00:00:00 ◼ ► Hello and welcome to Connected episode 536. Today is January 22nd, 2025. The episode is made
00:00:16 ◼ ► possible by our sponsor, Ecamm. My name is Stephen Hackett and I have the pleasure of being joined
00:00:21 ◼ ► by our keynote chairman, Mike Hurley. Hello, thank you, Stephen. And I, as keynote chairman,
00:00:28 ◼ ► have the pleasure of introducing to the show, annual chairman, Federico Vattici. Hi, Federico.
00:00:44 ◼ ► So, on last week's pro show, which you can get by going to getconnectedpro.co and you can sign up,
00:00:55 ◼ ► Me and Federico were way too excited about the possibility of a Nintendo Switch reveal. It
00:01:01 ◼ ► didn't go the way that we expected, but it did happen. So, Nintendo put that out and I thought
00:01:05 ◼ ► we could start off today's episode by some vibes. Stephen, are you at all aware of what happened
00:01:10 ◼ ► in any possible way? Yeah. No, I watched the video. I noticed it was two minutes and 22 seconds long.
00:01:16 ◼ ► Did you guys catch that? Huh? I actually didn't. I knew it was like two minutes, but I didn't know it was 222.
00:01:22 ◼ ► Very clever. That's fun. No, it looks great. Bigger. I'm excited for bigger Joy-Cons because
00:01:37 ◼ ► Yeah, they did. Good. I'm okay. Hopefully. We assume they did. They made, they made a big point
00:01:42 ◼ ► in the video of showing the Joy-Cons like spinning around that, that would suggest to me. And I'm sure
00:01:46 ◼ ► Federico would agree that that is like some kind of hint to them having done what needs to be done,
00:01:51 ◼ ► which is something called Hall Effect. It's a different type of technology for sticks. And
00:01:55 ◼ ► the assumption is that they would have handled that. Honestly, like Nintendo always does weird
00:01:59 ◼ ► stuff. I 100% expect they would have fixed this because this was a problem for them in the long
00:02:04 ◼ ► time. They had to do a lot of remorsements and stuff. My original Joy-Cons, uh, the one of them
00:02:09 ◼ ► died and I like got in touch with their support. Anyways, it's the whole thing. Uh, so bigger,
00:02:14 ◼ ► hopefully more powerful. Uh, there's like a mouse mode or something that's rumored, right?
00:02:19 ◼ ► Cause like they had that shot where the, the Joy-Con, which is magnetic now it looks like,
00:02:23 ◼ ► which is awesome. I hate the little track thing. You have to slide in and out. Um, some sort of
00:02:28 ◼ ► cursor mode or something that looks interesting. That is the expectation. Uh, well, that means if
00:02:34 ◼ ► anything, we don't know, right? Like, will you play Call of Duty like that way? Who knows? You know,
00:02:41 ◼ ► maybe. What do you think Federico about like the mouse thing? I do think it's real and happening and a
00:02:48 ◼ ► way for Nintendo to, to have a, an interesting answer to the Steam Deck in terms of, here's another
00:02:57 ◼ ► environment where indie developers can port their PC games to a handheld. This handheld, so the Steam Deck
00:03:05 ◼ ► has a touchpad and, and it's maybe you and I, you know, the, the games that we usually play, we don't rely
00:03:11 ◼ ► on the touchpad a lot, but there's other types of games. And obviously there's a civilization seven
00:03:17 ◼ ► coming out this year that absolutely benefit from, from, from pointer. And I think it's interesting to
00:03:23 ◼ ► see Nintendo sort of going after that part of the Steam Deck without a touchpad, but by saying, well,
00:03:28 ◼ ► the Joy-Con is now a mouse. Yeah. And obviously in addition to that, I'm sure there'll be some weird
00:03:36 ◼ ► Nintendo gimmick, like a new Mario paint or something that takes advantage of, of a cursor. Yeah.
00:03:42 ◼ ► So it's a podcast assistant into a kind of funny games cast and one of, they were given like their
00:03:47 ◼ ► predictions over the last few days or whatever. And one of the things that one of the hosts said
00:03:52 ◼ ► is like, what if like Mario paint is a part of Mario maker three, which I thought was like a really
00:03:57 ◼ ► interesting thing to do, like to combine that idea together. Um, this is the thing, if this is the weird
00:04:05 ◼ ► thing they've done great, cause it's not going to affect me at all if I don't want it. Right.
00:04:09 ◼ ► Where there are a bunch of weird things Nintendo could intend to do and adding in this support,
00:04:16 ◼ ► isn't it? And like, you know, it's not a problem that the magnet thing, I'm really intrigued to see
00:04:21 ◼ ► what that experience is like, um, of actually attaching and detaching the Joy-Con. Um, but yeah,
00:04:28 ◼ ► I think pretty much anything could be better than the way that you currently have to do it with that,
00:04:37 ◼ ► And you can, if you have children in your household, you will discover that it's possible to jam a Joy-Con
00:04:43 ◼ ► on the wrong way around to a restaurant. You don't need to have children to do that. You could also
00:04:47 ◼ ► have someone who did that on the first day, which was, uh, and potentially new Mario cart. Finally.
00:04:53 ◼ ► No, not potentially. That's a new Mario cart. There's no potential. Yeah. I'm excited because
00:04:57 ◼ ► my switch, my kids play several things on it. It took them to the TV like 98% of the time,
00:05:03 ◼ ► but I sometimes, you know, dad draws a bath and plays Mario cart. No, I'm just kidding.
00:05:07 ◼ ► Not in the bath. Um, but you know, sometimes I'll play Mario cart. So I'm excited for a new one.
00:05:12 ◼ ► Everyone likes Mario cart and that's why they showed it in the trailer. You know what I mean?
00:05:16 ◼ ► Like everybody loves Mario cart and they're going to make a new one, which is going to be amazing
00:05:26 ◼ ► It's like an insane amount of time since the new one. Uh, so I expect big things from that,
00:05:33 ◼ ► from that. So yeah, I'm really excited about this. The only thing that's a downer for me is that
00:05:37 ◼ ► it's not coming until way later in the year. Like I'd hoped that this thing was going to come in like
00:05:43 ◼ ► March, but it's probably June or July, which is, that's a bit, that's a bummer. I, I, I'm bummed out
00:05:49 ◼ ► about that, but yeah, excited about the rest. I suspect there'll be one, uh, under the Christmas
00:05:53 ◼ ► tree this year at my house. Oh yeah. I mean, do it, you know? Yeah. Uh, Federico, you have solved
00:06:01 ◼ ► email. What's going on? Well, well, no, no, I mean, no to the, in the sense of like Federico,
00:06:08 ◼ ► it really is thanks to Mike. Hello. And, and so I got this text from, from our, uh, my fellow chairman, um,
00:06:19 ◼ ► wow, a few days ago, uh, saying, Hey, have you, have you ever played around with this? Because I,
00:06:24 ◼ ► I was talking to a friend and they've been really happy with it and they've been doing some incredible
00:06:29 ◼ ► things with this app. So this app is called short wave. I was familiar with short wave. I think I,
00:06:37 ◼ ► I tried it when it first came out. It was like this Gmail only client. Um, and it was like at the
00:06:45 ◼ ► time, if I recall correctly, it sort of looked like a modern version of, do you guys remember
00:06:51 ◼ ► Google inbox that old? Yeah. Yeah. It kind of, it kind of looked like that. So that was a couple
00:06:57 ◼ ► of years ago, I think when short wave came out and I kind of lost touch with it. Uh, it now
00:07:04 ◼ ► seems that over the past few years, they have sort of become a more business oriented product. Uh,
00:07:11 ◼ ► and they are going very heavily, uh, very like all in on AI integrations. And I, I, and so I thought,
00:07:21 ◼ ► well, you know, Mike gave me some examples of what their friend had been doing, uh, with short wave
00:07:26 ◼ ► and so I took it for a spin. And, uh, all this to say, I canceled my superhuman subscription. And, uh,
00:07:34 ◼ ► the, I think this product is incredible. If you receive a lot of emails and especially if you like
00:07:43 ◼ ► to receive everything at a single address, but require better organizations, uh, of the different
00:07:51 ◼ ► kinds of messages that you get. Um, so the idea here is that like in superhuman, uh, in short wave,
00:08:05 ◼ ► advantage of Gmail's own default organization. So you can have emails, uh, fall under like
00:08:12 ◼ ► promotions, updates, uh, finance, those sort of like default categories, or you can make your
00:08:20 ◼ ► own splits like in superhuman. And a split can be based on any kind of possible, like filter
00:08:32 ◼ ► What I think is interesting is that these, uh, short wave still carries over like the, some
00:08:39 ◼ ► of the legacy of the old Google inbox, um, app in that you can choose to have some emails be
00:08:47 ◼ ► bundled together and appear as a small bundle in the main inbox. So for example, I have all
00:08:56 ◼ ► of my, um, uh, emails about something that I purchased, I automatically labeled them and I'll
00:09:04 ◼ ► get to this in a minute. I automatically labeled them as transactions. Those transactions emails
00:09:11 ◼ ► appear when a new one comes in as a small bundle in my inbox called transactions, which is very
00:09:18 ◼ ► similar to what Google inbox used to do. And to what other, I think back in, back in the day,
00:09:23 ◼ ► I think when I was using Hay many years ago, um, uh, yeah, um, I think that there was also
00:09:32 ◼ ► a feature there. Uh, so this is still supported here. The AI stuff is the best I have found to
00:09:40 ◼ ► date. Uh, both in terms of the stuff that I don't necessarily really care about a lot, which
00:09:47 ◼ ► is like, there's a feature that there's actually a collection of features to write emails in your
00:09:54 ◼ ► style because this, this service can be trained optionally if you want on your data and learn
00:10:00 ◼ ► how to write emails like you, uh, which is not something that I necessarily want or need.
00:10:07 ◼ ► But if you do, but if you, but if you do want it, I, I, I, I tested it. It's, uh, sort of eerie how
00:10:15 ◼ ► accurate it is. Like it picked up my style correctly. Uh, and you can refine like if, like if you see
00:10:24 ◼ ► something that like, okay, this sort of kind of sounds like me, uh, but there's a sidebar where you can
00:10:30 ◼ ► talk to the LLM and, uh, you can say, no, actually make it sound shorter. And, and so you can tweak
00:10:38 ◼ ► it with natural language. And of all the, this kind of similar products that I've tried, this one is the
00:10:44 ◼ ► best. I am more interested in the AI enhancements in terms of search and inbox organization. And this is
00:10:53 ◼ ► where I think short way really got me. So the search, I actually sent you a few minutes ago, an example,
00:11:00 ◼ ► we were talking in the, in the, in the pro show about, uh, wallpapers. And I recalled that I had
00:11:07 ◼ ► purchased over the past couple of years, uh, a series of wallpaper packs from Gumroad, but I couldn't
00:11:14 ◼ ► remember off the top of my head, like what were they actually called, what the name of the different
00:11:20 ◼ ► creators on Gumroad was. So I asked, um, in the AI sidebar of shortwave, uh, can you, uh, can you find the
00:11:29 ◼ ► wallpaper packs that I bought from Gumroad, like a natural language query? Um, and he found a
00:11:36 ◼ ► list of the, of all the transactions for the wallpapers, extracted the names of the wallpapers, the names of the
00:11:43 ◼ ► creators, and it linked me back to each email for those purchases so that I could also re-download them
00:11:51 ◼ ► again. And this is just great, man. It's incredible. You can go much deeper with this in the sense of
00:12:00 ◼ ► like, I have been able to ask stuff like, can you look at emails that, oh, actually John, uh, John is
00:12:08 ◼ ► also checking this out. John sent me an incredible example today that I'm going to read you. Uh, John asked,
00:12:15 ◼ ► find messages received in the last 30 days about new and updated apps from individual developers.
00:12:21 ◼ ► Messages may include links to test flight and promo codes and have links to press kits or links to the
00:12:27 ◼ ► same. Do not include any messages that have an unsubscribed link in them. And the AI responded with
00:12:34 ◼ ► a list of indie apps that we were recently sent with details for each app and a link back to the
00:12:40 ◼ ► original email message. Um, I did something like a couple of days ago, I asked, uh, can you look in my
00:12:46 ◼ ► email for, um, club Mac stories, support requests that I haven't answered. And each one of those, can you
00:12:55 ◼ ► make it to do for me? Uh, and it, and it worked. Um, this to do functionality, unfortunately is
00:13:04 ◼ ► proprietary to shortwave. So it's tasks within shortwave. I wish that there was some kind of like
00:13:11 ◼ ► to do is integration, but there's not. Um, but the, the other, there's two more things I want to
00:13:16 ◼ ► mention. The other AI feature that I think is like my favorite so far in any product of this kind is AI
00:13:24 ◼ ► filters. Obviously I'm really into like smart searches, uh, filtering criteria for all kinds
00:13:32 ◼ ► of productivity apps, but usually you got to learn the syntax. Gmail does have a syntax that you can
00:13:39 ◼ ► learn and it's a pretty complex one and I don't want to learn it. So instead I am using, there's this
00:13:48 ◼ ► feature where you can write your own AI prompt. And when a new message comes in shortwave is going to
00:13:56 ◼ ► match it against the AI, the AI prompt. And if there's a match, it's going to do something. And in
00:14:03 ◼ ► my case, it's applying labels. For example, I have a filter called shipped, and this is what it does.
00:14:10 ◼ ► Include emails that are shipping notifications for physical products or goods that have been shipped
00:14:14 ◼ ► to me. These emails may be in Italian or English. Include emails for all stages of the shipping
00:14:19 ◼ ► process from the initial shipment to tracking number to the item being delivered. Never include
00:14:24 ◼ ► receipts about the initial transactions. I only want shipping confirmations and updates. Now, whenever I
00:14:30 ◼ ► get shipped something and the emails may be formatted in a whole bunch of different ways, right? Uh, you know,
00:14:41 ◼ ► Cause that's not really something you can do with Google. You can't get Google to do that because it
00:14:48 ◼ ► needs the, you know, you need, if everything came from one email address that you could do with Amazon,
00:14:53 ◼ ► right? You could maybe do a Shopify, but you can't guarantee every purchase you make comes from one of
00:14:58 ◼ ► those places. I purchased that iPhone case that John reviewed on Mac story today. Like that came from a
00:15:04 ◼ ► totally different Shopify store. Like how would I consistently automate this stuff without this kind
00:15:12 ◼ ► of AI integration? I wouldn't be able to do that. Um, lastly, I will mention this will, this will be part
00:15:19 ◼ ► of a, of a story of an article that I'm working on on the iPad. This is the best PWA that I've ever
00:15:26 ◼ ► tried. It's the absolute best progressive web app I've ever seen. It even supports PWA push notifications,
00:15:35 ◼ ► which is something that I think Apple added like last year. I haven't seen anywhere. Uh, so they have done
00:15:43 ◼ ► a really good job with their progressive web app. It supports, uh, custom keyboard shortcuts, um, push notifications,
00:15:50 ◼ ► really well done. Uh, because, uh, as is the case, and this is something that I will explore more deeply
00:15:57 ◼ ► in my story. There's this clear divide now between the functionalities and the UIs of native iPad apps
00:16:05 ◼ ► compared to what you can get by using the web app color part instead. So yeah, thank you, Mike,
00:16:13 ◼ ► for the recommendation. Pleasure. Uh, the pitch that, uh, this friend of mine gave for why they liked this
00:16:19 ◼ ► app, which I just thought I would share was like, they basically are like, they asked the AI, uh,
00:16:27 ◼ ► give me an itemized list of every action item for my kid's school and put any calendar events on my
00:16:39 ◼ ► calendar. And it just went, boom, did it all. And he was like, I'm in. So I heard it too. I was like,
00:16:45 ◼ ► I love the sound of this. I mean, my problem is, as it always is, um, some of my email is not Gmail.
00:16:53 ◼ ► Like one email account that I use a lot is not a Gmail account. It's my iCloud account.
00:16:58 ◼ ► And like, they just don't support iCloud. And so it's like, well, you know, which is usually the way
00:17:03 ◼ ► these things go. Uh, but I'm happy that these tools exist in these ways. I think this is email email to
00:17:09 ◼ ► me feels like a prime candidate for AI, not the doing of it, but the handling of it. Yeah. Um, you
00:17:18 ◼ ► know, the idea that, you know, just the entire world can just send you stuff like it's just, you know,
00:17:24 ◼ ► anybody can get into your inbox. That is a, just a wild system that we have accepted, uh, as a species
00:17:31 ◼ ► and something that can help you manage that is like perfect. So like, that is how we get to a
00:17:37 ◼ ► better, better living with email life. Uh, so I think tools like this sound fantastic to me.
00:17:43 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. Pretty good. Uh, it's expensive, but it looks like all of this email, email business
00:17:52 ◼ ► oriented AI power tools are expensive. Yeah. You're on the bleeding edge, right? Like, and so you're
00:17:58 ◼ ► going to pay for it. And, uh, eventually if it works out, it won't be so expensive anymore.
00:18:01 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, I'm happy you like it. I am very keen to see how it goes to you over the longterm.
00:18:08 ◼ ► I'm still using MimeStream again, Gmail only. So Mike doesn't help you, but, um, I'm still really
00:18:16 ◼ ► happy with it. And they have said that, uh, the iOS app is coming along. He had an update on
00:18:21 ◼ ► massed it on the other day, but, um, there was also reporting that the categorization stuff that's
00:18:28 ◼ ► for some reason only on the iPhone and iOS 18 is going to come to the iPad and Mac. And Mike,
00:18:39 ◼ ► Yes. And how, how has it been in the past? I, I kind of just don't like that stuff, but,
00:18:45 ◼ ► I think it is. I mean, people seem really mad about it and I don't understand. I just think
00:18:49 ◼ ► it is like fine. And that's all I need. I just want emails from people in, in my inbox and
00:18:56 ◼ ► then everything else somewhere else. I don't care where it goes. Just get it out. Right.
00:19:00 ◼ ► Like they have like these three categories. It doesn't really bother me. Like just, just
00:19:04 ◼ ► get it out. Now the feature that I don't think is implemented very well is Apple's attempt
00:19:09 ◼ ► at trying to surface important emails. Like that is a separate thing they're doing. That
00:19:14 ◼ ► is bad. Like they've not done a very good job of that feature because on two occasions now
00:19:18 ◼ ► I've had like spam scam emails highlighted to me as an important thing that I need to know
00:19:24 ◼ ► about. Wow. Like you got to change your Netflix password, but it turns out it didn't come
00:19:28 ◼ ► from Netflix. So it's like, click on that. It's cool. Not, not awesome really. Cause like
00:19:35 ◼ ► that, that does not, that is not a good pattern because you are like people trust their trust
00:19:40 ◼ ► Apple in that scenario. So like a different person, if they got that would be less likely
00:19:45 ◼ ► to check if it was spam or not. So that is an unfortunate scenario. Uh, but this categorization
00:19:58 ◼ ► only thing I'm still using spark for is just to have some element of categorization, you
00:20:03 ◼ ► know, newsletters go into a newsletters, transactions go into a transactions and that's the end of
00:20:08 ◼ ► it. And like, and so once they bring it, I'm, I'm done with spark. Okay. I'm glad we could
00:20:13 ◼ ► talk about email feelings about email. Love email. Do you? No, but I love talking about
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00:22:25 ◼ ► iOS 18.3 incredibly has reached release candidate. It's like, oh, what is it? What is even in it? Like
00:22:34 ◼ ► there's, I think two features in it. There was kind of nothing. And then right at the end, they put a bunch
00:22:40 ◼ ► of stuff in and or change some things. Like basically the biggest two things in iOS 18.3 are Apple
00:22:48 ◼ ► intelligence related, but no features. So first off, iOS 18.3 enables Apple intelligence by default
00:22:57 ◼ ► at upgrade, which is an incredible decision. Like just a, I don't even know why decision.
00:23:04 ◼ ► It's no longer opt-in. It is still classed as a beta. And if you don't want it, you have to go into
00:23:12 ◼ ► settings and disable it. So like it's in the, it's you, you're told it's happening. You're allowed
00:23:18 ◼ ► to customize it in the way that you want to. Maybe you can skip it. I don't know. I have not done an
00:23:23 ◼ ► update from a non Apple intelligence device, right? But it's part of the, hey, you've upgraded.
00:23:28 ◼ ► You now have these features, right? So it's, it's like kind of how features get added to the
00:23:36 ◼ ► operating system, right? Typically you don't like opt in, you're like, oh, I want to opt into the new
00:23:41 ◼ ► home app. No, you just get the new home app, right? So they're doing that. But Apple intelligence,
00:23:45 ◼ ► that's a, it's a stretch. I mean, especially because it is still a beta. I mean, especially
00:23:49 ◼ ► when iOS 18.3 disables some things like news and entertainment apps will no longer have notification
00:24:03 ◼ ► I think it looks so bad, but they've done it. But at least you can't not notice it, right? Like you do
00:24:09 ◼ ► notice it, but yeah, they've done that. They've also added two features to visual intelligence,
00:24:16 ◼ ► which is everyone's favorite feature, which, so if you use visual intelligence now, you can add an
00:24:22 ◼ ► event to the calendar app. Okay. So you've seen a poster and you're like, oh yeah, I want to go to
00:24:28 ◼ ► that. You can also more easily identify animals and plants, which again, so if you, you know,
00:24:33 ◼ ► you don't necessarily have to ask, what is that dog? Like they did in the ad, it should just now
00:24:39 ◼ ► show you what, what kind of dog it is. That ad still, that video still cracks me up. Ask the person
00:24:45 ◼ ► holding the other end of the leash what the dog is. All of these, these two features, they are steps in
00:24:51 ◼ ► the right direction for this feature, right? These are things that it should do. So great,
00:24:56 ◼ ► they're adding them. Like I'm not really, the idea of visual intelligence is more interesting to me
00:25:02 ◼ ► than the actual implementation of it so far, but it's like, we'll see where that goes. But yeah,
00:25:07 ◼ ► iOS 18.3 doesn't have anything new in it. So I guess now we look towards iOS 18.4 as a potential
00:25:25 ◼ ► supposed to be a part of iOS 18. There's probably some other stuff I don't remember. There is none
00:25:31 ◼ ► of that in .3. And I expect, you know, if, if there, if this comes out maybe this week or next week,
00:25:37 ◼ ► then maybe the week after there'll be the .4 beta will come out and it will have expect,
00:25:43 ◼ ► I would expect at least something. But really iOS 18.3 is a release where Apple has kind of had to
00:25:50 ◼ ► take a step back from something in Apple intelligence, which is the way that the notification
00:25:55 ◼ ► summaries are working because people are getting real mad. And a lot of news organizations are very
00:26:01 ◼ ► upset, I think for good reason, because it's, it's making them look like fools. And so now they're,
00:26:06 ◼ ► they're going in and they're changing it. So weird release. It's just like a bug fix release,
00:26:11 ◼ ► which is usually not a problem for a .3 or whatever, but there are still a bunch of features
00:26:17 ◼ ► left and we're five months away from WWDC. And there's a lot to go. So good, good work. Good luck
00:26:26 ◼ ► over there, I should say. Good work too. Yeah. So there we go. I'm super excited to install it. Can't
00:26:33 ◼ ► wait. Can't wait to do it. I have a story. I'm so excited for this. There are so many notes in
00:26:49 ◼ ► I want to know now. It's like a blog post in here. Yes. Stephen's blogging inside of Notion.
00:26:55 ◼ ► I was, I was live tweeting as it was happening to send to Notion. Okay. So last, was it last
00:27:01 ◼ ► episode, a couple of episodes ago? Yes. We spoke about tech things we wanted to do in the new year,
00:27:07 ◼ ► right? Sure. New year's resolution. My resolution's 5k. And sorry. I think you mean it. I think you
00:27:18 ◼ ► need a yearly theme. Yeah. Yeah. My yearly theme is 5k. It's not the same. It doesn't have the same ring
00:27:23 ◼ ► to it, does it? Yeah. So one of the things that I spoke about was file management. And I mentioned
00:27:34 ◼ ► that we were bumping up against the two terabytes that we have on iCloud. So we have an iCloud family,
00:27:41 ◼ ► my wife and I, we have three kids. Two of those kids have iPhones. Third kid has an iPad that is
00:27:47 ◼ ► basically just a video game and a math homework machine. And so we've got a shared photo library.
00:27:53 ◼ ► The shared photo library, uh, is, has just crossed one terabyte in size, which is wild. And then of
00:28:01 ◼ ► course the kids have their own and back device backups, all that sort of stuff. It's like, well,
00:28:06 ◼ ► I need to address this. So, uh, I said this and lots of people, and I appreciate the feedback,
00:28:12 ◼ ► um, said, Hey, you don't have to go to six terabytes. There's this option where you can upgrade
00:28:19 ◼ ► and add an additional two terabytes. So you'd be at four terabytes total for an additional $9.99 a month,
00:28:35 ◼ ► Okay. So you're adding two terabytes on top of your current two terabytes for four terabytes total.
00:28:47 ◼ ► On top. Six terabytes is $30 a month, which is a little more than twice the cost. Um, so it's like,
00:28:56 ◼ ► great. I'll just add two terabytes. I'll just kick the can down the road. And maybe by the time we
00:29:03 ◼ ► hit four terabytes, you know, maybe one of the kids will be off and they'll be, you know, out of the
00:29:14 ◼ ► I mean, maybe eventually. It's like when they leave the cell phone playing, you know, like,
00:29:25 ◼ ► Also, I find it a little frustrating that you can only have six people in an iCloud family plan.
00:29:31 ◼ ► So that's important. I'm going to come back to that. Just stick that behind your ear like a pencil.
00:29:43 ◼ ► So, boop-a-doop-a-doop, go to settings. I do not have this option. I see two terabytes and I see
00:29:50 ◼ ► six terabytes. This upgrade options. And I'm going to put a screenshot in the show notes that our friend
00:29:57 ◼ ► Casey Liss, he was listening to the show and sent me this. I was like, oh, just hit this button. I was
00:30:05 ◼ ► like, yeah, I don't have that button. That's the problem. And I figured, well, you know, probably
00:30:13 ◼ ► something weird going on. I'll deal with it later on. But then, over the weekend, I don't know what
00:30:22 ◼ ► happened. Actually, I do know what happened. My wife and one of our kids was out of town and we hit the two
00:30:30 ◼ ► Hit the limit. I'm like, well, I don't have time to deal with this today. Let me temporarily... I'll do the
00:30:37 ◼ ► six terabytes. I'll just... I'll do this temporarily. And then when I get some time, I will deal with it.
00:30:52 ◼ ► Yeah. So now I have six terabytes total. It's way more than I need. It's more than I want to pay
00:30:57 ◼ ► for. Mike, I put a URL to the image in the Notion for you. And I was like, well, I'll just... I'll deal
00:31:04 ◼ ► with it later. So it turns out later was only one day because I ended up having some free time on
00:31:10 ◼ ► Monday. I was like, well, I'll just chat with AppleCare. And, you know, they'll fix it for me.
00:31:23 ◼ ► wasn't possible, that it was two terabytes or six terabytes. There was no upgrade option.
00:31:28 ◼ ► So I had the screenshot from Casey. I dropped it in the chat. I said, hey, I get that. But
00:31:33 ◼ ► it does seem to be an option. You know, this is from a friend of mine. And so I don't understand
00:32:10 ◼ ► I'm just, you know, we're on this ride of use, you know, so I'm like upset on your behalf.
00:32:32 ◼ ► And at this point, I start live tweeting into Notion because like, oh, this is something
00:32:39 ◼ ► So I asked the person, hey, there's not, I don't see any UI to like donate this space to
00:33:32 ◼ ► They verify my identity with a push notification because they're going to like, this person
00:34:25 ◼ ► So you'll have your six terabytes or whatever until, you know, the 18th or whatever, the
00:36:45 ◼ ► So the person on the phone said that having 2 terabytes and upgrading to 2 more terabytes
00:37:41 ◼ ► I don't want to get anybody in trouble, but, like, he was just rushing me off the phone.
00:37:54 ◼ ► Because, like, my email and mentions have been full all week of people telling me, just go to 4 terabytes.
00:38:30 ◼ ► I don't pay just for iCloud, I pay for Apple One, because News Plus, Apple TV Plus, Fitness, all that stuff, right?
00:39:17 ◼ ► Because at some point, I changed the Apple ID I was using, but all my purchases were like, lots of people do this.
00:39:32 ◼ ► I also renamed it legacy Steven, so I could tell the difference between the two of them now.
00:40:07 ◼ ► Where he said, I'll use my new Apple ID for all my syncing stuff, but an Apple, up until this very specific feature, supports you logging in with a separate Apple ID for purchases.
00:40:20 ◼ ► It's right built into system settings, and to this day, you can have your Apple ID, and you can have a purchase ID.
00:40:30 ◼ ► And the mobile me one is what you have used as essentially what is now your Apple account.
00:41:04 ◼ ► The second reason is that iCloud family sharing only has six spots, and we have five people in our household.
00:41:15 ◼ ► I've kind of held that six spot open if, like, we need to bring one of our parents for some reason into it or, you know, somebody else.
00:41:28 ◼ ► And, thirdly, I have, other than having to sign in to two different accounts, like, one in iCloud settings, one in the App Store settings, this has not caused a problem until now.
00:41:39 ◼ ► It has been, it has worked perfectly for over 10 years since 2011, Stephen made this decision.
00:41:50 ◼ ► It's a little annoying when you set up a new device because you have to sign in with two Apple IDs, but it's supported.
00:41:56 ◼ ► But not if you want to upgrade because adding an additional two terabytes to your account is only supported if you have Apple One.
00:42:37 ◼ ► Like, in system settings, if you go to settings on your phone or your Mac or whatever, there are two places to put an Apple ID.
00:42:49 ◼ ► Media and purchases was signed into my legacy account, and that gave me access to all the Apple One stuff through that account.
00:42:59 ◼ ► They're signed in as their individual accounts, and then my legacy Apple ID for their purchases in media.
00:43:16 ◼ ► In theory, the kids have their own, and they can't buy anything without your push notification, and then you allow it.
00:43:23 ◼ ► That's how family sharing is supposed to work, but that's not how it's working in your house, right?
00:43:33 ◼ ► So they have Apple One because the iPhone essentially thinks you're logged in, not because there's a family thing, but that's okay.
00:43:43 ◼ ► And honestly, because it's been working, I was like, I just never have to deal with this.
00:43:52 ◼ ► It did not cross my mind, nor, this is my complaint with Apple, nor did it cross the mind of any of the three people, including the senior advisor I spoke to.
00:44:13 ◼ ► Yeah, but you've also done the wrong thing in asking our listeners to contact us about this.
00:44:33 ◼ ► This, we could have gotten to the bottom of this if any of those people had said, do you use a separate Apple ID for iCloud and purchasing?
00:44:46 ◼ ► I was like, oh, I bet because I do this, I, for some reason, and I think it's probably a bug on Apple's part, or maybe they just don't want people to do it this way anymore.
00:45:16 ◼ ► It's my little 16-bit version of me, but on a gray background instead of the blue one, so I can tell them apart visually.
00:45:43 ◼ ► And so I just made a new account on that and signed that into that Legacy ID, like, fully, so it could get the invite to join the family.
00:46:00 ◼ ► I later found a support document that, and I put it in the show notes, but I can't find it again, that says family sharing changes may take up to 30 minutes to go into effect.
00:46:46 ◼ ► So I set it back to two terabytes, and I think next month it'll roll off, and then I can go to four terabytes.
00:47:37 ◼ ► So I went into like the TV app and tried to play something out of that Legacy account, and it was like, gave me an error.
00:48:00 ◼ ► So the other thing I did at this point was, because I wasn't sure like what the Apple One would do.
00:48:44 ◼ ► In a month, I will hopefully be able to upgrade and have just four terabytes of iCloud space and not six or eight that I currently have, which is really funny when you log into iCloud.
00:48:55 ◼ ► The little thing of like how much storage space you're taking, mine is so funny looking because most of it's just empty.
00:49:02 ◼ ► I moved the Apple One over so it will expire for Legacy Steven and my, you know, normal Apple ID will pick that up.
00:49:19 ◼ ► So at the end of all of this, in like a year, when all my, because one of my, I forget what it was.
00:49:26 ◼ ► I just had like one of my main app subscriptions, maybe it was Carrot Weather, just renewed like three days before.
00:49:34 ◼ ► And then Legacy Steven will just have our up to this point media purchases, which is mostly, you know, movies and TV shows and stuff.
00:50:38 ◼ ► And the music app is real mad about playing that now, even though in theory the content should be shared.
00:50:50 ◼ ► Movies and TV shows are, and music is listed in Apple's support documents as content that can't be shared.
00:52:05 ◼ ► And because I had all my music downloaded locally on my Mac, so I have all the folders,
00:52:53 ◼ ► I mean, so what I told Mary is like, this is saving us, I mean, if this works, it'll save
00:53:23 ◼ ► But at that point, I was just kind of committed to, let me just actually, like, just rip the
00:54:53 ◼ ► You should have way more flexibility about the storage that you want, like, what you're dealing with.
00:55:03 ◼ ► But today, in 2025, starting at 5 gigabytes for free and then 50 gigabytes and then going up to 200.
00:55:53 ◼ ► And I don't know what problems they are, but I don't want to be responsible for whatever they are.
00:56:03 ◼ ► I mean, unfortunately, that is the answer, is to pay Apple for storage that, I mean, five gigabytes is ridiculous for free.
00:56:33 ◼ ► With some steps in between, you know, if you have everything, if the stars align for you.
00:56:38 ◼ ► But it feels pretty punitive, and they have done some things I want to give them credit for.
00:56:43 ◼ ► If you buy a new phone, you temporarily get in a fire cloud space to back it up to move to a new phone.
00:56:49 ◼ ► Like, you should get a set amount of storage for a year or two years when you buy a device.
00:56:54 ◼ ► And beyond that, the prices should be cheaper and the spacing of the things being a bit more even.
00:57:11 ◼ ► Like, I don't, I would not, you know, for all of Apple's price laddering, there's an iPad at this and an iPad at that.
00:57:32 ◼ ► And it was really frustrating doing all of this, not only because of the Apple ID and the Apple, excuse me, Apple account stuff.
00:57:41 ◼ ► So much of this stuff is so buggy, especially on the Mac where I was doing most of this because I was just at my desk.
00:57:47 ◼ ► Like, you go click like an iCloud thing and a sheet would come up in system settings and there'd be no CSS in it.
00:57:56 ◼ ► Or you want to be able to scroll in the window or you try it on the phone and the phone freezes.
00:58:12 ◼ ► And it's really frustrating when you're trying to get something done in a system that's already confusing and convoluted.
00:58:35 ◼ ► With a front end built in SwiftUI, which is just, it's a real good combination, really.
00:59:28 ◼ ► It is funny that, you know, MobileMe's cursedness has followed me all the way into 2025.
01:00:14 ◼ ► I don't remember what it was, but I had to cancel an order or something, and I was talking
01:00:20 ◼ ► Yeah, the retail stuff seems to use iMessage, because I had an issue with, like, an order
01:00:55 ◼ ► I like being able to have these conversations in iMessage, rather than trying to keep some,
01:01:21 ◼ ► If you have, actually, I would like to know if you first had experience with this from,
01:01:29 ◼ ► But when I looked at it the first time, first of all, it was extremely complicated to set
01:01:50 ◼ ► I, like, have a somewhat similar thing right now where, you know, with the new Apple Mail
01:02:00 ◼ ► I have my assistant looking at that for Cortex Brand, and it seems like it is very complicated.
01:02:16 ◼ ► But none of this stuff is easy, but I guess it's better to be that than to just, I don't
01:02:23 ◼ ► You could, I mean, just put it all in your email signature, you know, with, like, a picture
01:05:16 ◼ ► It is day two of Thanksgiving, and you're surrounded by your cousins who don't appreciate the work