Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 374.

00:00:12 ◼   ► It's made possible this week by our sponsors,

00:00:16 ◼   ► Indeed, Bombas, Squarespace, and Memberful.

00:00:20 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett and I'm joined

00:00:22 ◼   ► by my dear friend, Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:25 ◼   ► - Hello, it's me. - Hello.

00:00:27 ◼   ► - And just me.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Just you, Myke is on vacation.

00:00:31 ◼   ► It's just me and you this week.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - Yes, and we can finally talk about the Mac.

00:00:36 ◼   ► I mean-- - We're talking about the Mac,

00:00:38 ◼   ► finally, we're going to do some listener questions

00:00:42 ◼   ► that just like, as a spoiler, really,

00:00:45 ◼   ► I did not know what to expect.

00:00:47 ◼   ► And we got some really weird questions.

00:00:48 ◼   ► So that's gonna be fun.

00:00:49 ◼   ► - We got some weird town going later, yes, yeah.

00:00:54 ◼   ► - But first we start with follow-up,

00:00:57 ◼   ► and I have very important follow-up for you, Federico.

00:01:00 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - Listeners may remember that we have physical trophies

00:01:04 ◼   ► for the Ricky's now made by our friend Matt.

00:01:07 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:01:08 ◼   ► - They're made out of wood, they light up,

00:01:09 ◼   ► they're fantastic.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Mine is like right here on my desk,

00:01:11 ◼   ► just to the right of my display.

00:01:14 ◼   ► I love it.

00:01:14 ◼   ► We were unable to use them as soon as we wanted to though,

00:01:17 ◼   ► because yours got lost in the mail.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Well, I have big news.

00:01:22 ◼   ► It has, after maybe like six months,

00:01:26 ◼   ► Returned whoa, Matt it showed up. No at his house today. It's back in America

00:01:33 ◼   ► they couldn't send it to you for some reason and so they

00:01:38 ◼   ► They gave it back to gave back to Mac for months. So what they say I was correcting not six months four months

00:01:43 ◼   ► So it is back

00:01:45 ◼   ► That is incredible. I'm so glad that it's back home. It is quite quite the international travel

00:01:52 ◼   ► Poor trophy. Yeah, I just went to Europe for a little while found itself

00:01:56 ◼   ► and then came back.

00:01:58 ◼   ► - It literally spent the summer in Europe.

00:02:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:03 ◼   ► - Then it came home.

00:02:07 ◼   ► - Came home for Thanksgiving, basically.

00:02:08 ◼   ► - It did, it did.

00:02:09 ◼   ► So all I know is there are plans for this fourth trophy.

00:02:14 ◼   ► I don't really know what that means.

00:02:16 ◼   ► I'm afraid to know what it means,

00:02:18 ◼   ► to be perfectly honest with you, but it may show up again.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Related to this, Federico, the post office

00:02:25 ◼   ► also lost your stuffed little Ricky character, remember?

00:02:30 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah.

00:02:33 ◼   ► - And I have a new one of those coming to me

00:02:36 ◼   ► and I'm gonna put it in a UPS box

00:02:37 ◼   ► with your Magtricky magnets and ship it to you.

00:02:40 ◼   ► - Thank you so much.

00:02:41 ◼   ► - When it shows up.

00:02:42 ◼   ► - Thank you.

00:02:44 ◼   ► - Third part of this follow-up,

00:02:45 ◼   ► has your hardware calendar showed up for me?

00:02:47 ◼   ► - Nope, so I think that got lost as well.

00:02:51 ◼   ► - I may send that via UPS as well.

00:02:54 ◼   ► - Yes, I think you may wanna wait for that to come back

00:02:58 ◼   ► and just make a single box and I'll pay you the UPS.

00:03:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm just gonna ship you a giant box of things

00:03:05 ◼   ► that belong to you.

00:03:07 ◼   ► - Thank you, yes.

00:03:08 ◼   ► - Do you want anything else from America?

00:03:10 ◼   ► You want some cookies or some misinformation or something?

00:03:13 ◼   ► - What is it?

00:03:14 ◼   ► John is usually like my American retail smuggler,

00:03:18 ◼   ► but then I discovered Big Apple Buddy, of course.

00:03:22 ◼   ► - Yes, I heard you talked to Mary about that

00:03:24 ◼   ► in the most recent episode. - Great service.

00:03:26 ◼   ► They're now sending me promotional emails

00:03:28 ◼   ► every time they have a sale going,

00:03:30 ◼   ► which is exciting. - Nice.

00:03:31 ◼   ► - No, I don't think I need anything from America

00:03:34 ◼   ► at the moment. - Okay.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Well, keep me posted. - Yeah, thank you.

00:03:36 ◼   ► - So once that all shows up,

00:03:38 ◼   ► I'll just send you a box of things.

00:03:40 ◼   ► - Perfect.

00:03:41 ◼   ► - One thing I could put in there is a nice screwdriver.

00:03:44 ◼   ► How does that sound?

00:03:46 ◼   ► Sound pretty good?

00:03:46 ◼   ► - Okay, I'm actually in need of a better screwdriver.

00:03:51 ◼   ► - Are you?

00:03:52 ◼   ► There is nothing better than a good hand tool.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Maybe I'm showing my dad life off, but--

00:03:59 ◼   ► - No, not at all.

00:04:01 ◼   ► Just a little.

00:04:02 ◼   ► - If you're gonna do a job, you want the right tool.

00:04:03 ◼   ► So Coda and Peter, amongst others,

00:04:06 ◼   ► wrote in about Apple's tool.

00:04:08 ◼   ► So we've talked about this in light of their repair program

00:04:12 ◼   ► they're gonna start next year,

00:04:13 ◼   ► where you can order parts and tools.

00:04:15 ◼   ► The brand we looked at last week,

00:04:18 ◼   ► Weha, W-I-H-A, Weha, I don't know how you would say it.

00:04:23 ◼   ► That's what they used to use, I have a bunch of those still,

00:04:25 ◼   ► but now the brand they use is called Wira,

00:04:27 ◼   ► which I think is what Myke said,

00:04:29 ◼   ► and then I corrected him to the wrong brand.

00:04:31 ◼   ► Anyways, there's a link in the show notes to this tool.

00:04:35 ◼   ► It looks amazing.

00:04:36 ◼   ► It's like a whole set with like a handle

00:04:39 ◼   ► and a bunch of drivers and stuff.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And you can pick it up for a cool 120 bucks.

00:04:43 ◼   ► - How much?

00:04:44 ◼   ► Wait, what?

00:04:45 ◼   ► On Amazon, this kit is $123.

00:04:50 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:04:51 ◼   ► - Probably not gonna be what Apple sells.

00:04:55 ◼   ► And this thing's really fancy.

00:04:56 ◼   ► Like you can set the torque you want.

00:05:00 ◼   ► So like you only need like this amount of pressure

00:05:02 ◼   ► on a screw and then it will stop at that point.

00:05:04 ◼   ► Like it's-- - Okay.

00:05:05 ◼   ► - No one actually needs this.

00:05:06 ◼   ► This is very fancy, but if you wanted to know

00:05:09 ◼   ► what they're using, that's what they're using.

00:05:11 ◼   ► - Okay, I know what to get you for your birthday.

00:05:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, $123 screwdriver, please.

00:05:17 ◼   ► - Professional screwdriver kit, that's what I'm getting at.

00:05:20 ◼   ► - The link in the show notes to Amazon,

00:05:22 ◼   ► you know, it'll be an affiliate link,

00:05:24 ◼   ► so go buy some screwdrivers.

00:05:27 ◼   ► - Okay, all right.

00:05:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:30 ◼   ► - So hopefully that's the end of our tool talk

00:05:33 ◼   ► until this program opens up, and I'm excited about it,

00:05:37 ◼   ► you know, gonna repair some phones or something.

00:05:41 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:05:42 ◼   ► - Maybe.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Last week we also spoke about reviewing the podcast.

00:05:47 ◼   ► A bunch of listeners, Federico, have gone out

00:05:50 ◼   ► and reviewed the show, which is very kind of them.

00:05:53 ◼   ► - Yes, yes.

00:05:54 ◼   ► - And I thought maybe we could just

00:05:57 ◼   ► take a look at that real quick.

00:05:58 ◼   ► - Okay, I wanna start with an email I got.

00:06:00 ◼   ► I got an email from listener Marcos.

00:06:03 ◼   ► I believe Marcos is from Brazil,

00:06:06 ◼   ► and he personally emailed me this review

00:06:10 ◼   ► that they left on the App Store.

00:06:14 ◼   ► I really like the vibe, the show.

00:06:15 ◼   ► So this is a five-star review.

00:06:17 ◼   ► - That's nice. - And the subject is,

00:06:18 ◼   ► with them, I feel connected.

00:06:20 ◼   ► - Nice. - Ah.

00:06:21 ◼   ► - I really like the vibe the show gives.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Each one of the three compliments the other.

00:06:27 ◼   ► It is a great experience.

00:06:29 ◼   ► My only complaint is when Federico starts the show with "Ciao".

00:06:33 ◼   ► You see, I am from Brazil and we speak Portuguese.

00:06:37 ◼   ► The word "Ciao" for means goodbye.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Federico always confuses me with these words and I think the show is ending before I get

00:06:44 ◼   ► to know who won the RICIS. One out of five would not recommend. JK, great show. This

00:06:50 ◼   ► is actually a five star review. Thank you, Marcos. I didn't know that. Well, I guess,

00:06:54 ◼   ► yeah, the thing with ciao is we use it both ways in Italy. It's both to say hi and to

00:07:01 ◼   ► say goodbye. It's always ciao. That's all confusing. Depending on your intonation, like

00:07:06 ◼   ► Like you know what it means obviously, and depending on context, I mean, it's clear.

00:07:11 ◼   ► I guess when it's said on a podcast or where it's written on a page, it could be confused.

00:07:18 ◼   ► It's more of a universal, contextual sort of greeting, I guess?

00:07:24 ◼   ► And it works.

00:07:25 ◼   ► Like in real life, you know...

00:07:26 ◼   ► I mean, right?

00:07:27 ◼   ► It's like if you meet someone, obviously you're not saying goodbye.

00:07:30 ◼   ► Right.

00:07:31 ◼   ► Unless you're just being rude.

00:07:32 ◼   ► You know, it's like, "Get out of here!"

00:07:34 ◼   ► Let's say goodbye.

00:07:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:36 ◼   ► I've got a couple I just wanna touch on.

00:07:39 ◼   ► All the dark mode said, "You will pay for what you've done."

00:07:42 ◼   ► But five stars, so that's good.

00:07:44 ◼   ► That's good.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Someone called us the most entertaining Apple podcast,

00:07:50 ◼   ► so thank you, David.

00:07:51 ◼   ► - Thank you.

00:07:52 ◼   ► - I'm not sure HandyThink's got the point of the assignment.

00:07:55 ◼   ► They said, "Best podcast app."

00:07:57 ◼   ► This is the best podcast app.

00:07:59 ◼   ► "Multinational, nonsense school,

00:08:00 ◼   ► "but gotta love this player."

00:08:02 ◼   ► Maybe we're-- - Interesting.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Do you think we're overcast or something? Well, to be fair,

00:08:07 ◼   ► if we are, if we, if connected is playing in overcast,

00:08:12 ◼   ► we are overcast in that moment. That's true. Right?

00:08:16 ◼   ► It's like team Apple basically. And in that moment we are overcast.

00:08:21 ◼   ► That's true. Yeah. Very, very meta. Yeah. Yeah.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Really like podcast players just become whoever speaking through them. Right.

00:08:29 ◼   ► - Exactly, that's what I meant.

00:08:32 ◼   ► - Like a prophet or something, you know?

00:08:34 ◼   ► Just keep hearing the voice from above.

00:08:36 ◼   ► - Yes, pretty much.

00:08:38 ◼   ► - Pretty much, yes, it's great.

00:08:40 ◼   ► Lots of nice reviews, thank you all, please.

00:08:42 ◼   ► - Please continue, please continue leaving reviews,

00:08:45 ◼   ► preferably just for connected and only five star reviews.

00:08:49 ◼   ► I'm just saying.

00:08:50 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:08:51 ◼   ► - You know, those are, the ideal review

00:08:54 ◼   ► is the connected one with five stars.

00:08:56 ◼   ► So I'm not trying to game the system here,

00:08:59 ◼   ► I'm just saying we like those. Yeah. I don't think it's gaming the system. No.

00:09:03 ◼   ► I mean, Apple likes people to interact with their platform.

00:09:07 ◼   ► So we're really doing Apple podcast a favor. We're just pushing engagement.

00:09:11 ◼   ► That's right. Yeah. So, so if anything, we are doing Apple a favor, you know?

00:09:16 ◼   ► Yeah. That's what we're here for. That's not what we're here for. Apple's fine.

00:09:21 ◼   ► So thank you for all your reviews. That's very kind.

00:09:27 ◼   ► Made my day to look through those.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Federico, let's take our first break.

00:09:31 ◼   ► How does that sound?

00:09:32 ◼   ► - All right, let's do it.

00:09:34 ◼   ► - This episode of Connected is brought to you by Indeed.

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00:11:14 ◼   ► Our thanks to Indeed for their support of the show.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Did you have a good Cyber Monday?

00:11:19 ◼   ► - I think it was pretty good.

00:11:20 ◼   ► I got a stream deck.

00:11:21 ◼   ► So yeah, it was a pretty good Cyber Monday.

00:11:23 ◼   ► more about this in the pre-show for Connected Pro members.

00:11:28 ◼   ► - I wasn't even reaching for the plug, but you just did it.

00:11:30 ◼   ► This is the plug though.

00:11:31 ◼   ► Now's a great time to sign up for Connected Pro

00:11:34 ◼   ► because if you go to giverelay.com,

00:11:38 ◼   ► it's in the show notes, giverelay.com,

00:11:41 ◼   ► now through December 17th, 22% off new annual membership.

00:11:46 ◼   ► So if you haven't joined or if you have someone in your life

00:11:50 ◼   ► who may wanna join or you wanna send a link,

00:11:52 ◼   ► Let's be honest, a lot of people like us, nerdy people,

00:11:57 ◼   ► we're kind of hard to shop for, right?

00:11:59 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's like we're hard to buy for.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Well, maybe your parents or your spouse or your partner

00:12:08 ◼   ► or roommate, someone is looking for a gift to give you,

00:12:12 ◼   ► send them this link and you can get signed up

00:12:13 ◼   ► for any show on Relay FM.

00:12:15 ◼   ► Give relay.com 22% off.

00:12:19 ◼   ► It's the best deal going in podcast memberships right now.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Federico, what do people get if they join Connected Pro?

00:12:25 ◼   ► Ah, they get a lot of extra content.

00:12:28 ◼   ► Really, that's all that matters is getting the secret content that we share before the

00:12:33 ◼   ► show, right?

00:12:35 ◼   ► And so you get all those secrets coming directly into your ears, which is a great benefit,

00:12:41 ◼   ► great advantage of a subscription, I think.

00:12:44 ◼   ► Plus the show is ad-free.

00:12:47 ◼   ► Which is cool.

00:12:48 ◼   ► Which is cool.

00:12:49 ◼   ► Which is cool.

00:12:50 ◼   ► get the best version of connected it's like getting connected you know if it

00:12:55 ◼   ► was an iPhone this is the Pro Max version of connected it's called Pro but

00:13:00 ◼   ► it's also Pro Max you know yes it's it's it's like that it's it's the best

00:13:05 ◼   ► possible version of it so why not get it but also the

00:13:10 ◼   ► cool like the the things we say on the pre-show you know chef's kiss emoji that

00:13:17 ◼   ► that doesn't exist, but you got the idea.

00:13:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:13:20 ◼   ► - And of course, if you sign up to support Connected

00:13:23 ◼   ► or any other show, you get the base Relay FM benefits,

00:13:26 ◼   ► access to the members Discord,

00:13:27 ◼   ► which is the best place on the internet,

00:13:29 ◼   ► wallpapers, the crossover podcast,

00:13:32 ◼   ► which has a bunch of like other member only content in it.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Lots of good stuff.

00:13:37 ◼   ► So giverelay.com, go check it out.

00:13:40 ◼   ► We have a, I don't wanna say this is a ghost story

00:13:44 ◼   ► to talk about.

00:13:45 ◼   ► - Well, it kinda is.

00:13:46 ◼   ► - But it kind of is.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Mark Gurman has been on the beat for a while now,

00:13:51 ◼   ► saying that Apple is continuing to work

00:13:55 ◼   ► on something like AirPower,

00:14:00 ◼   ► or some sort of multi-charger.

00:14:04 ◼   ► What do you make of all this?

00:14:05 ◼   ► - I feel like Mark is really on Team AirPower,

00:14:10 ◼   ► and it's been, since the beginning,

00:14:14 ◼   ► is been reporting about this product ever since, you know, what was it, 2017?

00:14:19 ◼   ► Yeah, talking about this.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Yeah, it was the iPhone X.

00:14:23 ◼   ► Yeah, so the idea is that Apple is still working away at this sort of multi-device charging

00:14:31 ◼   ► pad or charging station, whatever it's going to look like. I feel like they have to keep

00:14:38 ◼   ► working on this, right?

00:14:40 ◼   ► They may have abandoned the original AirPower idea,

00:14:43 ◼   ► but I also feel like it's kind of weird

00:14:47 ◼   ► that that sort of product doesn't exist coming from Apple.

00:14:51 ◼   ► You got companies like Berkin, for example.

00:14:54 ◼   ► They just announced the new version of the,

00:14:58 ◼   ► what's it called, the three-in-one charger that they have,

00:15:01 ◼   ► the Boost Pro charger.

00:15:03 ◼   ► And the latest version,

00:15:04 ◼   ► which I still cannot get from Italy, by the way,

00:15:07 ◼   ► You need Big Belkin Buddy.

00:15:10 ◼   ► - Oh my, yeah, oh my God.

00:15:13 ◼   ► Steven, BigAppleBuddy.com,

00:15:16 ◼   ► Belkin Boost.

00:15:19 ◼   ► - Do they have it?

00:15:20 ◼   ► - Let's see, hold on, hold on.

00:15:24 ◼   ► - No.

00:15:24 ◼   ► - They don't have it, no.

00:15:27 ◼   ► - Look, you're a famous Apple Pro blogger.

00:15:31 ◼   ► - Look, I'm gonna get in touch with the Big Apple Buddy.

00:15:33 ◼   ► - Get in touch with Big Apple Buddy and say look.

00:15:35 ◼   ► - And be like, hey, Big Apple Buddy.

00:15:37 ◼   ► - Or, you know, John's listening.

00:15:38 ◼   ► Get John to mail you one.

00:15:40 ◼   ► Or I guess I can mail you one with all your other stuff

00:15:42 ◼   ► that I owe you.

00:15:43 ◼   ► - In that big UPS box.

00:15:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:15:45 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Anyway, I think it's kind of weird when the likes

00:15:49 ◼   ► of Bakkin are making this kind of charging pads.

00:15:52 ◼   ► They're not like free form as well as AirPower,

00:15:56 ◼   ► but like what's the downside?

00:15:59 ◼   ► You have a spot for the iPhone,

00:16:00 ◼   ► you have a spot for your AirPods,

00:16:02 ◼   ► and you have a spot for your Apple Watch.

00:16:03 ◼   ► And the Apple Watch charger supports the new first charging

00:16:07 ◼   ► of the Series 7. So Apple has something like this, which is the MagSafe dual pad, portable

00:16:14 ◼   ► sort of travel charging pad. I still have it. I really like it. I think it's too expensive

00:16:19 ◼   ► compared to what you can get from the competition. So I think they should keep working on this.

00:16:25 ◼   ► MagSafe is now in the picture, right? And it wasn't when AirPower was announced with

00:16:31 ◼   ► iPhone X. So maybe, you know, the arrival of MagSafe is sort of breathing new life into

00:16:39 ◼   ► this idea internally at Apple, so I really hope that they do come up with something based

00:16:43 ◼   ► on MagSafe and the new fast charging for the Apple Watch eventually.

00:16:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I'd never really... the free form nature of AirPower where you can just sit your stuff

00:16:54 ◼   ► down wherever. Like that was cool, but were people really like really hungry for that?

00:17:02 ◼   ► I mean, I've got the material doc by our friends at Studio Neat and it's got MagSafe and the

00:17:07 ◼   ► Apple Watch so I can put my AirPods on it too. I'm totally fine having like, this is

00:17:12 ◼   ► where this goes and this is where that goes, but all sort of in a self-contained little

00:17:18 ◼   ► place, right? Like that's just on my nightstand and that's where my things go to charge at

00:17:22 ◼   ► at night.

00:17:23 ◼   ► And I just, I don't know if the AirPower,

00:17:26 ◼   ► like free-for-all, you know, free-range charging

00:17:30 ◼   ► is something that I really need or want, you know?

00:17:33 ◼   ► I'm totally fine with these things go where they go.

00:17:36 ◼   ► - I think actually maybe in hindsight,

00:17:39 ◼   ► it's actually better to have these charging pads

00:17:42 ◼   ► where you have sort of clear instructions

00:17:46 ◼   ► as to where to place the device.

00:17:50 ◼   ► because I feel like maybe it could be a problem.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Like you would always have that sense of uncertainty.

00:17:57 ◼   ► Like, have I placed the thing right?

00:18:00 ◼   ► And especially now with MagSafe,

00:18:02 ◼   ► I think it makes more sense to have an exact spot

00:18:05 ◼   ► where you're like, okay, here's where I placed my iPhone.

00:18:08 ◼   ► It snaps on magnetically and that's it.

00:18:11 ◼   ► And I can rest assured that this thing

00:18:13 ◼   ► will be charged overnight.

00:18:15 ◼   ► And when I pick it up in the morning, it's a 100% battery.

00:18:18 ◼   ► So I think Apple should do this still.

00:18:22 ◼   ► It should be something like the Belkin one.

00:18:24 ◼   ► It should take advantage of MagSafe and the new charging

00:18:27 ◼   ► that they have for the Apple Watch.

00:18:29 ◼   ► I am surprised that this thing still doesn't exist.

00:18:33 ◼   ► If the problem-- if all the delays-- because we've

00:18:36 ◼   ► been getting these rumors since last year,

00:18:38 ◼   ► that Apple was still actually working on something

00:18:41 ◼   ► like AirPower internally.

00:18:43 ◼   ► Some of these so-called leakers who

00:18:46 ◼   ► were talking about this last year, I think.

00:18:49 ◼   ► And I think if the holdup is having the freeform placement,

00:18:56 ◼   ► just let it go, just use MagSafe

00:18:59 ◼   ► and have separate areas for the devices.

00:19:01 ◼   ► Nobody will care and everybody will just get the Apple one.

00:19:05 ◼   ► Because when you get the Apple version of something,

00:19:08 ◼   ► it's usually good enough for most people.

00:19:09 ◼   ► And I don't think the MagSafe Duo is as versatile

00:19:13 ◼   ► as Apple thinks it is.

00:19:15 ◼   ► - No, especially at the price.

00:19:17 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:19:17 ◼   ► - I mean, we've got one,

00:19:19 ◼   ► 'cause it is fantastic for travel.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Like we had a camping trip over the,

00:19:24 ◼   ► towards the end of the summer

00:19:25 ◼   ► and we'd bought one of these and it's nice.

00:19:27 ◼   ► And one thing like MagSafe gives you like,

00:19:29 ◼   ► it's like, yeah, like I know for sure

00:19:31 ◼   ► that this phone is charging because it clipped in place.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And something I had not considered

00:19:37 ◼   ► until we just started talking about it is,

00:19:39 ◼   ► surely Apple knew MagSafe was on the horizon in 2017, right?

00:19:44 ◼   ► like I'd imagine these things take a long time.

00:19:46 ◼   ► - Good point.

00:19:47 ◼   ► - So it was like there was there one team working

00:19:49 ◼   ► on air power with this like free for all like charging mat.

00:19:53 ◼   ► And then like down the hall, someone's working on mag safe

00:19:55 ◼   ► thinking you don't have to put it anywhere.

00:19:57 ◼   ► 'Cause it was just gonna like, you know,

00:19:59 ◼   ► go right where it belongs.

00:20:00 ◼   ► Very strange to me.

00:20:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I'm gonna try and get the back in one

00:20:06 ◼   ► in the meantime.

00:20:07 ◼   ► I do wonder, you know, this kind of accessory,

00:20:13 ◼   ► if the rumor is true, I could see this being one

00:20:17 ◼   ► of the things that Apple releases before the spring.

00:20:21 ◼   ► Like, they usually launch stuff in the winter, right?

00:20:24 ◼   ► When everything calms down.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Didn't they used to do the battery cases

00:20:30 ◼   ► in like around the holiday season?

00:20:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think because it's like, hey, you can just get this

00:20:37 ◼   ► 'cause everyone you know has an iPhone

00:20:39 ◼   ► and it's a good gift for 129 bucks

00:20:43 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:20:44 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, they're definitely not above like

00:20:47 ◼   ► accessories pretty late in the year.

00:20:50 ◼   ► Like we got the head pods.

00:20:52 ◼   ► What are they called?

00:20:53 ◼   ► The AirPods Max?

00:20:54 ◼   ► - The AirPods Max.

00:20:55 ◼   ► - Head pods.

00:20:57 ◼   ► You know, they were in December.

00:20:59 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Was it last year?

00:21:01 ◼   ► It was last year, I think.

00:21:02 ◼   ► - Yes, it was last year, I think.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Apple announces AirPods Max.

00:21:08 ◼   ► - And it was just a press release, right?

00:21:10 ◼   ► - December 8th, 2020.

00:21:12 ◼   ► - So almost a year ago next week.

00:21:13 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:21:15 ◼   ► - We can have a throwback episode next week.

00:21:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's when, that's also,

00:21:22 ◼   ► I'm gonna be getting my booster shot

00:21:24 ◼   ► before the episode next week,

00:21:25 ◼   ► so that's gonna be interesting to see how it goes.

00:21:28 ◼   ► - So you're gonna be sleepy,

00:21:30 ◼   ► and I'll talk about headphones I don't own.

00:21:32 ◼   ► - Excellent, excellent, okay.

00:21:35 ◼   ► - We may need Jon to join us next week.

00:21:37 ◼   ► - Maybe Jon, please, if you're listening,

00:21:39 ◼   ► I think he is listening, please,

00:21:41 ◼   ► there's a good chance you may have to clear schedule

00:21:44 ◼   ► for next Wednesday at my seven.

00:21:46 ◼   ► - Come on, the show next week.

00:21:48 ◼   ► So we've talked about MagSafe a lot.

00:21:49 ◼   ► I mean, it continues to be something

00:21:52 ◼   ► that I really enjoy using.

00:21:53 ◼   ► Like I've got a puck on my desk,

00:21:56 ◼   ► that one on my nightstand.

00:21:58 ◼   ► You know, I don't use it in the car.

00:21:59 ◼   ► I tried a couple of the, in fact Belkin was one of them,

00:22:03 ◼   ► the MagSafe like car mounts,

00:22:06 ◼   ► they all still required plugging in via lightning,

00:22:08 ◼   ► which is fine for me because I use wired CarPlay in my truck

00:22:11 ◼   ► Although spoiler alert, this box right here,

00:22:14 ◼   ► can you hear this?

00:22:15 ◼   ► (clicking)

00:22:16 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:22:17 ◼   ► - This is a wireless CarPlay receiver

00:22:21 ◼   ► that I'm gonna review.

00:22:22 ◼   ► I haven't opened it yet.

00:22:23 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:22:24 ◼   ► - So I'm gonna give that a shot,

00:22:25 ◼   ► but I think the vents in my truck are like weird

00:22:29 ◼   ► because any sort of mount I've ever tried,

00:22:32 ◼   ► most of them like clip into the vents,

00:22:33 ◼   ► you know what I'm talking about?

00:22:34 ◼   ► And they would just like flop down.

00:22:36 ◼   ► Like they're not very robust, I guess.

00:22:41 ◼   ► So no fancy car mount for me with MagSafe.

00:22:44 ◼   ► Which is probably good anyways,

00:22:47 ◼   ► 'cause I got a car plate right there.

00:22:48 ◼   ► So the phone goes in like a little storage thing

00:22:52 ◼   ► next to the shifter.

00:22:53 ◼   ► - Right.

00:22:55 ◼   ► - Where does your phone go when you drive?

00:22:57 ◼   ► - I have a back in car vent MagSafe thing.

00:23:02 ◼   ► - Okay, so your vents are good.

00:23:04 ◼   ► You got good vent energy.

00:23:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, good vents.

00:23:08 ◼   ► The MagSafe attachment that they have is really strong.

00:23:12 ◼   ► It never detached, even with the precarious conditions

00:23:17 ◼   ► of the roads in Rome, it never actually detached.

00:23:21 ◼   ► Actually one of my favorite accessory purchases

00:23:24 ◼   ► of the past year, it's really, really good.

00:23:27 ◼   ► It's really good, really good.

00:23:28 ◼   ► - The Discord pointed me to the Spigen OneTap Pro

00:23:32 ◼   ► designed for MagSafe fast wireless car charger,

00:23:35 ◼   ► parentheses, magnetically levitate

00:23:37 ◼   ► and fast charge iPhone 1312 models, even the max model.

00:23:41 ◼   ► - It's a magnetic levitate, so it's okay.

00:23:45 ◼   ► - Levitate.

00:23:46 ◼   ► It's right there in the Amazon.

00:23:48 ◼   ► Who is searching Amazon for levitate iPhone stand?

00:23:52 ◼   ► - I guess some people are.

00:23:55 ◼   ► - I mean, clearly it's in the name.

00:23:56 ◼   ► Like they know what they're doing, I guess.

00:23:58 ◼   ► - I love how it says at the end of the parentheses,

00:24:02 ◼   ► even the max model.

00:24:04 ◼   ► - Even the max model.

00:24:05 ◼   ► - Even the max model.

00:24:07 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:24:08 ◼   ► - That's perfect.

00:24:10 ◼   ► - I don't think I'm gonna buy this, but that's cool.

00:24:12 ◼   ► Levitate.

00:24:14 ◼   ► You like turn a corner and your phone just levitates

00:24:19 ◼   ► right out the window.

00:24:20 ◼   ► - Just hovering there.

00:24:22 ◼   ► - So yeah, we may be reviewing AirPower in the future.

00:24:28 ◼   ► This is what Mark Gurman says.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Still working on it.

00:24:31 ◼   ► It seems like such an obvious move for Apple

00:24:35 ◼   ► to do more charging accessories.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Everybody needs them and they could do something nice,

00:24:40 ◼   ► but maybe they're happy to let Belkin and others do it.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:24:43 ◼   ► - And they really are.

00:24:45 ◼   ► The reason why I keep bringing up MagSafe

00:24:46 ◼   ► is that they really are embracing MagSafe everywhere.

00:24:49 ◼   ► Even the AirPods, they have it now.

00:24:52 ◼   ► The AirPods 3 and I think we all sort of collectively

00:24:57 ◼   ► forgot about this, but Apple is now selling AirPods Pro

00:25:00 ◼   ► with a MagSafe compatible case.

00:25:03 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:25:04 ◼   ► - There's a new slightly updated revision

00:25:06 ◼   ► of the AirPods Pro with the MagSafe case.

00:25:08 ◼   ► And so they really are embracing MagSafe.

00:25:10 ◼   ► They should be doing more MagSafe stuff.

00:25:13 ◼   ► And all they are doing is the case wallet

00:25:15 ◼   ► and the MagSafe Duo.

00:25:17 ◼   ► I really would like to see Apple do more MagSafe accessories.

00:25:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, just go wild with it.

00:25:21 ◼   ► Put magnets and everything.

00:25:23 ◼   ► - It's easy money for them.

00:25:24 ◼   ► People are gonna get the Apple version of anything.

00:25:25 ◼   ► I mean, people are buying a polishing cloth from Apple.

00:25:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, you talked to the New York Times about it.

00:25:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:25:33 ◼   ► Mr. Vitici talking about polishing cloths on the Times.

00:25:37 ◼   ► - I think about that like three times a day.

00:25:39 ◼   ► It's like, oh yeah, Federico,

00:25:41 ◼   ► talking about the cleaning cloth on the New York Times.

00:25:43 ◼   ► - I was cleaning up my iKonur Drive today,

00:25:45 ◼   ► and I stumbled across the audio recording of the interview

00:25:50 ◼   ► that I did on the phone with the New York Times.

00:25:51 ◼   ► I was like, man, that was, what a wild week.

00:25:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:25:57 ◼   ► With the memes and the tweets

00:25:59 ◼   ► and then the New York Times interview, it's, yeah.

00:26:03 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is brought to you by Bombas.

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00:28:08 ◼   ► Our thanks to Bombas for their support of the show

00:28:10 ◼   ► and Relay FM.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Federico, you wrote this piece, it really caught my eye,

00:28:15 ◼   ► and I wanted to talk to you about it.

00:28:17 ◼   ► You wrote this on a website called Mac Stories.

00:28:21 ◼   ► Mac stories, oh, I get it, Mac stories.

00:28:23 ◼   ► Mac stories, macstories.net.

00:28:25 ◼   ► - They had me as a guest just for this article.

00:28:28 ◼   ► - Oh, yes.

00:28:29 ◼   ► So you sent them a cold email saying

00:28:31 ◼   ► that you write guest posts.

00:28:34 ◼   ► - I wrote an email with the subject,

00:28:36 ◼   ► guest post collaboration.

00:28:38 ◼   ► And I started the email with,

00:28:41 ◼   ► dear sir or madam, I would like to request

00:28:46 ◼   ► a paid guest post collaboration.

00:28:49 ◼   ► And attached, I sent a Word file written with Microsoft Word

00:28:54 ◼   ► and they published my story.

00:28:56 ◼   ► So that was cool.

00:28:57 ◼   ► - But it is cool.

00:28:58 ◼   ► - But they didn't pay me though.

00:29:00 ◼   ► - Well, what's for the exposure?

00:29:01 ◼   ► - This guy, believe his name is Jack, Joseph, John.

00:29:06 ◼   ► - John. - John.

00:29:08 ◼   ► John, he told me, yeah, you know, it's for the exposure.

00:29:13 ◼   ► This is a great opportunity for you.

00:29:16 ◼   ► You're gonna go places and everything.

00:29:18 ◼   ► It's like, okay, I guess I'll do it.

00:29:20 ◼   ► - So you wrote this piece and in this piece,

00:29:23 ◼   ► you talk about how there seems to be a disconnect

00:29:26 ◼   ► between the teams writing apps like Reminders or Notes,

00:29:31 ◼   ► I think those are two of the examples you use,

00:29:33 ◼   ► how those apps get new features,

00:29:36 ◼   ► but those features aren't exposed in shortcuts.

00:29:39 ◼   ► So for example, Reminders got tags and smart list folder,

00:29:44 ◼   ► you know, slash folders this year and good stuff,

00:29:49 ◼   ► but the shortcuts, you know, side of the things,

00:29:53 ◼   ► like don't have any access to those new features.

00:29:56 ◼   ► And I wanna read back to you something you wrote.

00:30:00 ◼   ► This is the part that really jumped out at me.

00:30:02 ◼   ► If I had to guess, much of this problem boils down

00:30:05 ◼   ► to Apple's internal structure

00:30:06 ◼   ► and how different teams communicate,

00:30:08 ◼   ► whether or not they are aware of each other's latest work.

00:30:11 ◼   ► And then you mentioned tags and reminders not being there.

00:30:14 ◼   ► We can't know the answer to this question.

00:30:15 ◼   ► All we know is the predicament we're currently in.

00:30:18 ◼   ► The reminders, actions and shortcuts for iOS and iPadOS 15

00:30:21 ◼   ► have no tagging support whatsoever.

00:30:23 ◼   ► This is it.

00:30:24 ◼   ► - Despite tagging in SmartList being the highlight

00:30:27 ◼   ► of the Reminders update this year.

00:30:30 ◼   ► - Right.

00:30:31 ◼   ► - It's like the thing in Reminders,

00:30:32 ◼   ► and you sort of lay out this argument of like,

00:30:36 ◼   ► who is responsible for this?

00:30:37 ◼   ► Is the Reminders team responsible for going

00:30:39 ◼   ► and making sure their shortcuts actions are updated?

00:30:42 ◼   ► Or is like the shortcut squad who are busy, you know,

00:30:45 ◼   ► porting to SwiftUI and having a bad time on the Mac,

00:30:47 ◼   ► like are they responsible for going around

00:30:51 ◼   ► and making sure they support everything

00:30:52 ◼   ► these other teams are doing?

00:30:55 ◼   ► Like, brilliant question, and I think you've really nailed

00:30:58 ◼   ► like what's going on here.

00:30:59 ◼   ► - Thank you, yeah.

00:31:01 ◼   ► That's the thing, right?

00:31:02 ◼   ► So when people come into shortcuts,

00:31:05 ◼   ► they look at the library of built-in actions,

00:31:10 ◼   ► which is the greatest advantage of shortcuts.

00:31:12 ◼   ► Even start like, even from the very first version

00:31:15 ◼   ► of workflow from now seven years ago,

00:31:18 ◼   ► I believe the workflow anniversary is coming up.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Let's see, Workflow, Mac stories.

00:31:23 ◼   ► It was December, 2014.

00:31:26 ◼   ► - Has it been that long?

00:31:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, December 11, 2014.

00:31:30 ◼   ► That's when I published my review of Workflow.

00:31:33 ◼   ► But even from that very first version,

00:31:36 ◼   ► the biggest advantage of Workflow was you open it up

00:31:40 ◼   ► and it's got hundreds of actions for the things

00:31:44 ◼   ► and apps already on your system, right?

00:31:47 ◼   ► And as time went on, of course, Apple added more actions,

00:31:51 ◼   ► more apps got shortcuts integration, but we're now at a point where I think there are two

00:31:58 ◼   ► underlying problems that I would like to see Apple address in the near future, maybe next year.

00:32:07 ◼   ► The first one, which is the least concerning one, I think, is the disconnect between multitasking

00:32:18 ◼   ► and windowing control on Mac OS and on iPad OS.

00:32:22 ◼   ► There are some shared concepts in how you

00:32:26 ◼   ► manage multitasking and how you manage windowing between the Mac and

00:32:30 ◼   ► iPad OS. The Split View terminology, for example, is the same.

00:32:34 ◼   ► How you can tile windows is sort of similar.

00:32:38 ◼   ► Basically, Apple did a bunch of windowing

00:32:42 ◼   ► actions this time in Shortcuts for Mac. None of those exist in

00:32:46 ◼   ► iPadOS, SplitView should be unified, I think. These actions should be more consistent between

00:32:54 ◼   ► platforms. These are the two platforms that support multi-windowing and more complex multitasking

00:33:01 ◼   ► than an iPhone, and these actions, they should be consistent everywhere.

00:33:05 ◼   ► But the more concerning problem for me is exactly what I described in the story, which

00:33:11 ◼   ► is there's shortcuts, the shortcuts app in iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS. And every year, Apple

00:33:19 ◼   ► releases new versions of these operating systems. And these OSes, they come with either new

00:33:26 ◼   ► or updated apps. And Apple makes a big deal out of the new designs or the new features

00:33:32 ◼   ► that they've added to the apps. Look at reminders, Facetime notes. They got a redesign years

00:33:39 ◼   ► ago, and every year Apple adds some major new functionality to those apps. Now, I would

00:33:47 ◼   ► expect that there should be, you know, that the apps and the shortcuts integrations for

00:33:55 ◼   ► those apps, they should advance in lockstep, right? That's what you would expect. But this

00:34:02 ◼   ► is not what's going on right now. If you remember years ago when we used to have, you know,

00:34:08 ◼   ► used to be concerned and worried about the Mac versions of Apple's system apps being

00:34:16 ◼   ► one or two years behind their iPhone and iPad versions. This is what's happening now with

00:34:21 ◼   ► shortcuts. The actions for many, many Apple apps are at least a couple of years behind

00:34:29 ◼   ► the features that Apple shipped in the apps themselves. Tagging in reminders is an excellent

00:34:37 ◼   ► there are still, for example, photos. The Photos app got some major search updates over

00:34:46 ◼   ► the years, like how you can search for people, objects, like that's been around for three,

00:34:50 ◼   ► four years, I think. And the photo search integration in Shortcuts has no idea whatsoever

00:34:57 ◼   ► what it means to search photos for content or people or places. There's tons of little

00:35:03 ◼   ► things like that. And it makes me wonder, is it too optimistic to think that shortcuts

00:35:12 ◼   ► as an extension of those apps should be updated alongside the app? Or am I right in what I'm

00:35:20 ◼   ► saying here and Apple should do better? Now I'm going to flip this problem.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Okay.

00:35:26 ◼   ► And maybe think about it this way. Imagine if reminders got updated, right? Or notes

00:35:31 ◼   ► got updated. But the share extension of reminders didn't. Right? So imagine if one of the—because

00:35:40 ◼   ► this is the problem with—not the problem, but the reality of modern Apple apps. They're

00:35:45 ◼   ► not just about the app anymore. They're not just about the little icon that you put on

00:35:50 ◼   ► your home screen anymore. They have a Siri integration. They have a shortcuts integration.

00:35:54 ◼   ► They have keyboard support on iPad. They have a widget. They have a share extension. Like,

00:35:59 ◼   ► They have all these separate but related components.

00:36:04 ◼   ► And all of them, right, all of them they get updated every year.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Reminders gets tagging, gets smart lists.

00:36:13 ◼   ► You can see those features in Siri.

00:36:15 ◼   ► You can, well, maybe to an extent in Siri, you can see them in the shared extension.

00:36:19 ◼   ► You can see the keyboard support on iPad.

00:36:20 ◼   ► You can see them in the widget, of course, but not in shortcuts.

00:36:25 ◼   ► So there's always these shortcuts being the one module, if you want to call it that, that

00:36:30 ◼   ► is lagging behind.

00:36:32 ◼   ► Now, I'm also aware that I really think Apple is... they know about this.

00:36:40 ◼   ► I think they are, and this is my personal theory based on conversations that I hear

00:36:45 ◼   ► from time to time, I think they are making some changes to make sure that this doesn't

00:36:50 ◼   ► happen anymore.

00:36:52 ◼   ► And that's ultimately why I published that story.

00:36:54 ◼   ► story came out in Mac Stories Weekly for club members and then I decided, you know, I'm

00:36:59 ◼   ► gonna post this for free on Mac Stories as well. Let's face it, you know, Apple, they

00:37:05 ◼   ► look at websites, they listen to podcasts and what we do...

00:37:09 ◼   ► Hey Tim!

00:37:10 ◼   ► What we do, yes, hi Tim Apple. What we do, what we say to an extent can steer or can

00:37:17 ◼   ► help steer things in a certain direction, because, you know, it's obvious, right? Look,

00:37:25 ◼   ► people are talking about this, people are responding to this, maybe we should do something

00:37:29 ◼   ► here if our users are reacting to this kind of problem. And that's why I decided to put

00:37:35 ◼   ► it out on MicroStories, this is the time to file your feature requests, you know, before,

00:37:41 ◼   ► you know, when Apple is, you know, I don't want to say they're finalizing their work

00:37:45 ◼   ► on iOS 16, but this is the time to do it, right?

00:37:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, they know what it's gonna be,

00:37:50 ◼   ► or they're getting close to it.

00:37:52 ◼   ► - I think the big picture problem here is,

00:37:57 ◼   ► I hope that Apple can come up with a process internally

00:38:02 ◼   ► to make sure that shortcuts actions, they are,

00:38:06 ◼   ► here's another way to look at this, Steven.

00:38:08 ◼   ► I hope that Apple comes up with a process

00:38:10 ◼   ► so that shortcuts actions do not end up like watch faces.

00:38:14 ◼   ► - Hmm.

00:38:16 ◼   ► - That get released and never updated again.

00:38:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I get the sense that it's,

00:38:24 ◼   ► the problem is these teams,

00:38:26 ◼   ► or part of the problem is these teams are really busy

00:38:30 ◼   ► and Shortcuts just doesn't have the priority

00:38:33 ◼   ► that new features have.

00:38:35 ◼   ► And I think what Apple should do is,

00:38:37 ◼   ► like basically just have a rule.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Like if you implement a new feature in a system app,

00:38:43 ◼   ► you need to expose that to shortcuts

00:38:46 ◼   ► and they need to go back and catch stuff up.

00:38:50 ◼   ► I mean, just this morning, I was working on a shortcut

00:38:53 ◼   ► because it's a different topic,

00:38:56 ◼   ► but I'm exploring Apple Notes again

00:38:59 ◼   ► after being in craft for a year.

00:39:00 ◼   ► - Interesting, okay.

00:39:02 ◼   ► - And I was like, hey, I wanna make a shortcut

00:39:05 ◼   ► that I can put in the share sheet

00:39:06 ◼   ► and I can pick from a list of my podcasts

00:39:09 ◼   ► and append whatever the share sheet saw

00:39:12 ◼   ► to that note for that podcast.

00:39:15 ◼   ► 'Cause I just save links and stuff throughout the week,

00:39:17 ◼   ► and then when it's time to prepare for a show,

00:39:19 ◼   ► I can open the Apple note and see what I've collected,

00:39:23 ◼   ► compare it with what y'all have collected, everything else.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Best I can tell, nearly impossible to do,

00:39:28 ◼   ► because like the append note action is super janky,

00:39:32 ◼   ► and Notes just doesn't have a lot of good support

00:39:36 ◼   ► and shortcuts, which is a shame because like Notes is,

00:39:39 ◼   ► I mean, let's see if you agree with this,

00:39:42 ◼   ► - It's maybe the best example right now

00:39:44 ◼   ► of Apple taking a system app

00:39:46 ◼   ► and really implementing on it year after year after year.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Like it was a joke for years.

00:39:53 ◼   ► - I would say reminders is a close second.

00:39:56 ◼   ► - But you remember like the old notes,

00:39:57 ◼   ► like we're gonna sync with an IMAP folders.

00:39:59 ◼   ► Like what are you doing?

00:40:00 ◼   ► Don't do that.

00:40:01 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:40:02 ◼   ► - And it's world-class now,

00:40:04 ◼   ► but then you go to interact with it in shortcuts

00:40:06 ◼   ► and it's like, you know, good luck.

00:40:09 ◼   ► It's very frustrating.

00:40:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, Notes is like the Notes actions.

00:40:14 ◼   ► This is in the story also,

00:40:15 ◼   ► like the Notes actions were released what, three years ago?

00:40:18 ◼   ► - Probably, yeah. - 2018, 2018 I think.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And they never got updated, never.

00:40:24 ◼   ► They are still limited to plain text, for example.

00:40:30 ◼   ► And Notes very famously, it can hold rich text,

00:40:33 ◼   ► it's got rich formatting controls.

00:40:36 ◼   ► It can do link previews, link thumbnails.

00:40:41 ◼   ► It can do tables.

00:40:42 ◼   ► It can do attachments within a note.

00:40:45 ◼   ► If you try and pass an image or a PDF in shortcuts

00:40:50 ◼   ► to the note action, you know what happens?

00:40:54 ◼   ► It creates a note with a plain text file name

00:40:59 ◼   ► of that image or PDF document.

00:41:03 ◼   ► - Yes, that's what I wanted.

00:41:04 ◼   ► - It literally puts in IMG_23.png.

00:41:09 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh.

00:41:11 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:41:12 ◼   ► - That hurts.

00:41:13 ◼   ► That hurts so bad.

00:41:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I really think your suggestion is the right one.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Obviously we do not work at Apple.

00:41:19 ◼   ► We do not know how functionally speaking

00:41:23 ◼   ► these teams cooperate and communicate,

00:41:25 ◼   ► but I think it's generally like a good rule of thumb

00:41:28 ◼   ► to say if there's a new feature,

00:41:30 ◼   ► make sure this feature works in Siri,

00:41:32 ◼   ► share extension, keyboard shortcuts.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Like, you have to consider this sort of ecosystem

00:41:40 ◼   ► of surrounding components, right?

00:41:45 ◼   ► These features that sort of gravitate around the app,

00:41:50 ◼   ► and you need to make sure that those features

00:41:53 ◼   ► are all up to date as well.

00:41:55 ◼   ► I hope that, well, I think Apple is aware of this.

00:41:58 ◼   ► I think they're doing things around this.

00:42:01 ◼   ► Obviously, it doesn't help that the shortcuts roll out

00:42:05 ◼   ► this year was rocky, to say the least.

00:42:09 ◼   ► The SwiftUI redesign was really,

00:42:14 ◼   ► still is problematic, right?

00:42:18 ◼   ► There's still a lot of issues.

00:42:20 ◼   ► It's getting much better on the Mac with the beta.

00:42:25 ◼   ► In fact, I believe Monterrey 12.1 Beta 4

00:42:28 ◼   ► just came out a few minutes ago.

00:42:30 ◼   ► So I'm gonna update to that right away because the shortcuts fixes are plenty in Monterey.

00:42:36 ◼   ► I have to assume that the shortcuts team was very distracted by that ongoing situation

00:42:44 ◼   ► with 50i.

00:42:46 ◼   ► But once that's in a...

00:42:48 ◼   ► I don't wanna say settled, but once that's in a decent state, I hope that they can take

00:42:56 ◼   ► a good look at all these actions and say, "Okay, how can we modernize them?" Because

00:43:01 ◼   ► it's such a shame, you know, to only add new actions. Apple adds new actions every year,

00:43:08 ◼   ► but they should also consider the existing ones and make sure that they get updated for

00:43:13 ◼   ► how that feature has changed over time. Yeah, hopefully they can make that work because

00:43:21 ◼   ► they've made such a big deal of it being like the future of automation and saying that on

00:43:26 ◼   ► on the Mac is like a pretty serious statement, right?

00:43:30 ◼   ► It is a, it's a big deal to a lot of people.

00:43:34 ◼   ► And if they, if they don't take it seriously

00:43:38 ◼   ► then it's hard to get, you know, third parties

00:43:40 ◼   ► or users to take it seriously too.

00:43:42 ◼   ► I think they risk that by letting their stuff grow stagnant.

00:43:46 ◼   ► (sighs)

00:43:46 ◼   ► Shortcuts.

00:43:47 ◼   ► What are you gonna do? - I know, I know.

00:43:49 ◼   ► - Make a shortcut to make me feel better.

00:43:51 ◼   ► - I'll try.

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00:45:41 ◼   ► So you're a Mac user now.

00:45:44 ◼   ► - I'm trying to be, like I'm testing this MacBook Pro

00:45:48 ◼   ► that Apple sent me, I'm playing around with it.

00:45:50 ◼   ► I want to write about it. I am writing about it already in the context of shortcuts, but

00:45:56 ◼   ► I, you know, I have a lot of catching up to do here. And I wanted to, you know, I wanted

00:46:04 ◼   ► to briefly talk about this. We have, as we said at the beginning of the show, we have

00:46:09 ◼   ► an excellent Q&A segment coming up. But before we get to that, I wanted to share some sort

00:46:14 ◼   ► of an appreciation segment for some of the techniques and some of the utilities that

00:46:21 ◼   ► I'm sort of rediscovering as I familiarize myself with Mac OS again. That doesn't mean

00:46:29 ◼   ► that I guess I've seen some people say this, "Oh, you're a Mac user again." I still prefer

00:46:35 ◼   ► writing on my iPad Pro, I still prefer actually working on my iPad Pro, but I'm actually having

00:46:41 ◼   ► fun with this MacBook Pro a ton. And something that really bothered me years ago is no longer

00:46:48 ◼   ► an issue, which is all my automations, all my shortcuts are here now. So honestly, without

00:46:54 ◼   ► shortcuts on the Mac, I don't think I would enjoy this MacBook as much as I am right now,

00:47:00 ◼   ► which is another topic, but still. So yeah, I'm rediscovering some Mac OS things, some

00:47:05 ◼   ► some apps, some ideas that are fun. And I want to mention a few of these, just in random

00:47:14 ◼   ► order of appreciation. Rocket, the emoji utility. This is really an excellent app. So Rocket,

00:47:24 ◼   ► it lets you enter emoji anywhere in any text field on Mac OS, sort of by using the same

00:47:30 ◼   ► syntax of Slack, so you type a colon and then you start typing something like

00:47:34 ◼   ► "eyes" or "smile" or "waving", right? And it suggests emoji that match that name.

00:47:40 ◼   ► Which is cool, it works in any text field, right? It works in iMessage, in Mail,

00:47:46 ◼   ► in Slack, in Discord, in Tweetbot, right? It works everywhere. But the thing that

00:47:52 ◼   ► really makes it special for me is if you get the Pro version, which I believe is

00:47:57 ◼   ► like a $14 purchase, you can add your own custom definitions for emoji. So for

00:48:04 ◼   ► example, I didn't like the waving suggestion for the emoji of

00:48:09 ◼   ► the hand that says "hello". I wanted to associate the words "hello" and "hi"

00:48:15 ◼   ► with that emoji, because those words, they match the way that iOS suggests those

00:48:23 ◼   ► emoji above the keyboard. And with Rocket Pro you can do that. You open the main app,

00:48:31 ◼   ► you select emoji, and in a sidebar you add your own custom suggestions, custom words

00:48:37 ◼   ► to trigger emoji. And next time you use Rocket, you type a colon, and then you type "hello"

00:48:42 ◼   ► and you see that emoji. And it's excellent. And I've been going in and adding my own definitions

00:48:47 ◼   ► for emoji, it's really, really well done. And it makes—this is one of those things

00:48:51 ◼   ► that you can only get on Mac OS because this kind of utility, you know, that you type something

00:48:56 ◼   ► and a custom UI pops up above the cursor just cannot exist on iOS and iPadOS. So great time

00:49:03 ◼   ► saver, especially the pro version with the ability to add your own custom things. Do

00:49:08 ◼   ► you use Rocket, Steven? I do. It is fantastic. And yeah, I just I love being able to type

00:49:16 ◼   ► the colon key anywhere, because I'm so used to that from Slack and now Discord, that I

00:49:23 ◼   ► do want it absolutely everywhere. It's great. It's one of those things where if I'm all

00:49:27 ◼   ► like my wife's computer, it's like, "Oh, why doesn't this work?"

00:49:30 ◼   ► Second thing, Better Touch Tool. Like, I think we're all familiar with Better Touch Tool.

00:49:34 ◼   ► Better Touch Tool is amazing. This is like, you can create custom triggers for any sort

00:49:40 ◼   ► of action that you want to speed up and automate on your computer. The amount of

00:49:45 ◼   ► triggers available in BetterTouchTool is kind of ridiculous, to the point where

00:49:50 ◼   ► there are so many you probably don't even know that you can do something that

00:49:57 ◼   ► you think it's impossible, but you can actually do it with BetterTouchTool.

00:50:02 ◼   ► Just a few days ago I discovered, for example, that you can have custom hot

00:50:08 ◼   ► corners as a trigger in Better Touch Tool. So you know the hot corners

00:50:14 ◼   ► feature of macOS, which by the way I still think hot corners are like the

00:50:18 ◼   ► unsung hero of macOS. Such a great feature that I've been using forever.

00:50:23 ◼   ► But I wanted, and again there's an argument here, why didn't Apple make this?

00:50:29 ◼   ► I wanted to trigger a shortcut when the cursor went over the

00:50:37 ◼   ► bottom right hot corner on the display. And that's not possible. But in Better Touch Tool,

00:50:44 ◼   ► you can, under the other category of triggers, you can add a trigger for a hot corner. And

00:50:52 ◼   ► of course, Better Touch Tool has been updated for Monterey. It's got a Run Shortcut action,

00:50:58 ◼   ► and it's literally just that. You say Custom Trigger, Hot Corner, Action, Run Shortcut,

00:51:04 ◼   ► it. Now when I place the cursor on the bottom right corner, my shortcut runs.

00:51:10 ◼   ► Really, really excellent. And there are triggers for anything, right? I made a

00:51:17 ◼   ► custom gesture trigger, which is a three-finger double tap. So anywhere on

00:51:23 ◼   ► Mac OS, I can double tap with three fingers and it runs a shortcut that I

00:51:29 ◼   ► chose. You can do keyboard shortcuts, of course. You can do

00:51:33 ◼   ► custom hotkey triggers. I believe the developer is working on something

00:51:40 ◼   ► called the notch bar, which is like replacing better touch tools, previous

00:51:45 ◼   ► touch bar integration with something for the notch on the new MacBook Pro. You can

00:51:50 ◼   ► actually use the notch itself as a trigger, which is kind of ridiculous. If I place the cursor under the

00:51:57 ◼   ► notch and click do something, like I haven't done that but it's possible. So

00:52:02 ◼   ► Yeah, Better Touch Tool, really incredible for any kind of action that you want to either

00:52:09 ◼   ► chain together, like do two things in a row, or as I think it's really my favorite Shortcuts

00:52:18 ◼   ► companion right now, because you can run Shortcuts from Better Touch Tool, but you can also do

00:52:25 ◼   ► it the other way around.

00:52:27 ◼   ► In Shortcuts, you can use better touch tools, actions, and there are like 50 different actions

00:52:35 ◼   ► that BetterTouchTool provided for shortcuts on Monterey.

00:52:39 ◼   ► So really fantastic sort of two-way integration between BetterTouchTool and shortcuts going

00:52:45 ◼   ► on right now.

00:52:47 ◼   ► I am rediscovering, of course, Keyboard Maestro.

00:52:51 ◼   ► Yes, another great.

00:52:53 ◼   ► Yeah, Keyboard Maestro does a lot of things that shortcuts can now do, but it also still

00:52:59 ◼   ► does a lot more that shortcuts cannot do. For example, the shortcuts window management

00:53:07 ◼   ► actions right now are really broken and super slow to use.

00:53:10 ◼   ► So slow! What is it doing?

00:53:12 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know. It takes like 30 seconds to run. I have no idea. I wanted

00:53:19 ◼   ► to create a macro to basically replicate how I create split views on my iPad, but on the

00:53:27 ◼   ► Mac. Like, I wanted to take the front post window, tile it to the left side of the screen,

00:53:33 ◼   ► bring up a picker, like a picker UI, to choose the second app, and the second app gets placed

00:53:41 ◼   ► on the right. Basically sort of what I do on the iPad, but done in a macro, automated

00:53:47 ◼   ► fashion on macOS. And Kibra Maestro lets me do that. There are some wild actions here,

00:53:56 ◼   ► like move and resize front window, and you can use maths, like you can use calculations

00:54:04 ◼   ► to get the window size exactly right. There are actions that ShortCasts doesn't have,

00:54:10 ◼   ► this is an excellent one. Pause macro until the front application changes.

00:54:17 ◼   ► I was looking exactly for this kind of feature because what I was doing is I'm

00:54:22 ◼   ► using the picker UI that Keyboard Maestro has to let me manually pick the app that

00:54:29 ◼   ► I want to tile to the right side of the screen. But I was running into a problem

00:54:33 ◼   ► where Keyboard Maestro was activating the picker but it was also continuing the

00:54:39 ◼   ► execution of the macro and it was failing and I wanted to have sort of

00:54:44 ◼   ► like a smart pause action. I was thinking I just want this to pause

00:54:49 ◼   ► until I'm done and sure enough, keyboardmeister has an action for it.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Yep, it's got a built-in pause. It's a built-in pause but it's the kind of like

00:54:58 ◼   ► it's a pause that you can configure. Yeah. Like and one of the options is until the

00:55:03 ◼   ► front window changes. Like yes, that's exactly what I wanted. So yeah, I'm using

00:55:08 ◼   ► I'm using Kibra Maestro a lot for windowing related automations.

00:55:12 ◼   ► Really well done.

00:55:13 ◼   ► And of course there's a bunch of other things you can get really esoteric with Kibra Maestro.

00:55:17 ◼   ► But I'm taking things slow, starting from the basics, and I really appreciate how complex

00:55:22 ◼   ► it is, how rich it is.

00:55:24 ◼   ► Like it's got this deep catalog of actions.

00:55:28 ◼   ► And again, good example of something that you can do on macOS that you cannot do on

00:55:34 ◼   ► iPadOS. Kind of ironic how I'm using this to replicate some iPadOS behaviors on the

00:55:41 ◼   ► Mac. I thought that was funny.

00:55:44 ◼   ► Especially all the window management stuff. It cracks me up. But I'll have in the show

00:55:49 ◼   ► notes, we have done Mac power user episodes on both BetterTouchTool and Keyboard Maestro,

00:55:55 ◼   ► like went really deep on both of them. You can totally use them at the same time. Like

00:55:59 ◼   ► obviously overlap and some of what they do, but they're both like pretty classic power

00:56:06 ◼   ► user tools on the Mac. And I've been really encouraged that both of them have jumped into

00:56:14 ◼   ► the shortcut support with both feet. Like I was a little afraid when that when shortcuts

00:56:19 ◼   ► first got announced that kind of sucked the air out of the room for these other automation

00:56:24 ◼   ► tools and so far I think the opposite has been true where now these tools can do even

00:56:30 ◼   ► more because they integrate with shortcuts and that's really exciting to me.

00:56:35 ◼   ► And lastly I want to mention CleanShotX.

00:56:40 ◼   ► This is...

00:56:41 ◼   ► Oh yeah, you and Myke are all about this app.

00:56:42 ◼   ► This is so... like it does a lot of things.

00:56:45 ◼   ► I don't need a lot of things from it, but the three things that it does are excellent.

00:56:51 ◼   ► Again, I'm not taking advantage of all the options that this app provides, but I'm going

00:56:56 ◼   ► to mention a few that I've come to really rely on.

00:57:00 ◼   ► You can take a screenshot, and it's got the same UI that you got on iPadOS and iOS with

00:57:06 ◼   ► a floating thumbnail in the bottom left corner of the display.

00:57:10 ◼   ► You can hover with a pointer over that thumbnail, right?

00:57:15 ◼   ► And as you do, there's a copy button.

00:57:18 ◼   ► So you can copy the screenshot to the clipboard, and that's it.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Without saving it, without having to dismiss it manually.

00:57:28 ◼   ► You can dismiss it manually if you want, but you can just take a screenshot, hover, copy,

00:57:33 ◼   ► done.

00:57:34 ◼   ► Like, you're not saving anything, you don't have to do anything else.

00:57:37 ◼   ► Then you open Slack or Discord or Twitter and you paste.

00:57:40 ◼   ► That's like, I want that from iPadOS and iOS as well.

00:57:45 ◼   ► You can sort of do it on iPadOS.

00:57:48 ◼   ► This is a teachy-tip, like, not so well-known option in iPadOS.

00:57:54 ◼   ► When you take a screenshot, when you get the floating thumbnail, you can long-press the

00:58:00 ◼   ► thumbnail to invoke the sharesheet, which of course has a copy button.

00:58:06 ◼   ► That gesture is so broken, the timing is super weird, the visual feedback of it is super

00:58:11 ◼   ► weird, but it works.

00:58:13 ◼   ► This thing that CleanShotX does is better, because you can just hover, click the copy

00:58:17 ◼   ► button and you're done. These thumbnails you can drag over shortcuts in your dock.

00:58:25 ◼   ► So if you've added a shortcut to your dock, and again go check out the story that John did about

00:58:33 ◼   ► these different ways to turn shortcuts into apps. He published that on Mac Stories today.

00:58:39 ◼   ► But you can drag these thumbnails over shortcuts in your dock and that will be treated as a file

00:58:47 ◼   ► input. So you can... That's cool. Yeah. So I add it to my dock, a shortcut that uploads images to my CDN.

00:58:55 ◼   ► All I need to do now is take a screenshot, grab the thumbnail, drag it over my upload shortcut

00:59:02 ◼   ► in the dock, and it runs. And it takes that image as input. And lastly, I love how in CleanShotX,

00:59:10 ◼   ► when you take a screenshot of a window, of a single Mac window, it doesn't do the drop

00:59:18 ◼   ► shadow like transparency thing that always looks kind of weird.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it looks old.

00:59:24 ◼   ► It looks old.

00:59:25 ◼   ► It frames the window with your desktop wallpaper.

00:59:32 ◼   ► It puts like a...

00:59:34 ◼   ► It pads the window with some of your desktop wallpaper.

00:59:39 ◼   ► It looks so much better and personalized because it takes from your wallpaper.

00:59:46 ◼   ► And there are some other nice touches like when you take screenshots or when you record

00:59:50 ◼   ► video because CleanShot can also record video, it automatically hides all the icons on your

00:59:56 ◼   ► desktop so everything looks always more professional when you take a screenshot.

01:00:01 ◼   ► It can do GIFs, it can do videos, it's really well done, but these three features are the

01:00:05 ◼   ► ones I love the most about CleanShot.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Okay, I've downloaded it because now you and Myke have both spoken so highly of it. So it's it's now my minibar

01:00:15 ◼   ► Little little icon up there. Nice. And according to Zach, oh, thank you, Zach for sharing this in the discord

01:00:22 ◼   ► See why the discord is useful so that you can get these tips from people like Zach

01:00:26 ◼   ► Zach says you can right-click on the system on the system screenshot pop-up

01:00:30 ◼   ► So the Apple one on Mac OS to copy to the clipboard. So this is nice

01:00:35 ◼   ► The Apple version also supports this. Apparently you can right-click and copy.

01:00:41 ◼   ► I still kind of prefer the CleanShot version where you just hover and copy.

01:00:45 ◼   ► But yeah, CleanShot comes with a bunch of other options and I really recommend you check it out.

01:00:50 ◼   ► I have remapped the default keyboard shortcuts for screenshots to CleanShot,

01:00:56 ◼   ► and I've been using that since basically day one that I got my MacBook Pro,

01:01:02 ◼   ► because John and Myke, they were speaking both so highly of CleanShot, and they were right.

01:01:06 ◼   ► This is cool. All right, I'm gonna check it out. I have it installed.

01:01:10 ◼   ► All right. All right.

01:01:11 ◼   ► How do you feel, I mean, coming from an iPad where you, you know, pretty famously can't run these,

01:01:20 ◼   ► like, system utilities all the time, right? Like, you can run shortcuts, but you gotta go to the

01:01:26 ◼   ► shortcut or trigger it from the share sheet or something. And with the Mac, you can have these

01:01:31 ◼   ► utilities like Hazel also comes to mind, these utilities that are basically

01:01:35 ◼   ► available to you all the time everywhere, it's a really different way of thinking

01:01:41 ◼   ► about things. Yeah. Do you think, I mean I'm sure you want this on iPadOS, but

01:01:46 ◼   ► like do you see a world where something like BetterTouchTool or Keyboard

01:01:51 ◼   ► Maestro could even be possible on iPadOS, or do you think Apple views this as

01:01:55 ◼   ► like, well that's a thing for the Mac but not in this world that we have now? Well

01:02:00 ◼   ► I feel like I don't think we're ever gonna see utilities like well

01:02:04 ◼   ► No, I don't want to say I don't want to use the expression never

01:02:06 ◼   ► I think it's it's very unlikely that we're gonna get those kinds of utilities on an iPad. I do think that shortcuts

01:02:14 ◼   ► Should and will grow I'm very confident that it will I think it should grow exponentially on iPad OS in terms of

01:02:20 ◼   ► system-wide application control I think those I think more

01:02:27 ◼   ► automation on iPad will come from shortcuts. I

01:02:31 ◼   ► still think

01:02:33 ◼   ► obviously iPadOS is, you know, now that I can do a proper

01:02:37 ◼   ► comparison between the two, it's very clear to me how iPadOS is a

01:02:43 ◼   ► condensed, sort of more distilled, maybe, version of macOS.

01:02:48 ◼   ► I still actually, like honestly, like I've been trying this computer for a month now and

01:02:54 ◼   ► And what I said on day one is still true.

01:02:57 ◼   ► I still prefer the multitasking of iPadOS.

01:03:01 ◼   ► I never manually resize windows on Mac OS.

01:03:04 ◼   ► And sure, maybe old habits die hard.

01:03:07 ◼   ► Maybe I need another month with Mac OS

01:03:09 ◼   ► to become a, you know, a resizable window guy.

01:03:14 ◼   ► But I still think there's aspects of iPadOS

01:03:18 ◼   ► that I prefer myself to Mac OS,

01:03:22 ◼   ► just because they're so much more clear and yeah, distilled is a good expression, I think.

01:03:29 ◼   ► It encapsulates what I mean.

01:03:30 ◼   ► It's like the same feature but stripped down of things you most likely do not need.

01:03:38 ◼   ► But at the same time, I still think there should be more system-wide sort of like extension

01:03:45 ◼   ► points on iPadOS.

01:03:48 ◼   ► like the copy and paste menu, you should be able to add extensions from apps there. You

01:03:54 ◼   ► should be able to customize that menu. You should be able to have utilities running in

01:03:59 ◼   ► the status bar or in Control Center, like custom things that are always there. And I

01:04:03 ◼   ► think Apple can get to the point where they take some of the benefits of macOS and the

01:04:10 ◼   ► wild ecosystem of utilities that you can install on a Mac, and I think they can distill that

01:04:17 ◼   ► down to a more sort of curated, if you will, approach where you're like, yeah, now you

01:04:22 ◼   ► can install extensions in the copy and paste menu, or now you can trigger your shortcuts

01:04:27 ◼   ► from anywhere with the keyboard shortcut.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Like taking some of the essentials, and this is what they've been doing, you know, these

01:04:36 ◼   ► past five years with iPad, right?

01:04:38 ◼   ► Taking the core of something coming from the Mac, simplifying it, modernizing it for iPad,

01:04:46 ◼   ► bringing it over to iPadOS. And I think they should consider doing this for these kinds

01:04:52 ◼   ► of system-wide things that you can do. Why not? iPadOS, I think, is in need of... It

01:05:02 ◼   ► needs some new life in it in terms of pro stuff. This is a point that I actually made

01:05:11 ◼   ► in my review in September. iPadOS 15, it's more intuitive for a lot of people, but it

01:05:20 ◼   ► doesn't ultimately unlock anything new for existing users like us. It doesn't bring any

01:05:27 ◼   ► major new changes. I mean, sure, the shelf is in there, but it doesn't add more split-view

01:05:34 ◼   ► controls or options. Sure, there's the keyboard stuff, which is great, but it doesn't really

01:05:42 ◼   ► unlock system-wide triggers for shortcuts, for example. That sort of stuff. I feel like

01:05:49 ◼   ► iPadOS 16 would be a good time to really do new power user things, whether it's shortcuts

01:05:58 ◼   ► in more places, new extension points, external display integration. I feel like iPadOS 15

01:06:06 ◼   ► was about updating the foundation, you know, having this new baseline, and I would like

01:06:11 ◼   ► to see more macOS features be updated, simplified, distilled, use whatever verb you want to use

01:06:19 ◼   ► for iPadOS 16 next year.

01:06:23 ◼   ► - It'd be cool.

01:06:23 ◼   ► And it's, the thing that really kills me about it is,

01:06:28 ◼   ► it's not like the iPad lacks the horsepower

01:06:32 ◼   ► to have something available to you all the time.

01:06:35 ◼   ► Like it's purely a software play, right?

01:06:38 ◼   ► Like your iPad Pro is an M1 in it.

01:06:40 ◼   ► Like it can run something in the background all the time,

01:06:43 ◼   ► but it feels like it's one of those things

01:06:44 ◼   ► where it's still sort of chained to the past maybe.

01:06:48 ◼   ► Well, I'm glad you're checking out cool Mac apps.

01:06:52 ◼   ► I love that you are.

01:06:53 ◼   ► Do you feel like there's something missing

01:06:55 ◼   ► that you want to explore, or are you just having a good time

01:06:59 ◼   ► seeing what's out there?

01:07:00 ◼   ► - I barely dip my toes in the stream deck ecosystem.

01:07:06 ◼   ► Again, go listen to the pre-show for more context on this.

01:07:11 ◼   ► That's an aspect that I wanna explore more.

01:07:13 ◼   ► Much of my attention has been going into the shortcuts

01:07:17 ◼   ► for Mac sort of story and narrative lately,

01:07:22 ◼   ► like what's going on there, what can you do?

01:07:25 ◼   ► I feel like I wanna try and figure out more

01:07:30 ◼   ► the multitasking and windowing situation.

01:07:34 ◼   ► I still think I must be missing something

01:07:38 ◼   ► because I still find myself, and again,

01:07:41 ◼   ► I'm sure that one of the factors here is 10 years,

01:07:45 ◼   ► nine years of iPad muscle memory.

01:07:48 ◼   ► I am going into my almost 10 years of working on an iPad.

01:07:53 ◼   ► 2012 is when I started considering it as my main computer.

01:08:00 ◼   ► So I'm sure that a decade of muscle memory

01:08:03 ◼   ► doesn't help here, but I wanna try and understand better,

01:08:06 ◼   ► can I be more efficient?

01:08:11 ◼   ► Ultimately, that's the question.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Can I be more efficient

01:08:13 ◼   ► if I use more than two windows at once?

01:08:15 ◼   ► And again, maybe a 14-inch computer

01:08:18 ◼   ► is also not the most ideal device for that.

01:08:22 ◼   ► I don't know, we'll see.

01:08:24 ◼   ► But yeah, I wanna learn more about Stream Deck

01:08:27 ◼   ► and this kind of physical triggers for automations,

01:08:31 ◼   ► looking more into integrating shortcuts

01:08:37 ◼   ► with Kibra Maestro and AppleScript,

01:08:40 ◼   ► and figuring out over time

01:08:45 ◼   ► the advantages of multitasking.

01:08:48 ◼   ► And maybe I'll try this and I realize at the end,

01:08:52 ◼   ► yep, I've tried it.

01:08:54 ◼   ► More than two apps, not for me.

01:08:58 ◼   ► But maybe there's a way, I don't know.

01:09:00 ◼   ► But that's definitely what I'm gonna explore

01:09:02 ◼   ► over the holiday break, going into next year and beyond.

01:09:06 ◼   ► - Well, keep us posted as you explore.

01:09:09 ◼   ► It's fun to keep up with this

01:09:11 ◼   ► because a lot of us have been using these for a long time

01:09:14 ◼   ► and you definitely bring a fresh set of eyes to these tools

01:09:18 ◼   ► because like you said, you have this decade long

01:09:21 ◼   ► sort of muscle memory with the iPad.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Looking forward to you buying a Mac Pro next year.

01:09:28 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is made possible by our friends

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01:11:28 ◼   ► Q&A time.

01:11:29 ◼   ► - All right, how do you wanna do this?

01:11:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, we have this spreadsheet.

01:11:33 ◼   ► Since yesterday, we have had 202 things

01:11:38 ◼   ► added to this from people.

01:11:40 ◼   ► We're not gonna do all 202, I'm sorry.

01:11:43 ◼   ► You and I have each selected some,

01:11:44 ◼   ► so maybe we just alternate

01:11:47 ◼   ► and we'll do this for a little while.

01:11:49 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:11:50 ◼   ► - So we've highlighted some that we both like,

01:11:51 ◼   ► so why don't you pick one and then I'll pick one.

01:11:54 ◼   ► And it's not really around Robin

01:11:56 ◼   ► 'cause there's just two of us.

01:11:57 ◼   ► It's a flat Robin.

01:12:00 ◼   ► - It's been a good co-host to let the other talk, really.

01:12:04 ◼   ► It's a basic podcasting 101.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Okay, this comes from Zach.

01:12:09 ◼   ► in the Discord.

01:12:11 ◼   ► If you have to pick one member of the triple J

01:12:14 ◼   ► to replace Myke, who would it be?

01:12:16 ◼   ► - So we have Jason Snell, we have Jon Voorhees,

01:12:20 ◼   ► and we have James Thompson.

01:12:22 ◼   ► Jon's been on the show the most.

01:12:25 ◼   ► - So to replace Myke, also let's consider

01:12:27 ◼   ► who we are replacing.

01:12:28 ◼   ► - Okay, so who replaces Myke?

01:12:30 ◼   ► I mean, James kinda sounds like him.

01:12:33 ◼   ► - Okay, so James has the language advantage.

01:12:36 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:12:37 ◼   ► - Kinda sounds, although James sounds more British

01:12:40 ◼   ► than Myke at this point.

01:12:41 ◼   ► - True.

01:12:42 ◼   ► - You know, Myke and his vocal fry.

01:12:45 ◼   ► (both laughing)

01:12:48 ◼   ► - Okay, so James replaces Myke.

01:12:54 ◼   ► And this is all really easy.

01:12:55 ◼   ► John replaces you because you work together

01:12:57 ◼   ► and so we still have the Mac stories contingent.

01:13:00 ◼   ► - Jason replaces you.

01:13:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause we both like old Macs.

01:13:03 ◼   ► - And space.

01:13:05 ◼   ► - And space.

01:13:06 ◼   ► - So yeah.

01:13:06 ◼   ► - We each have custom keyboards now.

01:13:10 ◼   ► - Right.

01:13:11 ◼   ► So yeah, James is set to replace Myke

01:13:14 ◼   ► in case of a hostile takeover.

01:13:18 ◼   ► I think in that case, yeah, James Thompson

01:13:20 ◼   ► would be Myke's replacement.

01:13:22 ◼   ► - Zach. - Okay.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Okay.

01:13:25 ◼   ► That was pretty good.

01:13:27 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:13:28 ◼   ► - Here's another question from Zach.

01:13:30 ◼   ► We'll just stay with Zach for a second.

01:13:32 ◼   ► What would it take for Apple to actually excite

01:13:35 ◼   ► and interest you about AR/VR with their inevitable headset.

01:13:40 ◼   ► We had other questions about this, like would you buy it?

01:13:43 ◼   ► Would you buy it just because you had to talk about it,

01:13:45 ◼   ► not because you actually wanted it?

01:13:47 ◼   ► It's like, well, what do you think?

01:13:48 ◼   ► Are you excited?

01:13:49 ◼   ► - Okay, so here's how I see this.

01:13:55 ◼   ► I am deeply skeptical that,

01:14:00 ◼   ► I need to phrase this in a way that,

01:14:03 ◼   ► well, you know what, I don't care.

01:14:05 ◼   ► I think most of the, a lot of the sort of metaverse ideas

01:14:10 ◼   ► that we are seeing now, I think it's delusional

01:14:17 ◼   ► to think that people will hang out more than two hours a day

01:14:23 ◼   ► in a virtual world instead of seeing other people.

01:14:31 ◼   ► And I think the sort of the pandemic showing us how much people ultimately crave

01:14:39 ◼   ► human contact. People, whether you like it or not, people want to see each other.

01:14:44 ◼   ► People want to touch each other. You know, they want to say each other. Yeah.

01:14:47 ◼   ► I mean, you know that that's what I mean. They're like people, they, they, they,

01:14:50 ◼   ► we are wired as human beings in a way to be social animals.

01:14:58 ◼   ► Yeah. To connect.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Yes, hence the name of the show.

01:15:03 ◼   ► So I think it's a bit delusional, like what?

01:15:09 ◼   ► Instead of cooking dinner, I'm just gonna isolate myself

01:15:13 ◼   ► from my family and my friends and be like,

01:15:15 ◼   ► "No, sorry guys, I'm in the metaverse."

01:15:18 ◼   ► But, so I'm very skeptical of that.

01:15:21 ◼   ► But I think it's like every time I see these demos

01:15:25 ◼   ► of actually useful AR applications.

01:15:32 ◼   ► I'm like, yeah, that is cool and useful and something

01:15:35 ◼   ► that I would like to use ideally.

01:15:39 ◼   ► A few days ago, there was somebody on Twitter.

01:15:42 ◼   ► I believe Steve Transmith retweeted them.

01:15:47 ◼   ► They had made a custom Snapchat lens

01:15:50 ◼   ► to show you when you're on a train

01:15:55 ◼   ► to show you information about the town or city you're passing by.

01:15:59 ◼   ► It's like population, weather, you know, that kind of info.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Like, you're in Berlin.

01:16:04 ◼   ► Like, you're in Viterbo, you know, that kind of stuff.

01:16:06 ◼   ► It's like, that was cool.

01:16:08 ◼   ► Like, imagine looking out the window, you're on a train,

01:16:10 ◼   ► and you get contextual information

01:16:12 ◼   ► about the city that's there.

01:16:15 ◼   ► And I see these applications for, like,

01:16:17 ◼   ► you're at the supermarket, you're just

01:16:19 ◼   ► looking at the label on a box of cereal,

01:16:22 ◼   ► and you get nutritional facts in front of your eyes.

01:16:24 ◼   ► Like, that's cool.

01:16:27 ◼   ► I struggle to imagine that people are going to walk around places wearing visors.

01:16:35 ◼   ► It was one thing to say, you know, it was one thing to go from cell phones to smartphones.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Objects that you hold, I think they do not cross a threshold of potential weirdness,

01:16:50 ◼   ► like as a factor.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Like, how much is this potentially weird as a thing to do socially and in public?

01:16:57 ◼   ► Going from the cell phone, like Nokia cell phones, to iPhones, kind of the same thing,

01:17:03 ◼   ► you're holding something in your hand.

01:17:06 ◼   ► But to go out there in public and wearing something on your face, it's gonna be weird,

01:17:11 ◼   ► man.

01:17:12 ◼   ► Like, let's face it, it's weird.

01:17:14 ◼   ► But if they can figure out a way to make this small and extremely lightweight and fashionable

01:17:21 ◼   ► and maybe integrate it with your eyeglasses, I think it's got potential.

01:17:28 ◼   ► I still feel very strange about it.

01:17:35 ◼   ► Like having a computer that can process anything you may be looking at, I think it's going

01:17:43 ◼   ► to be a big barrier for people to accept going forward. In a way that other devices, when

01:17:51 ◼   ► we were talking about them before they came out, like when we were talking about the Apple

01:17:55 ◼   ► Watch before it came out, I remember us on this very show having all kinds of conversations

01:18:01 ◼   ► like, "Oh, this is going to be so cool." Imagine like it's tracking your heart rate. Imagine

01:18:05 ◼   ► with workouts. Imagine when you're out and about and you want to get directions on your

01:18:09 ◼   ► wrist, like we were talking about all these things, but that's still something that you

01:18:13 ◼   ► put on your wrist. Like the potential weirdness of it is relatively low. It's a watch with

01:18:19 ◼   ► a display. Cool. But something on your face like that to me is still like the thing that

01:18:29 ◼   ► I think it's always funny is when I see this sort of Silicon Valley bros on Twitter be

01:18:35 ◼   ► like how the future is AR. I want to spend time in the metaverse all day. And I'm like,

01:18:41 ◼   ► buddy, do you have a social life? Do you have a family or friends? Do you have other people

01:18:44 ◼   ► looking at you or not? Or like, do you just hang out with your bros wearing headsets,

01:18:50 ◼   ► you know, smoking cigars, whatever they do in Silicon Valley? I have no idea. I think

01:18:54 ◼   ► that's right. But like, are you surrounded by normal people also or just your other,

01:19:01 ◼   ► know VC startup bros. So that for me is is the the problem right now is it's

01:19:08 ◼   ► cool I want to see if it can become something that is socially and morally

01:19:15 ◼   ► to an extent acceptable. Yeah it is a big jump and the the the previous attempts

01:19:23 ◼   ► Google class have not gone well right it is a bigger move from something that

01:19:30 ◼   ► that's just on your wrist and even thinking about that like

01:19:32 ◼   ► There are times where like you look at your Apple watch because I messes coming in and whoever you're with is like

01:19:38 ◼   ► Oh, do you need to go right like there's still a little bit of

01:19:41 ◼   ► Cultural

01:19:43 ◼   ► Stuff around a watch that isn't completely broken just because the Apple watch has been successful

01:19:49 ◼   ► Max wants to know what will it take for Steven to play a Pokemon game?

01:19:54 ◼   ► I have played Pokemon games before like you know Gameboy, and we were little and played them, but not recently

01:20:00 ◼   ► Okay, I thought you were gonna say Pokemon go that doesn't count no I can actually and I've played what's the Pokemon game on the switch?

01:20:08 ◼   ► Switch Pokemon I've played that with my kids

01:20:11 ◼   ► You know walking around getting you have Pokemon. Yeah, really yeah

01:20:17 ◼   ► Maybe because they didn't know what to do not that I really knew what to do

01:20:21 ◼   ► But all right

01:20:24 ◼   ► Can I ask another one sure is this fun one? This is this come from Maddie from discord also, I believe yes

01:20:30 ◼   ► Maddie is from discord Maddie wants to know what do you do for fun outside of work? What do I do for fun?

01:20:38 ◼   ► What is outside of work? No, it's getting

01:20:40 ◼   ► It's a very busy year I

01:20:44 ◼   ► Mean anyone who knows me at least like it's not surprised like I enjoy bike riding. I like fishing

01:20:53 ◼   ► I like reading, I enjoy photography.

01:20:57 ◼   ► So yeah, I enjoy all those things.

01:21:01 ◼   ► But the simple things are just as important, right?

01:21:04 ◼   ► Like taking the kids to the park or family picnic,

01:21:07 ◼   ► just like time away from the computer is always fun.

01:21:12 ◼   ► What about you?

01:21:13 ◼   ► Collecting Pokemon cards.

01:21:15 ◼   ► - Well, so yeah, video games are a huge part

01:21:18 ◼   ► of my downtime.

01:21:20 ◼   ► It does kind of bleed into work sometimes because of remaster or video game show here

01:21:26 ◼   ► on Relay, but I still mostly and largely play video games for my personal enjoyment. Huge

01:21:33 ◼   ► Pokémon fan myself. I have all the consoles, thankfully, so I can pick and choose whatever

01:21:39 ◼   ► I want to play. Right now I'm going through this game called Kena, Bridge of Spirits on

01:21:43 ◼   ► on PS5, really gorgeous, really fun game. I enjoy... I'm not a huge book person, but

01:21:50 ◼   ► I'm... You know, I'm that guy. I'm not a book guy, I'm jealous of other book people. And

01:21:57 ◼   ► I'm very jealous, in a good way, of Jason Snell, for example. I saw Jason say "I'm going

01:22:01 ◼   ► through my eighth or ninth book in November." Like, how? How have you read nine books in

01:22:10 ◼   ► the same month. I probably read nine books in the past decade. So it's something that

01:22:16 ◼   ► I always aspire to be, but maybe I should just be honest with myself. I prefer reading

01:22:21 ◼   ► articles on the web and I prefer listening to music. Listening to music with good equipment

01:22:27 ◼   ► is one of my recent hobbies from, you know, in adult life. I'm really happy with my setup.

01:22:34 ◼   ► I do enjoy trying different headphones. I do enjoy spending some of my money on this

01:22:40 ◼   ► It's something that brings me a lot of joy, so to speak.

01:22:44 ◼   ► It's fun.

01:22:45 ◼   ► And otherwise, you know, the simple things are good.

01:22:48 ◼   ► Like you said, spending time with Silvia, playing with my dogs.

01:22:52 ◼   ► I like going to the mall, you know, now that we can again.

01:22:55 ◼   ► It's a simple thing, but I like going to the mall with Silvia and the dogs and just, you know, browsing, shopping around.

01:23:00 ◼   ► I like having drinks with friends and I like watching junk TV, like Big Brother.

01:23:08 ◼   ► other and that's a stuff like I you do like TV I do the simple things are

01:23:15 ◼   ► simple but they are important yes so Matt C asks a technical question you can

01:23:22 ◼   ► have an iPhone with 50% more battery but it's a portless would you take that

01:23:28 ◼   ► trade? Uh, yeah. I'm at the point where, uh, yep. 50% more. Yeah. But no port. No port.

01:23:43 ◼   ► If he had said double, maybe it's an easier trade. Doubled. So double the battery, but

01:23:48 ◼   ► no port. Yeah. Let's say double that. I think that makes it clearer which one you would

01:23:52 ◼   ► So, my first reaction was yes. My only concern is, like, there's nothing I do that requires

01:24:02 ◼   ► a cable now, I mean, besides charging, nothing I do requires a cable, but I would miss two

01:24:11 ◼   ► things. One is... So I'm gonna have to say no, ultimately, because I wanna be able to

01:24:20 ◼   ► plug in an external DAC. I'm sorry, I need to be that guy. I want to be able to plug

01:24:26 ◼   ► in my DAC via a cable. Sure. And I want to be able to install side-loaded software via

01:24:34 ◼   ► AltStore. You're still on that scene, huh? Oh yeah, big time. Especially now that, have

01:24:41 ◼   ► you seen my tweets about backing up my Game Boy cartridges from yesterday? Yes, what is

01:24:46 ◼   ► that device called? It's amazing, it's called the GB operator. It's this little

01:24:51 ◼   ► cartridge reader, basically, that lets you back up physical Game Boy cartridges, so

01:24:57 ◼   ► Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance, but not just that, it lets you

01:25:01 ◼   ► back up your saves as well. So I can now take my original save file from, say,

01:25:09 ◼   ► Pokemon Yellow or Pokemon Ruby from 2003, and I can load that up in All Store,

01:25:15 ◼   ► running on my iPhone, and I can continue playing

01:25:19 ◼   ► from where I left Toph in the physical game on the iPhone.

01:25:24 ◼   ► So that's cool.

01:25:25 ◼   ► - That is cool. - So yeah.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I keep the port, yeah.

01:25:31 ◼   ► - I don't use a port for anything except CarPlay.

01:25:34 ◼   ► And again, I'm going to review this wireless CarPlay adapter

01:25:38 ◼   ► that's been sitting on my desk for a while.

01:25:40 ◼   ► So maybe that would change my mind,

01:25:43 ◼   ► But I also don't have,

01:25:45 ◼   ► and a lot of new cars have wireless charging pads in them.

01:25:48 ◼   ► I don't have that.

01:25:49 ◼   ► So I would need to like retrofit that in for long trips.

01:25:51 ◼   ► But other than the car,

01:25:53 ◼   ► like that's literally the only time I plug my phone in.

01:25:55 ◼   ► I mean, I guess on occasion,

01:25:57 ◼   ► one thing that is nice about charging with a cable

01:26:00 ◼   ► is you can do fast charging, right?

01:26:02 ◼   ► So like if you're really in a tight spot,

01:26:06 ◼   ► it's gonna be faster than wireless or MagSafe charging,

01:26:09 ◼   ► but that's not very often.

01:26:11 ◼   ► The 13 Pro Max is basically a two-day phone for me.

01:26:14 ◼   ► Like, it can be very easily, the battery life's ridiculous.

01:26:18 ◼   ► But I don't know.

01:26:20 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:26:21 ◼   ► - Marlys from Discord, she wants to know,

01:26:25 ◼   ► if you could get away with stealing one segment

01:26:28 ◼   ► from another show, what would it be?

01:26:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:26:34 ◼   ► - I like Q&As.

01:26:35 ◼   ► This is fun.

01:26:37 ◼   ► So, you know, maybe we take, take ass upgrade.

01:26:40 ◼   ► (mimics laser noises)

01:26:43 ◼   ► Those are my lasers.

01:26:44 ◼   ► I would still, I wanna say upstream from upgrade.

01:26:49 ◼   ► Jason has a standalone show for that.

01:26:55 ◼   ► He doesn't need that segment on upgrade anymore.

01:26:58 ◼   ► It's got the standalone show on relay for entertainment.

01:27:02 ◼   ► It's got downstream.

01:27:03 ◼   ► We can do upstream.

01:27:05 ◼   ► We can take that.

01:27:06 ◼   ► We can steal that.

01:27:07 ◼   ► And Myke would still be able to talk about it

01:27:08 ◼   ► 'cause he's on this show too, you know,

01:27:10 ◼   ► when he's not on vacation. - Exactly.

01:27:12 ◼   ► So when you think about it,

01:27:14 ◼   ► connected actually is the optimal place for AppStream.

01:27:18 ◼   ► Jason can keep doing his standalone show,

01:27:22 ◼   ► Myke can keep talking about it,

01:27:24 ◼   ► but now you and I can bring on our, you know,

01:27:29 ◼   ► entertainment industry expertise.

01:27:33 ◼   ► - Do we have that expertise? - Shut up.

01:27:35 ◼   ► This doesn't matter right now.

01:27:36 ◼   ► I'm just justifying the stealing right now.

01:27:39 ◼   ► - That's a good question.

01:27:45 ◼   ► That's really good.

01:27:45 ◼   ► Okay, let me scroll through here.

01:27:48 ◼   ► BG asks, what are your scheduling/time management strategies?

01:27:54 ◼   ► Do you open your to-do app?

01:27:57 ◼   ► Do you start going down the list?

01:27:58 ◼   ► Do you put everything on your calendar?

01:28:00 ◼   ► This is a common question.

01:28:02 ◼   ► Like how do you divide calendar events

01:28:06 ◼   ► and tasks to complete?

01:28:08 ◼   ► So I have-- so I don't know if this answers the question,

01:28:11 ◼   ► but I think I mentioned this before.

01:28:14 ◼   ► I updated how I sort of schedule my days

01:28:19 ◼   ► and manage my time this year, a couple of months ago.

01:28:22 ◼   ► I still follow that approach, which

01:28:26 ◼   ► is I think some people would probably

01:28:29 ◼   ► call this time blocking, which is I've basically allocated

01:28:35 ◼   ► certain blocks of my day to certain types of work. And it's the same schedule every week.

01:28:42 ◼   ► Of course I make modifications if necessary, like I can be flexible, I can make adjustments.

01:28:47 ◼   ► But roughly speaking I know that for example on Monday morning from 11 to 1 pm it's writing time,

01:28:54 ◼   ► or that you know Tuesday morning it's admin time and research time. Like I try to follow that

01:29:03 ◼   ► strategy. And then when I do, I, so if it's writing time, I have a writing smart list

01:29:08 ◼   ► in Reminders and I go in there and I'm like, "Okay, what am I supposed to be writing now?"

01:29:12 ◼   ► And so I use that combination of trying to keep some kind of sort of office schedule and

01:29:20 ◼   ► checking out what's in my list of things to do in my task manager.

01:29:27 ◼   ► - So for me, I only put things on my calendar

01:29:30 ◼   ► that blocks of time.

01:29:33 ◼   ► So like recording connected and editing connected

01:29:36 ◼   ► are each a couple hours on my schedule every Wednesday.

01:29:40 ◼   ► But I also have a lot of tasks due today that sort of,

01:29:43 ◼   ► for me, tasks sort of fill in the gaps

01:29:46 ◼   ► between podcast recordings, meetings, appointments,

01:29:51 ◼   ► that sort of thing.

01:29:52 ◼   ► And so for me, almost everything ends up in a,

01:29:55 ◼   ► Like I also have a task for like edit and publish connected.

01:29:58 ◼   ► So I'll check that off, you know,

01:30:00 ◼   ► in a few hours when the show goes up.

01:30:02 ◼   ► For me, the calendar is more about making sure

01:30:04 ◼   ► nothing else interrupts when I'm supposed to be

01:30:07 ◼   ► doing something, if that makes sense.

01:30:10 ◼   ► But there's no right or wrong answer to this, I don't think.

01:30:12 ◼   ► Like I know a lot of people who just manage everything

01:30:14 ◼   ► on their calendar, right?

01:30:15 ◼   ► If they've got something due,

01:30:17 ◼   ► they just put it on the calendar for that day.

01:30:18 ◼   ► But I like my to-do lists.

01:30:21 ◼   ► - Okay, let's see.

01:30:25 ◼   ► This was a good one. Justin wants to know.

01:30:27 ◼   ► Uh oh. Justin is an agent of chaos.

01:30:30 ◼   ► Yes, Justin is. Do you know how to drive stick?

01:30:35 ◼   ► I do. I have a fun story for everybody here.

01:30:41 ◼   ► So a few weeks ago, I was waiting for Sylvia.

01:30:45 ◼   ► She had a doctor's appointment.

01:30:48 ◼   ► I was just waiting for her in the car outside with the dogs.

01:30:52 ◼   ► and I was, dogs were, you know, in the backseat,

01:30:55 ◼   ► and I was just minding my own business,

01:30:57 ◼   ► getting some work done on my iPad Pro.

01:30:59 ◼   ► And I was there, very chill, like it was a rainy day,

01:31:02 ◼   ► so the rain was falling by, I was in my car,

01:31:05 ◼   ► the dogs were sleeping, I could hear Ginger snore,

01:31:09 ◼   ► and at some point, bang!

01:31:11 ◼   ► I hear that, and I turn, and a lady

01:31:14 ◼   ► just crashed her car, trying to back up

01:31:19 ◼   ► from her parking spot into another car.

01:31:22 ◼   ► Oh, so they didn't hit you. They hit another park car, another car. And so now,

01:31:26 ◼   ► so that was very awkward, right? Because I was like, okay, what do I do now?

01:31:30 ◼   ► Right. Obviously heard and seeing this person. You're a witness, right?

01:31:34 ◼   ► I am a witness. So just, let's just play cool. Pretend that like,

01:31:37 ◼   ► I have my headphones on or something. Um,

01:31:40 ◼   ► or do I go out and offer to help her and

01:31:45 ◼   ► see what's happening. So, um,

01:31:49 ◼   ► So I decide for the latter, right? So I open the door like, "Hey, I said you bumped into the other car."

01:31:57 ◼   ► So thankfully, I don't know how, but it was literally just a scratch.

01:32:02 ◼   ► And I polished the other car with my hands like, "Okay, that's fine."

01:32:06 ◼   ► There was like no big damage or anything.

01:32:09 ◼   ► But this girl, she was like in her 20s or something.

01:32:12 ◼   ► She was like, kind of panicking. I was like, "Yeah, it's okay. Don't worry."

01:32:18 ◼   ► She was like, "Can you back up for me?

01:32:23 ◼   ► Can you drive my car and back up for me because I can't do it?"

01:32:26 ◼   ► And so I look at her car, I look at the shift.

01:32:30 ◼   ► It's like, "Is that an automatic car?"

01:32:33 ◼   ► And she's like, "Yeah."

01:32:34 ◼   ► And I was like, "I'm sorry.

01:32:36 ◼   ► I only know how to drive manual, like stick.

01:32:40 ◼   ► I cannot do...

01:32:42 ◼   ► If you let me do...

01:32:43 ◼   ► If you make me do this, I'll probably do even more damage because I don't know how to use

01:32:47 ◼   ► a car without, what's it called, a clutch? Yeah. Or without a stick. It's like, I am

01:32:53 ◼   ► gonna, I was like, I tell you what, why don't you go the other way around? I am going to

01:32:57 ◼   ► remove my car so you can go the other way around. Okay. And you don't have to back up.

01:33:02 ◼   ► So that's what I did. I prefer to move and go somewhere else than to have, you know,

01:33:09 ◼   ► to try and use her automatic. I mean, you just like, I select the gear you want and

01:33:14 ◼   ► I don't know. It's it's weird to do it without a clutch. No, no, no, no, no, no not for me. I'm sorry

01:33:21 ◼   ► I can drive stick, but I've never owned a manual shift car. All of my cars have always been automatics

01:33:28 ◼   ► Just kind of a bummer. I've always wanted it just hasn't ever happened

01:33:32 ◼   ► But I haven't driven a stick probably in like four years, but I could do it if I needed to

01:33:38 ◼   ► Justin asked another another chaos question. Maybe we we end the show with this one since Myke isn't here

01:33:44 ◼   ► What's your most hot take about him? Oh

01:33:47 ◼   ► Yes, okay, okay

01:33:50 ◼   ► So first of all, I think here's a proposal a formal proposal Steven. Okay, why don't we keep reusing this?

01:33:58 ◼   ► Amazing list of questions also next week like we got so many that I feel like I want to answer

01:34:05 ◼   ► Yeah, we can do a Q&A section next week. Yeah. Yeah, we I mean we still have so we have like 50 more

01:34:12 ◼   ► I would like to get to

01:34:14 ◼   ► My most hot my hottest take yeah about Myke

01:34:18 ◼   ► I feel like you know how he likes to have

01:34:22 ◼   ► this this wild

01:34:24 ◼   ► Busy home screens and wallpapers with all kinds of colors. Yeah

01:34:29 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:34:30 ◼   ► - I think he does that mostly to prove a point

01:34:33 ◼   ► and to have him look different.

01:34:36 ◼   ► I don't think those home screens are actually good.

01:34:40 ◼   ► I think it does it because he knows that we get upset

01:34:44 ◼   ► and that we get sort of emotional about those.

01:34:48 ◼   ► - That's good.

01:34:49 ◼   ► - But I don't think if that sort of,

01:34:54 ◼   ► if that mechanic wasn't in place of us being like,

01:34:58 ◼   ► "Oh, look at your home screen."

01:34:59 ◼   ► It's like, I don't think it would do it.

01:35:01 ◼   ► I think it would have a gradient wallpaper,

01:35:04 ◼   ► like a color or something.

01:35:05 ◼   ► But it's, I mean, it must see

01:35:08 ◼   ► that those home screens are too busy.

01:35:11 ◼   ► So I think it does it for the show of it.

01:35:14 ◼   ► - Interesting.

01:35:17 ◼   ► That's pretty hot, man.

01:35:19 ◼   ► - What about you?

01:35:21 ◼   ► - I'm gonna go a little more personal.

01:35:23 ◼   ► He's not here.

01:35:24 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:35:26 ◼   ► I think he's too precious about his beard.

01:35:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:35:32 ◼   ► Every year we plan the podcast-a-thon, right?

01:35:35 ◼   ► Like it's gonna be here again before we know it.

01:35:38 ◼   ► And every year it comes up,

01:35:41 ◼   ► we have all these meetings planning, right?

01:35:43 ◼   ► Like hours and hours of planning, which is fantastic.

01:35:46 ◼   ► I love the team we work with, but it's a lot.

01:35:48 ◼   ► And every year it comes up,

01:35:50 ◼   ► "Hey, if we raise X amount of money,

01:35:53 ◼   ► maybe Myke shaves his beard,

01:35:55 ◼   ► you know, the way that I have the last few years

01:35:57 ◼   ► during the podcast-a-thon, and he won't do it.

01:36:02 ◼   ► He has made an identity around his beard

01:36:05 ◼   ► in a way that was maybe cool in like 2013 or 2014,

01:36:10 ◼   ► but in 2021, it's just like a little tired.

01:36:12 ◼   ► I know that I'm one to like, you know,

01:36:16 ◼   ► I like mixing up my look, I'll cut my hair,

01:36:18 ◼   ► I'll grow it out, have a beard.

01:36:19 ◼   ► Right now I just have a mustache again.

01:36:21 ◼   ► Like, I like mixing it up, and he's kind of been the same.

01:36:24 ◼   ► He's kind of been stuck in the beard rut,

01:36:27 ◼   ► and I think he needs a little bravery

01:36:29 ◼   ► to try to mix it up some.

01:36:31 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:36:33 ◼   ► To be fair, so to play Myke's advocate, I guess.

01:36:38 ◼   ► I guess Myke is the devil in this case.

01:36:41 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:36:43 ◼   ► I have tried to shave my beard.

01:36:48 ◼   ► I did shave my beard during the first lockdown.

01:36:51 ◼   ► - I remember, yeah.

01:36:52 ◼   ► - I'm never gonna do it again.

01:36:54 ◼   ► I looked like an overgrown child, you know?

01:36:58 ◼   ► No.

01:36:59 ◼   ► Do you think you think Myke has like a baby face under there?

01:37:01 ◼   ► I think it does because I know that I do.

01:37:04 ◼   ► And I think we're in the same situation here.

01:37:07 ◼   ► It's just never gonna do it again.

01:37:10 ◼   ► Like I would rather like be,

01:37:14 ◼   ► I've been bald before, right. When, you know, I've been bald,

01:37:18 ◼   ► but honestly I would rather consider

01:37:24 ◼   ► putting on like a fake beard rather than like a toupee

01:37:28 ◼   ► or something for my hair.

01:37:30 ◼   ► Like without a beard, that would just be so bad.

01:37:34 ◼   ► - So let me ask follow up.

01:37:36 ◼   ► So if the time comes and you lose your hair, right?

01:37:40 ◼   ► Like, you know, not due to medication,

01:37:42 ◼   ► but like, you know, Matt Alexander, his hair fell out.

01:37:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:37:46 ◼   ► - But Matt rocks the bald plus beard,

01:37:48 ◼   ► which I think really works for him.

01:37:50 ◼   ► - I think that's my goal eventually.

01:37:51 ◼   ► Like I know--

01:37:52 ◼   ► - You think that's your future at some point?

01:37:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, yes, yes.

01:37:55 ◼   ► - It's a strong look.

01:37:57 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:37:58 ◼   ► - But I'm just saying Myke needs to get out of his shell

01:38:00 ◼   ► a little bit, that's what I'm saying.

01:38:02 ◼   ► - My plan is no hair, long beard, neck tattoo.

01:38:07 ◼   ► That's my strong look for my mid 30s, I think.

01:38:13 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:38:14 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:38:15 ◼   ► - Well, they're coming up on you quick.

01:38:17 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:38:18 ◼   ► - Wow, well, this was fantastic.

01:38:20 ◼   ► We'll get to some more of these.

01:38:21 ◼   ► I mean, there's like,

01:38:22 ◼   ► Now there's 203 in here.

01:38:24 ◼   ► Just keep adding them as we talk.

01:38:27 ◼   ► If you wanna find links to stuff we spoke about,

01:38:30 ◼   ► head on over to the website, relay.fm/connected/374.

01:38:35 ◼   ► If you wanna hear a longer version of the show with no ads,

01:38:38 ◼   ► you can become a member.

01:38:39 ◼   ► Right now we're running a sale on annual memberships,

01:38:42 ◼   ► 22% off until December 17th.

01:38:45 ◼   ► GiveRelay.com.

01:38:48 ◼   ► GiveRelay.com.

01:38:49 ◼   ► It's nice, short and sweet, right?

01:38:51 ◼   ► I couldn't believe that that URL was available by the way.

01:38:53 ◼   ► I was stunned that it was free.

01:38:57 ◼   ► You can find us online.

01:38:59 ◼   ► Federico is the editor-in-chief of maxstories.net.

01:39:03 ◼   ► But most of the time he's just hanging out on Twitter

01:39:05 ◼   ► at Vitiici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.

01:39:08 ◼   ► Federico, anything cool coming up on maxstories

01:39:11 ◼   ► we should look out for?

01:39:12 ◼   ► - I keep saying maxstories selects,

01:39:14 ◼   ► so I've already said that.

01:39:15 ◼   ► - Where is it?

01:39:16 ◼   ► Where are the trophies, man?

01:39:17 ◼   ► It's December.

01:39:18 ◼   ► They are being manufactured and they will be shipped to John's house soon.

01:39:24 ◼   ► So, that's coming up and you know what is coming up?

01:39:29 ◼   ► Issue 300 of Mac Stories Weekly.

01:39:32 ◼   ► Whoa!

01:39:33 ◼   ► This Friday.

01:39:34 ◼   ► And there's gonna be a special story from me, something that I haven't done in a while,

01:39:40 ◼   ► and we're bringing back someone special just for issue 300.

01:39:46 ◼   ► Is it me?

01:39:47 ◼   ► So no, it's not you, you're not special.

01:39:50 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:39:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:39:53 ◼   ► Now I'm just like thinking about people

01:39:54 ◼   ► who used to work for you and wondering who it is.

01:39:57 ◼   ► - So let's see, it's gonna be awesome.

01:40:00 ◼   ► - That's cool.

01:40:01 ◼   ► 300, that's wild to me.

01:40:03 ◼   ► - 300, yeah, yeah.

01:40:06 ◼   ► - You can find me on Twitter as ISMH.

01:40:09 ◼   ► I'm on a bunch of other shows here on Relay FM.

01:40:11 ◼   ► And go check out the 512Pixels channel on YouTube.

01:40:15 ◼   ► I just put a new video up this week

01:40:16 ◼   ► about the voices of macOS.

01:40:18 ◼   ► That was a lot of fun.

01:40:19 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week.

01:40:22 ◼   ► They are Indeed, Bombas, Squarespace, and Memberful.

01:40:26 ◼   ► Until next time, Federico, say goodbye.

01:40:29 ◼   ► - Arrivederci.