼   ► Just put the bag on. I don't want to put the bag on my phone. And also like I was in IKEA yesterday and I

00:26:17 ◼   ► couldn't remember the PIN number for a card. It's like a card I don't use very

00:26:21 ◼   ► frequently so I had to like I could put the card in I was like oh no I've

00:26:24 ◼   ► forgotten and then I had to open one password put in my master password find

00:26:29 ◼   ► I was like I hate doing that so embarrassing you stand in there for like

00:26:32 ◼   ► two minutes where you search up the stuff. So I'm very excited about the face ID mask thing.

00:26:36 ◼   ► Just hold your breath, take your mask off real quick, that's bad advice.

00:26:41 ◼   ► No, you see, I don't like doing it, right? Like, it's not me, I don't like looking like that guy,

00:26:45 ◼   ► you know? Like, I don't want to be that guy who's like, "Oh, I pulled his mask down." Like,

00:26:49 ◼   ► like a fool. They added some stuff with Beta 2, Look Down to Unlocked, it kind of reminds me of,

00:26:56 ◼   ► like, the whatever on the iPad or something like that, right? Where they point, like, "Hey, the

00:27:00 ◼   ► face things over here. Because I think it needs your attention, is that right Federico? Like it

00:27:04 ◼   ► needs... Yeah. It has to have... you have to be looking at the phone so like you can't turn off

00:27:10 ◼   ► the attention detection thing for that. I think that's accurate, yeah. Right? Yeah. I think it's

00:27:16 ◼   ► like the attention detection thing. It's really good. I've been running the beta and it's such a

00:27:22 ◼   ► good feature. It's so useful. The change in shortcuts is like made tech press

00:27:29 ◼   ► people happy. Where you can run some automations without notifications. Not

00:27:36 ◼   ► all of them. The one that I use the most often which is replace a home screen

00:27:39 ◼   ► icon with a shortcut. That still shows the banner which is frustrating but I

00:27:45 ◼   ► think people are excited about this and it feels like another slow step towards

00:27:49 ◼   ► maybe shortcuts can just like do stuff in the background

00:27:53 ◼   ► all the time.

00:27:54 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Not bother me.

00:27:56 ◼   ► - They still have a bit of work to do there.

00:27:58 ◼   ► Like for example, automations like in,

00:28:01 ◼   ► any kind of automation in shortcuts

00:28:05 ◼   ► does not exist on Monterey at all.

00:28:08 ◼   ► If you want to run shortcuts on the Mac on a schedule,

00:28:10 ◼   ► you got to use like Chrome jobs or external utilities,

00:28:14 ◼   ► like better touch tool with time triggers

00:28:17 ◼   ► or something like that,

00:28:18 ◼   ► because they don't have like the automation tab

00:28:21 ◼   ► in the Mac app, it's just not there,

00:28:24 ◼   ► which is kind of weird.

00:28:25 ◼   ► But what you mentioned for the home screen icons,

00:28:29 ◼   ► I was hoping that they would,

00:28:31 ◼   ► we talked about this last week,

00:28:32 ◼   ► that they would add like a toggle

00:28:34 ◼   ► in the shortcuts details page

00:28:37 ◼   ► that lets you do what you can do with automations,

00:28:41 ◼   ► which is notify when run.

00:28:43 ◼   ► But it's as of beta two, it's still not there.

00:28:46 ◼   ► I still want to kind of believe

00:28:48 ◼   ► that they're gonna add this to the shortcuts inspector,

00:28:52 ◼   ► or maybe as a toggle, it could even be like an option

00:28:56 ◼   ► that you only see when you add a shortcut

00:28:59 ◼   ► to the home screen, like in the icon picking,

00:29:02 ◼   ► like sort of final confirmation screen,

00:29:04 ◼   ► there could be maybe an option there.

00:29:06 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:29:07 ◼   ► I feel like it's odd to have that inconsistency right now

00:29:12 ◼   ► where an automation like--

00:29:13 ◼   ► - My only question to this was like,

00:29:15 ◼   ► what if they do what you suggested in your Ricky pic?

00:29:18 ◼   ► Like homes, this was one of your Ricky pics,

00:29:21 ◼   ► like customization stuff?

00:29:23 ◼   ► - Yep, yep.

00:29:24 ◼   ► - So maybe they wouldn't want to offer this

00:29:26 ◼   ► 'cause they've got like a thing

00:29:27 ◼   ► they're gonna do with app icons.

00:29:29 ◼   ► - Maybe, maybe, because like using a shortcut

00:29:33 ◼   ► to install a custom icon for an app

00:29:35 ◼   ► is a kind of a silly work around.

00:29:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:29:39 ◼   ► - You're not supposed to make a shortcut

00:29:42 ◼   ► if you want to customize your home screen.

00:29:44 ◼   ► and we're all in agreement there.

00:29:46 ◼   ► It's a workaround that people have discovered.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Apple actually made it better.

00:29:51 ◼   ► If you recall, before iOS 14.2, .3, maybe,

00:29:56 ◼   ► basically after this became a thing,

00:30:01 ◼   ► before that, these kinds of shortcuts,

00:30:06 ◼   ► they would still open the shortcuts app first,

00:30:10 ◼   ► and then it would take you to the app

00:30:12 ◼   ► that you wanted to launch from a custom icon.

00:30:14 ◼   ► And then Apple realized,

00:30:15 ◼   ► "Oh, millions of people are doing this.

00:30:17 ◼   ► "I guess we gotta make it a little better for them."

00:30:19 ◼   ► And so now those custom icons, those custom shortcuts,

00:30:23 ◼   ► when you tap them from the home screen,

00:30:25 ◼   ► they just go straight to the app that you're launching.

00:30:28 ◼   ► But it didn't used to be like this.

00:30:30 ◼   ► It used to be worse.

00:30:31 ◼   ► So Apple made it a bit better.

00:30:33 ◼   ► But now they could make it all the way better.

00:30:35 ◼   ► And it seems like they don't want to.

00:30:38 ◼   ► And the inconsistency is weird because arguably,

00:30:41 ◼   ► an automation that runs in the background

00:30:44 ◼   ► and can do all kinds of things,

00:30:47 ◼   ► I mean, it's technically more dangerous

00:30:49 ◼   ► than a shortcut that you run as an icon

00:30:52 ◼   ► from the home screen, you know?

00:30:54 ◼   ► But still, there's an option there

00:30:56 ◼   ► and not when you wanna add a shortcut

00:30:58 ◼   ► with a custom icon to your home screen.

00:31:00 ◼   ► I don't get it.

00:31:02 ◼   ► - Marina in the Discord had a question.

00:31:04 ◼   ► Does the iPad also get Face ID with a mask on?

00:31:08 ◼   ► - I don't think it does.

00:31:10 ◼   ► - Do you think they'll do that?

00:31:11 ◼   ► - Maybe, I don't know.

00:31:12 ◼   ► I can see why they wouldn't just because they like don't think they need to.

00:31:17 ◼   ► You know what I mean? Like I could see that being like a blind spot,

00:31:20 ◼   ► but I think it would be good to have it.

00:31:22 ◼   ► I wonder if it has anything to do with the,

00:31:25 ◼   ► the iPad's ability to do face ID from more angles.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Like I wonder if that makes it more or less complicated. I just don't know,

00:31:33 ◼   ► but it would be nice. Like if you have, if you can do it, it should.

00:31:38 ◼   ► So maybe there's a reason that it can't.

00:31:41 ◼   ► - Isn't it weird that the iPhone never got the ability

00:31:43 ◼   ► to do it from multiple angles?

00:31:46 ◼   ► - I think it is.

00:31:46 ◼   ► I think it's super weird.

00:31:47 ◼   ► - Why is that?

00:31:49 ◼   ► Why is that?

00:31:49 ◼   ► If the iPad can do it,

00:31:51 ◼   ► and it seems like the sensors are basically the same.

00:31:55 ◼   ► Hmm, I don't know.

00:31:57 ◼   ► - I'm so used to the iPad Mini now with the Touch ID.

00:32:02 ◼   ► It's like I never even considered the Face ID iPads

00:32:06 ◼   ► needing or not needing this feature.

00:32:09 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is made possible by Fitbod.

00:32:13 ◼   ► It's very normal for people to start considering

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00:34:30 ◼   ► Our thanks to Fitbod for the support of the show,

00:34:33 ◼   ► and Relay FM.

00:34:35 ◼   ► So the Six Colors Apple Report Card

00:34:40 ◼   ► was just released earlier this week,

00:34:42 ◼   ► or maybe last week now.

00:34:44 ◼   ► I don't know how time works.

00:34:46 ◼   ► But one of the sections--

00:34:47 ◼   ► - It was this week, it was like two days ago.

00:34:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:34:50 ◼   ► - We didn't talk about it,

00:34:51 ◼   ► but I didn't have power for like a week.

00:34:52 ◼   ► - You didn't have power, so what do you know?

00:34:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, Memphis had this big ice storm,

00:34:58 ◼   ► I didn't have power for almost a week,

00:34:59 ◼   ► so like I'm, I, seriously, if we weren't recording today,

00:35:02 ◼   ► I wouldn't know what day it is because I'm so off.

00:35:05 ◼   ► But it's fascinating, go read it.

00:35:06 ◼   ► All three of us are lucky enough to participate in it,

00:35:09 ◼   ► which I always enjoy.

00:35:11 ◼   ► But one of the sections that always gets

00:35:14 ◼   ► pretty much a rough score is HomeKit,

00:35:16 ◼   ► Apple's smart home platform.

00:35:18 ◼   ► It's a weird ecosystem because Apple,

00:35:21 ◼   ► like HomeKit's kind of invisible.

00:35:23 ◼   ► They have the home app, which is not very good,

00:35:26 ◼   ► but then there's all these other parts of the service

00:35:28 ◼   ► that aren't even exposed and the home app

00:35:31 ◼   ► and other apps can build on top of it.

00:35:32 ◼   ► but Apple doesn't make any hardware for it,

00:35:34 ◼   ► other than the HomePod and the Apple TV,

00:35:36 ◼   ► which can act as basically HomeKit hubs,

00:35:40 ◼   ► so you can use and access your stuff

00:35:42 ◼   ► when you're away from your network.

00:35:43 ◼   ► But they don't make cameras or lights or anything,

00:35:45 ◼   ► they leave all that up to the third party

00:35:47 ◼   ► sort of world to make stuff.

00:35:49 ◼   ► And the three of us have all experimented with HomeKit

00:35:53 ◼   ► and Smart Home stuff over the years.

00:35:55 ◼   ► So I kind of wanted to touch base with the two of you

00:35:57 ◼   ► and see kind of where things are

00:36:00 ◼   ► with your Smart Home stuff,

00:36:01 ◼   ► What do you think about HomeKit in particular?

00:36:03 ◼   ► Are you looking to move past it?

00:36:04 ◼   ► Are you looking to engage more with it?

00:36:06 ◼   ► Kind of the lay of the land,

00:36:09 ◼   ► and Federico gave this section a very good name

00:36:12 ◼   ► that we should recognize.

00:36:13 ◼   ► So Federico, what are we doing today?

00:36:16 ◼   ► - Because you mentioned, like,

00:36:17 ◼   ► why don't we go sort of round-robin style,

00:36:20 ◼   ► talking about our setups and all the different rooms

00:36:24 ◼   ► that we have in our homes.

00:36:26 ◼   ► I thought we could call this a room-robbing.

00:36:30 ◼   ► So, you're welcome.

00:36:31 ◼   ► - It's very good.

00:36:33 ◼   ► - Really good.

00:36:33 ◼   ► - Are we gonna actually do this around Robin's style?

00:36:36 ◼   ► - I mean, we can.

00:36:38 ◼   ► - I mean, why else?

00:36:40 ◼   ► - Well, Steven said that.

00:36:42 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:36:43 ◼   ► - I mean, we have to now.

00:36:45 ◼   ► - It's a room Robin.

00:36:47 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:36:48 ◼   ► - You know?

00:36:48 ◼   ► I'll go first because I came up with the title,

00:36:52 ◼   ► which grants me rights to--

00:36:54 ◼   ► - Makes you king of the room.

00:36:55 ◼   ► - Makes me the king of the room.

00:36:58 ◼   ► So I will say that, first of all, Myke,

00:37:01 ◼   ► I enjoyed your quote in the Six Colors report card.

00:37:06 ◼   ► For context, for those who have not read it,

00:37:08 ◼   ► Myke said that Apple spent all of its energy

00:37:11 ◼   ► building the home set for the keynote videos.

00:37:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:16 ◼   ► - You know, like, I don't know if you ever have this,

00:37:18 ◼   ► like, when I fill out the report card,

00:37:21 ◼   ► it's like it's just going to Jason.

00:37:23 ◼   ► - Yes, it's like, yeah.

00:37:25 ◼   ► - And then when it's published, I'm like,

00:37:28 ◼   ► But the design may be a little...

00:37:29 ◼   ► Oh no, what have I done?

00:37:30 ◼   ► Did I say that the right way? I don't know.

00:37:33 ◼   ► This was meant to be for you and you only.

00:37:36 ◼   ► No, I know it's not that.

00:37:38 ◼   ► Like, I know that it's...

00:37:40 ◼   ► But like, it feels different.

00:37:41 ◼   ► But anyway, he sent it to me beforehand

00:37:43 ◼   ► and I didn't ask him to remove it.

00:37:45 ◼   ► But like, it was one of those things that I was like,

00:37:46 ◼   ► I was maybe a little unnecessarily snarky there,

00:37:49 ◼   ► but nevertheless.

00:37:50 ◼   ► That was good, that was good.

00:37:51 ◼   ► So I will say that my smart home setup

00:37:54 ◼   ► has been simplified a lot over the years.

00:37:57 ◼   ► That's partly because we're still renting a very small place.

00:38:02 ◼   ► There's not enough freedom for us at the moment to install the things we would like to install or to change.

00:38:08 ◼   ► Some of the things we would like to change, like a new thermostat for example, or redoing all of the lights,

00:38:14 ◼   ► redoing all of the light switches. We can't do that.

00:38:16 ◼   ► And until we find a new place that is ours and that we fully control, that sort of stuff is not available for me.

00:38:23 ◼   ► And I have also simplified, because I realized that sometimes, you know, you can easily overdo

00:38:31 ◼   ► home automation stuff to the point where it gets in the way. And sometimes it's just, it's better

00:38:38 ◼   ► to have something that is easy and, you know... - Have you met my friend Homebridge? - Exactly, exactly.

00:38:45 ◼   ► And so when I say this, I say this because I know what it's like to go really deep down the

00:38:52 ◼   ► the rabbit hole of like turning everything

00:38:54 ◼   ► into a HomeKit appliance or making everything a switch

00:38:59 ◼   ► in the Home app that you can also control with Siri.

00:39:02 ◼   ► You can overdo this stuff,

00:39:04 ◼   ► just like you can overdo any kind of automation, right?

00:39:08 ◼   ► You just gotta figure out what works, what sticks for you,

00:39:12 ◼   ► what is easy and reliable and consistent.

00:39:15 ◼   ► In the context of home automation,

00:39:16 ◼   ► what makes it tricky is it's not just for you,

00:39:19 ◼   ► it's also for other people who live with you,

00:39:22 ◼   ► which is something that is another topic to consider.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Like you may think that something that you just set up

00:39:27 ◼   ► in HomeKit or Alexa or whatever is cool,

00:39:30 ◼   ► but remember, it needs to be usable by other people

00:39:33 ◼   ► in your household as well, including kids, possibly.

00:39:36 ◼   ► So yeah, it's a whole topic,

00:39:39 ◼   ► but essentially I have a very small place

00:39:43 ◼   ► and Myke has seen my place, can confirm that it's small.

00:39:47 ◼   ► The one true John has seen it.

00:39:49 ◼   ► Steven hasn't because Steven has never,

00:39:51 ◼   ► Steven hates Italy, Steven hates Europe.

00:39:53 ◼   ► The thing about your apartment, it's a small apartment, massive balcony.

00:39:58 ◼   ► It's like half of the apartment is balcony.

00:40:02 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:40:03 ◼   ► Yes, but there's a whole story there, but we cannot get into that here.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Anyway, we have three Logi Circle 2 cameras.

00:40:14 ◼   ► These are the second generation Logi Circle that got updated to support HomeKit Secure Video,

00:40:20 ◼   ► which we are using on all three of them.

00:40:23 ◼   ► I have one in the entrance room of the apartment,

00:40:28 ◼   ► I have one in the kitchen/living room,

00:40:31 ◼   ► and another in the short hallway that connects the living room to the bedroom and the second bathroom.

00:40:38 ◼   ► These are the three cameras that we use most of the time that we set up with HomeKit Secure Video.

00:40:45 ◼   ► Outside on the huge balcony that Myke mentioned, I have an old D-Link Ommina camera.

00:40:56 ◼   ► So yeah, I wanted to start from the first room that I want to cover,

00:41:02 ◼   ► it's the balcony and the entrance, because they're camera-related.

00:41:05 ◼   ► There's two cameras, two Hue lights, so there's one white only,

00:41:14 ◼   ► and outside there's a colored one, just because we spend more time in the spring and in the summer outside with friends.

00:41:21 ◼   ► And it's nice to have some accent colors there.

00:41:25 ◼   ► And in addition, outside we also have the Eve weather sensor.

00:41:31 ◼   ► This is a Thread-compatible temperature sensor that can live outside.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I also forgot to put this on the list, but on the balcony we also have the

00:41:43 ◼   ► Eve Energy. This is a smart plug that is also thread compatible. I basically repurchased all

00:41:52 ◼   ► of these HomeKit accessories last year when I wanted to make sure that I had thread compatibility

00:41:58 ◼   ► everywhere as much as possible. It has improved reliability, but not as much as I hoped, honestly.

00:42:06 ◼   ► this Thread Radio stuff. It's not as foolproof as I hoped it would be. So yeah, basically when

00:42:14 ◼   ► the first two rooms of the apartment, which are... I think of them as one thing, because they were

00:42:20 ◼   ► supposed to be one thing, but it's a whole... Sorry. - If we're around Robbing-ing, should it not move on now?

00:42:27 ◼   ► - Yes, I am gonna let you move on, but I just wanted to recap. Entrance and balcony, LogiCircle2,

00:42:34 ◼   ► 2U lights, an old D-Link omni that really should change eventually,

00:42:38 ◼   ► Eve weather and Eve energy. Nice, Eve weather, that's the one. Eve weather. Eve weather.

00:43:03 ◼   ► So in my entrance, I guess, really like the front of my house, I've got a ring camera looking out.

00:43:10 ◼   ► I used Nest stuff for a long time, and I bought one of their sort of new generation cameras,

00:43:16 ◼   ► and we talked about on the show, it was so abysmal, I just ended up replacing my other

00:43:23 ◼   ► couple of Nest cameras with ring stuff. I know people have, and it's a good conversation to have,

00:43:28 ◼   ► about ring and privacy and the stuff they do. You can turn all of it off now, you can have

00:43:32 ◼   ► end-to-end encryption turned on their, at least their new hardware, I have that turned

00:43:37 ◼   ► on everywhere. It makes some of the alerts a little slower but I'm fine with

00:43:40 ◼   ► that. So we've got a ring camera looking at the front and then I have an

00:43:45 ◼   ► overhead light on our front porch that is set to come on an hour before sunset

00:43:53 ◼   ► and stay on an hour after sunrise, so it's on at night. You may think, "Oh, well

00:43:59 ◼   ► how you doing that? You have like an app? No, I have what's called an "Intermatic

00:44:03 ◼   ► STO1". There'll be a link in the show notes. Love the STO1. That's the, that's the,

00:44:08 ◼   ► that's the good one. That's the good one. That's the good one. So this goes where you put your

00:44:16 ◼   ► regular light switch, and you can use it as a regular light switch, you can just

00:44:19 ◼   ► push it and it clicks like a regular switch, but this has a timer in it and

00:44:27 ◼   ► and you can tell it where you are, and it knows,

00:44:32 ◼   ► due to I guess internal programming,

00:44:34 ◼   ► 'cause this thing's not on the network,

00:44:35 ◼   ► like it's all built in logic.

00:44:37 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:44:38 ◼   ► - It knows when sunrise and sunset is,

00:44:39 ◼   ► it knows when daylight savings time is,

00:44:41 ◼   ► and so you can program it.

00:44:42 ◼   ► This came with our house, by the way,

00:44:44 ◼   ► this was here when we bought the house,

00:44:48 ◼   ► and I haven't changed it.

00:44:49 ◼   ► - Do you think this thing survived Y2K?

00:44:52 ◼   ► Like, do you think it handled it?

00:44:53 ◼   ► - I mean, it still works now.

00:44:54 ◼   ► - I guess, right?

00:44:55 ◼   ► - So, yes.

00:44:56 ◼   ► - I'm sure it will survive Y3K.

00:44:58 ◼   ► - If my house is still here in a thousand years,

00:45:01 ◼   ► then have at it.

00:45:03 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:45:05 ◼   ► And I mean, I don't think,

00:45:07 ◼   ► I don't know if I would have known

00:45:09 ◼   ► to look for something like this.

00:45:10 ◼   ► I probably would have tried to find something

00:45:12 ◼   ► smart and clever, but it totally gets the job done.

00:45:15 ◼   ► And it came with the house, so it has stayed

00:45:18 ◼   ► 'cause it is really reliable.

00:45:20 ◼   ► There's a note on the website that's fantastic.

00:45:23 ◼   ► It says, "Not for use with sun lamps, saunas,

00:45:26 ◼   ► or loads that could cause personal injury

00:45:28 ◼   ► if timed incorrectly.

00:45:30 ◼   ► - Oh, what is that?

00:45:33 ◼   ► What happened?

00:45:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, someone died in a sauna is what happened.

00:45:37 ◼   ► - No, it's the last part.

00:45:39 ◼   ► Loads that could cause personal injury

00:45:42 ◼   ► if timed incorrectly.

00:45:43 ◼   ► - Like a breathing machine or something?

00:45:46 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:45:47 ◼   ► - Someone was using one of these to wait something

00:45:50 ◼   ► and it just hit the time wrong and it fell, right?

00:45:53 ◼   ► Like that's what happened here and I wanna know.

00:45:55 ◼   ► - I didn't mean electrical loads, not like a load of rocks.

00:45:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's just holding a big row of rocks, as you say,

00:46:02 ◼   ► and then switch goes off, rocks fall down.

00:46:06 ◼   ► - Anyways, you get 'em at your hardware store.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Really simple, I just have the PDF manual and Apple Notes,

00:46:11 ◼   ► and if I ever wanna make adjustments,

00:46:13 ◼   ► but I've been happy with it, so I have this thing,

00:46:17 ◼   ► which is like smart home stuff before smart home stuff.

00:46:21 ◼   ► But as far as the front of my house, that's about it.

00:46:25 ◼   ► I honestly, so that's it for yours?

00:46:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:29 ◼   ► I don't know if you'll believe me when I tell you that for our home security system,

00:46:36 ◼   ► kind of which is the only thing in our entrance way, I am using a canary.

00:46:41 ◼   ► No, still? I mean come on, it's been 20 years.

00:46:45 ◼   ► I'm still using the same canary that I've been using.

00:46:51 ◼   ► Are they still around?

00:46:52 ◼   ► you know what I couldn't believe this they updated the app a couple of weeks

00:46:56 ◼   ► ago and added new features to the canary I assumed I was the only customer home

00:47:05 ◼   ► kit support no are you sure there's not like a single engineer that is creepily

00:47:12 ◼   ► watching you no I don't know I mean isn't that couldn't that be the thing

00:47:16 ◼   ► of all of this stuff who knows what did you name your canary I remember it

00:47:20 ◼   ► having a name. Buster. Buster! He's at Bust the Bad Guys. He busts the bad guys, you know?

00:47:24 ◼   ► That's right. He's gonna take care of it for you. So what did they add? They added...

00:47:29 ◼   ► They actually do a lot of stuff. They've added audio alerts for

00:47:35 ◼   ► professional monitoring. Oh, that is professional. Better real-time

00:47:39 ◼   ► conversations with their two-way talk system. Yeah, they've, I don't know, they

00:47:45 ◼   ► keep doing things. It surprises me to be honest. But I'll tell you this thing,

00:47:49 ◼   ► rock-solid like still works like the day I bought it I've had this thing since

00:47:54 ◼   ► January 2016 I do not we do not have problems with it and it doesn't you know

00:47:59 ◼   ► it doesn't go off all the time you know like it's not like one of it's not very

00:48:03 ◼   ► sensitive but I know it's still working like if we leave the blinds open or

00:48:08 ◼   ► whatever like sunlight can still affect it just like any of these things but

00:48:12 ◼   ► that canary that's still that is still going that thing and I think it's

00:48:16 ◼   ► awesome. That's great. I've looked for a while like could I find something that

00:48:22 ◼   ► did everything in one unit? No, it's still the only one. What we like about it is

00:48:28 ◼   ► it's always doing it you know it's always available like for video calling

00:48:32 ◼   ► when we want it, turns on and off when like the video camera turn on off when

00:48:36 ◼   ► when we wanted to, has a speaker in it, has like a heat sensor, smoke sensor,

00:48:41 ◼   ► everything all in one new unit. I think it's awesome and I love it and it's

00:48:46 ◼   ► not that expensive to run as the service. I've been very happy the whole time.

00:48:51 ◼   ► They now seem they give you free cameras if you sign up for the service now so

00:48:55 ◼   ► you know I can't speak to the longevity of Canary like I'm not necessarily

00:49:01 ◼   ► advocating people jump in now but we are still very happy with ours. Should I go

00:49:07 ◼   ► next yeah we're back to the Robin again we're back we're back to me okay neither

00:49:12 ◼   ► neither me or Steven have expansive balconies to talk about so right right so

00:49:17 ◼   ► the kitchen is a bit more interesting for me I have another LogiCircle 2

00:49:21 ◼   ► which I mentioned before more you lights we have two of them now we have the

00:49:29 ◼   ► original HomePod is back because as I mentioned the while back the echo is

00:49:35 ◼   ► gone again. Alexa is gone once. We actually sold... And it is impossible to keep up with... Look it's very

00:49:45 ◼   ► easy and I'm telling you I sold the echoes again. The experiment did not

00:49:51 ◼   ► last even even a year I think. They're gone. They've been purchased by a close

00:49:58 ◼   ► friend of ours and they now live in a better home which is actually a dense

00:50:02 ◼   ► school but still. That is a better home. It is a better home. They're actually using

00:50:07 ◼   ► the intercom feature at the school with the two echoes it's in a very clever way

00:50:13 ◼   ► it's nice. So now we are back to have the original home pod, one of those

00:50:19 ◼   ► one of the home pods that I physically bought in America and the

00:50:24 ◼   ► last WWDC that I attended in person so it's a nice gift from that era that it's

00:50:31 ◼   ► it's never coming back.

00:50:32 ◼   ► - You were your own Big Apple Buddy.

00:50:34 ◼   ► - Yes, I was my own Big Apple Buddy

00:50:36 ◼   ► before Big Apple Buddy existed.

00:50:40 ◼   ► So there's a HomePod that we mostly use for,

00:50:43 ◼   ► so it's set in English.

00:50:47 ◼   ► I could set it in Italian

00:50:49 ◼   ► because it's now available as an option,

00:50:51 ◼   ► but I didn't because of,

00:50:53 ◼   ► like Sylvia never uses the HomePod via voice.

00:50:57 ◼   ► I occasionally do,

00:50:59 ◼   ► And at this point, I would prefer to ask questions

00:51:03 ◼   ► to the assistant in English.

00:51:05 ◼   ► I would feel kind of weird asking them in Italian.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:51:08 ◼   ► Well, no, I guess I know why.

00:51:09 ◼   ► All of my other devices are set to English.

00:51:12 ◼   ► I use Siri in English.

00:51:13 ◼   ► I wouldn't even know.

00:51:14 ◼   ► Like, I'm actually using-- like, my Italian is getting worse.

00:51:18 ◼   ► My friends are making fun of me.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Silvia is making fun of me, but I'm also kind of concerned.

00:51:22 ◼   ► Like, it was getting worse before,

00:51:24 ◼   ► but now it's gotten much worse.

00:51:27 ◼   ► Like I tried because I very rarely, especially like writing in Italian,

00:51:34 ◼   ► it's very concerning.

00:51:36 ◼   ► Like I, you know, I write in English, I talk in English a lot of hours each day.

00:51:41 ◼   ► And the pandemic happened and we've been in isolation a lot.

00:51:47 ◼   ► And is Sylvia just more forgiving?

00:51:48 ◼   ► Oh, Sylvia is getting worse too, actually.

00:51:51 ◼   ► In terms of like using like English words instead of Italian words.

00:51:56 ◼   ► Oh, because you two speak in Italian to each other.

00:51:59 ◼   ► We do, we do, we do.

00:52:00 ◼   ► But it's sort of become this hybrid language at this point.

00:52:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very weird and funny

00:52:06 ◼   ► and concerning at the same time.

00:52:07 ◼   ► Anyway, we mostly use the HomePod as an AirPlay receiver

00:52:11 ◼   ► in the music app, you know, selecting as a destination.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Then we have an Apple TV that we use

00:52:17 ◼   ► when we want to watch Netflix or something, you know,

00:52:19 ◼   ► at dinner instead of regular television.

00:52:22 ◼   ► This is an Apple TV 4K.

00:52:25 ◼   ► I upgraded the remote last year, and it's very good.

00:52:28 ◼   ► Very good remote that I also mentioned

00:52:31 ◼   ► in the Six Colors Report Card.

00:52:33 ◼   ► I love it.

00:52:34 ◼   ► The latest addition to the kitchen

00:52:37 ◼   ► that is not a HomeKit device at all, but is essential,

00:52:42 ◼   ► because it's a home server that I use for something else,

00:52:46 ◼   ► it's an Intel NUC.

00:52:48 ◼   ► We mentioned this one before.

00:52:49 ◼   ► It sits above my TV, right next to the modem from my ISP.

00:52:55 ◼   ► I love it. I love that little thing. It acts as a music server for me.

00:52:59 ◼   ► Runs the excellent Roon, that's R-O-O-N. It runs the excellent Roon software with my personal

00:53:08 ◼   ► offline music library that I then stream and listen to with the setup that I will describe

00:53:16 ◼   ► for the bedroom later. But yes, this one lives in the kitchen, it's plugged into my Orbi

00:53:24 ◼   ► via ethernet and it's very tiny and compact and it's been running for months without having

00:53:31 ◼   ► to ever reboot it.

00:53:33 ◼   ► It's super reliable, I love it.

00:53:35 ◼   ► It's amazing to me how much love the Apple TV remote got.

00:53:40 ◼   ► I mean, in the episode of Upgrade, Jason was like, "Yeah, I burned out my whole TV setup

00:53:45 ◼   ► because this remote was so good."

00:53:47 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, great remote.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Pretty wild.

00:53:50 ◼   ► In my kitchen I have the only remaining big home pot.

00:53:55 ◼   ► I had three, two have died, the one in the kitchen lives on, and it's great in the kitchen,

00:54:03 ◼   ► mostly.

00:54:04 ◼   ► The multiple timer thing is a lot better.

00:54:08 ◼   ► The sound is still amazing, and I don't have any plans on replacing that if and until it

00:54:16 ◼   ► fails.

00:54:17 ◼   ► One new thing in the kitchen is the addition of some hue light strips under our cabinets

00:54:25 ◼   ► that shine down on the countertops.

00:54:28 ◼   ► We have not had under cabinet lighting in our kitchen and we looked at some options.

00:54:34 ◼   ► At some point early on in the pandemic I got some like regular just LED kind of bar lights

00:54:41 ◼   ► you could touch and they would come on.

00:54:44 ◼   ► But they ended up not really being bright enough and they were a little bit finicky

00:54:48 ◼   ► to use.

00:54:49 ◼   ► And so I was like, well, I know the hue light strip stuff works really well.

00:54:53 ◼   ► When we get to the office, I have a lot of hue light stuff out here.

00:54:56 ◼   ► Let me just get a light strip for that.

00:54:58 ◼   ► So I have that running under a couple of cabinets and I have a scene in HomeKit so we can just

00:55:04 ◼   ► say turn cabinet light on and it comes to the brightness and the color temperature we

00:55:09 ◼   ► like.

00:55:10 ◼   ► But of course it can be any color or any brightness.

00:55:13 ◼   ► So sometimes it's fun to mix that up.

00:55:18 ◼   ► And it's been like a nice fun addition in the kitchen to have that hue light strip.

00:55:23 ◼   ► I think if I were going to, you know, if we were like do a kitchen from the start, I would

00:55:30 ◼   ► not use, like this is overkill probably for our use.

00:55:35 ◼   ► And there's a lot of like real like nice options for like kitchen lighting.

00:55:38 ◼   ► But as far as a retrofit, I was pretty happy with how it came out.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Do you stick them on like you stick them on with the way that they like the adhesive that comes on the back of them?

00:55:47 ◼   ► Yes, and then I did the same thing out here. I got a metal staple that's wide enough

00:55:55 ◼   ► so it doesn't puncture the light strip right and

00:55:57 ◼   ► Put that there as well to help hold it up and it's it's been fine. Okay now

00:56:03 ◼   ► It's not like over the stove or anything. There's not like a lot of steam or humidity

00:56:07 ◼   ► Where it is, you know, that would be a factor I think but it's kind of off to the side in the kitchen

00:56:12 ◼   ► It's been fine for probably going on a year. Say your kitchen. That's my kitchen. That's it

00:56:18 ◼   ► We've already done the entrance. So the door is open

00:56:21 ◼   ► You can come in

00:56:23 ◼   ► To the kitchen in my home. I only have one small home thing in my entire kitchen a robot wait

00:56:31 ◼   ► No, it's the echo show

00:56:36 ◼   ► So we use one of the... so like we are a split household like for the way that we

00:56:43 ◼   ► interact with our smart devices. It's not that like one of us chooses one over the other

00:56:49 ◼   ► for all the time or whatever. Like I'm sometimes I will ask the Echo and sometimes I will ask Siri.

00:56:55 ◼   ► But like for us there are some stuff that like the Echo does and it just does better than the HomePod. Like I've mentioned it

00:57:01 ◼   ► before but you know, we use a shopping service that has an

00:57:05 ◼   ► echo skill that allows us to add things directly to our shopping list and it's

00:57:10 ◼   ► such a killer feature for me where it's like I'm cooking and I have used the

00:57:14 ◼   ► last of a certain ingredient and I can just add it to the actual cart of our

00:57:21 ◼   ► grocery provider. That's pretty cool. Like that is so much better than adding it

00:57:26 ◼   ► anywhere else because I add it anywhere else I still gotta add it to the cart

00:57:29 ◼   ► later on. So still things like that measurements and stuff like that I much

00:57:33 ◼   ► prefer having a screen than just having it audio. Our echo show has been getting

00:57:38 ◼   ► a bit long in the tooth I think we have the second generation which we got in

00:57:43 ◼   ► 2019. Sometimes it's a little slow to respond like it feels like it's genuine

00:57:49 ◼   ► like getting old like a person gets old like it sometimes it gets a little

00:57:53 ◼   ► confused or like you'll ask it to do something and it can't hear you. This is the saddest thing I've ever heard about a robot.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Sometimes, sometimes like the screen is black, like it's fallen asleep or something.

00:58:06 ◼   ► It's really weird, genuinely it's really weird.

00:58:09 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:58:11 ◼   ► We also use it for like a digital photo frame kind of thing, you know?

00:58:16 ◼   ► Like we will have, we have like images of some of our favorite vacations and playing on a loop.

00:58:24 ◼   ► So I think I'm going to upgrade this.

00:58:25 ◼   ► I would love Apple to make a product like this.

00:58:27 ◼   ► I don't know if they're going to, even if they do,

00:58:29 ◼   ► I don't think it's going to do everything that I want in the way that I want it to.

00:58:32 ◼   ► So we're probably going to remain with the Echo Show.

00:58:35 ◼   ► And plus I'll say that there's like a thing that we'll do is like,

00:58:39 ◼   ► we'll say like the name of the assistant, whether it's Siri or Alexa,

00:58:42 ◼   ► we'll just say like, turn on living room.

00:58:44 ◼   ► And like in it with the Echo that just turns on the lights.

00:58:48 ◼   ► But with Siri, it turns on everything.

00:58:52 ◼   ► The TV comes on, everything comes on.

00:58:55 ◼   ► And like, that's not what I want it to do.

00:58:57 ◼   ► and I also just really like that command.

00:58:59 ◼   ► And the way I get around it,

00:59:01 ◼   ► 'cause I do ask Siri this a lot,

00:59:02 ◼   ► is I'll just say living room lights and it works.

00:59:05 ◼   ► - You just have to be a little bit more specific with it.

00:59:07 ◼   ► The other way to do it is to set scenes

00:59:09 ◼   ► and then call the scene name.

00:59:11 ◼   ► But HomeKit could be--

00:59:14 ◼   ► - Siri doesn't like it because the name

00:59:15 ◼   ► and the scene are the same.

00:59:16 ◼   ► And I found that to be inconsistent.

00:59:18 ◼   ► I found it to be less inconsistent with the echo.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Look, with the echo, it kind of does it

00:59:22 ◼   ► the way that I expect it to.

00:59:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was gonna say HomeKit sort of

00:59:25 ◼   ► makes bad assumptions sometimes

00:59:28 ◼   ► with some of the voice commands.

00:59:29 ◼   ► So if you're all home kit, like I have no,

00:59:32 ◼   ► I mean, I have a, what,

00:59:33 ◼   ► like the little baby Amazon Echo Show out here,

00:59:36 ◼   ► I don't wanna use it very much,

00:59:37 ◼   ► it's kind of over on the shelf,

00:59:38 ◼   ► basically being a fancy clock,

00:59:39 ◼   ► but with home kit, you kind of have to like work around

00:59:42 ◼   ► some of that stuff.

00:59:44 ◼   ► And that's a little frustrating

00:59:45 ◼   ► because when you're setting it up,

00:59:47 ◼   ► to Federica's point earlier,

00:59:48 ◼   ► which is like a really good point about all this stuff,

00:59:51 ◼   ► you have to do this in a way,

00:59:52 ◼   ► like if you live with other people,

00:59:53 ◼   ► that they have to be able to use it.

00:59:55 ◼   ► And if it's like, oh, we have to say this Cernit texturing

00:59:58 ◼   ► in just the right way, or everything will come on

01:00:01 ◼   ► or everything will go off and you just meant the light.

01:00:02 ◼   ► It's like, that makes it frustrating for other people to use

01:00:05 ◼   ► who aren't the nerds or who--

01:00:08 ◼   ► - And this is, I know Adina would not accept the fact

01:00:10 ◼   ► that she now has to be specific.

01:00:13 ◼   ► Like she just internalized the light.

01:00:14 ◼   ► And I honestly, most of the time will ask the Echo

01:00:17 ◼   ► to turn the lights on and off just as simpler.

01:00:20 ◼   ► But in general, I prefer HomeKit

01:00:23 ◼   ► for the smart home automation stuff.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Everything I buy, I try and make sure

01:00:28 ◼   ► that it's home kit enabled,

01:00:29 ◼   ► just because I find it to be fast

01:00:31 ◼   ► and I like having it all on my iPhone,

01:00:33 ◼   ► just like all in control center or whatever.

01:00:35 ◼   ► It's like typically what I'll use.

01:00:37 ◼   ► But you will hear as I go through,

01:00:39 ◼   ► I don't have a lot of home stuff at home.

01:00:41 ◼   ► I have more at the studio,

01:00:43 ◼   ► but even then I think I'm,

01:00:44 ◼   ► compared to the two of you,

01:00:45 ◼   ► I actually think I'm the most basic of the three of us.

01:00:48 ◼   ► So, but yeah, that's it for my kitchen,

01:00:51 ◼   ► just the Echo Show.

01:00:52 ◼   ► - Okay, I would be super into a home pod with a screen.

01:00:56 ◼   ► I think that'd be really cool.

01:00:57 ◼   ► And I would put it in the kitchen.

01:00:59 ◼   ► That's where it would go for me, for sure.

01:01:01 ◼   ► - That would be my hope, right?

01:01:02 ◼   ► That I could replace what I have, but I don't know.

01:01:06 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:01:07 ◼   ► - All right, my hallway is very simple.

01:01:11 ◼   ► I only have two devices, three if you count

01:01:15 ◼   ► the Dyson hot and cool fan that we have,

01:01:20 ◼   ► but it's not HomeKit compatible.

01:01:22 ◼   ► used to be HomeKit compatible via Homebridge two years ago,

01:01:29 ◼   ► but I found that eventually too unreliable to keep it around

01:01:33 ◼   ► for my taste.

01:01:34 ◼   ► And so now we control the Dyson fan using the remote,

01:01:38 ◼   ► because it comes with a physical remote,

01:01:40 ◼   ► or via the Dyson app on our iPhones.

01:01:44 ◼   ► We do have, though, HomePod Mini.

01:01:47 ◼   ► So this is one of the two HomePod Minis that we have.

01:01:50 ◼   ► This used to be, by the way, these two HomePod Minis, they used to be a stereo pair in the

01:01:56 ◼   ► bedroom for the LG TV that we have, using the ARC sound out thing, but that also turned

01:02:05 ◼   ► out to be too unreliable for our taste, and so we split up the stereo pair, and we just

01:02:12 ◼   ► went back to using a HomePod Mini in the hallway, and another in the bedroom I'll talk about

01:02:17 ◼   ► later.

01:02:18 ◼   ► So in the hallway we have this IKEA cabinet with a HomePod Mini on top of it and a LogiCircle2

01:02:25 ◼   ► camera.

01:02:27 ◼   ► No smart lights here, just this HomePod Mini that we use to put on some background music

01:02:32 ◼   ► when we want.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Otherwise it also serves as another Thread Radio in the house.

01:02:39 ◼   ► So the hallway is very simple, Dyson fan that is not compatible with HomeKit, unless you

01:02:45 ◼   ► want to use HomeBridge.

01:02:46 ◼   ► LogiCircle to the camera and a white HomePod Mini.

01:02:50 ◼   ► - I don't have a hallway.

01:02:52 ◼   ► I mean, I do have a hallway.

01:02:54 ◼   ► - I don't have a hallway, really.

01:02:55 ◼   ► But it's the entrance for me.

01:02:57 ◼   ► The entrance and the hallway are one and the same thing.

01:03:00 ◼   ► It's all I have.

01:03:01 ◼   ► - I guess I'll just do like what I labeled in my section,

01:03:04 ◼   ► interior rooms.

01:03:06 ◼   ► So just kind of like stuff that's randomly in the house.

01:03:11 ◼   ► So we have a white HomePod Mini in Mary and I's bedroom.

01:03:15 ◼   ► It replaced a full blown HomePod when it died.

01:03:18 ◼   ► I would do yellow probably for our room, or maybe blue,

01:03:21 ◼   ► but I bought it before the colors came out.

01:03:24 ◼   ► I have iHome Smart Plugs.

01:03:27 ◼   ► I have several of them.

01:03:29 ◼   ► Some of them are seasonal,

01:03:30 ◼   ► like I use some for Christmas lights,

01:03:31 ◼   ► but I have one that's permanently like in the den,

01:03:35 ◼   ► one in the living room and one in the bedroom.

01:03:38 ◼   ► And they just put regular, in two cases, floor lamps,

01:03:42 ◼   ► the ones like a bedside lamp into HomeKit.

01:03:46 ◼   ► And the iHome switches just plug into the outlet,

01:03:47 ◼   ► the lamp plugs into the front of it,

01:03:49 ◼   ► and it just toggles on and off with a command.

01:03:52 ◼   ► It also works with the Amazon Echo family of products.

01:03:56 ◼   ► There's a lot of HomeKit only,

01:04:02 ◼   ► or Amazon Echo only plugs now.

01:04:08 ◼   ► I bought these a long time ago,

01:04:10 ◼   ► and there is an iHome app that you can use,

01:04:14 ◼   ► although they also talk directly to HomeKit.

01:04:16 ◼   ► I keep the iHome app around because,

01:04:19 ◼   ► in case you need to update one,

01:04:22 ◼   ► or if anything's acting weird,

01:04:23 ◼   ► you can do a reset with the iHome app.

01:04:26 ◼   ► If I were to replace these now,

01:04:29 ◼   ► I would look for something that was just HomeKit native

01:04:32 ◼   ► 100% that you didn't need its own app

01:04:34 ◼   ► to kind of be the intermediate step.

01:04:38 ◼   ► But I did get the job done.

01:04:39 ◼   ► My only complaint, and I ran into this the other day

01:04:41 ◼   ► after my power came back out of the storm,

01:04:43 ◼   ► is that these things don't rejoin the network

01:04:46 ◼   ► like the right way,

01:04:48 ◼   ► or it may be that my network takes longer to come up

01:04:50 ◼   ► than these things,

01:04:51 ◼   ► but if the power's out and the power comes back on,

01:04:55 ◼   ► I have to like go around and unplug all these things

01:04:57 ◼   ► and plug them back in for it to see the wifi.

01:04:59 ◼   ► So maybe it's like a order of operations thing.

01:05:01 ◼   ► And that's really annoying.

01:05:03 ◼   ► Like maybe they just give up trying to connect

01:05:05 ◼   ► to the network after a few seconds, I don't know.

01:05:08 ◼   ► But it's something that I've noticed that if anything weird

01:05:12 ◼   ► happens with the network or the power,

01:05:14 ◼   ► these things often need a reset.

01:05:15 ◼   ► So I just have to go around and unplug them

01:05:17 ◼   ► and plug them back in like some sort of caveman.

01:05:21 ◼   ► And then lastly, we spoke about this in previous episodes,

01:05:26 ◼   ► we bought our first OLED TV last year.

01:05:28 ◼   ► We got the 48 inch LG, the exact same TV Myke,

01:05:31 ◼   ► you and Adina have.

01:05:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:05:34 ◼   ► - It's fantastic.

01:05:35 ◼   ► Man, I just had no idea how good TVs were

01:05:38 ◼   ► 'cause my last one I bought in like 2010.

01:05:40 ◼   ► But it's really great.

01:05:41 ◼   ► We have the Apple TV, the new one,

01:05:45 ◼   ► or maybe not the new new one, but the one before it,

01:05:47 ◼   ► the first 4K one with the new remote

01:05:50 ◼   ► and a Sonos Beam as the soundbar.

01:05:54 ◼   ► And I don't really use the Sonos Beam on its own,

01:05:57 ◼   ► although it is available for AirPlay and HomeKit stuff,

01:06:01 ◼   ► but I don't, I just basically just use it as a soundbar.

01:06:05 ◼   ► But what is nice is the LG TV is in home kit

01:06:09 ◼   ► and you can airplay directly to it without the Apple TV.

01:06:11 ◼   ► So I can tell Siri just to turn off the TV

01:06:15 ◼   ► or turn on the TV and that works perfectly.

01:06:19 ◼   ► I've been really impressed with that.

01:06:20 ◼   ► I really love this LG OLED.

01:06:23 ◼   ► Everyone says they're really good and everyone is correct.

01:06:26 ◼   ► That's been a really nice addition to our house

01:06:28 ◼   ► over the last, I guess maybe year or so.

01:06:31 ◼   ► - I guess you can use the Sonos Beam

01:06:33 ◼   ► like a Sonos too, right?

01:06:34 ◼   ► Not just airplay like it's just it's the Sonos

01:06:37 ◼   ► And I think I would if our TV our TVs like not in our main like living space like my house

01:06:44 ◼   ► Has like a big living room dining room as you come in and then it's kind of like a TV room

01:06:50 ◼   ► We're like a separate den and that's where the television is

01:06:53 ◼   ► And so that room is not huge if that if our TV was in the big open space

01:06:58 ◼   ► I would probably use the Sonos beam as a speaker

01:07:02 ◼   ► But we have the HomePod not far away.

01:07:05 ◼   ► So I just didn't really pan out that I'm using it for all the features.

01:07:07 ◼   ► So I could have gone cheaper with my soundbar.

01:07:09 ◼   ► I kind of regret the Beam purchase, honestly, but it is what it is at this point.

01:07:13 ◼   ► Alright, so I'll do my living room now.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Okay.

01:07:18 ◼   ► So we have a stereo pair of the original HomePod there.

01:07:23 ◼   ► Still going great.

01:07:24 ◼   ► We use that attached to our Apple TV.

01:07:27 ◼   ► Like it's basically just our TV speakers.

01:07:29 ◼   ► It's kind of the only thing we use it for.

01:07:31 ◼   ► put music on it occasionally but we're not really big like just have music on

01:07:35 ◼   ► in the house people. Hue lights we have like hue lamps there we have the same

01:07:41 ◼   ► LG OLED Steven. I think the only thing that is unique for us that you don't

01:07:45 ◼   ► have is we have a power strip by a company called Meros. Mm-hmm. These are

01:07:50 ◼   ► available on Amazon. They're really cool. They're like they're power strips where

01:07:53 ◼   ► you can turn the whole thing on and off or it's got like four plugs and a bunch

01:07:57 ◼   ► USBs and you can set it to turn each one of them on and off whenever you want and

01:08:04 ◼   ► on a schedule and it's all in HomeKit. I really like that actually. Very easy to

01:08:08 ◼   ► automate it and stuff like that. Yeah. It's a cool, it's a really cool product.

01:08:12 ◼   ► That's our living room. I don't have a ton of stuff at home I don't think. I know

01:08:16 ◼   ► when you first set it up you had issues with the HomePod stereo pairing in the

01:08:20 ◼   ► Apple TV. Has that gotten better over time with subsequent updates? It's 100%

01:08:23 ◼   ► fixed. Really? Absolutely 100% fixed. Yeah I don't have any problems at all.

01:08:27 ◼   ► And can you use the Minis as a stereo pair now?

01:08:32 ◼   ► Stereo pair? Yes.

01:08:34 ◼   ► Okay. Obviously not going to sound as good.

01:08:36 ◼   ► I bet your HomePod stereo pair sounds awesome.

01:08:38 ◼   ► Sounds so good.

01:08:40 ◼   ► I bet.

01:08:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm actually really pleased that we did it.

01:08:44 ◼   ► It really sounds excellent.

01:08:48 ◼   ► I'm sure the Minis sound good too,

01:08:50 ◼   ► but this sounds real good.

01:08:51 ◼   ► So I'm very happy that we ended up

01:08:53 ◼   ► kind of leaning into that and doing it.

01:08:56 ◼   ► All right, let's take a break here,

01:08:58 ◼   ► and then we will finish our round room robin

01:09:02 ◼   ► that we're doing today.

01:09:04 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is made possible by New Relic.

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01:10:39 ◼   ► That's N-E-W-R-E-L-I-C, newrelic.com/connected.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Our thanks to New Relic for their support of the show

01:10:48 ◼   ► and Relay FM.

01:10:50 ◼   ► Alright, the last room of my house is the bedroom and...

01:10:55 ◼   ► It's where the magic happens.

01:10:57 ◼   ► It's where... this is actually where the fun happens, but like for real, and I'm especially happy with my desk setup right now.

01:11:05 ◼   ► I don't have a dedicated office space. My office has a desk in the corner of our bedroom.

01:11:12 ◼   ► That's for the special business. It's in there.

01:11:14 ◼   ► This is where I'm talking to you from right now.

01:11:17 ◼   ► I like it, no, I like it.

01:11:18 ◼   ► standard stuff first. We have an LG B7 from 2017, 55-inch OLED TV. We love it. I would eventually

01:11:29 ◼   ► like an upgrade for 120Hz refresh, HDMI 2.1, that kind of stuff, but this still works absolutely fine

01:11:38 ◼   ► for my PS5, for my Apple TV, and the picture quality is great. We love it. We use it a ton.

01:11:45 ◼   ► We watch a ton of movies and TV shows in the bedroom before sleep or after dinner.

01:11:50 ◼   ► It's very comfy and big and beautiful. We love the LG makes good televisions.

01:11:56 ◼   ► There's an Apple TV, like I mentioned. We also upgraded the Siri remote here.

01:12:02 ◼   ► And the second HomePod mini is also in the bedroom on a shelf next to an e-room sensor.

01:12:12 ◼   ► This is another indoor temperature and humidity sensor. We have a bit of a humidity problem in the

01:12:18 ◼   ► winter season over here, so it's important to keep an eye on it. We have a dehumidifier, but it's not

01:12:25 ◼   ► smart at all. It's a pretty traditional one, with a basic display, no wi-fi, no Bluetooth or anything,

01:12:34 ◼   ► and when necessary, it's got wheels on it, so we can carry it from the bathroom into the

01:12:39 ◼   ► the bedroom to dehumidify a little bit. The fun stuff is at my desk. Now, I've been working

01:12:47 ◼   ► on this setup for the past three years, and you guys know me, a hobby of mine besides

01:12:55 ◼   ► video games and consoles in general, it's music equipment.

01:13:00 ◼   ► Scrubbling.

01:13:01 ◼   ► It's a scrubbling, man. It all comes down to the Scrubble, right? At the end of the

01:13:08 ◼   ► we do all this for no other reason than the scrubbling.

01:13:13 ◼   ► Just for the scrubble.

01:13:14 ◼   ► It's all for the...

01:13:16 ◼   ► I do it for the scrubbling, I'll be honest.

01:13:20 ◼   ► I do it all because of that.

01:13:22 ◼   ► We don't have kids, but we do have the scrubbles.

01:13:25 ◼   ► So it's all in the name of the scrubbling.

01:13:30 ◼   ► All right, so last year I upgraded my desktop deck

01:13:36 ◼   ► to a bigger, more powerful, better sounding model.

01:13:41 ◼   ► It's still a Matrix Audio DAC,

01:13:45 ◼   ► but I upgraded from a Matrix Audio Mini iPro 3

01:13:50 ◼   ► to the bigger, nicer,

01:13:54 ◼   ► Matrix Audio Saber 3.

01:13:58 ◼   ► - Oh good, yeah, that's the one.

01:14:00 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, I know you were gonna make fun of this.

01:14:03 ◼   ► I don't care. - They said the previous one,

01:14:04 ◼   ► specific loads could kill people.

01:14:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:14:07 ◼   ► Please that you've moved to this one.

01:14:10 ◼   ► - Yes, so you guys can make fun of it as much as you want.

01:14:14 ◼   ► I absolutely love my DAC.

01:14:17 ◼   ► And I mention it in the context of home automation

01:14:21 ◼   ► because it's also an AirPlay receiver.

01:14:24 ◼   ► It supports AirPlay 2 and it shows up in HomeKit

01:14:28 ◼   ► as an AirPlay device, which is a nice touch.

01:14:31 ◼   ► But the DAC is important for a couple of reasons.

01:14:34 ◼   ► It's a Rune-certified playback destination device,

01:14:39 ◼   ► meaning that in the Rune software,

01:14:42 ◼   ► I can select my X Saber 3 as a playback destination device.

01:14:47 ◼   ► However, the DAC alone wouldn't do much

01:14:51 ◼   ► because on top of it, there's my also new,

01:14:55 ◼   ► well, new, I got it last year.

01:14:57 ◼   ► It's been with us for a few months now.

01:15:00 ◼   ► It's Milo.

01:15:02 ◼   ► Milo is here.

01:15:03 ◼   ► specifically Milo hey man I'm gonna post a picture in the discord of my setup

01:15:08 ◼   ► Milo is my new best friend Milo is my headphone amp 24,240

01:15:16 ◼   ► scrabbles that's a lot of scrabbles man look that's not Milo Milo is the black

01:15:20 ◼   ► thing on top of the deck with that with the with the fin spoken out of it that's

01:15:26 ◼   ► That's the giant hintsink that it's got.

01:15:30 ◼   ► You gotta keep that Ogg Vorbis cool, you know?

01:15:33 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the flak, it's the flak, man, come on.

01:15:37 ◼   ► Ogg Vorbis, I'm not an animal, come on.

01:15:39 ◼   ► There's a real interesting scale issue with this image,

01:15:43 ◼   ► like where Milo originally looks small, and then when you start looking at the other things around it,

01:15:49 ◼   ► it's like, "Oh, Milo's a big boy."

01:15:51 ◼   ► Milo is a chunky boy.

01:15:53 ◼   ► He's a big old boy.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Big old boy that's got a ton of power inside of it.

01:15:57 ◼   ► He had to get a special power condition cable for it and everything.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Anyway, it's one of the few amps that can power my headphones.

01:16:07 ◼   ► It's a whole thing, I'm super happy with it, it sounds incredible.

01:16:10 ◼   ► I got it from this family-run business based out of San Jose in California.

01:16:16 ◼   ► This is actually like a family-run company, very old school, I love it.

01:16:19 ◼   ► talk directly to the guy to get this handmade for you. It's an incredible experience, super

01:16:26 ◼   ► fun and kind people. If I ever make it back to San Jose, I want to go visit their store,

01:16:32 ◼   ► because they have like a sort of like showroom, museum of sorts. Very good people, very cool

01:16:42 ◼   ► experience purchasing this and waiting for this to come to Italy. And most of all, it sounds

01:16:46 ◼   ► incredible. So what's nice about this is, usually I just use Rune to stream my

01:16:57 ◼   ► FLAC library to the DAC that sends its signal to the amp, and I listen with my headphones.

01:17:05 ◼   ► But I can also choose, if I want to listen at lower quality, but if I just want to try something

01:17:11 ◼   ► from Apple Music or from any other AirPlay source, I can. And I usually do that if I

01:17:18 ◼   ► want to try something out on Apple Music before actually buying the album and purchasing the

01:17:25 ◼   ► album for my offline personal music collection. The DAC shows up in Control Center, it shows

01:17:32 ◼   ► up in HomeKit, and I can control playback there. It's very nice. It's a nice way to

01:17:37 ◼   ► to try something out on Apple Music

01:17:39 ◼   ► before committing to a full-on purchase.

01:17:42 ◼   ► Lastly--

01:17:43 ◼   ► - Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

01:17:45 ◼   ► I'm looking at the website for the Milo,

01:17:47 ◼   ► the Wells Audio.

01:17:49 ◼   ► I just wanna share the name to some of their other products.

01:17:53 ◼   ► So you have Milo, you have Commander.

01:17:57 ◼   ► That thing is huge.

01:18:00 ◼   ► You have Majestic.

01:18:02 ◼   ► Enigma 2.

01:18:06 ◼   ► You want to get enigma one the load on the enigma one could sometimes kill people. Yeah. Yeah head trip head trip to whoa

01:18:14 ◼   ► Head trip to level two. That's the real as the real one. That one's $15,000 by the way, so don't don't buy that

01:18:22 ◼   ► Look at the last one in the list dragon dragon

01:18:26 ◼   ► One is the real deal it doesn't have a price it doesn't have a price

01:18:35 ◼   ► There's no price on it.

01:18:37 ◼   ► Nope.

01:18:38 ◼   ► Wow.

01:18:39 ◼   ► Oh, wait, hang on.

01:18:39 ◼   ► No, there kind of is.

01:18:41 ◼   ► Level three Dragon Tube headphone amplifier, $5,500.

01:18:45 ◼   ► Wow.

01:18:47 ◼   ► I can't tell.

01:18:49 ◼   ► This company makes serious things, don't they?

01:18:52 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

01:18:53 ◼   ► I think maybe even more than serious,

01:18:55 ◼   ► this all looks handmade.

01:18:57 ◼   ► And not in a bad way.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:59 ◼   ► Well.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Just looks like someone's putting this together.

01:19:00 ◼   ► This is what their website says.

01:19:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:03 ◼   ► All Wells Audio products are custom built in the USA

01:19:06 ◼   ► for the best parts money can buy,

01:19:08 ◼   ► allowing us to accommodate special feature requests

01:19:10 ◼   ► by customers.

01:19:11 ◼   ► And then there's a biting lip emoji, that's weird.

01:19:14 ◼   ► - In my case, I wanted to have a specific knob

01:19:19 ◼   ► for the volume.

01:19:20 ◼   ► And so I got this,

01:19:23 ◼   ► I believe it's called the Goldpoint Attenuator.

01:19:26 ◼   ► Maybe you can pick up the nice sound that it makes.

01:19:31 ◼   ► Hold on, let's see.

01:19:32 ◼   ► [typing sounds]

01:19:36 ◼   ► Yeah, okay. That's a big old dial.

01:19:39 ◼   ► Yeah. It's a very nice feel and a very nice way to control volume.

01:19:44 ◼   ► Anyway, the last item on my desk, I actually need to thank one of my idols from my teenage years.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Back when I used to be in high school, I used to read this music website called Absolute Punk.

01:20:00 ◼   ► Now, Absolute Punk, you've probably been on the forums, that was back in the MySpace era.

01:20:07 ◼   ► People my age, people my age, you all know what I'm talking about.

01:20:11 ◼   ► You know, when Fallout Boy were a new band, you know, you've been on Absolute Punk.

01:20:18 ◼   ► I'm sure.

01:20:19 ◼   ► Yeah, just people my age and your age.

01:20:21 ◼   ► That generation, you know what I mean.

01:20:23 ◼   ► Nobody, you know, that generation.

01:20:25 ◼   ► Maybe Stevens, age two, but like people...

01:20:27 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I'm familiar with this.

01:20:29 ◼   ► Okay, well, I don't think you are, but I'll believe you for the sake of the show.

01:20:34 ◼   ► Absolute Punk is now known as Chorus FM.

01:20:38 ◼   ► It's my favorite music website, and Jason Tate still writes Chorus FM.

01:20:42 ◼   ► Now, Jason, a few months ago, did this very cool side project that we also linked on Mac

01:20:50 ◼   ► Stories, I believe.

01:20:52 ◼   ► Jason turned a Raspberry Pi into a portable standalone display, this is what Myke was

01:21:01 ◼   ► making fun of a few minutes ago, for your Last.fm scroubles.

01:21:07 ◼   ► So this is a tiny, square-shaped display that in real time updates and shows you a bunch

01:21:15 ◼   ► of stats from your Last.fm account.

01:21:19 ◼   ► And I thought that was an... because it updates in real time, as you start listening to something,

01:21:25 ◼   ► in apps like Marvis, for example, on iPhone and iPad, which is an Apple Music client,

01:21:31 ◼   ► or on the Mac, you can listen in the music app, but then have something like Neptunes,

01:21:35 ◼   ► for example, that instantly scrabbles what you're listening to.

01:21:39 ◼   ► In real time, this shows up on the Raspberry Pi display.

01:21:43 ◼   ► It's basically a physical, now playing screen.

01:21:47 ◼   ► And I loved the idea so much that I ordered the parts, and actually a bunch of them had

01:21:54 ◼   ► to be shipped to me from the Voorhis family.

01:22:01 ◼   ► Some parts started in Chicago, went to Ireland, and then from Dublin they came to Rome.

01:22:08 ◼   ► So thank you to the Voorhis family, as always, for the assistance here.

01:22:13 ◼   ► I built it all.

01:22:15 ◼   ► It took me a few tries to... because you're getting essentially this Raspberry Pi Zero,

01:22:23 ◼   ► it's called.

01:22:24 ◼   ► You're getting just the board of a Raspberry Pi, and then you connect the display.

01:22:29 ◼   ► And then you need to follow a bunch of instructions, but it was also a weekend project for me,

01:22:34 ◼   ► and now it's done, it's set up, and when music is playing, it shows up on the Raspberry Pi.

01:22:41 ◼   ► music is not playing, I get stats, which I also posted with the photo on Discord. So

01:22:47 ◼   ► that's my desk. It's very fun. It's a lot of Scrobbles. Yeah. Every day is Scrobblin'.

01:22:53 ◼   ► I think I made that joke last time. I think you did. You always do. It never gets old,

01:22:59 ◼   ► and I understand why you do. Thanks. I think. I mean, I'm an easy target with the Scrobbling,

01:23:05 ◼   ► So I get it, I get it.

01:23:08 ◼   ► Alright my office.

01:23:10 ◼   ► If you saw my video tour I did on my YouTube channel, you've seen a lot of this, but lots

01:23:16 ◼   ► of hue lights in here.

01:23:18 ◼   ► I've got one in my desk lamp.

01:23:20 ◼   ► I've got two sets of shelves.

01:23:22 ◼   ► They have the hue strip lights on them so I can control them.

01:23:26 ◼   ► I have each shelving unit as a group and so I can say like turn on wood shelves and they're

01:23:30 ◼   ► all three levels come on all at once.

01:23:34 ◼   ► handy. I have an iHome temperature and humidity sensor so it just plugs into

01:23:41 ◼   ► the wall and it basically just reports temperature humidity into home kit so I

01:23:47 ◼   ► can see like Federico said I have a humidity issue out here sometimes and

01:23:51 ◼   ► I run a dehumidifier and that can kind of keep me in the loop about what's

01:23:55 ◼   ► going on out here as far as that's concerned. It got really cold in here and

01:23:59 ◼   ► the power was out I would imagine but in that power so how cold nobody knows.

01:24:03 ◼   ► a pair of HomePods Mini in orange and they sound pretty good as a pair. I

01:24:11 ◼   ► realized after I talked to you about that a second ago, Myke, that I do have a

01:24:15 ◼   ► pair of them and they sound pretty good. So I have a set of those and then the

01:24:22 ◼   ► sort of the wildest thing on my whole HomeKit network or I guess my SmartHome

01:24:27 ◼   ► network because these aren't like... these are in HomeKit via HardwareBridge

01:24:31 ◼   ► which a lot of these, I mean, HUDA is the same thing,

01:24:33 ◼   ► a lot of these companies have like a bridge

01:24:36 ◼   ► that you plug into power and ethernet

01:24:37 ◼   ► and it talks to their accessories and it talks to HomeKit.

01:24:40 ◼   ► But I have two smart shades over the two big windows

01:24:44 ◼   ► in my new studio from a company called Serena,

01:24:48 ◼   ► which are actually owned by Lutron,

01:24:50 ◼   ► they make the smart light switches and stuff.

01:24:53 ◼   ► And they're like custom made to fit these windows,

01:24:56 ◼   ► you pick the color and everything.

01:24:58 ◼   ► By far one of the biggest expenses

01:25:00 ◼   ► putting this office together but it's fantastic to have them in HomeKit so I

01:25:06 ◼   ► can open or close them via Siri or buttons on my stream deck or the home

01:25:13 ◼   ► app but I also have an automation setup that 15 minutes before sunset close the

01:25:20 ◼   ► shades and so they just you know every day 15 minutes before sunset if they're

01:25:26 ◼   ► not already closed, then they'll close themselves and they're great.

01:25:33 ◼   ► I cannot recommend them due to the expense. This is Quinn Nelson's fault. I was

01:25:38 ◼   ► talking to him about outfitting HomeKit stuff. He's like, "You need these." He's a

01:25:43 ◼   ► very bad influence, but here they are and it's pretty cool to have shades

01:25:47 ◼   ► on your smart home network, I gotta say. Why do Lutron have so many brand

01:25:54 ◼   ► names it's weird right right like cassette a by Lutron Serena by Lutron

01:26:00 ◼   ► why not just they're almost worse than the walls audio family of maybe like the

01:26:07 ◼   ► thing with the walls audio thing is they're all just single products right

01:26:11 ◼   ► that they make we're like Lutron have like all these sub brands that make

01:26:16 ◼   ► multiple products is it also the cassette a but yeah you said about

01:26:20 ◼   ► Lutron and I see one here it's like outdoor smart plug from Caseta by Lutron

01:26:25 ◼   ► why not just call it the Lutron outdoor smart plug? Like why does it if you're gonna also

01:26:30 ◼   ► always put Lutron in there there's no point sub-branding it. It reminds me of

01:26:35 ◼   ► that meme image with the label on the t-shirt Mark Jacobs by Mark Jacobs by

01:26:42 ◼   ► Marc Jacobs. Marc by Marc Jacobs by Marc Jacobs.

01:26:47 ◼   ► For Marc Jacobs.

01:26:49 ◼   ► They look nice, those shades. They're there.

01:26:57 ◼   ► Is that the end of the pod cabin? I think it is. I was trying to think about other

01:27:02 ◼   ► smart home stuff. I guess I can talk about my network a little bit if we

01:27:05 ◼   ► wanted to go that deep. Well, I've still got two more rooms to go. Okay, why don't

01:27:09 ◼   ► don't you take us to your bedroom and then we'll loop back around. Because we've done a really bad

01:27:13 ◼   ► job of like, for some reason Stephen had interior rooms not bedroom, I don't know. Yeah it's a

01:27:20 ◼   ► lumpy Robin today. So take us to your bedroom and then Federica and then we can just like talk about

01:27:27 ◼   ► our network so quick and be done. But I haven't done the studio yet. Oh yeah. Oh god this is gonna

01:27:32 ◼   ► go on forever. Well I mean I can't be held responsible for this. Federica you started the round Robin by

01:27:38 ◼   ► doing two rooms so you know I wanted to speed it up you know it's a mega no no

01:27:44 ◼   ► bedroom echo dot hue lamp Dyson hot and cool fan that's it oh I forgot to talk

01:27:51 ◼   ► about a room burrelly we have a room yeah I do too it's rolling around

01:27:55 ◼   ► somewhere so that's the end of the bedroom now we can move back around to

01:27:58 ◼   ► Federico again I'm done like I got nothing else to Federico's done so now

01:28:04 ◼   ► we move back around again to Steve's small apartment I was gonna mention my

01:28:08 ◼   ► network I've got three wired Eero Pro base stations which is fantastic if you

01:28:14 ◼   ► use something like Eero or Linksys or any other sort of mesh network and you

01:28:19 ◼   ► can do it and a lot of people like Federico can't be doing a bunch of holes

01:28:24 ◼   ► and running wires everywhere but if you can I really recommend having your base

01:28:28 ◼   ► stations all wired with Ethernet so they use Ethernet as the backhaul I found it

01:28:34 ◼   ► to be much more reliable and faster having done that.

01:28:37 ◼   ► And so a couple of era pro base stations in the house

01:28:40 ◼   ► and one out here in the studio,

01:28:42 ◼   ► there is ethernet linking the studio back to the house.

01:28:45 ◼   ► It's been in place now since I built this

01:28:47 ◼   ► the first time around.

01:28:48 ◼   ► And especially when you're doing things like cameras

01:28:53 ◼   ► that may be on the outside of the house

01:28:54 ◼   ► or the more smart homes that you add,

01:28:57 ◼   ► it's network congestion.

01:28:58 ◼   ► And so if you're finding issues with connectivity

01:29:01 ◼   ► with some of this stuff,

01:29:03 ◼   ► Definitely check out Mesh Networking.

01:29:05 ◼   ► I like your stuff, they've been a sponsor.

01:29:07 ◼   ► But a lot of the good brands out there too.

01:29:10 ◼   ► It can be worth the sort of investment.

01:29:12 ◼   ► And it's a pain, right?

01:29:13 ◼   ► It's a pain to redo your network.

01:29:14 ◼   ► But if you're adding more and more smart home stuff,

01:29:17 ◼   ► like the network is really the glue

01:29:18 ◼   ► that holds it all together.

01:29:19 ◼   ► And that's really why I wanted to mention it.

01:29:22 ◼   ► - I don't think this is gonna take me very long

01:29:24 ◼   ► to do at the studio 'cause I have a lot of the same product.

01:29:27 ◼   ► The only thing, we have a Ring security system.

01:29:30 ◼   ► We have the previous version,

01:29:32 ◼   ► the one that is now but the only difference is just the way it looks. I like it. It's

01:29:36 ◼   ► got like one box, it's got everything I needed like the alarm system, security, like the

01:29:43 ◼   ► sensors and all that kind of stuff. I got one too. Couple of cameras. In the pod cabin.

01:29:47 ◼   ► We have some Hue lamps. And you know sharks. There's sharks circling. Yeah, they do that

01:29:52 ◼   ► too. It's funny how Ring provide that but Ring Sharks is a real good service. I have

01:29:58 ◼   ► some Hue lamps and I have a Hue switch for those lamps as well. Linked just so I could

01:30:01 ◼   ► I have that by the door in case I just want to turn it off when I'm leaving.

01:30:05 ◼   ► I have an echo pair that I never use.

01:30:08 ◼   ► It was a bad purchase.

01:30:11 ◼   ► The echoes don't really do very well in this space.

01:30:14 ◼   ► I don't know why.

01:30:15 ◼   ► I think maybe they shouldn't have two so close to each other.

01:30:18 ◼   ► I don't know what it is.

01:30:19 ◼   ► It doesn't work very well.

01:30:20 ◼   ► I have a HomePod mini.

01:30:22 ◼   ► It's what I use to do any voice commands here because I've just got everything hooked up

01:30:27 ◼   ► by Home with the Home app.

01:30:30 ◼   ► accept ring. I hope that matter, which is the thing that we have not spoken about today

01:30:34 ◼   ► because who the frick knows when it will come or what it's actually going to be. I hope

01:30:38 ◼   ► that matter will be able to help with that, like make that better for me in the future,

01:30:42 ◼   ► like connect these things together maybe. I have here a couple of radiators, like regular

01:30:50 ◼   ► radiators and I have a thing that Eve make called the Eve Thermo radiator kit. So basically

01:30:56 ◼   ► you replace the radiator valve with these smart valves and it can turn them on and off

01:31:01 ◼   ► and you can adjust the temperature and stuff. I really like that because this studio can

01:31:04 ◼   ► get pretty cold because it's just a big brick room and so I like that I can turn that on

01:31:10 ◼   ► or I can automate that as well if I want to so that was a real game changer for me honestly.

01:31:16 ◼   ► I have another one of the Dyson fans here, it's the hot and cool air purifying fan. We

01:31:21 ◼   ► got one for home and I loved it so much I got one for here. That was before I got the

01:31:25 ◼   ► radiator valves because I didn't know that was a thing so I was trying to use

01:31:28 ◼   ► that to heat the room and that didn't really do a good job but I like having

01:31:31 ◼   ► that and then an Apple TV I have a regular I have like a Panasonic TV it's

01:31:35 ◼   ► like our old TV from home it's not very it's not smart at all and I have an

01:31:41 ◼   ► Apple TV that I use for that I don't have any fancy speakers or anything here

01:31:45 ◼   ► I might do a home pod mini pair here actually get like a second home pod mini

01:31:49 ◼   ► and set them up there I might do that I haven't thought about that yet might do that

01:31:52 ◼   ► That's Megastudio. Cool. And the round robin is complete. The robin is finally

01:31:57 ◼   ► done around. Nice job, thank you. I think that's it. We have toured our houses,

01:32:03 ◼   ► been down the hall, stopped in the bedroom. Yeah, Myke's door is open, so.

01:32:09 ◼   ► Always open. You wanna come over? My door is open. Okay. You can find links to all the stuff we

01:32:16 ◼   ► spoke about over on the website relay.fm/connected/384. There you can

01:32:22 ◼   ► get in touch with feedback or follow up there's an email link there on the side

01:32:25 ◼   ► of the page you can also join connected pro and you'll get a longer ad-free

01:32:31 ◼   ► version of the show each and every week this week we talked about portable

01:32:37 ◼   ► gaming like handheld pcs and emulation through dolphin was a lot of fun

01:32:41 ◼   ► basically weird small computers are awesome that we all agree on that yes

01:32:45 ◼   ► you can find us all online you can find Federico on Twitter as Vitici V I T I CCI

01:32:50 ◼   ► and he's the editor-in-chief of max stories dotnet. Federico, what's going on

01:32:55 ◼   ► at max stories? Nothing, we're just waiting for the Nintendo Direct. Nothing

01:33:00 ◼   ► else is going on. Yes, it's a couple of hours, I'm really excited about it.

01:33:04 ◼   ► Metroid Prime on Switch, baby! It's happening! This episode will, like, that would have

01:33:12 ◼   ► happened. You would have been disappointed before this episode is

01:33:14 ◼   ► released. You can also follow Myke on Twitter I M Y K E. Myke hosts a bunch of

01:33:22 ◼   ► shows here on Relay FM. Myke what are you up to this week? I don't know man, my brain's

01:33:28 ◼   ► falling out of my ears. I've been recording like six hours straight today. I don't know what's

01:33:33 ◼   ► happening anymore. Go listen to Panatic 500. Go do it. I'm gonna listen. You could

01:33:40 ◼   ► at least listen to the start. I'm gonna try to listen. Yeah I want to listen to you

01:33:44 ◼   ► all cry together then that'll be it we are known to do that I've been in person

01:33:49 ◼   ► when it's happened while recording and while not recording both very intense

01:33:54 ◼   ► around the two of you couple of cry guys pull it together you can follow me on

01:33:58 ◼   ► Twitter as is mh did you hear that everyone that was some toxic masculinity

01:34:02 ◼   ► from Steven there wow okay you know they won't accept that boys can cry you know

01:34:06 ◼   ► I'm just saying it's intense I don't say it was bad mm-hmm you said pull it

01:34:10 ◼   ► together you know I just feel like you know let me and Brad express

01:34:14 ◼   ► our feelings. I do think it's time to cancel you, Steven. We've all decided, we all got together.

01:34:21 ◼   ► So I'm sorry, but yeah, you've been cancelled. So... Oh, why don't you end the show then?

01:34:29 ◼   ► Steve, Federico, you gotta end it. You gotta end it now. You used to be able to find

01:34:35 ◼   ► find Steven on Twitter @ismh or on his website 512pixels.net. Thanks to our sponsors this

01:34:44 ◼   ► week. They were three sponsors, if I'm not mistaken Bombas, Fitbot and New Relic. So

01:34:51 ◼   ► thank you to our three sponsors. All three of them. Thank you very much for your support

01:34:56 ◼   ► and thank you to our listeners, whether you listen to the regular show or Connected Pro.

01:35:00 ◼   ► Myke, where can people find Connected Pro? GetConnectedPro.co

01:35:04 ◼   ► All right, thank you Michael, thank you to all the members of our Discord as well.

01:35:10 ◼   ► You're really missing out if you don't join Discord, and until next time, say goodbye Myke.

01:35:15 ◼   ► Cheerio!

01:35:16 ◼   ► Arrivederci!