00:00:00 ◼ ► Hello and welcome to episode 599 of the Connected Podcast from Relay. This episode is brought
00:00:14 ◼ ► to you by Mercury Weather, Squarespace and Steam Clock. My name is Mike Hurley and I have
00:00:20 ◼ ► the pleasure of introducing Prince Flexi, Federico. Hi Federico. Hello Mike, how are you?
00:00:26 ◼ ► I'm good, it's just me and you today. Yes. We will hopefully all be together next week.
00:00:30 ◼ ► Hopefully. For episode 600. I want to warn you that currently the show note document that we have
00:00:40 ◼ ► in Notion for episode 600, I think there are two topics where it just says hold for Stephen.
00:00:44 ◼ ► So we've got that one to look forward to I guess. Ominous. We'll see, yeah kind of. I got a bit of
00:00:53 ◼ ► follow-up for you. So me and Stephen were talking last time about the fact that the MacBook Neo has
00:01:01 ◼ ► the self-service repair parts available now on their like portal and I was like oh could you buy
00:01:07 ◼ ► different colors you know and swap things around and Stephen said because as it has been in the past
00:01:13 ◼ ► no you need to give them your serial number and it just lets you buy replacement parts that are like
00:01:17 ◼ ► for like but it seems that now I've got a report from the Verge who are also reporting something from
00:01:23 ◼ ► that Macworld found that you can choose the colors of the parts that you buy irrespective of the model
00:01:32 ◼ ► of MacBook Neo that you have. So in theory you could get a new keyboard, a new top case in different colors
00:01:39 ◼ ► and swap them around and that is especially interesting for anybody who is even just a little bit tinkery
00:02:04 ◼ ► Not much. I think it's gonna end up being like a beta computer. I don't know. We'll see.
00:02:10 ◼ ► But not much because like I realized I open so many apps on a daily basis. I don't know.
00:02:19 ◼ ► And also like I gotta use the MacBook Pro for real work, you know. And the MacBook Neo I think is a great computer
00:02:28 ◼ ► like if you just want to write or just browse the web or do more lightweight things. And the form factor of it makes me happy
00:02:36 ◼ ► but I think it's gonna end up being my secondary Mac for like betas in the summer, stuff like that.
00:02:49 ◼ ► So as a very quick refreshment of this, we were talking about backups in a pro show a couple of
00:02:56 ◼ ► weeks ago. Then it was highlighted to me that Backblaze, which is what I've been using for my
00:03:02 ◼ ► online backup, is no longer backing up Dropbox files because of reasons that they say. And then this sent
00:03:10 ◼ ► me down like just a spiral of trying to work out how to back up my computer in a way that is desirable
00:03:16 ◼ ► terrible for me. So I want to give you an update to where what the last week has given. So I made the
00:03:22 ◼ ► decision after doing a lot of thinking about how I was going to make this work for me, that I didn't
00:03:28 ◼ ► want to go for a network attack storage device. I got lots of recommendations for products that did look
00:03:32 ◼ ► good. But ultimately, I wanted something that was immediately understandable to me, which macOS is,
00:03:40 ◼ ► and also would then allow me to do some macOS-y things on a computer that is always on and always
00:03:45 ◼ ► connected to the internet. That idea is interesting to me as it is to many people. So I thought to
00:03:51 ◼ ► myself, right, what I'll do, because I don't necessarily need a beefy machine here, I will
00:03:57 ◼ ► just get a base Mac mini and an SSD, and that's where I'll start, right? Get the Mac mini, and then
00:04:03 ◼ ► just download my entire Dropbox to that SSD, it can just live there. Because even in the file provider
00:04:09 ◼ ► error that we're in, Dropbox can still put itself onto an external drive. There are some restrictions
00:04:18 ◼ ► around that and some ways that you have to do it, but Dropbox documents it all very well, it seems.
00:04:23 ◼ ► So I was like, okay, that's what I'll do. Then I started looking, and there were no Mac minis.
00:04:32 ◼ ► Yeah. Now, I actually did look today, and some are available for pickup now, even if delivery is still
00:04:39 ◼ ► like six weeks from now. But it's only the complete base model, and I was wondering if I would maybe
00:04:45 ◼ ► want more RAM, but anyway, I couldn't get anything. And so then I was like, okay, let me go look at
00:04:53 ◼ ► network attack storage devices again. And I was kind of going down the rabbit hole of what would
00:04:58 ◼ ► make sense here. And I was looking at some products that took NVMe drives. My word, the price of NVMe
00:05:07 ◼ ► storage right now is unbelievable. Truly unbelievable. They're more expensive than external SSDs.
00:05:14 ◼ ► Just like, you know, like say, like one of those Samsung things or whatever. Like it's just unhinged to the
00:05:21 ◼ ► prices of this stuff right now. So I was like, right, that's not going to work. And I found a
00:05:27 ◼ ► crucial, so you know, the company Crucial, they make external SSDs. And I found an eight terabyte SSD drive
00:05:34 ◼ ► for I think it was like 600 pounds, which is expensive. But in the grand scheme of where things are right
00:05:43 ◼ ► now, that's okay. And I'm not paying attention to what that would have cost me before, because there's
00:05:50 ◼ ► no point in doing that. I don't live in that reality. So I was like, well, I still need something to
00:05:55 ◼ ► connect it to if I go down that road. And I was like, oh, I have my M1 iMac. Like that is a computer
00:06:06 ◼ ► I have in a box. It's like, I can use that. And then I remembered, hang on a minute, I have a MacBook
00:06:11 ◼ ► Pro. I have my M1 Max MacBook Pro that's just sitting in the studio. And that was a computer that when I
00:06:20 ◼ ► moved from the MacBook Pro to the MacBook Air, I thought to myself, I'm going to keep this MacBook
00:06:25 ◼ ► MacBook Pro because I think someone in my life will need a computer at some point, because that
00:06:30 ◼ ► happens, right? So it's like this and that machine is a few years old at that point. I was like, I was
00:06:35 ◼ ► looking at the prices, like, I can't really make a decent money back. So I'm going to hold on to this
00:06:39 ◼ ► computer. Someone will need it at some point. Turns out that someone ended up being me. This machine
00:06:45 ◼ ► is beefy. I've got two terabytes of onboard SSD in this thing. I got the max CPU because when that computer
00:06:54 ◼ ► came out, I definitely only needed a pro, but we didn't really understand what max and pro were
00:07:01 ◼ ► like. And I ordered it very quickly. Um, it's why I bought a polishing cloth. Cause I just thought that
00:07:06 ◼ ► that was something that I would need. And I, anyway, uh, so I got that and, uh, it's also got like 64
00:07:14 ◼ ► gigabytes of RAM in it, I think. And so it's like, it's a very powerful machine. I was like, well, that's
00:07:19 ◼ ► much better for what I might want to do with this thing. And so, uh, I got the SSD. I got the MacBook
00:07:26 ◼ ► Pro up and running. I kind of cleared it out of apps. I'm not going to need cause I'm not going to use it
00:07:31 ◼ ► like my regular laptop, right? So let's get rid of Slack. Let's get rid of all the regular apps I might
00:07:36 ◼ ► have on my computer. Let's clear out a bunch of stuff. Um, and so set that all up and I put the
00:07:43 ◼ ► SSD in and I was like, right, I'm going to deal with this later on. Like I formatted the SSD the way
00:07:47 ◼ ► that it needed, um, to APFS encrypted, which is what Dropbox wanted. Fine. Then I had to go to a show
00:07:54 ◼ ► and as I'm recording the show, I get a notification from Backblaze telling me that my Backblaze license
00:08:00 ◼ ► was inherited by my MacBook Pro moving the license away from my Mac mini. I don't know why that decision
00:08:07 ◼ ► was made so that that license was previously inherited from my MacBook Pro to my Mac mini.
00:08:14 ◼ ► I don't know why turning that MacBook Pro on again would without me doing anything, move that license
00:08:25 ◼ ► back to that computer. And it, I couldn't get it to swap back. It was throwing an error. And so I had
00:08:33 ◼ ► to contact their support team to understand. I then had to uninstall Backblaze, reinstall Backblaze
00:08:41 ◼ ► and do the whole dance of like the inherent and backup, which it had the Backblaze app was showing this
00:08:48 ◼ ► screen of, like it said, inheriting backup downloading. It was showing that one screen for two days
00:08:54 ◼ ► without anything changing. And I, so I have, I didn't, I wasn't in the studio yesterday. I left
00:08:59 ◼ ► my Mac mini doing its thing. Uh, I came in today and it was still showing that screen. This is two days
00:09:04 ◼ ► after I started. And so I was like, well, something's not right here. So I forced quit the app, opened it
00:09:09 ◼ ► again. And it's like, Hey, it's all done. It's like, what are we talking about? So this is, you know,
00:09:13 ◼ ► and I've been, I'll say like, you know, I've been kind of getting into it a little bit with Backblaze's
00:09:19 ◼ ► support team. Uh, because I asked them to help me do this. They helped me do this. And then I said,
00:09:24 ◼ ► by the way, why did you do this with Dropbox? You know, like, why have you, why are you no longer
00:09:30 ◼ ► backing up Dropbox? They told me why it doesn't work on a Windows PC. I told them I'm using a Mac.
00:09:36 ◼ ► They gave me, they gave me an answer, which I'm not sure that I fully understand why now,
00:09:44 ◼ ► right? Cause they're talking about the way that like, um, file providers work and who knows,
00:09:48 ◼ ► maybe something changed on Tahoe and like, whatever, maybe it is impossible for them. But as I explained
00:09:54 ◼ ► to the support person, I was being very nice, but I am a, I'm a disgruntled customer, right? So I'm not
00:09:59 ◼ ► being rude, but I'm explaining why I'm upset. I just said like, why did you not contact customers
00:10:07 ◼ ► before deleting the data? And they said, well, your data is still available for 30 days. You can just go
00:10:13 ◼ ► download it. And it's like, my point still stands. Like after 30 days, that data is completely gone
00:10:20 ◼ ► and you didn't do anything to explain to anyone. And this person's like, well, unfortunately I have no
00:10:25 ◼ ► control over the communications, which I'm like, of course you don't, but I've lodged my complaint
00:10:30 ◼ ► and I'll come back to this in a moment, but I am considering, you know, switching away from Backblaze.
00:10:37 ◼ ► So that is that I've got that machine sorted out. Now the Backblaze migration thing is done.
00:10:44 ◼ ► Their whole migration system is really bad. Um, and it was especially bad because it just did it on its
00:10:51 ◼ ► own. And I don't know why it did that. Going back to the MacBook Pro Dropbox has been indexing for three
00:10:58 ◼ ► days now and nothing has downloaded. That's great. I did some research on this and apparently
00:11:03 ◼ ► for a Dropbox account of the size of mine, which is nearly three terabytes, which I'm trying to download.
00:11:12 ◼ ► It can take many days. Um, and apparently like as long as in inactivity monitor Dropbox is doing
00:11:19 ◼ ► something in the CPU, it means it is kind of preparing itself and it can take days and days.
00:11:25 ◼ ► So I may have more follow up in next week to see if that actually happened or not, but I know I can
00:11:31 ◼ ► get that Dropbox working at some point. I might just need to jump through a few more hoops to get that
00:11:37 ◼ ► going. I'm kind of edge case of edge case here, which I'm aware of. I have a massive Dropbox account
00:11:43 ◼ ► and I am downloading it via the file provider, which you can opt out of now, which is interesting.
00:11:49 ◼ ► Dropbox has a path for opting out of file provider. I don't want to do that because that doesn't feel
00:11:55 ◼ ► like something that should be done, but if this doesn't work, I may try it that way, but I'm like
00:12:01 ◼ ► massive Dropbox account using a file provider onto an external SSD. All of this stuff can be done,
00:12:06 ◼ ► but I know I'm kind of like very thin end of the wedge here. So I'm just going to let it do what
00:12:12 ◼ ► it's doing. Um, but something I've done for like in setting this machine up and I did this today,
00:12:17 ◼ ► I've set up tail scale and using the screens app. So I will be able to access this MacBook pro
00:12:23 ◼ ► from anywhere at any time, which I think is, this is the thing of like, okay, if I'm going to go down
00:12:29 ◼ ► this route, I don't want to have done all of this just to have a Dropbox backup, right? It feels like
00:12:34 ◼ ► too much. So like now I'll have this like somewhat powerful computer connected to a really fast,
00:12:41 ◼ ► I have like gigabit up and down in the studio, which I don't have at home. So I'm like, ah,
00:12:44 ◼ ► like I was thinking if I need to upload the audio for today's episode, it would be so much faster for
00:12:50 ◼ ► me to connect via screens to the Mac here and download it here and upload it to our CDN rather
00:12:57 ◼ ► than doing it at home. So I'm like already having these thoughts of like, I'll have this computer.
00:13:01 ◼ ► And so I'm, you know, I'm starting to think about, and I will look forward in the future to kind of
00:13:07 ◼ ► exploring like what I can do with an always on Mac. And because I have a laptop, I've got a couple of
00:13:15 ◼ ► things going on that I'm going to try. I'm using an app called Amphetamine to keep it on.
00:13:20 ◼ ► Yes. But also I bought a HDMI dummy plug. Yes. So if I want to close the screen, I can and then
00:13:29 ◼ ► Mac OS thinks that there's a monitor attached. So I've got a few different things I'm going to play
00:13:33 ◼ ► around with for like how I will keep this on. But I found the experience of using tail scale and screens
00:13:40 ◼ ► to be really good. Like the actual, I'll put a link in the show notes to the Edovia, which is the company
00:13:47 ◼ ► that makes screens. They're set up process for this, which, which worked really well for me.
00:13:51 ◼ ► Hopefully it's going to work. I've had some issues with like remote, remote access stuff from home to
00:13:59 ◼ ► my studio because I don't technically control my network here. Right. Like I have my own Wi-Fi routers,
00:14:07 ◼ ► but I've had some issues. Like I don't control the switch. It's not mine. It's rented right from the,
00:14:11 ◼ ► from the company that I rent my studio from. So I'll see how that works. Hopefully it will still
00:14:15 ◼ ► work, but that's been going well. The next thing that I'm doing is like, okay, I want to look at
00:14:22 ◼ ► Backblaze alternatives, right? Because I still want, once I've downloaded all this stuff, I then want an
00:14:40 ◼ ► So they, they claim to be like very popular, like the rest around. But anyway, they are, they are
00:14:46 ◼ ► essentially a, a, a, a competitor to Backblaze. They do the Backblaze stuff, right? Like online backup.
00:14:56 ◼ ► They seem to be quite focused on enterprise, those kinds of things. They do things a little
00:15:00 ◼ ► bit differently where you, your subscription is not unlimited. It is limited, but you can share
00:15:08 ◼ ► the pool of data amongst multiple computers. So their starting plan, which I think is like a hundred
00:15:15 ◼ ► dollars a year or whatever, is five terabytes of data. And that, but you can have multiple backups.
00:15:22 ◼ ► You can even have the multiple people within a team, if you, depending on which you choose.
00:15:27 ◼ ► And that, so that will do the syncing for you. They're like a whole system. It's not like ARC where
00:15:35 ◼ ► you're using somebody else's system on the backend. It is, they are, you know, they, they do the whole
00:15:40 ◼ ► thing. But what I, what I saw with them, which I thought was really interesting, they have an add-on
00:15:47 ◼ ► for an additional $20 a month. You can connect your Dropbox via the API and they will just do a cloud
00:16:00 ◼ ► Now, if I would have found this first, I may not have gone down the route that I'm currently going
00:16:06 ◼ ► down, but nevertheless, now, now I'm like, I've, I've been too rocked by this. So I now want to have
00:16:12 ◼ ► full local and full cloud. And I think that's probably how I'm going to do the cloud backup
00:16:17 ◼ ► portion to save me kind of, you know, and so maybe I'll get iDrive. I will just backup what's local to
00:16:24 ◼ ► my computer, like my photos and all that kind of stuff to them. And then also use their, their cloud
00:16:30 ◼ ► Dropbox backup to do that part as well. So yeah, I, I've never heard of this company, but they seem to be,
00:16:38 ◼ ► you know, they seem reputable enough. Their app looks terrible, but so is Dropbox's, right? Like
00:16:43 ◼ ► all of the things that I don't, are their websites terrible? So is, sorry, not Dropbox, Backblaze.
00:16:48 ◼ ► So is Backblaze's, you know, so these, these things are essentially, will it do the backup? And I've
00:16:54 ◼ ► always found Backblaze to be rock solid in that regard, which is why I recommended them for so long,
00:16:59 ◼ ► but now I can't bring myself to recommend them anymore. Um, and then, and I'm, so I'm going to
00:17:05 ◼ ► try, um, I am planning to try iDrive as well, um, as another thing to do here. So this is where I am.
00:17:12 ◼ ► Nothing is even nearly finished, but I've at least made my decisions. And then in the future, once I've
00:17:18 ◼ ► got this all set up, my plan is to buy also a very large spinning disc and have my time machine
00:17:27 ◼ ► on a spinning disc and I can, it would be very easy for me in the studio to have it like at the other
00:17:33 ◼ ► side of the studio. And I definitely wouldn't hear it. My issue with the spinning discs was having them
00:17:37 ◼ ► connected to my Mac mini, um, which, cause that's right in front of me. So that's where I am right
00:17:42 ◼ ► now. Tons of things going on. Uh, but yeah, I, I'm feeling like I'm finally starting to get a hold
00:17:58 ◼ ► Obviously, um, the, you know, if you have an always on Mac, there are plenty of things that
00:18:05 ◼ ► you could try. Uh, one of the things that I love doing on a, on my always on Mac studio
00:18:10 ◼ ► is, uh, just keep the, uh, the cloud app running and that allows you to use this patch from iOS.
00:18:19 ◼ ► And the reason for that is that I have some, uh, like some local web apps and local servers that I
00:18:26 ◼ ► built with cloud. And that, uh, that allows me to manage those apps and request changes or fix things
00:18:37 ◼ ► have a cloud code session, always running in the terminal on the, on the always on Mac. Uh,
00:18:45 ◼ ► if you want to use cloud from telegram or iMessage, which is also something very funny that I'm doing,
00:18:50 ◼ ► I to, to, to, especially cloud on iMessage is, is really interesting and fun because it allows you
00:18:56 ◼ ► to talk to it via Siri. For example, when you're using AirPods, uh, to do that, uh, I signed out
00:19:04 ◼ ► from my, uh, iMessage account on the Mac studio server. And I repurposed an old, uh, Apple account
00:19:11 ◼ ► as the cloud Apple account. So cloud as its own iMessage account on the Mac studio server. And that
00:19:19 ◼ ► allows me to talk to quote unquote, cloud as an iMessage contact. Um, something else that I do. So
00:19:26 ◼ ► uh, I mentioned this patch, cloud code, uh, for iMessage and telegram, uh, obviously you've got the,
00:19:34 ◼ ► I mean, you don't use Plex, you don't use Rune for music. Those are also like, you could, you could,
00:19:41 ◼ ► if you want to hook it up to a TV, you could use the channels server, um, for TV streaming,
00:19:47 ◼ ► uh, which is also something that I'm doing in my home. Um, yeah, those will be, and I, and I mean,
00:19:53 ◼ ► obviously you have tail scale installed. So the moment you start creating web apps for yourself
00:19:59 ◼ ► that only you can access via your tail scale network, anywhere you are in the world, that feels
00:20:05 ◼ ► like cheating, uh, kind of, it feels like a superpower. Yeah. And, uh, and also I love screens by
00:20:12 ◼ ► Adobe. Yeah. But I don't recommend it anymore because it's still using the VNC protocol. Okay. You want
00:20:20 ◼ ► to use something else. You want to use my recommendation right now is jump desktop because
00:20:26 ◼ ► it's using a long time ago. It's using the, the fluid remote desktop protocol. Okay. Which is much
00:20:33 ◼ ► less latency and much higher picture quality than, than VNC. And I'll give you one more Google,
00:20:39 ◼ ► Google, go on Google and Google jump desktop 10 beta. Uh, there's a free download for the desktop
00:20:46 ◼ ► server. And there's an email address. If you email that email address and you request access to the
00:20:54 ◼ ► test flight for version 10, they will just respond to you right away with the test flight link for the
00:21:00 ◼ ► updated jump jump desktop on iPhone and iPad. It is so much nicer than VNC. Alternatively,
00:21:06 ◼ ► the folks at Astropad, remember the Luna display folks, they just came out with their own take on a
00:21:15 ◼ ► remote desktop client called Astro workbench, which is a bit of a, has a bit of quirks right now that I
00:21:22 ◼ ► think John will soon have a review on Mac stories. Uh, it also has a subscription, but they're doing
00:21:28 ◼ ► some interesting things. Uh, for example, some, they do two, they have two interesting features.
00:21:33 ◼ ► One is they automatically adapt the display resolution to whatever device you're using to
00:21:41 ◼ ► connect. So for example, I connect, you connect from your iPhone, the, the picture feels the entire
00:21:48 ◼ ► display of the phone, which is cool. And they have a built-in dictation mode that uses the Apple
00:21:55 ◼ ► transcription API. So that if you have something running on the Mac server and you don't want to
00:22:01 ◼ ► type from your iPhone, you can just dictate from your iPhone and it'll be transcribed on the remote
00:22:07 ◼ ► computer. Uh, so if you want to issue a command to cloud in a terminal window or something like that.
00:22:13 ◼ ► So Astro workbench is a new, is a very new, it came out last week, uh, very new alternative that
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00:24:28 ◼ ► slash connected. The links in the show notes as well. Try it out and get all the standard features for
00:24:36 ◼ ► So last week, Federico, uh, Steven and I gave some kind of a grab bag of WWDC wishes. And I wanted to
00:24:45 ◼ ► know if you had anything you wanted to share. Oh boy. Yes. Yes, I do. I added some notes to our
00:24:53 ◼ ► documents. I would focus on three primary areas, AI, uh, iPadOS and other as a big bucket. Um, with AI, um,
00:25:05 ◼ ► obviously I want to have a Siri app with a chat bot. Like I, I, I am very excited actually about Apple being
00:25:13 ◼ ► late to this game and, and getting their act together with some help from their friends at Google. Um, I want to see
00:25:22 ◼ ► Apple really take, um, take advantage of the fact that they can go beyond just being a chat bot. Uh,
00:25:29 ◼ ► for example, one of the features that is, that is rumored right now is the idea that you can summon
00:25:34 ◼ ► the new city with AI. It's going to come down from the dynamic island. But if you want to go deeper,
00:25:39 ◼ ► you can sort of transfer that session to the main chat bot. And that is something that I would love to
00:25:45 ◼ ► have, uh, a way to go from ephemeral conversations with Siri to a more full-fledged, um, chat bot UI
00:25:53 ◼ ► so that I can see my previous conversations as well. That is something that I really would love to have.
00:25:57 ◼ ► And speaking of the chat bot app, the Siri app, uh, I hope that Apple is planning some kind of a folder
00:26:05 ◼ ► organization features for chats. I'm not sure if Apple wants to do like these things like projects
00:26:10 ◼ ► and environments like, uh, like, uh, like open AI and Anthropic do, but at least folders or tabs.
00:26:17 ◼ ► Yeah, that'd be nice. I do worry about them leaning too heavily into just iMessage layout,
00:26:24 ◼ ► right? They're like, oh, it just looks like iMessage works like iMessage, which I can understand for them
00:26:39 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I, I really, I also really hope that, so we know that it's going to be Google
00:26:49 ◼ ► Gemini behind this. So we don't know, we don't know how much of the Gemini experience you will have
00:26:57 ◼ ► in Siri. One of the things that I would like to have is the ability to at least set a thinking
00:27:04 ◼ ► level, like, and I'm sure Apple will simplify all these to the maximum extent. Maybe they'll just
00:27:10 ◼ ► call it, you know, uh, fast and pro and, uh, behind the scenes that that will technically mean that it's
00:27:24 ◼ ► I bet there ain't. I bet there ain't. Don't worry. We'll take care of it for you. That's what it's
00:27:31 ◼ ► I really dislike this new trend of adaptive thinking. No, let me choose. Do I want to go fast
00:27:40 ◼ ► or do I want to go slow and, you know, thinking, you know, for several minutes, uh, knowing Apple,
00:27:46 ◼ ► they will probably simplify this to the maximum extent and then eventually they'll walk it back
00:27:52 ◼ ► and add some options because they always do. But in theory though, this should be something that
00:28:01 ◼ ► This, this routing systems that they now have, I don't know. I, I'm a nerd. I like to have manual
00:28:08 ◼ ► control over these things, but yes, in theory they should be working. They should detect, oh,
00:28:13 ◼ ► is this a query that requires more thinking and more research or not? In theory it should work. So I'm
00:28:19 ◼ ► also leaning toward. That feels like intelligence, right? Like intelligence would tell you that maybe
00:28:36 ◼ ► that were first shown off two years ago. Um, whether it's still going to be app intense
00:28:42 ◼ ► or MCP is going to be in the middle now. I don't know. I just, I just really think that,
00:28:49 ◼ ► that one of the key advantages beyond the platform integration is also the app store ecosystem.
00:28:54 ◼ ► The idea that I don't have like, for example, I've been working a lot with cloud and, and, and, and with
00:29:01 ◼ ► cloud, I tend to prioritize, uh, using web services that have some kind of web API or web integration,
00:29:09 ◼ ► like notion, for example, it'd be nice to have an AI built into my phone that lets me choose, like,
00:29:16 ◼ ► do you just want to use Apple notes or do you just want to use, I don't know, the unread RSS app instead
00:29:21 ◼ ► of some web service. It'd be nice to have native apps part of the AI conversation. Yeah. Um, or just any
00:29:28 ◼ ► app, right? Like, like I want to use, say I want to use, I don't know, craft or whatever, right? Like
00:29:35 ◼ ► maybe they probably have an MCP, but you get my, or bare notes or whatever, right? It's just like pull
00:29:40 ◼ ► from there, but just pull from there rather than it have to be like, uh, I'm going to have to use this
00:29:45 ◼ ► tool if I want Claude to be able to see these notes or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. I want to move to
00:29:52 ◼ ► iPadOS. Okay. So I will say the unpopular thing now, bring back split view. I think so almost a year
00:30:01 ◼ ► has passed. We all love the new iPad multi-windowing feature. Uh, I personally do love it. I really like
00:30:10 ◼ ► it. I also think that a lot of people don't. And I also think that despite Apple's best efforts
00:30:16 ◼ ► to mitigate the removal of split view and slide over, which was brought back eventually, I still feel
00:30:24 ◼ ► like plenty of people, including me sometimes miss the old system and it'd be nice to, to have that back
00:30:34 ◼ ► in some fashion. I don't know how I just feel like there was something about it that was more intuitive
00:30:44 ◼ ► and faster and simpler than the multi-windowing. And the thing is, you know, we made fun over the
00:30:50 ◼ ► years of Apple having too many windowing systems and too many systems in general on the iPad, but maybe
00:30:56 ◼ ► that's the thing. Maybe it's, it's actually something that we should cherish about iPadOS. That is a
00:31:01 ◼ ► computer that is so weird in a good way and so flexible that maybe it's in its own nature to have
00:31:08 ◼ ► different systems for different people instead of just a, a, a, a, a, a one size fits all approach.
00:31:16 ◼ ► So I kind of think that split view should come back to be honest. Um, I also feel like it would be such a
00:31:26 ◼ ► slam dunk for Apple from a PR and current sort of like industry vibe perspective to finally bring a
00:31:36 ◼ ► terminal app to the iPad. Give us a terminal on the iPad that is sandboxed and show off during WDC
00:31:46 ◼ ► for a couple of minutes, cloud code or codex running on an iPad in a sandbox secure, but real shell
00:31:56 ◼ ► on the iPad, it would be such an easy story for Apple to say, if you're a developer, if you're an AI
00:32:04 ◼ ► tinkerer, you can just now take your AI with you, whatever you go with an iPad. Even if you're just
00:32:09 ◼ ► working in a park with a cellular connection and iPad lets you do it. And it obviously like it would be,
00:32:18 ◼ ► it would be a slightly more slimmed down terminal. Uh, and it would have to be really sandboxed compared
00:32:25 ◼ ► to Mac OS, but I think it's given how, especially, you know, especially the developer ecosystem is
00:32:32 ◼ ► changing. I really do think it's time for Apple to go beyond just saying, Oh, we offer switch
00:32:37 ◼ ► playgrounds on the iPad. What could you do though with a terminal on the iPad? I mean, just do whatever
00:32:43 ◼ ► you can with cloud code. Like let me, let me, let me just do whatever. Obviously like you wouldn't be
00:32:50 ◼ ► able to modify system files. If I imagine it would be a sandbox directory that, you know, allows you to
00:32:57 ◼ ► download packages from the internet that only work inside the sandbox. You wouldn't be able to, I don't
00:33:03 ◼ ► know, you wouldn't be able to, to, to download something that changes the iPad's, um, UI, but like
00:33:09 ◼ ► given the constraints of the sandbox, let me download, let me spin up a node JS server from the iPad that's
00:33:17 ◼ ► running inside the sandbox or stuff like that. Let me, you know, just let me do terminal things while
00:33:22 ◼ ► also knowing that it's a more secure environment than Mac OS because of the nature of, of the iPad. Um,
00:33:30 ◼ ► another, another, another quick, uh, an easy win, uh, would be given the current times Apple has,
00:33:41 ◼ ► I'll rephrase, one of the best Mac apps that Apple makes that very few people know about is the default
00:33:51 ◼ ► built in free to use screen sharing app. The screen sharing app that Apple offers on Mac OS is the best
00:34:01 ◼ ► remote desktop experience you can use because they have an exclusive Mac only high definition streaming
00:34:09 ◼ ► feature that only Apple can use. Uh, Mike, if you're looking for, like I recommended jump desktop before,
00:34:17 ◼ ► but if you're doing Mac to Mac screen sharing, yes, you just have to use the Apple one. Oh,
00:34:23 ◼ ► the default one. Okay. The screen sharing app, the first time you connect to a remote Mac from your
00:34:29 ◼ ► other Mac, you will be asked, do you want to use the high definition feature? You say, yes, you're going
00:34:35 ◼ ► to have an incredible experience that is high res, incredibly fast, smooth, and low latency. Okay.
00:34:41 ◼ ► This application should exist on the iPad, especially because of all the things that are happening now
00:34:48 ◼ ► with people setting up Mac minis for open claw or perplexity just today, a few minutes ago,
00:34:55 ◼ ► released personal computer, which is a similar idea, like all these agents, uh, and like they have
00:35:07 ◼ ► I would love to see also, uh, the, uh, the spotlight, the new spotlight from Mac OS from last year.
00:35:15 ◼ ► I would love to see it on the iPad with the ability, I guess this year to also invoke Siri AI from
00:35:22 ◼ ► spotlight with the ability to run shortcuts more quickly with input from spotlight search inside
00:35:28 ◼ ► apps, like all the things that, uh, that they announced with spotlight on the Mac last year.
00:35:33 ◼ ► Would love to see them on the iPad. And finally for iPad OS, um, improvements to Safari to really
00:35:40 ◼ ► modernize Safari, make it a true desktop class, not the fake desktop class that they, that they, uh,
00:35:48 ◼ ► offer now. Uh, there are so many websites still, uh, that given how, uh, the Chromium engine has evolved
00:35:55 ◼ ► on desktop, they no longer work, uh, in iPad OS Safari and just modern features. Like you look at any
00:36:02 ◼ ► modern browser. It's, it, it seems pretty obvious to me that people like vertical tabs. You can sort
00:36:07 ◼ ► of fake your way around having vertical tabs in iPad OS Safari, but not really. Uh, I would love to
00:36:14 ◼ ► see a native vertical tab mode. I would love to see a command K bar. Like, uh, you know how in those apps
00:36:20 ◼ ► you press command K and you can do things like arc used to have it. Dia has it. Notion has it. Spotify
00:36:26 ◼ ► of all applications on the Mac has a command K bar. I would love to have that, uh, in Safari in general,
00:36:33 ◼ ► also on the Mac, but especially on the iPad. Um, okay. Lastly, uh, in the other category,
00:36:40 ◼ ► I will mention, um, I cannot repeat exactly what I wrote in my notes, but fix the camera. Uh, I would
00:36:48 ◼ ► love to see less washed out colors, more contrasty pictures by default, um, and a completely redesigned
00:36:59 ◼ ► experience for photographic styles because the UI that we have right now is madness. Like I, I still,
00:37:06 ◼ ► like, I know that you've explained this to me. People have explained this to me, the whole thing with a
00:37:11 ◼ ► weird touchpad or going into settings or the numeric values, complete and total madness,
00:37:19 ◼ ► get rid of it, rename it, redesign it, whatever, make it easier, make it more obvious, get rid of
00:37:25 ◼ ► the numbers. Like, I don't know, make it, make it sliders or something. I mean, it's possible they
00:37:29 ◼ ► could do this, but it won't be a WWDC, right? Like if they do this, they'll do this in September.
00:37:33 ◼ ► Yeah. It'll be like part of the new phone. We'll have a new camera experience or whatever,
00:37:37 ◼ ► which is how they did when they did the photographic styles change a couple of years ago. It was
00:37:41 ◼ ► like, Hey, here's a new thing. So they'll probably do that if they do that. Yeah. You're right.
00:37:46 ◼ ► In the other bucket, I will also drop more customization options. Uh, given the upcoming
00:37:53 ◼ ► iPhone duo slash iPhone fold, which is going to have a smaller screen, I think it's also time to
00:37:59 ◼ ► have a home screen that allows you to have a denser, a tighter icon layout. That phone is going to be
00:38:07 ◼ ► small, but you still want to be able, but, but you still want to be able to fit, you know, a bunch of
00:38:12 ◼ ► your favorite applications on the home screen. So I think it's time to have a tighter home screen
00:38:17 ◼ ► layout on all devices in general. Like it's so spaced out compared to what you can do on Android. Like,
00:38:22 ◼ ► let me make it, you know, let, let, let, let, let, let the icons be cozier with one another. If I,
00:38:27 ◼ ► if I want to, um, I also would love to have the small icon option, but without the text labels,
00:38:35 ◼ ► the icon labels. Yeah. I, I would like to not have the text labels. I cannot deal with the size of the
00:38:41 ◼ ► icons. It just doesn't feel right to me. I know. I know. I would love to go back, but in choosing
00:38:46 ◼ ► between the text labels and the, and, and the giant icons, I just, I don't want to see the text labels anymore.
00:38:52 ◼ ► I get it. I get it. Yeah. And, uh, finally, uh, more, uh, widget sizes. Uh, I mean, uh, you know, um, uh,
00:39:00 ◼ ► speaking as you are a part of the widget trio, um, you know, uh, but, uh, I would love to see this. Uh, I would
00:39:13 ◼ ► Like two icons. Two icons. Two icons as a widget. You could do some really fun stuff with like text
00:39:18 ◼ ► based widgets like that. Um, like, like little information ticker kind of things. Like it would
00:39:23 ◼ ► be really nice. Yes. Exactly. Precisely what I mean. Um, that's, that's my, my, my wishes for now.
00:39:33 ◼ ► How much do you think you're actually going to get of that? Like not like thing by thing.
00:39:37 ◼ ► I had probably nothing. I especially think your, your dream of them kind of bringing split view
00:39:43 ◼ ► back. I don't think that's going to happen considering that they did something as like,
00:39:46 ◼ ► that's as much as you're getting. I think iPad, I'm just going to get spotlight, uh, based on
00:39:52 ◼ ► the informal conversations from briefings last year, whenever I mentioned, Oh, that new spotlight
00:39:58 ◼ ► looks great on the Mac. It should be nice to get it on the iPad. And some of the people in the room
00:40:03 ◼ ► were like, yes, yes, we know. We'll see. It feels like that the idea of the combination
00:40:09 ◼ ► of Siri and spotlight together, which was what Mark Gurman has been reporting. You would assume
00:40:15 ◼ ► that some of that would come to the iPad as well. Yeah. Yeah. But all devices, because the iPhone
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00:42:17 ◼ ► So Federico, you released Apple Frames 4 a few days ago. So this is, in case people have missed it,
00:42:25 ◼ ► you've had various, this is in fact the fourth iteration of a shortcut system, I'll call it because
00:42:32 ◼ ► of the complication of being able to take images, screenshots of any device that you have, put them
00:42:39 ◼ ► in frames. So make them, you know, kind of sitting them inside of the devices they were taking on so
00:42:44 ◼ ► they look really pretty and then being able to share them. You know, maybe you're a developer and
00:42:48 ◼ ► you want them for screenshots or for marketing purposes, or maybe you want to share a kind of
00:42:53 ◼ ► non disembodied screenshots on social media. You can do this. It looks very natural. But you said
00:42:59 ◼ ► finally, and also your article on Mac stories says, well, it's been a minute. What is new about Apple
00:43:06 ◼ ► Frames 4? And why has it taken you so long to go from 3 to 4? Okay, so what's new is that it's faster,
00:43:14 ◼ ► much, much faster than before, and it supports all the latest Apple devices, including the just released
00:43:19 ◼ ► as of last week, Frames for the Studio Display and Studio Display XDR and the iMac in colors, which is
00:43:26 ◼ ► also something that Apple added about 10 days ago. It supports all the latest iPhones, Apple Watches,
00:43:32 ◼ ► everything, MacBook Neo, you name it. The other big feature is that it now supports colors. So it used to
00:43:38 ◼ ► be that I would have to make a decision. Whenever Apple releases their official product bezels on the
00:43:44 ◼ ► Apple marketing website, in the older version of Apple Frames, I would have to pick a default color
00:43:50 ◼ ► and just use that for that particular device. So if the iPhone came in three colors, Apple Frames only
00:43:55 ◼ ► supported one. And maybe it wasn't really representative of the device that you personally
00:44:00 ◼ ► owned. Well, now Apple Frames supports all colors for all product bezels that offer colors on the Apple
00:44:06 ◼ ► website. And going forward, assuming that Apple keeps releasing frames with multiple colors,
00:44:18 ◼ ► in terms of like faster, more devices, colors and device variants, meaning the Apple ecosystem of devices
00:44:26 ◼ ► has obviously grown quite big at this point. And there are some overlapping device resolutions.
00:44:34 ◼ ► For example, the iPhone 17 Pro has the same resolution as the 16 Pro. And there are dozens of other examples
00:44:39 ◼ ► like that. In the past, I would have, again, to make a personal decision. Like for this resolution
00:44:46 ◼ ► point, which device do I want to support? And so in previous years, if the 15 Pro had the same
00:44:53 ◼ ► resolution as the 16 Pro, I just had to make a decision. The 16 Pro is going to be the default.
00:44:58 ◼ ► And again, maybe that was not necessarily representative of the device that you personally
00:45:02 ◼ ► owned. So now, Apple Frames 4 still defaults to the latest Apple device for any particular display
00:45:09 ◼ ► resolution, but you can override the default. If you don't have a 17 Pro, you want to stick with
00:45:15 ◼ ► the 16 Pro, you just open the shortcut, you find the device variant setting, you pick up your device
00:45:22 ◼ ► model, you drag it to the top of the list, and that's going to be the default for the shortcut.
00:45:26 ◼ ► And finally, for the shortcut, proportional scaling. That is something that always annoyed me about
00:45:37 ◼ ► Apple Frames. So let's say that you pick an iPhone screenshot, an iPad screenshot, and an Apple Watch
00:45:42 ◼ ► screenshot. And you frame them, and Apple Frames, the shortcut merges by default. Again, it's a behavior
00:45:50 ◼ ► that you can change if you don't want to, but by default, it merges those devices side by side,
00:45:55 ◼ ► producing a single image where the devices are placed horizontally side by side. The problem was that
00:46:01 ◼ ► before, the proportions would be all wrong. An iPhone would be as tall as an iPad Pro, or an Apple Watch
00:46:09 ◼ ► would be sometimes even taller than an iPhone 16 Pro. That was obviously wrong. I had to add a proportional
00:46:17 ◼ ► scaling system. And that was quite difficult. But it was part of the other, I think, conversation for
00:46:28 ◼ ► for Apple Frames 4, which is, this is really the first time that one of my ongoing long-standing
00:46:39 ◼ ► projects has been the result of my ideas and initial implementation plus AI. So Apple Frames 4 actually
00:46:52 ◼ ► started about a year and a half ago, where I had this idea. This is before Cloud Code even existed.
00:46:59 ◼ ► I had this idea for changing the structure of the shortcut to get rid of about 500 actions inside the shortcut.
00:47:08 ◼ ► It used to be that the shortcut would have these real nasty conditions, one inside the other,
00:47:16 ◼ ► where the shortcut said, if screenshot is iPad Pro, if screenshot is iPad Pro in portrait, or if screenshot
00:47:23 ◼ ► is iPhone 15 Pro, like over and over and over, 500 actions in total. And it became impossible to manage,
00:47:32 ◼ ► impossible to debug and impossible to update. And I realized there's got to be a different way to do this.
00:47:38 ◼ ► So the new shortcut, this idea that I had in late 2024, I think, was, well, rather than checking
00:47:46 ◼ ► multiple times over and over, I want the shortcut to just check once and understand with that single
00:47:53 ◼ ► check, what device is it dealing with? And my idea was, instead of checking inside the shortcut,
00:47:59 ◼ ► the shortcut will come up with a number. It will check if that number exists in a text file.
00:48:08 ◼ ► And if it does, it'll get the value of that number to understand what device we're dealing
00:48:14 ◼ ► with. The number is the resolution width of a screenshot. So how large is it? It gets a number
00:48:21 ◼ ► like, I don't know, 20, 12, 2200. And it says, okay, 2200. What is it? And the text file comes back
00:48:29 ◼ ► and says, MacBook Air, right? And I'm simplifying here, but that's the idea. Instead of checking over and
00:48:36 ◼ ► over with multiple conditions, it makes one call to a text file that is stored in iCloud Drive.
00:48:42 ◼ ► And the text file comes back and says, it's this device. It has this name. It supports these colors.
00:48:54 ◼ ► I came up with this system and I had a working version of this last year. And then I put it off
00:49:01 ◼ ► because creating that text file, which is a JSON file by hand, I didn't want to do it. It was going
00:49:09 ◼ ► to be lots of busy work. And I kept putting it off because I knew that it was going to be daunting
00:49:17 ◼ ► and it was going to be complicated and it was going to be boring. And I knew that it was going to work
00:49:22 ◼ ► because I did have a functioning prototype. I just didn't want to do the busy work myself.
00:49:27 ◼ ► Now, a few weeks ago, I had this idea. I realized, well, hold on a second. So Apple frames for,
00:49:33 ◼ ► first of all, I'm really tired. I got to have a new version of it. It's exhausting that I cannot
00:49:44 ◼ ► But now, all that busy work potentially can be automated by AI. And we now have these coding
00:49:53 ◼ ► agents. These coding agents are excellent at busy work and taking care of lots of text and working
00:50:00 ◼ ► with files in a file system. And I realized, okay, let me try something here. First of all,
00:50:06 ◼ ► let me try and distill all of this knowledge that I have in my brain about Apple frames,
00:50:13 ◼ ► how it works, how it's designed, how I created it into a skill for Claude. So first of all,
00:50:21 ◼ ► I took all the things that I knew and I created a skill for Claude so that every time we would chat
00:50:28 ◼ ► about Apple frames, it would know what it was about. So first of all, I created a skill version of what
00:50:36 ◼ ► I had in my head about Apple frames. And then I started working with Claude Code to modernize
00:50:45 ◼ ► Apple frames. Claude Code did the research and worked at one point for like three hours straight
00:50:55 ◼ ► to research all the physical proportions. Because see, with proportional scaling, it's not just about
00:51:06 ◼ ► the physical dimensions of each device. Like how big an iPhone 17 Pro or a 15 Pro actually is compared
00:51:13 ◼ ► to a studio display. How big is an Apple Watch Series 6 compared to a Series 11 when you factor in the
00:51:20 ◼ ► bezels or you factor in the watch bands, which are also visible in the framed images. So it came up with
00:51:28 ◼ ► these physical proportions that are now embedded in this JSON file that I did not edit myself,
00:51:37 ◼ ► not even once. I basically guided and directed Claude to design a system that worked exactly the way I
00:51:45 ◼ ► wanted. And then I kind of went a step beyond. Well, I went two steps beyond. The first step was
00:51:54 ◼ ► for the past four and a half months, I have been working on what started as a skill, has now become
00:52:03 ◼ ► a plugin called Shortcuts Playground. I'm sure that Apple will send me a cease and desist eventually when
00:52:10 ◼ ► I release this to the public. But I am going to launch it as Shortcuts Playground. It's a way for you to
00:52:16 ◼ ► create shortcuts in the Shortcuts app using natural language. And it works. It actually does work. I've
00:52:22 ◼ ► been working on it for, again, since January. And it's good enough at this point that I have been able
00:52:33 ◼ ► to iterate on the Apple Frames shortcut using my system that generates Shortcuts. So Shortcuts
00:52:43 ◼ ► Shortcuts Playground allowed me to make edits to the Apple Frames shortcut based on what we were working on
00:52:50 ◼ ► for new frames, for the JSON index, and all of those things. For example, the logic for doing proportional
00:53:00 ◼ ► scaling inside the shortcut, I can sort of follow along the calculations that it does, but I didn't write
00:53:09 ◼ ► that code myself. And we're talking about the shortcut, right? I didn't do it myself. My Shortcuts
00:53:15 ◼ ► Playground system did it. So that was a really sort of like compounding effect of all these things. All
00:53:23 ◼ ► this research and tinkering that I've been doing for the past year really came together in this project.
00:53:29 ◼ ► Because this shortcut, you know, like people can go through it. I think at a certain point, it's become too
00:53:35 ◼ ► complicated for you to be able to manage it all on your own. Yes, yes. Even especially the math that is required
00:53:41 ◼ ► for the proportional scaling and merging. Yeah. Like, you gotta get the aspect ratio, and then you gotta calculate
00:53:48 ◼ ► what's the height multiplied by a normalized value. It's very complex. And I've never been that good at
00:53:56 ◼ ► math myself. So I have seen with this project, the compounding effect of all this tinkering that I've been
00:54:03 ◼ ► doing for the past year came together here because I knew exactly how to work with the AI. I knew where it
00:54:11 ◼ ► was gonna be good, where it was not gonna be good. And that's where I stepped in with the ideas, saying,
00:54:17 ◼ ► no, this is dumb. I prefer to do it this way in a particular part of the shortcut. The other step
00:54:25 ◼ ► beyond was realizing at some point that I've always had a pretty strong audience for the Apple
00:54:34 ◼ ► frames shortcut in terms of developers, developers who use Apple frames to speed up the creation of
00:54:42 ◼ ► marketing assets for their apps. And I realized, well, okay, I have created this system where all the
00:54:52 ◼ ► assets for Apple frames, the actual images, the PNG masks. Oh, by the way, Sylvia used to do those PNG
00:55:00 ◼ ► masks. And she absolutely hated doing that as a favor to me. And so when I told her, I asked her
00:55:08 ◼ ► a few weeks ago, I said, hey, would you mind if I replaced you with AI so that you don't have to do
00:55:15 ◼ ► the frames for me anymore? She just looked at me and said, finally, please replace me with AI.
00:55:22 ◼ ► She was sacrificed to the AI and she was very happy about it. But I was saying, I realized, okay,
00:55:32 ◼ ► I have this JSON index. I have the folder with all the image assets. I know that developers love using
00:55:40 ◼ ► Apple frames as a shortcut, but like shortcuts kind of sucks if you do a certain kind of automation over
00:55:47 ◼ ► and over. And I, and I thought, well, we live in this new weird era where everybody loves the terminal.
00:55:55 ◼ ► Again, what if I did a command line interface for developers and tinkerers to use Apple frames and
00:56:03 ◼ ► thus the, the frame CLI was born. So Apple frames is still a shortcut and it's still primarily a shortcut.
00:56:10 ◼ ► But if you are a developer and if you need to frame hundreds, thousands of images and automate the
00:56:17 ◼ ► process with even more options than a shortcut would allow in a much more ergonomic way, if you are a
00:56:25 ◼ ► developer who's working in a terminal day in and out anyway, you can now use Apple frames from the
00:56:31 ◼ ► terminal and it's super fast. There's a video in the article that shows you how fast you can frame
00:56:37 ◼ ► a 50 images in a folder. Very cool. Um, it's all based on Python and, uh, with the standard with a
00:56:45 ◼ ► pillow, uh, uh, Python image library, no weird external dependencies. It makes one single call to the
00:56:53 ◼ ► internet. Uh, if you don't have the Apple frames assets already installed from the Mac stories CDN,
00:57:01 ◼ ► it will download those, but actually the CLI can detect if you are an existing user of Apple frames with shortcuts.
00:57:13 ◼ ► it supports some options that are not possible yet in the shortcut, for example, batch mode.
00:57:21 ◼ ► So let's say that you are a developer and you just took 200 screenshots of your app in multiple languages,
00:57:28 ◼ ► both in light mode and dark mode. And you have them in a folder or sub folders, all sequentially
00:57:34 ◼ ► named, you know, you name it. Um, you want to frame those screenshots for the app store,
00:57:39 ◼ ► but obviously you don't want to end up with a single image where all the images are framed
00:57:56 ◼ ► take this folder. It has 200 images. I want you to merge five iPhones side by side. So you frame this in
00:58:07 ◼ ► batches of five. So resulting in 40 images, right? And the CLI will do that. And on top of that,
00:58:14 ◼ ► you can add additional options. Like you can say, every time you frame, randomize the color,
00:58:19 ◼ ► for example. So you can have, you know, you can spice things up a little and it supports proportional
00:58:24 ◼ ► scaling. So you can put an iPhone next to an iPad and that'll be the right size. And, and of course,
00:58:31 ◼ ► to top it all off, there's a skill for cloud code or codex that teaches cloud code and codex or any coding
00:58:40 ◼ ► agent, how to use the CLI. So you can just drop it in, you install the CLI, you drop in the skill,
00:58:46 ◼ ► you ask cloud, uh, you know, um, I need to frame these images and cloud will know what you mean.
00:58:52 ◼ ► And, um, um, I even tested it with, um, uh, an, an MCP server for Xcode. I had the cloud test,
00:59:02 ◼ ► and this is something that, you know, if you're a developer, you can actually do this. It's not
00:59:06 ◼ ► science fiction. You can have cloud automatically test your application project from Xcode,
00:59:13 ◼ ► take screenshots of the simulator and frame them with the frames CLI. And it's going to work.
00:59:19 ◼ ► That is very cool. Yeah. Very cool. So thanks. So people can go to Mac stories and they can get
00:59:25 ◼ ► all of this, right? Yes. It's all free. And the shortcut is on Mac stories. It's on the Mac
00:59:30 ◼ ► story shortcuts archive and the CLI is open source on GitHub. I closed my first issue the other day
00:59:37 ◼ ► and I felt like a real developer, real developer. Yeah. It's strange times we're living in, but also
00:59:44 ◼ ► very, very fun. In, um, in honor of this, it's like, what, what's the best thing that we can
00:59:49 ◼ ► do on a podcast to celebrate Apple frames is to show off and talk about our home screens.
00:59:53 ◼ ► So we're going to do that. Of course. Uh, you'll find a link in the show notes to our current home
00:59:57 ◼ ► screen, uh, arrangements. Uh, should we talk through mine first? Cause you've done a lot of speaking.
01:00:03 ◼ ► Thank you. Um, so this is my, my current home screen, um, with the correct iPhone. I like that,
01:00:09 ◼ ► by the way. I think it's really cool that you do that. Um, so across the top, I, I'm, I'm very
01:00:13 ◼ ► widget focused. I've always been very widget focused and now even more widget focused than I was
01:00:17 ◼ ► before because part of my living is made by widgets. Now, um, the top kind of stack, uh,
01:00:24 ◼ ► I like stacks too on my main home screen. It's a, uh, fantastical, um, and carrot weather has always
01:00:32 ◼ ► been the classic, uh, kind of stack that I have there. I do also have a widget Smith, uh, calendar
01:00:40 ◼ ► there too, uh, which I've been tinkering with and playing around with a little bit recently,
01:00:44 ◼ ► because I do actually really like the way it's, uh, operates in widget Smith and you can use,
01:00:49 ◼ ► um, URL schemes that when I tap it, it opens fantastical. So that actually works pretty well
01:00:55 ◼ ► for me. Uh, but I'm, I'm playing around with it. I haven't been able to drop the fantastical widget
01:01:00 ◼ ► yet. I'm not really sure why I feel like it's just a part of my heart that I can't do it.
01:01:03 ◼ ► Uh, then I have another widget, which is due. So I use due for lots of like kind of simple reminders,
01:01:10 ◼ ► you know, like take out the trash, that kind of stuff. So if it's going to happen every day
01:01:18 ◼ ► Like I have like medication reminders. Some I'll put in there, um, little things like that. Um,
01:01:27 ◼ ► which has kind of like bigger shared family projects going reminders. So I've got those going on there.
01:01:33 ◼ ► Um, and then I have like two groups of four apps. So starting from the top, I have notes because that's
01:01:40 ◼ ► just my notes app. It has been for a really long time and I can't imagine moving. I really love the
01:01:44 ◼ ► notes app. Uh, I have chat GPT next. I'm thinking of changing this to Claude. Like I've been, I've
01:01:50 ◼ ► been using Claude more and more. Um, the thing that I haven't yet moved all over in to Claude is just
01:01:57 ◼ ► kind of like my general, instead of a web search searches, I haven't really put kind of Claude through
01:02:04 ◼ ► its paces for those, but I expect it probably does a good enough job. So that's kind of my next thing to
01:02:14 ◼ ► yes, Claude has been a sponsor, but the reason is because Federico for my birthday gave me a very
01:02:21 ◼ ► nice gift of, uh, Claude, I don't know, max, you gave me a month of max. Then I went and built a bunch
01:02:26 ◼ ► of apps and I was like, Oh, you know what? I love this. And I'm a big fan of co-work. Claude co-work is
01:02:32 ◼ ► really great. And when you hook that up with its connectors, man, I've been doing some fantastic
01:02:38 ◼ ► stuff recently with like being able to connect Claude to local files and my notion database.
01:02:44 ◼ ► Oh baby. I've been doing some stuff. I'm having a great time. Um, and I've got city mapper, which is
01:02:51 ◼ ► the app that I use for getting around London. City mapper is fantastic for public transport.
01:03:04 ◼ ► like filtering and stuff. Like in the summer, they have a has air con button for the different
01:03:11 ◼ ► transport options. It's very clever stuff. They, they really understand city living and how travel
01:03:16 ◼ ► works in cities. Um, then I got mango baby, which is the baby tracking app that I've used for a really
01:03:22 ◼ ► long time now. Um, obviously for over a year, uh, for obvious reasons. Then I have the photos app,
01:03:37 ◼ ► I'm reading Apple in China, but I'm reading, reading it, you know, like I'm actually reading,
01:03:46 ◼ ► Um, messages, got messages. Then I got widget Smith, which is like, it was really weird for
01:03:54 ◼ ► me to do this, to like put widget Smith on my main home screen because it's like, I have so
01:04:00 ◼ ► many ways to get to it, but we've got some stuff coming, which means that I'm needing to check the
01:04:15 ◼ ► that there's maybe like four to five people in the world that have widget Smith, just the app on
01:04:21 ◼ ► their home screen. And now I'm one of them. The rest of them also probably work on widget Smith
01:04:28 ◼ ► would be my expectation. Um, then I have timery. Um, and underneath timery is a kind of a small
01:04:36 ◼ ► kind of two stack shortcuts widget, which is two of my most used time tracking focused shortcuts.
01:04:44 ◼ ► Um, so that I have one, which is to, um, just go back in time and add an entry. So like, I can say,
01:04:53 ◼ ► like press a button, it pops up and I like 15 minutes, 30 minutes or enter a time. And this
01:04:59 ◼ ► is like, sometimes I found myself working on something and I'm like, oh, I forgot to start
01:05:02 ◼ ► my timer. So I could just jump back in time and add an entry. And then the other one is, uh,
01:05:07 ◼ ► when I'm recording shows, it's a shortcut that looks at my calendar, finds the name of the current
01:05:15 ◼ ► entry in my podcast calendar. And then adds that name as a tag to a, uh, a time entry because I just
01:05:25 ◼ ► format things in such a way that that all works very nicely. Um, in my doc, I have to do this notion,
01:05:31 ◼ ► Safari and overcast. Um, then on my second screen, I have a stack of health apps. So athletic is my
01:05:38 ◼ ► favorite. Um, but I also have been trying out a couple of other ones. I have peak in there and also,
01:05:43 ◼ ► um, uh, gentler streak, which I also have the icon for gentler streak on my home screen,
01:05:50 ◼ ► gentler streak is not going to last. It just doesn't work for me. I can't explain it. It just
01:05:53 ◼ ► doesn't have the feeling that I want. Athletic is absolutely the app that I want. Um, I then have a
01:05:59 ◼ ► mango baby widget. I have craft. Um, I've been playing around of craft for some notes stuff, but
01:06:04 ◼ ► again, I also don't think that's going to last. Um, and then I put Delta on, uh, I started replaying a
01:06:10 ◼ ► Pokemon game a little while ago, but, uh, I've stopped now, but yeah. So that, that kind of,
01:06:15 ◼ ► there's like a four stack there of, of, um, apps. Those are like things I need that I'm trying,
01:06:20 ◼ ► right? It's like, it's like a reminder to try the things that live in that space. Um, and then have
01:06:26 ◼ ► Duolingo. Uh, I, I missed my Duolingo yesterday, which I was very upset about. Uh, but I guess I'm
01:06:33 ◼ ► sorry for your loss. It's okay. I, I don't, I'm not too precious about this, the streak. Um,
01:06:38 ◼ ► I've been doing Duolingo for over 800 days at this point. I'm not super upset about the streak
01:06:44 ◼ ► thing. Uh, basically I was doing my Duolingo, um, at night. So like we used to give Sophia like
01:06:50 ◼ ► one, like we'd kind of wake her up and give her a feed, like give her a bottle that stopped
01:06:56 ◼ ► happening completely through my life into disarray of like when I do my Duolingo and now I just keep
01:07:01 ◼ ► forgetting. Um, but it's fine. And I, for a sec, for a second, my brain thought, give her an RSS feed.
01:07:08 ◼ ► Give her an RSS feed. I'm like, kid, you need to learn about CLIs. You're going to get replaced.
01:07:15 ◼ ► You're going to hurry up. Uh, then I have a stack of photos widgets. So I've got the photos app and
01:07:21 ◼ ► then a bunch of like, I have two WidgetSmith widgets. Uh, one is an on this day widget. Uh, one is a,
01:07:29 ◼ ► um, pulls from albums and one pulls from favorites actually. Now say all of this sounds like, wow,
01:07:37 ◼ ► Mike's talking about WidgetSmith a lot. Is it because he works there now on these two pages,
01:07:41 ◼ ► all of the widgets that I had, I had before I started working with WidgetSmith. The next page,
01:07:48 ◼ ► these are all that I did afterwards, right? So like I've been using WidgetSmith for a long time.
01:07:52 ◼ ► Anyway, there's a lot of history. There's a lot of documented history of my home screen. So you can
01:07:57 ◼ ► prove that fact yourself. Uh, then on my last page, I have a bunch of other widgets. So I have a time
01:08:03 ◼ ► zone widget. I have a music widget, which gives me quick access to a bunch of music that we play for
01:08:10 ◼ ► Sophia. So we have like a lullabies playlist. There's also a Imogen Heaps Happy Song, which is just one of the
01:08:16 ◼ ► greatest creations in all of history. Federico, it was a scientifically, um, it was a, it was a song
01:08:22 ◼ ► that was backed by scientific research from Goldsmith University in the UK to create a song that would
01:08:29 ◼ ► make children happy. They approached Imogen Heap. She said, yes, they produced it. This song is like
01:08:35 ◼ ► a thing and child's unhappy. You play the happy song. They become happy again. Unbelievable. Uh,
01:08:42 ◼ ► then there is a white noise widget. It actually plays, do I have brown noise? Yeah. Brown noise,
01:08:47 ◼ ► which is just a nicer sound than white noise. Um, and then just like a photo of, uh, Adina and the
01:08:53 ◼ ► baby. And there's, there's also some other photos, which is in that stack of some secret things that
01:08:57 ◼ ► we're working on. And then I have a collection of baby related apps. So, uh, Sleep Coach and
01:09:02 ◼ ► Huckleberry apps that we've done use for different things. Sleep Coach is like a sleep predictor app.
01:09:07 ◼ ► Um, Huckleberry is like Huckleberry is what Mango Baby is, but not made by an independent
01:09:14 ◼ ► developer. What if like this app, but they really want you to become like all parents use Huckleberry.
01:09:20 ◼ ► It's the one that is, I think a bit predatory. Like they really want your subscription and it's
01:09:25 ◼ ► really expensive and that kind of thing. Um, and then baby log is a shortcut that I made that just
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01:10:55 ◼ ► So I don't really use widgets. I use widgets much less than you do. So starting from the...
01:11:11 ◼ ► I use the left page, the today page of the home screen for basic stuff. Like I have two calendar
01:11:21 ◼ ► widgets, one for the family calendar, another for the work calendar. Then I have two shortcuts widgets,
01:11:26 ◼ ► one for Apple Frames, one for shortcuts Playground, which I use all the time to sort of generate shortcuts
01:11:31 ◼ ► on my Mac Studio server in the background and then install them directly on my iPhone and then the batteries
01:11:37 ◼ ► widget. Okay. I don't use that screen at all anymore. Interesting. That's... I use it because I
01:11:47 ◼ ► really don't want to see widgets on my primary home screen, which has to be all about icons. Okay.
01:11:51 ◼ ► Maybe eventually... I really would love to have keyboard input support for widgets like it's possible
01:11:58 ◼ ► on Android, but that's not possible on iOS, unfortunately. On my home screen, it's... These have been the apps that I've
01:12:07 ◼ ► been using most... It's been pretty consistent. The one thing I will... The one thing I will call out
01:12:14 ◼ ► immediately is that you will see the icon for X on my home screen. I am not a... I am not an X user, but
01:12:23 ◼ ► unfortunately, I have to use it to keep up with some AI news that unbeknownst to me only happened there.
01:12:31 ◼ ► Don't ask me why. Some people don't use blogs. Some people don't post on Blue Sky or Mastodon.
01:12:38 ◼ ► They just... We mentioned this before on the show. I am so confused by the fact that a bunch of people who
01:12:46 ◼ ► work at OpenAI, people that I know, continue posting on X. A company run by the guy that is suing
01:12:55 ◼ ► OpenAI. But it's self-perpetuating, right? Like, if they continue to do it, it's the place you have to do it.
01:13:01 ◼ ► Like, if you want to talk about AI, you have to go there. I don't know why that is the case.
01:13:06 ◼ ► Yeah. Like, I would understand, sure, if you don't want to use Mastodon for whatever reason. But Blue Sky exists? Like, why not use that? I don't understand.
01:13:14 ◼ ► I don't get it. I don't understand it. But unfortunately, I have to use it because, like, some... I have noticed things and discovered people that became meaningful connections for Mac stories, for things like embargoes and articles, including one that you will see in a few minutes.
01:13:37 ◼ ► Yeah. In about 15 minutes, you will see one that is a result of one of these connections from X, unfortunately. So, it is what it is. I was opening the timeline enough times during the day that I realized, well, I'm just going to swallow this ugly thing and put X on the home screen. Whatever.
01:14:04 ◼ ► Top row has always been about media for me. So, App Store, because I check for app updates multiple times a day.
01:14:14 ◼ ► I recently switched from Pocket Casts after many years back to Overcast because of the transcript feature and because, I don't know, there's something about it.
01:14:27 ◼ ► The story that Marco told on ATP about, like, going from one Mac mini to a fleet of Mac minis in a data center and using the Apple APIs for transcriptions and the plans that he has for the future.
01:14:39 ◼ ► There's something so cool about the fact that there's a small army of Mac minis in a data center generating transcripts.
01:14:55 ◼ ► Whenever I do use the transcript feature, which I do, it's quite handy to skip ads in podcasts.
01:15:03 ◼ ► But also to go back and, you know, double check, did that person really say that or, you know, just find something.
01:15:12 ◼ ► And also the Overcast audio effects are, I gotta say, still unparalleled compared to Pocket Casts or Castro.
01:15:25 ◼ ► So, I finally, I can say this with confidence, finally switched for good from Spotify to Apple Music.
01:15:41 ◼ ► I just very much, very, very much like the Apple Music UI, especially the now playing screen with lyrics.
01:15:52 ◼ ► And I love the ability to pin albums and artists or playlists to the top of your library,
01:16:12 ◼ ► So, that icon next to Apple Music, the light mode equivalent in the third row from the bottom,
01:16:21 ◼ ► and then the two yellow ones, those are all commissioned icons that I created for some of my local web apps
01:16:48 ◼ ► So, it's a web app that loads YouTube videos that I saved for later with the Notion Web Clipper.
01:16:54 ◼ ► And I have a Notion AI agent that reformats them, presents them nicely, and gets them ready for this web app
01:17:00 ◼ ► where they are presented in a grid view that shows me a timestamp, a duration, a summary, a bunch of nice things.
01:17:45 ◼ ► Sylvia clearly didn't hear my diatribe of the first version of the Spark mail app on the Mac, which was, oh boy.
01:18:22 ◼ ► This is similar to the other one in that it's based on the same Notion database, but it's about regular web clippings.
01:18:39 ◼ ► I know you use Notion a lot now, and I can't hardly talk about it, but do you not use Obsidian at all anymore?
01:18:59 ◼ ► Notion is just, there's this new term that I use a lot to describe these AI experiences.
01:19:12 ◼ ► I find that Notion and cloud are some of the most ergonomic AI products in the sense that they adapt to you.
01:19:56 ◼ ► The first one is, again, when I say the cloud is ergonomic, I really like the fact that cloud on iOS has a built-in reminders integration.
01:20:28 ◼ ► But the second reason, and a small teaser that I also posted on Mastodon a couple of weeks ago.
01:20:41 ◼ ► And I will tell you, because the whole point of making this CLI was to make the best CLI for reminders.
01:21:16 ◼ ► The first one lets me quickly add text or images or audio to my Notion Daily Note for the day.
01:21:26 ◼ ► And next to it, a sort of similar Notion Daily Note web app, but to scroll horizontally, as you can see in the icon, my currently open daily notes.
01:21:44 ◼ ► My message, WhatsApp, Matter, which I'm using as my read-lator, again, because of two features.
01:21:51 ◼ ► The superior text-to-speech and the CLI, of course, that came out a couple of days ago.
01:22:12 ◼ ► And in the doc, Notion, Cloud, Safari, best browser that you can use on iOS, and Telegram, which I exclusively use for Cloud.
01:22:28 ◼ ► There's the Cloud widget, which I currently gain the ability to be customizable, so you can change the buttons in the Cloud widget.
01:22:48 ◼ ► Content creators posting long-form videos on X instead of YouTube and forcing me to watch them on X.
01:22:56 ◼ ► So I vibe-coded a web app that takes my bookmarks from X, downloads those videos, and lets me watch them in a native Apple video player.
01:23:40 ◼ ► The Philips U widget and the last row is two dictation apps and two vibe-coded web apps.
01:23:48 ◼ ► The two dictation apps that I need to make a decision about right now are AquaVoice, the
01:24:04 ◼ ► I think AquaVoice is a little more Apple-like and intuitive, and they have their own custom
01:24:10 ◼ ► voice transcription model that I think works better than Super Whisper, so I'm probably gonna
01:24:20 ◼ ► I think this one I will commission, because this is the RSS reader that I'm, especially
01:24:40 ◼ ► So whenever I open it, the AI takes a look at my unread articles and groups them in columns
01:24:49 ◼ ► It's a very nice way to mark a bunch of related things as read and to find them all grouped
01:25:29 ◼ ► A lot of the things that I try and build, I eventually discard because the only reason I do it is
01:25:36 ◼ ► like the things that I, the things that I release to the public are like a fraction of the things
01:25:43 ◼ ► But every time I learn something and that I think is really valuable, especially if, you
01:25:55 ◼ ► curious and I, and I think that tinkering with AI and these things is a great way to, to stay
01:26:02 ◼ ► Even if I don't end up releasing a bunch of, a bunch of these things, it, it, it, it was
01:26:10 ◼ ► And the empty row is empty, is empty because that's where I drop random stuff that I want
01:26:16 ◼ ► Uh, when I'm, when I'm writing for Mac Stories Weekly, the app debuts, that kind of thing.
01:26:23 ◼ ► If you want to get the notes for this episode, this should be in your podcast player of choice,
01:26:27 ◼ ► but they're always on the rep, the web over at relay.fm slash connected slash 599 is the
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01:26:52 ◼ ► If you would like to catch up with the Prince Flexi online, he's the editor-in-chief of