Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Ding!]

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Reel AFM, this is Upgrade, episode 389.

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

00:00:16 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley, I am joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason!

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hi, Myke! Oh, you're so energetic! It's great, good to start the show with so much energy.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Mhm, I've always got energy for this show.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Mhm.

00:00:29 ◼   ► I've got a #SNLtalk question for you.

00:00:31 ◼   ► It comes from Alexander, and Alexander asks, "As your family gets older, how do you handle

00:00:37 ◼   ► IT questions and concerns as your family's IT administrator?

00:00:41 ◼   ► Do you use things like screen sharing?

00:00:43 ◼   ► What do you do?"

00:00:44 ◼   ► So, first off, I don't actually know whether Alexander means as my family gets older, meaning

00:00:48 ◼   ► my kids are 20 and 17 now, or whether it means my mom and my in-laws who are in their 80s.

00:00:56 ◼   ► - The way I read this is like,

00:00:58 ◼   ► as older family gets even older, you know what I mean?

00:01:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I had that moment of like,

00:01:03 ◼   ► oh, what do they mean by this?

00:01:04 ◼   ► My answer is the same, which is, you know,

00:01:07 ◼   ► remote support is hard.

00:01:10 ◼   ► I have definitely done a screen-sharing session

00:01:14 ◼   ► with my daughter in college

00:01:15 ◼   ► where I've had to fix something on her computer.

00:01:17 ◼   ► I have not yet done that with iOS

00:01:21 ◼   ► where you can now do an iOS screen-share,

00:01:24 ◼   ► but I did get my mom a newer iPad

00:01:28 ◼   ► that supports the current version of iOS

00:01:31 ◼   ► so that I could do that if she has a problem in the future.

00:01:34 ◼   ► - I just realized I have not tried that.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Is that a thing that works now with SharePlay,

00:01:40 ◼   ► the screen sharing?

00:01:41 ◼   ► - You can share your screen to someone else, yes.

00:01:46 ◼   ► That's a new thing.

00:01:47 ◼   ► - Okay, and so like if I wanted to see your screen,

00:01:49 ◼   ► you would have to say show me,

00:01:51 ◼   ► you'd have to say show the screen to Myke kind of thing.

00:01:54 ◼   ► - Exactly, yeah.

00:01:55 ◼   ► But it's a better experience than what we had before

00:01:59 ◼   ► and it is view only,

00:02:00 ◼   ► so you still have to talk them through it,

00:02:02 ◼   ► but you can, you know, it eliminates that whole like,

00:02:05 ◼   ► what does it say in the bottom right corner?

00:02:07 ◼   ► It's like, well, there's just a green thing there.

00:02:08 ◼   ► I was like, okay, that doesn't make any sense.

00:02:11 ◼   ► It's not what it looks like,

00:02:12 ◼   ► so you need to tell me where you are.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Instead, you can see it

00:02:14 ◼   ► and then you have to step them through it.

00:02:17 ◼   ► I haven't done that yet.

00:02:18 ◼   ► I definitely have done that thing

00:02:19 ◼   ► where I've done the screen sharing with Jamie

00:02:22 ◼   ► and it's been a funny thing where,

00:02:25 ◼   ► 'cause that you can take control,

00:02:27 ◼   ► but they also can control and you have that thing

00:02:31 ◼   ► where you have to say, stop typing,

00:02:33 ◼   ► I am going to do the typing now, stop typing,

00:02:36 ◼   ► don't click anything, I'm doing the clicking now, right?

00:02:40 ◼   ► But also they tend to call you and say,

00:02:43 ◼   ► I am having trouble.

00:02:44 ◼   ► And then you say, let's do a screen share.

00:02:46 ◼   ► And then of course, you know what happens

00:02:47 ◼   ► is. The screen share very helpfully also transmits audio. And now you've got two separate audio

00:02:53 ◼   ► channels. So then you have to hang up your phone call and use that screen sharing audio,

00:02:57 ◼   ► which doesn't sound as good. And then when you're done with the screen share, if you

00:03:01 ◼   ► still need to talk, you have to call them back. It's a thing. Anyway, but that's mostly

00:03:05 ◼   ► what I am using is just that kind of stuff. Nothing much more than that. I'm not a super

00:03:15 ◼   ► hands-on IT administrator, I let the people in my family use their stuff.

00:03:19 ◼   ► And if they have a problem, they can come to me and I'll try to figure it out.

00:03:22 ◼   ► But there was, this is my, my in-laws have all Apple stuff.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Now there was a period where they had, they had max in the early days,

00:03:31 ◼   ► and then they bought a PC.

00:03:33 ◼   ► And I said to, I remember very clearly, I said to them, okay, you're

00:03:40 ◼   ► welcome to do with your money.

00:03:41 ◼   ► It's your life.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Do you do whatever you want?

00:03:43 ◼   ► But just to be clear, I'm not providing you

00:03:46 ◼   ► any technical support on PC.

00:03:47 ◼   ► - I cannot help you now.

00:03:48 ◼   ► - I can't help you with that.

00:03:51 ◼   ► And this was when my brother-in-law

00:03:54 ◼   ► was like a early teenager.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Maybe he was 10.

00:04:00 ◼   ► But they had that computer long enough for him

00:04:02 ◼   ► to become a teenager,

00:04:04 ◼   ► get super into downloading things on the internet,

00:04:07 ◼   ► get the whole computer infested with spyware and malware.

00:04:11 ◼   ► And then they bought an iMac

00:04:13 ◼   ► and they've been back on the Mac ever since.

00:04:15 ◼   ► So yeah, good times, good times.

00:04:20 ◼   ► - If you would like to send in a question

00:04:22 ◼   ► for us to open an episode of the show,

00:04:24 ◼   ► just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snltalk

00:04:26 ◼   ► or use question mark Snltalk

00:04:27 ◼   ► in the relay of their members discord.

00:04:30 ◼   ► So a couple of items of follow up.

00:04:32 ◼   ► The first is Upgrade Keyboard Club is returning this week.

00:04:36 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:04:37 ◼   ► - Friday the 14th at 9 a.m. Pacific time, 12 Eastern time.

00:04:42 ◼   ► That's 5 p.m. UK time, et cetera, et cetera.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Go to mic.live, which is my Twitch stream,

00:04:49 ◼   ► and Jason's gonna be joining me.

00:04:51 ◼   ► - I'll be there. - And we are going to be,

00:04:53 ◼   ► hopefully, completing Jason's keyboard build.

00:04:56 ◼   ► I have been buying lots of things

00:04:58 ◼   ► to modify the sound of the keyboard

00:05:00 ◼   ► because I am currently unhappy

00:05:02 ◼   ► with the sound of the keyboard,

00:05:03 ◼   ► and it is not good enough for me to deliver to Jason Snell.

00:05:06 ◼   ► So we will be building that together on Friday,

00:05:09 ◼   ► so you can tune in and check that out.

00:05:11 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes to a video of the previous iteration of Upquay Keyhole

00:05:17 ◼   ► Club when we hung out together and built stuff.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Yeah, me and Steven and we did it. I've got keycaps and other stuff here that's waiting

00:05:24 ◼   ► for the arrival of it too, so maybe I can show those off on Friday too.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Very nice.

00:05:29 ◼   ► I've been preparing the way for the receipt of the great mic-created keyboard when it

00:05:36 ◼   ► gets here. We'll roll out the red carpet, we've got some trumpeters, the whole thing

00:05:39 ◼   ► to receive the keyboard.

00:05:40 ◼   ► No pressure.

00:05:41 ◼   ► It's going to be a great day and it's going to be tricky to ship it because these things

00:05:46 ◼   ► are always really heavy but you know, you can make it work.

00:05:49 ◼   ► Jason Sudeikis won a Golden Globe for best TV actor in a comedy.

00:05:53 ◼   ► Again.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Oh, I love it when the Jason S's win stuff.

00:05:57 ◼   ► It's great.

00:05:58 ◼   ► It's good.

00:05:59 ◼   ► They had weird Golden Globes this year because they had their scandal last year and everybody

00:06:02 ◼   ► hated them and so they did it.

00:06:04 ◼   ► They basically got put in the penalty box and there wasn't a public event and it wasn't

00:06:08 ◼   ► on TV or anything like that, but they still gave out awards and Jason Sudeikis doubled

00:06:13 ◼   ► up and he obviously won the Emmy too. So just more accolades for Ted Lasso.

00:06:19 ◼   ► - There was the movie about a dog or something won a lot of Golden Globes.

00:06:25 ◼   ► - The movie about a dog. That's, you know, I don't know what you mean. I don't know anything

00:06:32 ◼   ► about it and I kind of love it. I kind of love that this could literally be, you made

00:06:36 ◼   ► something up it's like the Simpsons like dog on fire you know dog on fire had a

00:06:40 ◼   ► dog on fire so I don't I honestly don't know what the movie about the dog is I

00:06:48 ◼   ► don't want to know I don't want to know I want to go through life now knowing

00:06:54 ◼   ► you know what movie people are liking is that one about the dog just to see what

00:06:59 ◼   ► happens see if I can get any more information or if they look at me like I

00:07:04 ◼   ► I don't know what I'm talking about because you've set me up by saying I thought it was

00:07:07 ◼   ► a movie about a dog but it turns out it's not.

00:07:09 ◼   ► It's about a man who kills a cat.

00:07:10 ◼   ► - Would you like to hear the premise?

00:07:11 ◼   ► 'Cause I think it's only gonna confuse it more.

00:07:13 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:07:14 ◼   ► - A domineering rancher responds with mocking cruelty when his brother brings home a new

00:07:18 ◼   ► wife and her son until the unexpected comes to pass.

00:07:22 ◼   ► - But is it unexpected that they get a dog?

00:07:24 ◼   ► - I don't know, man.

00:07:25 ◼   ► All I know is I've seen a lot of posters for this and didn't understand really anything

00:07:30 ◼   ► about the movie but then it won like a ton of awards.

00:07:34 ◼   ► - Is this the movie where the guy thinks he's a bee?

00:07:37 ◼   ► That's a different movie, right?

00:07:39 ◼   ► - That's a different movie.

00:07:40 ◼   ► This is dog movie and that was bee movie.

00:07:44 ◼   ► This is on Netflix.

00:07:45 ◼   ► This is a Netflix movie by the way.

00:07:46 ◼   ► And I don't know, it might, I don't know if this,

00:07:49 ◼   ► it might end up winning the,

00:07:51 ◼   ► might win an Oscar, we'll find out.

00:07:52 ◼   ► - For your consideration, a movie about a dog.

00:07:55 ◼   ► - Movie about a dog.

00:07:56 ◼   ► I have a rumor roundup for you, Jason.

00:07:58 ◼   ► - Lots of rumors.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Mark Guern suggesting that Apple will be looking

00:08:04 ◼   ► at holding an event in March or April.

00:08:07 ◼   ► Mark said this was to focus on the iPhone SE with 5G.

00:08:12 ◼   ► That doesn't seem right to me.

00:08:14 ◼   ► Maybe they will announce it then,

00:08:15 ◼   ► but that doesn't feel like what your like temp hole

00:08:18 ◼   ► of an Apple event.

00:08:19 ◼   ► - No, that's like, and you could ask the question,

00:08:23 ◼   ► like, why not?

00:08:26 ◼   ► Why not do an event for the iPhone SE?

00:08:27 ◼   ► 5G, 5G, 5G, let's get Verizon out here to talk about 5G.

00:08:32 ◼   ► I think Apple has internalized this rule, which is the rule that an Apple media event

00:08:40 ◼   ► truly must be an event.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Otherwise it's just a press release.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And making a video press release, making an infomercial is not something that Apple wants

00:08:49 ◼   ► to do.

00:08:50 ◼   ► And I am very happy because they used to be bad at that before Steve Jobs came back and

00:08:56 ◼   ► right when Steve Jobs came back. And it was Apple events weren't special. In fact, the

00:09:02 ◼   ► story that I always tell is only the editor-in-chief of Macworld went to the iMac launch. And that

00:09:08 ◼   ► was as a courtesy because Apple's previous two "let's get the media down here to spring

00:09:13 ◼   ► something on them" events that they had done had been nothing, had been just wastes of

00:09:18 ◼   ► our time. And, but Jobs instituted, I think, in Apple this idea that if we're going to

00:09:25 ◼   ► do an event and we're gonna go to the trouble we need to have, we need to put on a show.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And so iPhone SE sounds like that is the most tangible thing that Mark Gurman has, like

00:09:35 ◼   ► that is part of the plan, but that is nothing. That's a nothing. So there's got to be more

00:09:40 ◼   ► to the story of what would be in that event because if that's all they do, that would

00:09:46 ◼   ► be not that an iPhone SE with 5G and you know refreshed internals and the A15 and all that

00:09:52 ◼   ► isn't perfectly nice, but like, can you imagine saying,

00:09:55 ◼   ► you know, we got a really great event today

00:09:57 ◼   ► where we're going to put out a cut rate iPhone,

00:09:59 ◼   ► bye everybody, like that's not going to cut it.

00:10:01 ◼   ► It's just not going to do it.

00:10:02 ◼   ► - If they created like the successor to the iPhone mini,

00:10:07 ◼   ► you know, and released it at a weird time in the year,

00:10:11 ◼   ► sure, maybe, you know what I mean?

00:10:12 ◼   ► Like if it was like, here's the iPhone SE

00:10:16 ◼   ► and it looks like an iPhone mini

00:10:18 ◼   ► and it's as big as an iPhone mini and like, this is the,

00:10:20 ◼   ► you know, like maybe, but even then it would still be

00:10:24 ◼   ► a bit of a stretch if that was your whole event.

00:10:27 ◼   ► - So I think this is the case where that's the one

00:10:29 ◼   ► that Mark Gurman has confidence in,

00:10:31 ◼   ► but that there are other products

00:10:32 ◼   ► that are gonna be loaded in there.

00:10:34 ◼   ► He's just not quite sure what they are

00:10:35 ◼   ► and so he's not gonna report it,

00:10:37 ◼   ► but he feels like they're ready to launch that one

00:10:39 ◼   ► and that one will definitely be there.

00:10:40 ◼   ► And maybe even his sources are saying, you know,

00:10:44 ◼   ► we're not quite sure how this is gonna resolve.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Also it's March or April, right?

00:10:48 ◼   ► So it's like, you know, we're working it out.

00:10:50 ◼   ► but that they will, that an event is coalescing

00:10:53 ◼   ► and that the SE is definitely gonna be one of the things

00:10:56 ◼   ► that's there and then the rest are to be determined.

00:10:59 ◼   ► But I would be surprised if there wasn't,

00:11:03 ◼   ► you know, this feels like maybe this is the MacBook Air

00:11:06 ◼   ► or maybe the iMac,

00:11:08 ◼   ► that there may be a Mac announcement in there too.

00:11:10 ◼   ► And that that would be the thing, right?

00:11:11 ◼   ► 'Cause there's no, I don't know,

00:11:13 ◼   ► they could do like an iPad Air refresh and all that,

00:11:16 ◼   ► but like what's up, you know,

00:11:18 ◼   ► So what's up next that we would think would be in March or April?

00:11:22 ◼   ► And my guess is that it may be more like Mac stuff than anything else.

00:11:27 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:11:28 ◼   ► - Well, one of the things that I thought it could have been, but reports are suggesting

00:11:32 ◼   ► that maybe it wouldn't be, is AirPods Pro 2.

00:11:36 ◼   ► This is a product that is expected for next year, but for, according to Min-Chi Kuo and

00:11:41 ◼   ► DigiTimes, both got different reports here, suggesting H2, so the second half of the year.

00:11:47 ◼   ► New design, improved audio quality with the ability to play lossless audio, and a new

00:11:53 ◼   ► case that can make a sound.

00:11:55 ◼   ► So if you want to find the case, right, so you do it in Fi-Mi.

00:11:59 ◼   ► The way you said that, it was a little bit like it can make a sound.

00:12:01 ◼   ► Like what sound?

00:12:02 ◼   ► Is it, is it, is it that dog from that movie?

00:12:05 ◼   ► Is that the sound?

00:12:06 ◼   ► The dog, the dog makes the sound.

00:12:08 ◼   ► Uh, this is the barking case.

00:12:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it's been, you know, it feels like it was just yesterday that the AirPods Pro came

00:12:15 ◼   ► out, but it's been quite a while now. That was what, in 2019? Maybe?

00:12:21 ◼   ► 2019. 2019. 2019, yeah.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Let me walk you through my thought process there, Myke. I went to an Apple store in Palo

00:12:31 ◼   ► Alto and got a briefing for the AirPods Pro, and they did a demo, and that pretty much

00:12:37 ◼   ► means it happened at 2019 or earlier, so. But that puts it in perspective.

00:12:43 ◼   ► - Oh yeah. - Oh my God.

00:12:45 ◼   ► - That's how you know.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Did it get sent to you or did you go see it?

00:12:48 ◼   ► - Or did I go see it?

00:12:49 ◼   ► And so 2019, it's like, so it's been a while.

00:12:52 ◼   ► I love the AirPods Pro.

00:12:53 ◼   ► I think they're amazing.

00:12:55 ◼   ► I remember when the rumors were out there

00:12:57 ◼   ► that they were gonna do a pro version of AirPods.

00:12:59 ◼   ► I was like, is this a thing?

00:13:01 ◼   ► Is this really gonna be necessary?

00:13:02 ◼   ► I was really skeptical about like them going

00:13:03 ◼   ► in the ear canal 'cause I'm such a dedicated

00:13:05 ◼   ► kind of in ear canal headphone user.

00:13:09 ◼   ► I was skeptical about the noise cancellation.

00:13:10 ◼   ► I was skeptical.

00:13:11 ◼   ► What I'm saying is I went into it being really skeptical

00:13:13 ◼   ► And it turns out I love them so much

00:13:16 ◼   ► and they have replaced almost all of my use

00:13:19 ◼   ► of other headphones other than like when I'm podcasting

00:13:21 ◼   ► or editing a podcast.

00:13:23 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm looking forward to whatever they've got.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Myke, how could they improve it?

00:13:29 ◼   ► How could they?

00:13:30 ◼   ► - Well, there was this report, right,

00:13:32 ◼   ► about Bluetooth being a holdback for them.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Did you see this?

00:13:37 ◼   ► It was like an interview kind of thing.

00:13:39 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, right.

00:13:40 ◼   ► Well, I mean, okay, so they rolled out lossless audio

00:13:45 ◼   ► without support of it for it on their own devices, right?

00:13:49 ◼   ► Not great, not Apple-like, it's not what they would prefer.

00:13:53 ◼   ► So I feel like at that moment,

00:13:55 ◼   ► we all knew that there would be a future version of AirPods

00:13:59 ◼   ► that supported lossless.

00:14:00 ◼   ► - Or they would just enable it on the current ones,

00:14:02 ◼   ► but we weren't sure at the time,

00:14:04 ◼   ► like what was the possibility, what could Apple do?

00:14:07 ◼   ► but they weren't going to say, "No, no, no. Wireless just doesn't get this feature."

00:14:12 ◼   ► Because they're going to want to talk about it. So they put the spatial audio in, the

00:14:18 ◼   ► old ones, but not lossless. And everything we hear is that current Bluetooth can't do

00:14:22 ◼   ► it. I think it's funny that a lot of people are speculating, like, "Is Apple going to

00:14:28 ◼   ► make its own thing, make its own wireless thing that solves this problem?" And then

00:14:32 ◼   ► will they have phones even have Bluetooth in it? So, well, they're going to have Bluetooth

00:14:35 ◼   ► in it because you want to have it connect to all the devices, including devices that

00:14:39 ◼   ► don't have support for a new standard like, you know, Macs and everything have Bluetooth.

00:14:43 ◼   ► However, I imagine, and I'm not deep down in this world, but I only see two scenarios

00:14:50 ◼   ► here. One is that there's a new wireless audio streaming spec that is out there, that is

00:14:58 ◼   ► being implemented or is about to be implemented that Apple will do, or two, that Apple is

00:15:04 ◼   ► on the committee that's working on that and has done its own implementation and is going

00:15:08 ◼   ► to release it and then and also submit it as the next version of the standard. But either

00:15:13 ◼   ► way, I think this is the kind of thing where it's unlikely that Apple is going to invent

00:15:17 ◼   ► its own thing. I think it's far more likely that Apple is going to use some existing technology,

00:15:22 ◼   ► perhaps one that they pushed along as a standard, because they're the ones who really want this

00:15:27 ◼   ► wireless lossless audio support. But I do think it'll happen, and I do think that it's

00:15:34 ◼   ► been a priority of Apple because they made the decision to do lossless and then it immediately

00:15:39 ◼   ► makes you look at their wireless headphones and go, "Well, wait a second. Why don't they

00:15:43 ◼   ► support it?"

00:15:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I wonder what else they could do. Like, on connected federal because there's something

00:15:48 ◼   ► that I like that maybe they could increase the range or something, which I thought might

00:15:52 ◼   ► be kind of cool.

00:15:53 ◼   ► Yeah, they did that with the – what did they do? Well, they actually increased the

00:15:56 ◼   ► range with the phones on the phone side, right? They did a new Bluetooth chip. I remember

00:16:01 ◼   ► that from the—it was at the 12 or the 13 where one of the features was that AirPod

00:16:08 ◼   ► range was increased, but it was the phone did a better job, and then so the AirPods

00:16:12 ◼   ► were just—because it takes two to make that connection, so the phone made it better. I

00:16:17 ◼   ► mean, there's a lot of software stuff happening in there, so they could—or maybe it's

00:16:21 ◼   ► firmware stuff, but you know what I mean—they could improve the filtering of audio, the

00:16:29 ◼   ► noise canceling and all of that.

00:16:31 ◼   ► There's rumors that they're interested in doing sensors

00:16:35 ◼   ► in there for like health data,

00:16:37 ◼   ► unclear if that's gonna be a part of this,

00:16:39 ◼   ► but that there's rumors that that's an area

00:16:41 ◼   ► they wanna go in.

00:16:42 ◼   ► So then you're running with your AirPods

00:16:44 ◼   ► and it's able to,

00:16:45 ◼   ► 'cause it's in your ears,

00:16:46 ◼   ► it's able to measure things.

00:16:48 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't know.

00:16:49 ◼   ► But making it sound better and support better quality audio

00:16:54 ◼   ► and maybe have an improved level of noise canceling

00:16:57 ◼   ► and maybe improve pass through,

00:16:59 ◼   ► Maybe they have a better algorithm to detect voice

00:17:04 ◼   ► and filter that and send it through

00:17:07 ◼   ► so that you can hear other people.

00:17:08 ◼   ► It's that idea that AirPods aren't hearing aids

00:17:11 ◼   ► and yet they kind of are.

00:17:13 ◼   ► And so if they can improve some sort of accessibility

00:17:17 ◼   ► aspects with it, but that's all the secret sauce stuff.

00:17:21 ◼   ► That's the stuff where they're like,

00:17:22 ◼   ► we've tweaked our algorithm.

00:17:25 ◼   ► but it's been since 2019 since they released one.

00:17:29 ◼   ► So they've had a lot of time to work on a next-gen version

00:17:32 ◼   ► that does all the stuff that the regular AirPods Pro do,

00:17:35 ◼   ► but better.

00:17:36 ◼   ► - When they say about design,

00:17:38 ◼   ► I wonder if they're gonna do some kind of change

00:17:40 ◼   ► because they wanna fix that problem, the clicking problem?

00:17:44 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, right.

00:17:45 ◼   ► - I figure they gotta change somehow, right?

00:17:47 ◼   ► 'Cause you can still just walk in

00:17:48 ◼   ► and get your AirPods Pro just replaced all the time

00:17:51 ◼   ► if they're doing that little clicking thing.

00:17:52 ◼   ► So they've got to do something at least to fix whatever it was that caused that problem.

00:17:57 ◼   ► Right, well, and my question is, is that a problem that is fixed in more recent batches

00:18:03 ◼   ► of AirPods Pro, or is it continuing to be a production problem?

00:18:08 ◼   ► But regardless, yeah, I mean, like, if you have a thing that's costing you money because

00:18:11 ◼   ► you're having to replace all sorts of these AirPods because they don't, they make this

00:18:16 ◼   ► weird sound after a while, some of them, then you would certainly use what you learn there

00:18:21 ◼   ► to redesign them to not do that, hopefully.

00:18:25 ◼   ► And then also, headset, our favorite. I feel like we need, you know like we've got segments,

00:18:31 ◼   ► we've got upstream and upshift.

00:18:33 ◼   ► Yeah, sure.

00:18:34 ◼   ► We need one for the headset at some point, because we're not going to stop talking about

00:18:38 ◼   ► it. Ming-Chi Kuo is saying that he is expecting that it will be launching in late 2022 in

00:18:44 ◼   ► limited quantities. This is apparently later than Kuo and others have predicted. So like

00:18:49 ◼   ► Min-Chi Kuo records it like a delay. So you know like and I don't want to get

00:18:55 ◼   ► into that whole it's not a delay if they didn't announce it thing right like

00:18:59 ◼   ► there's still like you know maybe though that some of the people that he knows

00:19:03 ◼   ► that maybe Apple's partners in manufacturing were expecting it to come

00:19:06 ◼   ► out before now and it's not I mean my thinking on that is I mean the obvious

00:19:12 ◼   ► This is hello chip shortages, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:19:18 ◼   ► My theory would be also the potential of a delay in announcement because Apple is unconvinced

00:19:28 ◼   ► of when they could have an in-person event for it.

00:19:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, that could be.

00:19:33 ◼   ► I know that you're a big believer in the in-person event, and I think there's a lot of reason

00:19:36 ◼   ► to suggest that that is going to be their preference because they're going to want to

00:19:40 ◼   ► have people try it out.

00:19:41 ◼   ► Put it on people's faces.

00:19:42 ◼   ► - Exactly, especially if it's not gonna be out for a while.

00:19:45 ◼   ► But yeah, also if you've got issues with the supply chain,

00:19:49 ◼   ► you're obviously, I think, gonna prioritize the products

00:19:53 ◼   ► that are actually selling versus a product

00:19:55 ◼   ► that is off in the distance.

00:19:57 ◼   ► - There's no rush on this.

00:19:59 ◼   ► There's absolutely no rush on it.

00:20:00 ◼   ► If you can't, if you have any reason to delay it,

00:20:04 ◼   ► delay it would seem.

00:20:05 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:20:07 ◼   ► - Way to go for me.

00:20:07 ◼   ► But Mark Gorman also had something about this

00:20:09 ◼   ► in his newsletter too.

00:20:11 ◼   ► This is a couple of chunky quotes but I wanted to read them all out.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Here's one word I would be shocked to hear on stage when Apple announces its headset.

00:20:22 ◼   ► Metaverse.

00:20:23 ◼   ► I've been told pretty directly that the idea of a completely virtual world where users

00:20:27 ◼   ► can escape to, like they can in meta platforms vision of the future, is off limits from Apple.

00:20:35 ◼   ► Executives today at the highest levels of the company and in the past, like Johnny Ive,

00:20:39 ◼   ► pushed for virtual reality to not be an all-day device and instead one that can be used for

00:20:45 ◼   ► bursts of gaming, communication and content consumption. The augmented reality headset

00:20:50 ◼   ► is Apple's real priority because it can be worn all day and naturally not take anyone

00:20:55 ◼   ► out of their real environment.

00:20:57 ◼   ► - Yep. I mean, I feel like this is just... Anybody who thinks that you're gonna put a

00:21:02 ◼   ► VR headset on and just leave it on for all day is, I think, delusional. It's not that

00:21:12 ◼   ► kind of thing. And so I think there's a reality creeping in here where Apple's like, "Look,

00:21:17 ◼   ► in the short term we're going to do VR. It's not super comfortable. You're only going to

00:21:21 ◼   ► be able to do it for limited bursts and we want to make that good." But the long-term

00:21:25 ◼   ► play is something that you can just wear comfortably and not shut out the outside world. And that's

00:21:31 ◼   ► that's the end goal. And it clearly is the end goal. That is the dream, is you wear a

00:21:37 ◼   ► pair of glasses. They can be any of these things, AR and VR, but it allows you to just

00:21:44 ◼   ► kind of integrate them into your whole life. But technology is not close to being able

00:21:49 ◼   ► to deliver something like that. And as we've talked about here too, biology is a big problem

00:21:53 ◼   ► there because of the way our eyes work. And it's complicated. So I think this is a good

00:22:02 ◼   ► restatement of not only it seems sensible philosophy to me about this, but something

00:22:08 ◼   ► that I think is absolutely in keeping with what Apple's direction has been. And yes,

00:22:12 ◼   ► I would also be in the camp where I don't think they're going to mention the metaverse

00:22:15 ◼   ► as a concept. I think they're going to put it in their own Appley terms and not—I think

00:22:21 ◼   ► The metaverse is not only a term that has been kind of like co-opted by Facebook, but

00:22:27 ◼   ► also it has kind of been poisoned already by a lot of people who are doing metaverse

00:22:33 ◼   ► stuff so that I think Apple's gonna wanna speed away from that term and rephrase it

00:22:41 ◼   ► in a way that better fits what Apple, better fits Apple's vision and also better fits whatever

00:22:46 ◼   ► this product is that Apple's working on.

00:22:47 ◼   ► I also wonder if this product will actually ship this year.

00:22:50 ◼   ► I'm starting to wonder if this is going to be one of those things like the Apple watch,

00:22:53 ◼   ► as you said, that ends up being a fall introduction and it doesn't ship until the spring. We'll

00:23:00 ◼   ► see. But when taking a page from Liftoff, the podcast that I occasionally now do with

00:23:05 ◼   ► Stephen Hackett about space stuff, we have a phrase which is "late this year means next

00:23:12 ◼   ► year." When you're promising things in space, I'm like, "Oh, well, it'll launch in late

00:23:16 ◼   ► 2022. Savvy people will be like, "That means 2023." It's just, it's never... So when Ming-Chi

00:23:23 ◼   ► Kuo says late 2022 in limited quantities, I'm like, "Mmm, maybe." Or maybe that's wishful

00:23:30 ◼   ► thinking and that they're ending up going to have to punt it into 2023.

00:23:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, we'll see. The thing I saw some people say to us online, and I liked it, which is

00:23:41 ◼   ► that the Apple headset couldn't be an all-day device because there's no way the battery

00:23:44 ◼   ► would last anyway. Of course. I like that as an idea. And I do have this, I mean, I

00:23:50 ◼   ► want to see what their whole strategy ends up being, but like I do have pause around

00:23:54 ◼   ► like VR, no way all day. AR, yes yes all day. Like it's always the idea of them getting

00:24:02 ◼   ► in, right? I mean like it's just, you know, if you're saying like, oh, if people put on

00:24:06 ◼   ► VR headsets, they're only going to shut themselves out from the world, which is actually kind

00:24:12 ◼   ► of not the point of the metaverse, right? Like, the metaverse part is the VR part of,

00:24:17 ◼   ► like, having communication and being a part of something around?

00:24:21 ◼   ► You're putting people and stuff that's not in your physical space in your real world,

00:24:27 ◼   ► for lack of a—again, I'm very skeptical about the word and a lot of the conversation

00:24:32 ◼   ► around it, but it is—on one level, there is a misunderstanding about what the metaverse

00:24:36 ◼   ► is, which is it's not you're shutting yourself off from reality. The answer is you're opening

00:24:40 ◼   ► yourself up to other things that are now part of your reality. And I guess that sounds really

00:24:47 ◼   ► squishy but what I'm really saying is if you've got a friend or friends that you mostly only

00:24:51 ◼   ► ever do a Zoom chat with or a FaceTime call or email or whatever, then those are real

00:24:59 ◼   ► relationships, right? And so you can, you know, you're bringing those people into your

00:25:04 ◼   ► frame of reference because they aren't actually physically present with you. I think that's

00:25:09 ◼   ► okay to think of it that way. But the truth is that wearing something on your face all

00:25:16 ◼   ► day is going to be painful. And look at the iPhone. The iPhone was announced 15 years

00:25:21 ◼   ► ago. And if you think about the progression of the iPhone in the early days, or if you

00:25:26 ◼   ► think about how much the Apple Watch has changed and improved and still got a long way to go

00:25:30 ◼   ► since it was introduced, that was seven years ago. At some point you got to get on the road

00:25:36 ◼   ► to the product that you want to build. And I remember when they came out with the edge-to-edge

00:25:39 ◼   ► display option on the Apple Watch and I was like, "Oh, that's what they wanted all along."

00:25:44 ◼   ► And I remember when they came out with the iPhone 10 and it didn't have the home button

00:25:47 ◼   ► anymore and I was like, "I'm sure this is the phone that Johnny Eye wanted from day

00:25:51 ◼   ► one," but he knew that it would take forever for them to get there and they finally got

00:25:55 ◼   ► there 13 years later or whatever, 10, 11 years later. So, you know, I would say caution number

00:26:02 ◼   ► one is don't judge Apple strategy based on product number one because they're going to

00:26:06 ◼   ► have to iterate a lot. I think even Apple knows that VR is just because the AR stuff,

00:26:11 ◼   ► something that passes through reality at a high enough level or that overlays on top

00:26:17 ◼   ► of reality and is comfortable to wear on your face and that you can wear it there for a

00:26:21 ◼   ► long period of time. Nobody is close to that right now. So instead, they'll take step one,

00:26:28 ◼   ► which is you can play games and do interaction with people who aren't nearby, and then when

00:26:32 ◼   ► it's done you take it off because your face hurts and you gotta charge it so you'll take

00:26:39 ◼   ► it off and it's fine.

00:26:40 ◼   ► I don't imagine a world in the even conceivable near future where there is one device that

00:26:46 ◼   ► could comfortably do both AR and VR, right? In the optimum ways you want to do them.

00:26:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I guess the question

00:26:55 ◼   ► from an engineering standpoint is,

00:26:57 ◼   ► do you build something where you can like flip down,

00:27:02 ◼   ► flip down the specs or whatever,

00:27:05 ◼   ► and it blocks out reality and then it's purely--

00:27:07 ◼   ► - I mean, yes, in theory you could do that,

00:27:09 ◼   ► but then what's the weight of that?

00:27:10 ◼   ► Are you gonna wear that 24/7?

00:27:12 ◼   ► You know what I mean? - Right.

00:27:13 ◼   ► - That's what I mean, like,

00:27:13 ◼   ► yes, you could have something that does both,

00:27:15 ◼   ► but not in the ways in which you'll do both.

00:27:17 ◼   ► Like that one's never gonna be as good

00:27:19 ◼   ► as a dedicated VR headset. - Right, exactly right.

00:27:21 ◼   ► and it's never gonna be as comfortable as an AR.

00:27:23 ◼   ► But like, and I'm fine with that,

00:27:24 ◼   ► like I have a phone and a TV.

00:27:26 ◼   ► It's like that, right?

00:27:28 ◼   ► So I'm intrigued to see where it ends up going.

00:27:31 ◼   ► I'm not gonna, I appreciate what Mark is saying here,

00:27:35 ◼   ► but as of right now, this doesn't feel like

00:27:39 ◼   ► their outward strategy or even their inward strategy.

00:27:41 ◼   ► This is just what they're saying at the moment

00:27:44 ◼   ► while they've got what they've got, in my opinion.

00:27:47 ◼   ► - Well, and they know what they can't do, right?

00:27:50 ◼   ► Like they, so I think Apple is comfortable knowing

00:27:53 ◼   ► what their product is that they're going to have

00:27:55 ◼   ► in not overselling it.

00:27:58 ◼   ► I think there's some expectation leveling going on here,

00:28:01 ◼   ► which is like, it's one thing for Mark Gurman,

00:28:04 ◼   ► see, oh no, I did it, I promoted Mark Gurman.

00:28:06 ◼   ► Mark Zuckerberg, or did I demote him?

00:28:09 ◼   ► It's one thing for somebody named Mark to go out there

00:28:12 ◼   ► and say, oh, metaverse, everything,

00:28:16 ◼   ► everybody lives in the metaverse.

00:28:18 ◼   ► And I think that that oversells it and leads to mockery

00:28:23 ◼   ► and dissatisfaction and discomfort.

00:28:26 ◼   ► And for Apple to come out and say,

00:28:28 ◼   ► "Hey, we got a thing, but we're gonna be real here, right?

00:28:30 ◼   ► You're not gonna wanna use this all day.

00:28:31 ◼   ► And it's not for that."

00:28:33 ◼   ► And also conveniently, it can't do that, right?

00:28:35 ◼   ► Like that's very Apple and it puts them kind of

00:28:38 ◼   ► in opposition to some of the hype about the metaverse.

00:28:41 ◼   ► And I think that's a good move,

00:28:44 ◼   ► but of course it's also based on what they've got.

00:28:47 ◼   ► and where that ends up going.

00:28:49 ◼   ► We'll find out.

00:28:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, by the way,

00:28:51 ◼   ► we've gotten a bunch of great suggestions

00:28:52 ◼   ► for what we could call

00:28:54 ◼   ► if we do a recurring segment about the headset,

00:28:56 ◼   ► Ryan suggested heads up,

00:28:58 ◼   ► James Thompson suggested FaceTime.

00:29:00 ◼   ► There's some others in there,

00:29:03 ◼   ► face up, eyes up, I don't know.

00:29:04 ◼   ► Anyway, we'll think about it.

00:29:05 ◼   ► - You know I want it to start with up realistically, right?

00:29:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's hard.

00:29:09 ◼   ► Up face is not so good.

00:29:10 ◼   ► Up face, up goggles, up verse,

00:29:15 ◼   ► it's not working for me.

00:29:17 ◼   ► So we'll have to think about that one.

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00:32:02 ◼   ► - So Jason, you wrote an article on six colors that--

00:32:07 ◼   ► - Oh no, what have I done?

00:32:08 ◼   ► - Very interesting.

00:32:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, it turns out sometimes I write about silly things

00:32:14 ◼   ► that I make.

00:32:16 ◼   ► - Like buttons.

00:32:17 ◼   ► - And nobody says anything.

00:32:19 ◼   ► And I get the distinct impression that the whole internet

00:32:21 ◼   ► is basically going, that's nice.

00:32:23 ◼   ► This one though actually got response.

00:32:25 ◼   ► So that was fun 'cause I literally,

00:32:28 ◼   ► I was not sure whether I even wanted to write it up,

00:32:29 ◼   ► but being a professional blogger basically in the year 2022,

00:32:34 ◼   ► you have that moment where you think,

00:32:38 ◼   ► if I did work on something vaguely related

00:32:40 ◼   ► to what I write about, I should write a story about it.

00:32:43 ◼   ► So I did because, and this is something

00:32:47 ◼   ► we are gonna get into a little bit later, I think,

00:32:50 ◼   ► about me looking at stuff.

00:32:53 ◼   ► And we talked about it a little bit in past times

00:32:58 ◼   ► about like, you know, thinking about what your work is

00:33:01 ◼   ► and other ways to streamline your work.

00:33:02 ◼   ► And I decided to have somebody else edit

00:33:06 ◼   ► a couple of my podcasts, even though I can edit them.

00:33:09 ◼   ► And this led me down a path where I realized that

00:33:13 ◼   ► the problem with giving up control over something like that

00:33:16 ◼   ► is that I'm the one who's having the conversations.

00:33:19 ◼   ► I'm the one who knows where the problems are.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I'm the one who knows that at 15 minutes in,

00:33:24 ◼   ► the, you know, the garage door opened.

00:33:26 ◼   ► And at 24 minutes in, somebody said a bad word

00:33:30 ◼   ► that they shouldn't have said,

00:33:31 ◼   ► and all of that kind of stuff.

00:33:32 ◼   ► And then there's somebody rambles at 29 minutes

00:33:35 ◼   ► and I want to clip that out.

00:33:36 ◼   ► And I have that all in my head as very me.

00:33:40 ◼   ► And I'm sure this appalls you to even hear it,

00:33:43 ◼   ► but like I've tried, I have pens on my desk,

00:33:45 ◼   ► I have field notes on my desk.

00:33:47 ◼   ► I have places to write this stuff down,

00:33:49 ◼   ► but I found that it never sticks to have a pen out

00:33:52 ◼   ► and to have me writing down time code.

00:33:53 ◼   ► It's just never been a thing.

00:33:54 ◼   ► So I end up internalizing this whole thing and saying,

00:33:57 ◼   ► well, I was there and I remember when all the problems are,

00:34:00 ◼   ► so only I can edit the podcast.

00:34:02 ◼   ► And that's a problem when you want to not edit that podcast

00:34:05 ◼   ► and have a very nice person that you pay do it for you.

00:34:08 ◼   ► - I will say, so two things,

00:34:10 ◼   ► just to respond to what you were saying there.

00:34:11 ◼   ► One, you keeping it in your mind is not great,

00:34:15 ◼   ► but like I'm fine with that.

00:34:16 ◼   ► You're not writing them down,

00:34:17 ◼   ► like because I write mine down,

00:34:18 ◼   ► I actually gave you a photo of an old episode of upgrade

00:34:21 ◼   ► from the notes that you put into the article.

00:34:23 ◼   ► It's a messy one, but it was the best I could do at home

00:34:25 ◼   ► because all of my recent ones are at the studio.

00:34:28 ◼   ► - The studio, yeah.

00:34:29 ◼   ► - But it doesn't bother me that you don't write them down.

00:34:32 ◼   ► What bothers me is what you wrote in your article,

00:34:35 ◼   ► which is that you would create a folder on the desktop

00:34:38 ◼   ► and name that with the issue.

00:34:41 ◼   ► That's the real problem.

00:34:42 ◼   ► So you say, when someone swore, I'd switch to Finder,

00:34:45 ◼   ► make a new folder and give that folder a name,

00:34:48 ◼   ► like Poop, 23 minutes.

00:34:50 ◼   ► - They didn't say Poop, by the way.

00:34:51 ◼   ► - Of course they didn't.

00:34:52 ◼   ► - They didn't actually say Poop.

00:34:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, this is, I look,

00:34:56 ◼   ► I made it a running thing in the article, right?

00:34:58 ◼   ► Because I know how bananas that is

00:35:00 ◼   ► and how that's something.

00:35:01 ◼   ► So, it's a couple of things.

00:35:03 ◼   ► First off, I'm just not pen and paper oriented.

00:35:06 ◼   ► I don't usually have them out.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Something ha, I'm not thinking about it.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Then something happens and I'm in the moment

00:35:12 ◼   ► where I'm like, oh no, I need to note this.

00:35:15 ◼   ► And there have been episodes

00:35:17 ◼   ► where I've had the pen and paper out

00:35:18 ◼   ► and I've been sketching like,

00:35:20 ◼   ► I need to talk about this next.

00:35:21 ◼   ► I mostly, I'm very keyboard oriented, right?

00:35:23 ◼   ► So mostly I'll do that in like an Apple note or something,

00:35:25 ◼   ► but there have been cases where I've done that on paper

00:35:28 ◼   ► and then I will jot down the time code and say,

00:35:30 ◼   ► oh, at this point, swear, right?

00:35:32 ◼   ► And put it in there.

00:35:34 ◼   ► But when you've got nothing and you're just sitting in Zoom

00:35:39 ◼   ► and somebody says something bad

00:35:40 ◼   ► and your files are out on the desktop recording,

00:35:43 ◼   ► one way to solve the problem in desperation,

00:35:45 ◼   ► which then became a habit,

00:35:47 ◼   ► is you literally just click out into the finder

00:35:49 ◼   ► and do command shift N and type a note.

00:35:52 ◼   ► and it makes a folder with that name.

00:35:53 ◼   ► And then the folder goes inside the project folder.

00:35:56 ◼   ► So when it comes time to edit it, I've got,

00:35:59 ◼   ► oh, look, there's a thing in here that says

00:36:01 ◼   ► 23 minutes over talk.

00:36:03 ◼   ► And another thing that says 28 poop.

00:36:06 ◼   ► And you're like, okay, I guess I gotta take that out.

00:36:09 ◼   ► And it's worse than that too,

00:36:10 ◼   ► because what are those time codes?

00:36:12 ◼   ► The thing is when you press record,

00:36:13 ◼   ► what you want is to record,

00:36:15 ◼   ► it's the time in your recording file where that happened.

00:36:18 ◼   ► but it can be, by the time you write it down,

00:36:22 ◼   ► it's past that time, so it's inaccurate.

00:36:24 ◼   ► There are other issues like sometimes we use AudioHijack.

00:36:28 ◼   ► Sometimes the session goes on,

00:36:30 ◼   ► but the recording hasn't started yet.

00:36:32 ◼   ► So the big light up number that AudioHijack puts out

00:36:35 ◼   ► that says here is the recording time

00:36:37 ◼   ► is not the recording time of the file,

00:36:40 ◼   ► which is a smaller number.

00:36:41 ◼   ► And so all your numbers are off.

00:36:43 ◼   ► So it's inefficient in a lot of ways.

00:36:48 ◼   ► and using the Finder is bad, and I should feel bad,

00:36:50 ◼   ► and I do feel bad about it.

00:36:53 ◼   ► But the point remains that--

00:36:54 ◼   ► - There's so many places to put notes on the mail.

00:36:57 ◼   ► There's so many. - I know, I know.

00:36:58 ◼   ► I could literally open the Notes app.

00:37:00 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:37:01 ◼   ► - I've got TOT, I've got, like there are so,

00:37:04 ◼   ► BBM has notes now.

00:37:06 ◼   ► I could send myself a text and messages

00:37:08 ◼   ► and that would be less ridiculous than what I do.

00:37:10 ◼   ► - You could open the Mail app and create like a new email

00:37:13 ◼   ► and just write them all down

00:37:14 ◼   ► and send it to yourself at the end.

00:37:15 ◼   ► There's like so many places,

00:37:18 ◼   ► but you're gonna create a bunch of folders on the desktop.

00:37:21 ◼   ► - It's, you know, John Syracuse knows what I'm talking about.

00:37:24 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:37:25 ◼   ► It's a very fine oriented person.

00:37:27 ◼   ► I, yeah, I mean, leaving messages for yourself

00:37:29 ◼   ► on the desktop is something that I used to do.

00:37:32 ◼   ► And for that, I still do it.

00:37:34 ◼   ► - I mean, there's also stickies.

00:37:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh, I know.

00:37:38 ◼   ► There's no end to the number of alternatives

00:37:41 ◼   ► to making a note in a desktop.

00:37:45 ◼   ► in a name of a folder, a new untitled folder on the desktop.

00:37:50 ◼   ► And yet.

00:37:52 ◼   ► So anyway, I decided I had to solve this.

00:37:56 ◼   ► And really this is,

00:37:59 ◼   ► I like how open you are about the fact that like,

00:38:01 ◼   ► you don't have to, you can keep it in your mind

00:38:02 ◼   ► or you could write it down on paper,

00:38:04 ◼   ► but just don't put it in the finder.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Everybody's different, right?

00:38:07 ◼   ► Like paper, you are a very paper and pen kind of person.

00:38:12 ◼   ► It's a comfortable, familiar way for you to get things out.

00:38:16 ◼   ► And so I wouldn't say,

00:38:17 ◼   ► "Myke, you need to throw away your pen and paper,

00:38:20 ◼   ► shut down the Pen Addict podcast and join me over."

00:38:23 ◼   ► Because everybody's brains work different,

00:38:25 ◼   ► that's the truth of it, right?

00:38:26 ◼   ► And so you have to find something that works for you.

00:38:28 ◼   ► And so while I have pens, very nice pens,

00:38:30 ◼   ► from friends of ours on my desk,

00:38:33 ◼   ► and I have Field Notes guides on my desk

00:38:35 ◼   ► that are full of places for me to write things,

00:38:38 ◼   ► What I know about myself is that I do not use them reliably.

00:38:42 ◼   ► And while I could try to force myself to use them reliably,

00:38:45 ◼   ► I am skeptical that I'm going to do a good enough job.

00:38:48 ◼   ► And part of that is I have terrible handwriting.

00:38:52 ◼   ► My relationship with pens and pencils is not very good.

00:38:56 ◼   ► And so I'm gonna end up in a situation where I'm,

00:38:59 ◼   ► keep in mind, this is happening during a podcast

00:39:02 ◼   ► conversation, which means I have to listen to what people

00:39:05 ◼   ► say, and I have to, and it's incomparable usually, right? So it's a large panel. I have

00:39:10 ◼   ► to juggle like who's saying what and who who was who hasn't spoken in a while and all that

00:39:15 ◼   ► stuff and for me the mental overhead of having a pen, clicking the pen or not, having the

00:39:22 ◼   ► piece of paper, looking at the recording time and figuring out what to write and literally

00:39:27 ◼   ► putting words down by writing with a pen is a lot of overhead for me because it's not

00:39:34 ◼   ► how my brain works. I'm really bad at it. That's why my handwriting is terrible. You

00:39:39 ◼   ► should see my notes because those are not for public consumption and they are indecipherable.

00:39:43 ◼   ► I barely can do it myself and sometimes I can't do it. So I need to find a way. So typing

00:39:49 ◼   ► is better. Again, why not the Notes app? Good question. Typing is a better solution for

00:39:54 ◼   ► me because it is not using that kind of mental overhead. So what I decided to do because

00:40:02 ◼   ► I have a stream deck, and I'm not sure if I mentioned this on this podcast before, but

00:40:07 ◼   ► it's the Grand Circle of Life, which is Stephen Hackett. I bought a stream deck mini to try

00:40:11 ◼   ► it out because I was skeptical, and I liked it. And then Stephen Hackett, who had a stream

00:40:14 ◼   ► deck, bought a stream deck XL, and I said, "Stephen, can I buy your stream deck from

00:40:18 ◼   ► you?" And he said, "Yes." And then I sold my stream deck mini—I think I mentioned

00:40:21 ◼   ► this last week—to a friend. So, it's the circle of life. They just keep moving. And

00:40:27 ◼   ► so I have extra buttons, and I thought, "Oh, you know what? This is actually a good use

00:40:32 ◼   ► of Stream Deck is, could I make a little thing, and when I press a button it says, "Something

00:40:37 ◼   ► bad happened here." Could I use the Stream Deck—and you could use a keyboard shortcut,

00:40:42 ◼   ► but I thought the Stream Deck would be better because it's like right in my face, these

00:40:45 ◼   ► buttons are right there, and so there's a little less, again, mental overhead in remembering

00:40:50 ◼   ► what your keyboard shortcut is—could I use it to build a script, basically, that would

00:41:01 ◼   ► a notes file for a podcast with all the time codes of when there were things that I need

00:41:07 ◼   ► to note. Because now I'm going to be sending this off to my friend Stephen—not Stephen

00:41:13 ◼   ► Hackett, Stephen Szczepanski—and I'm going to have Stephen do it. And so I need to send

00:41:16 ◼   ► Stephen notes of what to edit, and how am I going to do that? I can't just listen back

00:41:21 ◼   ► later. That defeats the whole purpose of it. I need to know it when it happens and say,

00:41:24 ◼   ► "Look for the swear at 35 minutes," right? So I did, and that's what the article is,

00:41:30 ◼   ► I wrote an AppleScript. I wasn't going to use AppleScript. I'm trying not to use AppleScript

00:41:36 ◼   ► so much anymore, but what I needed to do, what I realized I needed to do, to get back

00:41:41 ◼   ► to like what is a real time code, that was the problem, right? It's like I can't just

00:41:46 ◼   ► use the clock because the clock knows what time it is when I recorded it, but it doesn't

00:41:50 ◼   ► know the recording time. And I don't really want to do the math and say, well, I started

00:41:55 ◼   ► recording at 7.05, and this says that this node is at 7.22, so subtract 5 from 20—I

00:42:03 ◼   ► didn't want to do that. And so I used AppleScript because AppleScript I was able to look at

00:42:08 ◼   ► the place where AudioHijack records my files and find—basically find the recording of

00:42:14 ◼   ► the podcast that's going on right now and get the creation date and time, and then use

00:42:21 ◼   ► that as the offset, at which point it knows exactly, it doesn't need to talk to Audio

00:42:25 ◼   ► Hijack, which is not scriptable, which is a story for another day, it doesn't need to

00:42:30 ◼   ► talk to Audio Hijack at all, all it has to do is look in the Finder and say, "Hey, when

00:42:34 ◼   ► did your podcast recording start?" That's the zero time for the recording. And then

00:42:41 ◼   ► everything else is details, because once that script exists, I have the script accept input,

00:42:47 ◼   ► So if there's no input, it just adds a line to a text file that says "This time code."

00:42:52 ◼   ► And if you give it input, it will append that after the time code.

00:42:56 ◼   ► And then I wrote a couple of—I put a couple of buttons in keyboard maestro macros attached

00:43:01 ◼   ► to the Stream Deck, one of which gives me a box to type in what the problem was, and

00:43:08 ◼   ► the other one brings up a little floating dialogue that's basically telling me where

00:43:12 ◼   ► the podcast—tell me where your panelist ruined it.

00:43:17 ◼   ► So how did they ruin this thing? What went wrong?

00:43:19 ◼   ► And it's a list.

00:43:21 ◼   ► So you can actually just use the arrow keys

00:43:22 ◼   ► to pick one and hit return.

00:43:24 ◼   ► And it depends that so you don't have to type anything.

00:43:26 ◼   ► And that's what I built.

00:43:27 ◼   ► - So when you press the button,

00:43:30 ◼   ► so like is there a button on the stream deck

00:43:32 ◼   ► or is there multiple buttons on this too, right?

00:43:34 ◼   ► - Right now there are two.

00:43:35 ◼   ► Originally when I made this, there were two

00:43:37 ◼   ► and one of them was just put the code in

00:43:39 ◼   ► and not ask me anything.

00:43:40 ◼   ► And the other one was a box

00:43:42 ◼   ► that you would type in what happened.

00:43:44 ◼   ► And I've been toying with the idea,

00:43:46 ◼   ► which I initially thought was funny

00:43:47 ◼   ► and then I thought might actually be useful,

00:43:49 ◼   ► which is I could just detail all the ways

00:43:51 ◼   ► that panelists ruin things, right?

00:43:53 ◼   ► I could be like technical difficulties, swear,

00:43:56 ◼   ► over-talking, needed to restate something.

00:43:59 ◼   ► And I could load up like a little list of all those things.

00:44:02 ◼   ► So I won't have to type it.

00:44:04 ◼   ► I just have to pick it.

00:44:05 ◼   ► And right now, and I'll say, I've only done this

00:44:08 ◼   ► for like one or two podcasts so far

00:44:10 ◼   ► since I built this thing.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Right now I have two buttons.

00:44:13 ◼   ► The one that is the free form type what happened

00:44:16 ◼   ► and the other one is the picker of,

00:44:19 ◼   ► pick from this list what bad thing happened

00:44:23 ◼   ► with the default being nothing.

00:44:25 ◼   ► So if I press that button and then just hit return,

00:44:28 ◼   ► it just logs it as a blank.

00:44:30 ◼   ► I'm open to a couple of things.

00:44:31 ◼   ► I'm open to having a button that just logs the time code

00:44:35 ◼   ► and doesn't ask me anything.

00:44:36 ◼   ► And I'm open to hard coding in a button or two

00:44:40 ◼   ► for the most common occurrences.

00:44:44 ◼   ► I had an interesting back and forth on Twitter

00:44:47 ◼   ► with a UX designer who said,

00:44:50 ◼   ► "I'm curious why you have a choice come up

00:44:55 ◼   ► on your interface instead of just building six or eight

00:44:59 ◼   ► or however many you need stream deck buttons."

00:45:02 ◼   ► And it was a really good question because he said,

00:45:05 ◼   ► my thought is that this would be less overhead

00:45:09 ◼   ► than having to look at your computer.

00:45:11 ◼   ► And my thought was one, I don't know,

00:45:15 ◼   ► we'll see how it goes.

00:45:16 ◼   ► But two, for me having a little floating thing pop up

00:45:20 ◼   ► and having me hit return or arrow, arrow, arrow, return,

00:45:24 ◼   ► for me, that's not a lot of mental overhead.

00:45:27 ◼   ► That is very low level mental overhead.

00:45:29 ◼   ► And I think having eight different buttons

00:45:31 ◼   ► that I have to know what they mean on the stream deck

00:45:34 ◼   ► is way more mental overhead for me.

00:45:37 ◼   ► Even if I change the icons or if I have to put text on them,

00:45:40 ◼   ► then I'm reading the text button,

00:45:42 ◼   ► or I have to remember geographically.

00:45:44 ◼   ► And I think you could do that with two or three or four,

00:45:47 ◼   ► but I think there comes a time when now

00:45:48 ◼   ► all my mental overhead that's breaking my concentration

00:45:51 ◼   ► is which button do I push now?

00:45:54 ◼   ► And I don't like that when I can,

00:45:57 ◼   ► I find it very easy to just use the arrow keys

00:46:01 ◼   ► to pick a thing and hit return.

00:46:02 ◼   ► Like that's something, I'm so keyboard oriented

00:46:05 ◼   ► that that is, I know where those keys are,

00:46:08 ◼   ► I orient to the arrow keys and the return key.

00:46:11 ◼   ► I could do that in my sleep, right?

00:46:13 ◼   ► So for me, I want to minimize the number of buttons

00:46:17 ◼   ► on the stream deck because adding a hitting return

00:46:21 ◼   ► or moving the arrows around doesn't seem that important.

00:46:24 ◼   ► If I find it's more distracting than I expect,

00:46:27 ◼   ► then I might add some more presets in.

00:46:29 ◼   ► - And so I would make an argument

00:46:31 ◼   ► that really you don't need anything other than the time.

00:46:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, the challenge there is

00:46:40 ◼   ► how many of those notes am I making?

00:46:43 ◼   ► 'Cause if I, I may not remember where the swear is.

00:46:47 ◼   ► I mean, I could literally, you're right.

00:46:48 ◼   ► I could send the times to Steven and say,

00:46:50 ◼   ► "Here are the times, check, watch for things here."

00:46:53 ◼   ► But I wanted to give myself a little more latitude to say,

00:46:56 ◼   ► "This is a thing to check, this is a swear."

00:46:59 ◼   ► It's really nice, the one test that I did,

00:47:02 ◼   ► there was a weird over talk and I just pressed the button

00:47:05 ◼   ► and it was so great because I went directly to exactly

00:47:10 ◼   ► where the over talk was and snipped it out.

00:47:12 ◼   ► It saved a huge amount of time for a podcast.

00:47:14 ◼   ► I was actually editing myself.

00:47:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, or what I would do is like, so what I have,

00:47:19 ◼   ► you see, I have like a shorthand.

00:47:20 ◼   ► I've done up the shorthand for myself and--

00:47:23 ◼   ► - I like it.

00:47:24 ◼   ► - My main thing is the letter X.

00:47:26 ◼   ► And what that means is crosstalk.

00:47:28 ◼   ► - Crosstalk, yeah. - That's what the X means.

00:47:30 ◼   ► And so I would say like for you,

00:47:31 ◼   ► if I was building something like this for me

00:47:34 ◼   ► or probably was customizing what you had.

00:47:36 ◼   ► Well, just like hitting the button

00:47:39 ◼   ► just means there was crosstalk

00:47:41 ◼   ► unless I say something else occurred.

00:47:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that may be very much where I end up.

00:47:47 ◼   ► I mean, the other thing about this,

00:47:49 ◼   ► it's funny that you mentioned crosstalk

00:47:50 ◼   ► because I've altered my or designed my podcast method

00:47:55 ◼   ► to focus on crosstalk.

00:48:01 ◼   ► So I don't need to take notes about crosstalk

00:48:05 ◼   ► because I do the whole strip silence thing

00:48:08 ◼   ► where I'm actually making crosstalk visible,

00:48:10 ◼   ► which is like, that's a long way to go, right?

00:48:14 ◼   ► But I completely changed my process

00:48:16 ◼   ► in order to visualize crosstalk.

00:48:17 ◼   ► Whereas what you do is you just write it down.

00:48:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't like strip silence.

00:48:21 ◼   ► - I know, I know, that's fine.

00:48:23 ◼   ► Most people do.

00:48:24 ◼   ► You're in the minority there, but I think it's okay.

00:48:26 ◼   ► - I like things the old fashioned way.

00:48:28 ◼   ► - Everybody's brains work different.

00:48:30 ◼   ► I think this is part, when you're thinking about user experience and what I appreciate

00:48:32 ◼   ► about that UX designer engaging with me on Twitter is they didn't say you're wrong. They

00:48:37 ◼   ► said, "I am trying to understand why you wouldn't do it this other way." And I explained it

00:48:43 ◼   ► and his response was, "Thank you. That's very interesting, right?" Because this is the challenge

00:48:47 ◼   ► if you're a designer especially, it's everybody is different. And so you've got to think about

00:48:51 ◼   ► all these different kinds of use cases. But I think the bottom line is, and I've heard

00:48:57 ◼   ► from other podcasters like, "Oh, I need to adapt this for what I do," is in the end,

00:49:02 ◼   ► what really matters here is I built a little thing that is able to intuit from the file

00:49:08 ◼   ► itself when my recording started and then press a button to mark the time when something

00:49:15 ◼   ► happened and the rest of it is detail and I'll work out what the least friction is for

00:49:19 ◼   ► all of those things, but that is huge because this enables me to go with my files to Steven

00:49:27 ◼   ► and say, "Here's the edit," and give him notes about the things that are bad so that he knows

00:49:35 ◼   ► that I want those taken out and that I have more confidence that in giving away my baby

00:49:40 ◼   ► to someone else to edit that they're going to do a good job because he's going to be

00:49:45 ◼   ► fully aware of all the problems with it. And I've given him—essentially I'm giving him

00:49:48 ◼   ► instructions too. I'm saying you need to trim this bit and it's at this time. So we'll see

00:49:53 ◼   ► how it goes, but I think it's a great example of me using my user automation focus to actually

00:50:01 ◼   ► build something that will make my life better, which is sometimes it's very small amounts,

00:50:06 ◼   ► but this is a big one for me.

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00:52:19 ◼   ► So Jason, we got a little touchy feely on last week's show.

00:52:22 ◼   ► We did, a little bit.

00:52:23 ◼   ► We were talking about our lives and stuff.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And then you have since gone away and had a little retreat, right?

00:52:31 ◼   ► I did.

00:52:32 ◼   ► I retreated.

00:52:33 ◼   ► I left my home and went to another place.

00:52:38 ◼   ► It's actually a friend who has a VRBO, vacation rental.

00:52:43 ◼   ► And I figured we've been there a couple of times

00:52:45 ◼   ► and I asked them if they had anybody for the week

00:52:48 ◼   ► following New Year's.

00:52:50 ◼   ► And the answer is no, because of course not.

00:52:52 ◼   ► And they let us stay there for a few days.

00:52:54 ◼   ► And it was good.

00:52:55 ◼   ► I used to do off-site things all the time.

00:52:58 ◼   ► There were big corporate retreats for IDG,

00:53:00 ◼   ► where corporate meetings you go somewhere,

00:53:02 ◼   ► and there are sessions and you sit in a room

00:53:04 ◼   ► and there's flip charts and easels

00:53:06 ◼   ► and you write things in pen,

00:53:07 ◼   ► you can break out sessions and all those things.

00:53:10 ◼   ► And some of those are good and some of those are not good.

00:53:12 ◼   ► All the way down to actually the ones

00:53:14 ◼   ► that I always thought were the most useful,

00:53:16 ◼   ► which is when I took my senior managers from Macworld

00:53:20 ◼   ► and we would go, I mean, we would often go

00:53:22 ◼   ► to somebody's house basically, to somebody's living room

00:53:25 ◼   ► and spend the day kind of talking about big picture things.

00:53:30 ◼   ► 'cause the idea is to get out of your rut

00:53:33 ◼   ► and to try to think larger picture

00:53:35 ◼   ► about what you wanna do and what you wanna accomplish.

00:53:38 ◼   ► And it's so hard to do that when you're in the space

00:53:41 ◼   ► where you're doing the daily grind of stuff,

00:53:43 ◼   ► because there's always another little minor challenge

00:53:46 ◼   ► to deal with.

00:53:47 ◼   ► There's always another little thing

00:53:48 ◼   ► that you could push forward.

00:53:50 ◼   ► And you need to give yourself some space, I think,

00:53:53 ◼   ► to, I always called it like take a walk in the woods,

00:53:55 ◼   ► whether that's real or just in your mind,

00:53:58 ◼   ► but the idea of like kind of getting out,

00:54:00 ◼   ► out of your head, out of your day to day

00:54:03 ◼   ► and thinking about what you wanna do,

00:54:04 ◼   ► whether it's with your colleagues or by yourself.

00:54:08 ◼   ► So I decided to set this up.

00:54:10 ◼   ► This was in sort of December.

00:54:11 ◼   ► I was thinking about how I wanted to do this.

00:54:13 ◼   ► And we looked at people coming for the holidays

00:54:16 ◼   ► and all this stuff and ended up with last week.

00:54:19 ◼   ► So I went for a couple of days.

00:54:22 ◼   ► What's funny is that I got there

00:54:23 ◼   ► and I got a text message from David Sparks about something.

00:54:26 ◼   ► And I said, I was on my personal retreat.

00:54:29 ◼   ► And he immediately sent me a PDF

00:54:31 ◼   ► that he had generated that was why you should do

00:54:35 ◼   ► a personal retreat and how you should do it,

00:54:38 ◼   ► which I mean, that's very David Sparks, right?

00:54:40 ◼   ► He's like eight moves ahead of you.

00:54:42 ◼   ► He's already turned it into a PDF

00:54:44 ◼   ► that is available on his website.

00:54:46 ◼   ► And it is, and we can link to it.

00:54:48 ◼   ► And he did a blog post about it and a video about it.

00:54:51 ◼   ► - The video is good and has wonderful illustrations.

00:54:54 ◼   ► Those illustrations created by my wife, Adina.

00:54:57 ◼   ► - Ah, see.

00:54:58 ◼   ► - She's in the Max Sparky empire now.

00:55:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh, nice, nice.

00:55:02 ◼   ► Are those her drawings on the PDF too?

00:55:05 ◼   ► - I haven't seen the PDF, but I'm assuming so.

00:55:06 ◼   ► It's a little character that Adina does.

00:55:08 ◼   ► - Little Sparky character.

00:55:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, she did a little of that.

00:55:11 ◼   ► - So that was great.

00:55:12 ◼   ► And actually, even though David told me about that

00:55:15 ◼   ► after I had already made these decisions and all that,

00:55:17 ◼   ► I actually used a little bit of David's frameworks.

00:55:19 ◼   ► I adapted them for sort of like some stuff I wanted to do,

00:55:23 ◼   ► But I really wanted to do it.

00:55:25 ◼   ► So I wanted to do it right.

00:55:26 ◼   ► I bought, we got an easel, we borrowed an easel.

00:55:29 ◼   ► I bought one of those big flip chart easel poster things.

00:55:33 ◼   ► I bought some markers.

00:55:35 ◼   ► I wrote up a bunch of stuff on pieces of paper

00:55:38 ◼   ► and, you know, posted them on the walls,

00:55:40 ◼   ► very much like an offsite would be.

00:55:43 ◼   ► But it was a good, especially for somebody like me

00:55:45 ◼   ► who's not super into, like I said,

00:55:47 ◼   ► pen and paper and all of that,

00:55:49 ◼   ► it was a good exercise to put things down

00:55:52 ◼   ► slowly with a giant marker on a giant piece of paper,

00:55:57 ◼   ► but I felt like that was a good exercise to do that,

00:56:00 ◼   ► to think about it in a different way.

00:56:02 ◼   ► And I also, in order to make it feel real,

00:56:06 ◼   ► I also got some guests in.

00:56:10 ◼   ► So I got relay FM's Myke Hurley as our keynote speaker.

00:56:14 ◼   ► - Keynote, I was opening keynote, it was great.

00:56:16 ◼   ► - That's right.

00:56:17 ◼   ► - Breakfast was not provided.

00:56:19 ◼   ► - Tuesday morning, well, it wasn't breakfast for you,

00:56:21 ◼   ► breakfast was provided for me.

00:56:22 ◼   ► I had breakfast.

00:56:23 ◼   ► And then I had Dan Morin come in on the next day

00:56:28 ◼   ► and we talked about stuff,

00:56:29 ◼   ► trying to get a little bit of that same sort of thing of,

00:56:32 ◼   ► let's talk big picture and let's step outside of our,

00:56:36 ◼   ► and we don't, you know,

00:56:37 ◼   ► not traveling to see each other right now.

00:56:39 ◼   ► So I just got them on Zoom

00:56:40 ◼   ► and we spent like 90 minutes talking about stuff

00:56:43 ◼   ► that was hopefully a little bit bigger picture.

00:56:46 ◼   ► And yeah, it was really good.

00:56:50 ◼   ► And I recommend it for people who are working

00:56:52 ◼   ► independently and if you're, or even if you're in a,

00:56:56 ◼   ► if you're a manager, if you've got responsibility,

00:56:59 ◼   ► whether it's by yourself or with maybe some

00:57:02 ◼   ► of your senior people to get out of the context

00:57:05 ◼   ► of your day to day and do something different is huge.

00:57:10 ◼   ► I mean, David Sparks suggests essentially

00:57:12 ◼   ► like one night away.

00:57:14 ◼   ► I did more than that, but it,

00:57:18 ◼   ► and if you can't do it like a night away,

00:57:21 ◼   ► I would say even a day away, even whether that is going to,

00:57:26 ◼   ► going for a hike, going on a hike or something,

00:57:30 ◼   ► something to get that walk in the woods I was talking about,

00:57:33 ◼   ► to get out of the rut a little bit.

00:57:36 ◼   ► I used to do those at home when I had a job in an office,

00:57:40 ◼   ► but my job is at home now.

00:57:41 ◼   ► And so I can't escape it here

00:57:43 ◼   ► 'cause this is where it is.

00:57:44 ◼   ► - Also you would do this kind of stuff while you're at home.

00:57:48 ◼   ► - There would be times when I would take a day,

00:57:50 ◼   ► I would take a work from home day and this is what I did

00:57:52 ◼   ► is I tried to get out of the day to day of the office

00:57:56 ◼   ► and do and think bigger thoughts than that.

00:57:59 ◼   ► And then sometimes we would go over to somebody's house

00:58:02 ◼   ► and it would be two or three of us

00:58:03 ◼   ► and we would do that there.

00:58:05 ◼   ► But I really do recommend it.

00:58:07 ◼   ► And it was super helpful.

00:58:10 ◼   ► I mean, David's framework is that you write down

00:58:15 ◼   ► the roles that you have and then you kind of evaluate them

00:58:19 ◼   ► and you kind of grind through like what delights me

00:58:22 ◼   ► and what do I dread and what should I keep doing

00:58:25 ◼   ► and what should I stop doing and what should I put on hold

00:58:29 ◼   ► and what should I start doing that I'm not doing

00:58:33 ◼   ► and sort of like following a framework

00:58:35 ◼   ► and then walking through.

00:58:36 ◼   ► And if somebody and you and I are both like this,

00:58:38 ◼   ► somebody who has many roles

00:58:40 ◼   ► and you can have roles in a big company

00:58:41 ◼   ► or you can have roles as an individual.

00:58:43 ◼   ► I wrote down eight roles that I do for my job.

00:58:46 ◼   ► - Wow, that's a lot.

00:58:47 ◼   ► - I have kind of eight different jobs.

00:58:48 ◼   ► - It is. David's, I told that to David and he said,

00:58:50 ◼   ► "Maybe a fewer roles."

00:58:52 ◼   ► And I said, "Well, that's what this is all about, right?

00:58:54 ◼   ► Part of the reason to do this is to identify roles

00:58:57 ◼   ► that you don't wanna do,

00:58:58 ◼   ► or that you need to redefine in some way."

00:59:00 ◼   ► And it was very helpful.

00:59:01 ◼   ► I filled those pieces of paper with colorful marker notes.

00:59:06 ◼   ► And then I wrote a summary of that on a computer.

00:59:11 ◼   ► And I followed David's advice,

00:59:13 ◼   ► which is schedule time for yourself a week out

00:59:15 ◼   ► and a month out to follow up.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Because when you get back to work,

00:59:18 ◼   ► you're gonna have all the things that you didn't do

00:59:19 ◼   ► while you were offsite that are gonna,

00:59:22 ◼   ► you're not gonna be able to address it right away.

00:59:24 ◼   ► So instead schedule time

00:59:25 ◼   ► so that you can address the stuff going forward.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And, you know, it was,

00:59:30 ◼   ► there's something about being in another place

00:59:32 ◼   ► and not thinking about the day to day

00:59:34 ◼   ► that does not only get you to see the big picture,

00:59:37 ◼   ► but almost give yourself permission

00:59:41 ◼   ► to be honest about the stuff that you hate

00:59:45 ◼   ► and the stuff that you don't wanna do

00:59:46 ◼   ► and the stuff that's not working.

00:59:48 ◼   ► And once you get on a roll,

00:59:49 ◼   ► I found that really liberating,

00:59:51 ◼   ► where I made some decisions in the process

00:59:54 ◼   ► of writing down stuff.

00:59:55 ◼   ► I made some decisions of like,

00:59:56 ◼   ► I need to not do this anymore.

00:59:58 ◼   ► Where I had been kind of like,

00:59:59 ◼   ► eh, I'll just keep doing it.

01:00:00 ◼   ► And then once you start down that path

01:00:02 ◼   ► and you're thinking about it in that level of detail,

01:00:05 ◼   ► you realize, oh no, like, let's just be honest here.

01:00:07 ◼   ► This is a thing that you don't want to do.

01:00:09 ◼   ► And that was really valuable for me too.

01:00:11 ◼   ► - So I've been thinking about something like this too,

01:00:13 ◼   ► 'cause I kinda stumbled into it this past year,

01:00:17 ◼   ► where I was working on,

01:00:20 ◼   ► for me, thinking about my theme is a big part of this,

01:00:24 ◼   ► but I do think I would wanna expand it out a bit more

01:00:27 ◼   ► in the future to bring in some of the stuff

01:00:30 ◼   ► that David outlined.

01:00:32 ◼   ► But to do this at the end of a vacation,

01:00:37 ◼   ► I think would be really good for me.

01:00:39 ◼   ► 'Cause I was thinking, so this past year--

01:00:41 ◼   ► - Even more distance, right?

01:00:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I finalized my yearly theme

01:00:46 ◼   ► while I was in Hawaii.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And it was purposeful that I felt like I needed

01:00:54 ◼   ► to have a bit of reset to finalize it.

01:00:57 ◼   ► I was struggling to come up with the end part of it,

01:01:00 ◼   ► especially when part of it, you know, for me,

01:01:02 ◼   ► was about trying to find ways

01:01:04 ◼   ► to take a step back in some areas.

01:01:08 ◼   ► I needed to be able to take that step back

01:01:10 ◼   ► to really think about why that would be valuable to me.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And I really enjoyed the process of taking a couple of days

01:01:17 ◼   ► to really think it through after being relaxed

01:01:21 ◼   ► and getting out of the mode of feeling like I'm engaged.

01:01:25 ◼   ► So it's made me think that, I think for me,

01:01:28 ◼   ► combining this with a big vacation at the end of the year

01:01:31 ◼   ► to give me that distance

01:01:33 ◼   ► might be a pretty good way of doing it.

01:01:36 ◼   ► 'Cause I know, I feel like for me,

01:01:38 ◼   ► If I was to just be like, I'm gonna take two days,

01:01:41 ◼   ► it's not, I'm still gonna be too engaged with the day to day

01:01:45 ◼   ► or I'm gonna let some of that sneak in,

01:01:46 ◼   ► I just know how I am.

01:01:48 ◼   ► But to be able to do it after a few days

01:01:51 ◼   ► of like actually trying to really relax,

01:01:53 ◼   ► I think really added to the clarity for me

01:01:56 ◼   ► of really thinking things through.

01:01:59 ◼   ► So I think this is probably something I'm gonna do

01:02:01 ◼   ► towards the end of the year every year

01:02:02 ◼   ► to take a week or two off and then combine this

01:02:06 ◼   ► as part of that, I think might be pretty nice.

01:02:08 ◼   ► - Well, in the theme of everybody is different

01:02:10 ◼   ► and works in different ways,

01:02:12 ◼   ► I found it kind of effective.

01:02:16 ◼   ► I wasn't engaged day to day in the details when I was there.

01:02:20 ◼   ► I occasionally I would dip in

01:02:23 ◼   ► and see if something was going on,

01:02:24 ◼   ► but like I didn't, I gave myself permission

01:02:26 ◼   ► to basically like not do stuff.

01:02:29 ◼   ► And I can see how I could tell you,

01:02:31 ◼   ► well, Myke, you just need to do that and let it go.

01:02:33 ◼   ► Or I could say, well, Myke knows,

01:02:36 ◼   ► that normally that's just not gonna work for him.

01:02:38 ◼   ► So he needs to find another way to handle it.

01:02:40 ◼   ► And I think that that's fine.

01:02:41 ◼   ► But I do, I'm a real believer,

01:02:43 ◼   ► and this is, again, for literally for everybody.

01:02:46 ◼   ► Like I am a believer in getting out of your

01:02:51 ◼   ► day-to-day work mindset

01:02:55 ◼   ► so that you can think about bigger issues,

01:02:58 ◼   ► because there are bigger issues.

01:02:59 ◼   ► You are probably responsible, whether it's your job

01:03:03 ◼   ► or whether it's sort of de facto responsible.

01:03:06 ◼   ► You're probably responsible for stuff

01:03:08 ◼   ► and you're not thinking of,

01:03:11 ◼   ► should I do this better?

01:03:13 ◼   ► Is there a better way for us to do this?

01:03:14 ◼   ► Should I do something different?

01:03:16 ◼   ► You're not thinking about that.

01:03:16 ◼   ► You're thinking, I'm gonna work on this thing.

01:03:18 ◼   ► That's my job and I'm gonna do the job.

01:03:20 ◼   ► And there's real value in taking a step

01:03:23 ◼   ► or several steps back

01:03:25 ◼   ► and thinking about the bigger issues of it.

01:03:29 ◼   ► And it's just so easy to lose that.

01:03:31 ◼   ► And so, yeah, I found it really valuable.

01:03:34 ◼   ► And I haven't done anything like this, I think,

01:03:36 ◼   ► since I've been on my own.

01:03:37 ◼   ► The other thing I realized about this is the whole idea,

01:03:43 ◼   ► and I think I talked about some of this last week,

01:03:44 ◼   ► but the whole idea that, you know,

01:03:46 ◼   ► we were so much in the mentality

01:03:47 ◼   ► of starting an independent business,

01:03:50 ◼   ► and we've now reached the point where

01:03:51 ◼   ► we're not in that mentality anymore,

01:03:54 ◼   ► and you need to think about like,

01:03:56 ◼   ► how do I maintain my business?

01:03:57 ◼   ► And are there burdens that I've taken on

01:04:00 ◼   ► because it was one of the things that you had to do

01:04:02 ◼   ► to make the business start that don't make sense anymore.

01:04:07 ◼   ► In the context, I know that there's a lot,

01:04:10 ◼   ► I was talking to Kathy Campbell, our friend about this.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Like there are a lot of people who start up new businesses,

01:04:16 ◼   ► independent businesses, and then they get to the point

01:04:19 ◼   ► where they realize they need help.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Like they need to hire an employee

01:04:24 ◼   ► or they need to farm out some work to some different people

01:04:27 ◼   ► as freelance or whatever.

01:04:28 ◼   ► And it is a huge step because you build it

01:04:30 ◼   ► with your own two hands.

01:04:32 ◼   ► And then there comes a point where you realize

01:04:34 ◼   ► that even though you built it with your own two hands

01:04:36 ◼   ► and you can continue to do those tasks,

01:04:39 ◼   ► they're not necessary, right?

01:04:43 ◼   ► Which is why you gave me my official Myke and Gray theme

01:04:48 ◼   ► for the year, which is the year of essentials,

01:04:50 ◼   ► which is I need to start focusing on what things

01:04:53 ◼   ► are essential to my work as opposed to things I can do.

01:04:57 ◼   ► Because when you get started, you're like,

01:04:58 ◼   ► well, that's a task that needs to be done and I could do it.

01:05:00 ◼   ► So I'm gonna do it.

01:05:02 ◼   ► And then after a few years you realize,

01:05:04 ◼   ► hopefully you eventually realize,

01:05:06 ◼   ► I don't need to do this just because I can do it.

01:05:09 ◼   ► This is not the best use of my time.

01:05:11 ◼   ► There's something else I could be doing.

01:05:14 ◼   ► And that is a big leap,

01:05:16 ◼   ► especially when you're sort of following the playbook

01:05:20 ◼   ► that you put down when you started for me in 2014,

01:05:26 ◼   ► but it's 2022 now.

01:05:28 ◼   ► So that playbook is out of date.

01:05:30 ◼   ► And the only way you're going to rewrite the playbook

01:05:33 ◼   ► and rewrite the rules is by getting out of your own

01:05:37 ◼   ► day-to-day grind, out of your own head

01:05:39 ◼   ► and thinking about the bigger picture.

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01:06:29 ◼   ► So like what I think is super cool about this is kind of just the thing that we were just talking about is that as your business grows,

01:06:35 ◼   ► as things continue to move on for you, having something there to help you scale like electric is great, right?

01:06:43 ◼   ► So rather than needing to actually necessarily hire someone when you actually couldn't really employ them full time because maybe you're still small and growing,

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01:06:55 ◼   ► I think this is really really cool.

01:06:58 ◼   ► For upgrade listeners, electric are offering a free pair of beats solo 3 headphones for

01:07:02 ◼   ► taking a qualified meeting.

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01:07:08 ◼   ► That's electric.ai/upgradefm to get your free pair of beats solo 3 headphones today

01:07:15 ◼   ► for scheduling a meeting.

01:07:16 ◼   ► Our thanks to electric for their support of this show and relay FM.

01:07:20 ◼   ► some hashtag, ask upgrade questions.

01:07:22 ◼   ► (mimics air whooshing)

01:07:23 ◼   ► First comes from, oh,

01:07:26 ◼   ► 'cause we didn't do any last week.

01:07:28 ◼   ► - Or the week before.

01:07:31 ◼   ► - Sure, this one comes from Kieran then.

01:07:34 ◼   ► Kieran asks, we've got some display questions.

01:07:37 ◼   ► The display is on top of everyone's mind right now, Jason.

01:07:40 ◼   ► Everyone's like display, display, display,

01:07:42 ◼   ► tell me all about it, I need to know.

01:07:45 ◼   ► Kieran asks, assuming that the display quality

01:07:48 ◼   ► of an Apple external display is the same

01:07:50 ◼   ► as the upcoming iMac.

01:07:51 ◼   ► Would you pick the iMac over an external display

01:07:54 ◼   ► in something say like a Mac mini?

01:07:56 ◼   ► It seems like having a more modular setup

01:07:58 ◼   ► would be beneficial, especially in what is still

01:08:00 ◼   ► the early days of Apple Silicon.

01:08:02 ◼   ► Good question, good question.

01:08:05 ◼   ► - I have thought about this.

01:08:07 ◼   ► I am intrigued by the idea that I could get

01:08:12 ◼   ► an external display and then swap in new things, right?

01:08:16 ◼   ► Like it's been a while since I had something like that.

01:08:19 ◼   ► And the problem with the iMac

01:08:21 ◼   ► is you've got a beautiful display

01:08:22 ◼   ► and then it's at the end of its life

01:08:25 ◼   ► as this one that is in front of me probably is.

01:08:29 ◼   ► And what do I do with it?

01:08:30 ◼   ► I can't tuck it away somewhere

01:08:31 ◼   ► because it's a giant 27-inch iMac.

01:08:34 ◼   ► I can't put it to use in another form.

01:08:36 ◼   ► It can't be really a server

01:08:37 ◼   ► because it's gonna be taking up a huge amount of space.

01:08:40 ◼   ► And so I'm gonna have to sell it off.

01:08:42 ◼   ► And of course, even if the screen is great,

01:08:44 ◼   ► if the computer is outdated,

01:08:45 ◼   ► then it's sort of wasteful.

01:08:47 ◼   ► So maybe, maybe.

01:08:51 ◼   ► My challenge with it, it would be,

01:08:55 ◼   ► what's the price of the external display

01:08:56 ◼   ► versus the price of the iMac that I would buy?

01:08:59 ◼   ► What's the price of the external Mac, Mac mini or Mac Pro

01:09:04 ◼   ► or whatever it would be?

01:09:06 ◼   ► And does that make sense for me?

01:09:08 ◼   ► But I'm open to the idea

01:09:10 ◼   ► because if I could get a really great screen that I liked

01:09:13 ◼   ► and that I could just swap out the computer

01:09:15 ◼   ► after a few years, or plug in a laptop or whatever.

01:09:20 ◼   ► I like that idea.

01:09:22 ◼   ► My guess is that it won't be practical

01:09:26 ◼   ► and that the most expedient solution

01:09:28 ◼   ► will be to get a new iMac.

01:09:31 ◼   ► Also, if they come out with a new iMac

01:09:34 ◼   ► and then the screen isn't there yet and it comes out later,

01:09:37 ◼   ► am I going to be able to resist a new Apple Silicon iMac

01:09:41 ◼   ► with the hope that the mythical display comes later,

01:09:44 ◼   ► that's gonna be really tough too.

01:09:46 ◼   ► So I think this is a great question.

01:09:48 ◼   ► I think everybody who is sort of high-end iMac users

01:09:52 ◼   ► should be pondering it.

01:09:53 ◼   ► But my guess is that a large iMac is in my future again,

01:10:00 ◼   ► but I'm tempted.

01:10:02 ◼   ► I think in the right circumstances,

01:10:03 ◼   ► my answer would be yes,

01:10:05 ◼   ► that if I could get a external computer

01:10:10 ◼   ► of whatever kind that would meet my needs

01:10:14 ◼   ► and have a nice 27 inch, let's say, 5K Apple display

01:10:19 ◼   ► on my desk that was of iMac quality

01:10:23 ◼   ► so that I only have to swap out the computer after that.

01:10:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I would be interested in that,

01:10:28 ◼   ► but I feel like there's a really narrow window

01:10:31 ◼   ► where that would actually happen.

01:10:33 ◼   ► - I struggle with this a lot too, like on multiple fronts,

01:10:36 ◼   ► especially because none of this stuff exists.

01:10:38 ◼   ► So it's funny to even be struggling about it,

01:10:40 ◼   ► but obviously this is what I think about,

01:10:41 ◼   ► 'cause why wouldn't I be thinking about this?

01:10:43 ◼   ► This is what I think about, right?

01:10:45 ◼   ► The idea of an iMac Pro sounds really cool, right?

01:10:51 ◼   ► I love my iMac Pro, I love my current iMac.

01:10:53 ◼   ► If I could get an even better one of these, awesome.

01:10:56 ◼   ► The idea of like an Apple Silicon Mac Pro

01:11:01 ◼   ► is also really exciting to me.

01:11:03 ◼   ► Like, what does it mean?

01:11:04 ◼   ► What does it do?

01:11:05 ◼   ► How much does it cost, right?

01:11:07 ◼   ► So that's the one part.

01:11:08 ◼   ► But the part that I would maybe go in again

01:11:11 ◼   ► and say to Kieran is,

01:11:12 ◼   ► what about an external display and a MacBook Pro?

01:11:16 ◼   ► - Sure. - Rather than a Mac Mini?

01:11:17 ◼   ► 'Cause that's what I'm very confident that I'm going to do.

01:11:20 ◼   ► 'Cause that's what I'm currently doing.

01:11:22 ◼   ► And the experience for me,

01:11:23 ◼   ► like I have two setups in my studio.

01:11:26 ◼   ► I have the lovingly named PodCastle right here,

01:11:30 ◼   ► where I'm recording in,

01:11:31 ◼   ► which has got like these big sound blankets

01:11:33 ◼   ► and so it keeps the kind of the sound monitored.

01:11:36 ◼   ► Then I have a larger desk, and half of that desk is where I sit at when I'm working in

01:11:41 ◼   ► the studio and not recording or editing.

01:11:43 ◼   ► So I'm there most of the day.

01:11:44 ◼   ► And I have an LG display with my laptop plugged into it.

01:11:50 ◼   ► And I use a CalDigit dock.

01:11:52 ◼   ► And the experience is about 75% good, because every day I plug my Thunderbolt cable in,

01:11:57 ◼   ► then I have to unplug the monitor and plug the monitor back in.

01:12:01 ◼   ► I do this every single day.

01:12:02 ◼   ► It's the only way the monitor will work.

01:12:03 ◼   ► I've tried everything else.

01:12:05 ◼   ► annoying but I now know how I do it. The monitor that I have, the LG one, I don't make it anymore.

01:12:11 ◼   ► It's called the LG Ergo. It has a really good adjustable stand and it pivots very easily.

01:12:18 ◼   ► So I can just pull the screen out to the side, plug unplug, done. But what I am very confident

01:12:24 ◼   ► about is if I had an Apple display, I would just plug that in and it would work immediately.

01:12:31 ◼   ► I feel very confident about this as a possibility.

01:12:34 ◼   ► So that I know is going to be my future.

01:12:36 ◼   ► MacBook Pro with a display.

01:12:37 ◼   ► And what I like about that is,

01:12:39 ◼   ► I had this theory about this for me

01:12:41 ◼   ► when I was originally designing the studio.

01:12:43 ◼   ► I was like, that would be my recording computer,

01:12:46 ◼   ► but I've actually come to like that being my main machine

01:12:49 ◼   ► works really nicely for me,

01:12:50 ◼   ► because then if I take that Mac somewhere else,

01:12:53 ◼   ► maybe I'm working at home on something or I'm traveling,

01:12:56 ◼   ► I have like what I consider to be my computer everywhere.

01:13:00 ◼   ► And I love that.

01:13:03 ◼   ► - That is how I lived for a long time,

01:13:05 ◼   ► where I had a MacBook Air actually for a long time,

01:13:10 ◼   ► and a big external display at my office.

01:13:13 ◼   ► And I would put the Air in my backpack and come home.

01:13:16 ◼   ► And so when I was home, it was still my computer.

01:13:18 ◼   ► It was a little tiny Air and not the big screen,

01:13:22 ◼   ► but it was the same computer everywhere.

01:13:26 ◼   ► All the files were the same, all the settings were the same,

01:13:28 ◼   ► all the apps were at the same version, right?

01:13:30 ◼   ► It was, and there was something,

01:13:32 ◼   ► you talk about reducing mental overhead,

01:13:34 ◼   ► there's something about that

01:13:35 ◼   ► in terms of not having to maintain two computers.

01:13:40 ◼   ► And, you know, syncing services make this all better,

01:13:42 ◼   ► but the fact is I'm reminded every time

01:13:44 ◼   ► that I get my MacBook Air out

01:13:46 ◼   ► or I travel with my MacBook Air,

01:13:48 ◼   ► that it's not my computer,

01:13:50 ◼   ► that it's my vacation home, right?

01:13:53 ◼   ► It's my other computer and it's not,

01:13:55 ◼   ► I launched something, I'm like, why is this not working?

01:13:57 ◼   ► And it's, oh, this is the wrong version

01:13:59 ◼   ► or that file is here, or I let that,

01:14:01 ◼   ► that file wasn't on a syncing service,

01:14:03 ◼   ► and so now I have to retrieve it from the other computer

01:14:06 ◼   ► or go without, like there's a lot of overhead

01:14:09 ◼   ► that happens there.

01:14:10 ◼   ► That said, it's not for everybody,

01:14:11 ◼   ► and I'm not sure I would go back to that life,

01:14:14 ◼   ► because it really depends.

01:14:17 ◼   ► Like those MacBook Pros are very impressive,

01:14:19 ◼   ► and so maybe they would be tempting.

01:14:22 ◼   ► It, you know, you're paying a lot more money

01:14:27 ◼   ► for that flexibility, I think, at that point.

01:14:29 ◼   ► But for a lot of people, I think the laptop docked

01:14:34 ◼   ► to a display life is a good one.

01:14:37 ◼   ► And the way that Apple Silicon is shaping up,

01:14:41 ◼   ► it seems to be, I'm more optimistic

01:14:45 ◼   ► that it's not gonna be super weird to use.

01:14:49 ◼   ► 'Cause it was super weird when I would use mine.

01:14:50 ◼   ► Lid closed, things would be weird.

01:14:52 ◼   ► Sometimes it would stay awake,

01:14:54 ◼   ► even though it was lid closed and disconnected

01:14:56 ◼   ► in my backpack. Lots of weird things with an external display, but Apple Silicon Macs

01:15:02 ◼   ► are much better at handling external displays, so I'm more optimistic about that.

01:15:06 ◼   ► And I will say, like, I do actually quite enjoy having two machines, because this recording

01:15:13 ◼   ► machine I can leave behind in updates.

01:15:18 ◼   ► Right.

01:15:19 ◼   ► Which I like to do. I, like, so for example, there was a new version of Logic that came

01:15:26 ◼   ► out with the most recent version of Mac OS. I only upgraded to that like two days ago.

01:15:31 ◼   ► Right. You've got a production machine that you can keep behind and there is a lot of

01:15:36 ◼   ► value in that. So Ian had another question about these displays.

01:15:40 ◼   ► You mentioned that the new rumored external displays could also be used for the iPad.

01:15:46 ◼   ► If this is the case, do you think there would be touchscreen?

01:15:49 ◼   ► I don't. I think Apple doesn't want to go down that route and it would be weird to say

01:15:54 ◼   ► their touch but only for some and I don't think they're going to be adding touch to

01:15:57 ◼   ► the Mac. That's just they've shown no interest in that even though that might be fine. They're

01:16:02 ◼   ► not interested in it. iPads have support for you know trackpads and keyboards and mice

01:16:11 ◼   ► so you don't need a touchscreen. That would be I think they would definitely not be a

01:16:15 ◼   ► touchscreen. It would all be as if you were using a really really big Magic Keyboard case.

01:16:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I think Apple is against touch screen for the Mac at the moment.

01:16:27 ◼   ► I don't think this is the right move.

01:16:28 ◼   ► I said this before and I stand by.

01:16:30 ◼   ► I would love to have a touch screen on my laptop for the exact same reason that the

01:16:35 ◼   ► Magic Keyboard for iPad exists, right?

01:16:38 ◼   ► It's just the thing in the opposite.

01:16:41 ◼   ► When I attach the Magic Keyboard to my iPad, my touch screen on my iPad still works.

01:16:45 ◼   ► So Apple knows it's the thing that people might want to do.

01:16:49 ◼   ► But for some – I don't – if I was going to sit on the outside looking in, I don't

01:16:56 ◼   ► think that it is in opposition to this.

01:16:58 ◼   ► I just think maybe they don't want to do that work right now to macOS.

01:17:02 ◼   ► I think Apple would want to change a lot of macOS to make that work.

01:17:06 ◼   ► They wouldn't need to, I don't think, but I think they would want to.

01:17:09 ◼   ► And I think maybe that's not priority for them right now.

01:17:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:13 ◼   ► And I think that they're not going to make a display with touch that only works on iPad,

01:17:17 ◼   ► right?

01:17:18 ◼   ► That seems like –

01:17:19 ◼   ► for such a narrow use case.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Because even if they enable that,

01:17:23 ◼   ► not that many people are gonna do it.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Unless the iPad changes so dramatically,

01:17:27 ◼   ► but I don't see that happening.

01:17:29 ◼   ► - I'll throw out a wild card,

01:17:30 ◼   ► which is I do sometimes think about Apple pencil support

01:17:32 ◼   ► on something, but even that requires

01:17:35 ◼   ► like a coding on the screen

01:17:36 ◼   ► 'cause you're now rubbing the pencil on the screen

01:17:39 ◼   ► and you don't want to-- - And also that's so

01:17:40 ◼   ► complicated because then really for that to be comfortable,

01:17:43 ◼   ► the movement of the screen has to be significantly changed.

01:17:47 ◼   ► - There has to be a special stand

01:17:50 ◼   ► or it's gotta be on an arm or something

01:17:52 ◼   ► and it's a very different thing, I agree.

01:17:53 ◼   ► And that's why I think the easiest way to do this

01:17:55 ◼   ► is to think of it as a Magic Keyboard mode.

01:17:58 ◼   ► And by the way, Magic Keyboard mode,

01:18:00 ◼   ► yes, it has a touchscreen,

01:18:02 ◼   ► but the touchscreen is right in front of you

01:18:04 ◼   ► where you can reach to touch it.

01:18:05 ◼   ► An external display on a desk is not,

01:18:08 ◼   ► that's much more in the Zombie Arms category.

01:18:12 ◼   ► - I was talking more about the laptops there, but.

01:18:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, oh, well, I mean, it's true too, right?

01:18:17 ◼   ► I think there are lots of ergonomic issues with the Apple Pencil anywhere, because you've

01:18:23 ◼   ► got the keyboard in the way, whereas you take the iPad and it's just the iPad and the Apple

01:18:27 ◼   ► Pencil.

01:18:28 ◼   ► So, but it's still, it's like touchscreen but not, and I do wonder if they debate Apple

01:18:34 ◼   ► Pencil input, but so far their answer has been sidecar, right?

01:18:37 ◼   ► Which is, well, if you want Apple Pencil input on your Mac, what you do is you sidecar from

01:18:41 ◼   ► your iPad and then use the Apple Pencil, and it will actually work.

01:18:44 ◼   ► So I don't know, I think the simple answer is no.

01:18:48 ◼   ► I think that any external display support that would happen for iPad is going to be

01:18:53 ◼   ► predicated on the idea of an external keyboard and pointing device and using the cursor that

01:18:57 ◼   ► already — pointer that already exists on iPadOS.

01:19:01 ◼   ► In our holiday Ask Upgrade, one of the things that came up was that you don't own any red

01:19:08 ◼   ► clothing because if you wore that accidentally to a cow game, people would start chanting

01:19:13 ◼   ► at you to tell you to take it off.

01:19:15 ◼   ► - Take off that red shirt.

01:19:16 ◼   ► - There you go. - Take off that red shirt.

01:19:19 ◼   ► - This is some good AskUp Great follow-up from Nathan.

01:19:21 ◼   ► Is Santa allowed to attend Cal games

01:19:24 ◼   ► in his traditional red suit?

01:19:25 ◼   ► Do people chant, "Take off that red shirt," at him,

01:19:28 ◼   ► or does he just wear a green Santa suit

01:19:30 ◼   ► when he attends games?

01:19:31 ◼   ► - Well, there's a lot of really interesting philosophy

01:19:34 ◼   ► in Nathan's question.

01:19:35 ◼   ► I would say it depends on Santa's status.

01:19:40 ◼   ► You'd be surprised how many people went to Berkeley.

01:19:43 ◼   ► So my guess is that Santa is probably what we would call an old blue.

01:19:46 ◼   ► He's an alum.

01:19:47 ◼   ► Uh, in that case, he's probably wearing.

01:19:50 ◼   ► Wearing blue and not his Santa suit at a game.

01:19:54 ◼   ► However, if Santa didn't go to Cal and is really just there in a, in an official

01:19:58 ◼   ► capacity, making an appearance as Santa, I think he would wear a green Santa suit.

01:20:03 ◼   ► The color of Santa suits before Coca-Cola made them red.

01:20:06 ◼   ► And, uh, I think he would do that because nobody wants to see Santa torn limb from

01:20:11 ◼   ► limb by angry Cal fans who just see his red suit.

01:20:15 ◼   ► I think no one.

01:20:18 ◼   ► - Poor Santa.

01:20:19 ◼   ► - No, Santa's fine, but he just don't wear,

01:20:21 ◼   ► don't wear the red suit to Cal games.

01:20:23 ◼   ► Santa knows, Santa knows that he only does that at Stanford.

01:20:26 ◼   ► He goes, the red and white is for Stanford, not for Cal.

01:20:30 ◼   ► - Ryan asks, "Jason, as a classic Mac OS user,

01:20:34 ◼   ► when you select a menu bar item,

01:20:37 ◼   ► do you still hold your mouse or trackpad down

01:20:40 ◼   ► before releasing it on the dropdown items

01:20:42 ◼   ► or a menu from the top,

01:20:43 ◼   ► or do you click the menu bar

01:20:45 ◼   ► and then click the dropdown item?

01:20:46 ◼   ► - Okay, as a classic Mac OS user makes it sound

01:20:49 ◼   ► like I'm in OS 9 right now.

01:20:51 ◼   ► - You know, I thought you were.

01:20:54 ◼   ► - I've rebooted into OS 10 now.

01:20:57 ◼   ► See, I haven't used OS, classic Mac OS

01:21:00 ◼   ► in like 20 years regularly.

01:21:03 ◼   ► I think it's been a long time, but it is true.

01:21:06 ◼   ► - I started on classic Mac OS.

01:21:08 ◼   ► I just want to say that, right?

01:21:10 ◼   ► I used Classic Mac, like these old laptops and stuff

01:21:13 ◼   ► that my uncle gave me, that's where I grew up.

01:21:16 ◼   ► - So it used to be that when you used a menu item,

01:21:20 ◼   ► you clicked and held down the mouse to keep the menu down,

01:21:24 ◼   ► and then you would move the mouse down to the item

01:21:26 ◼   ► and let go, and it would select the item.

01:21:31 ◼   ► And you can still do that, you can still do that.

01:21:36 ◼   ► I generally don't do that because I use a track pad

01:21:40 ◼   ► and once you've got my thumb down clicking,

01:21:43 ◼   ► it's easier just to click and then move down.

01:21:47 ◼   ► But I think I do sometimes do it

01:21:49 ◼   ► if I know exactly what my target is.

01:21:51 ◼   ► I think I do sometimes go click, swipe, boop, right?

01:21:54 ◼   ► Like very quickly I do it.

01:21:56 ◼   ► But for the most part, I think habitually at this point,

01:21:59 ◼   ► I am all in on the, you click and lift your finger

01:22:03 ◼   ► and now the menu is open and then you move down

01:22:06 ◼   ► to what you want and then you click again.

01:22:08 ◼   ► But I'm sure I do both.

01:22:10 ◼   ► - And Blake asks, "I use Launchpad all the time

01:22:13 ◼   ► "to launch apps, am I weird?"

01:22:15 ◼   ► - Blake, how can I phrase this gently?

01:22:20 ◼   ► You're no weirder than the people at Apple

01:22:22 ◼   ► who decided that Launchpad should exist.

01:22:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like, Blake, you use something

01:22:26 ◼   ► that is built into Mac OS. - As intended.

01:22:28 ◼   ► - You are using a thing

01:22:30 ◼   ► that someone put in there once

01:22:34 ◼   ► and then no one ever touched again.

01:22:35 ◼   ► So think about that.

01:22:36 ◼   ► - That's, yep.

01:22:37 ◼   ► - You know, that's all we'll say on the Mac.

01:22:40 ◼   ► You use something that's in macOS, Blake.

01:22:43 ◼   ► - Who are we to judge somebody who is using a stock feature

01:22:47 ◼   ► of macOS that somebody at Apple thinks

01:22:50 ◼   ► should be used to launch apps?

01:22:52 ◼   ► - I cannot believe that there just is no,

01:22:56 ◼   ► I'm looking at it now.

01:22:58 ◼   ► Why can't I sort this alphabetically?

01:23:00 ◼   ► Why won't it let me do that?

01:23:01 ◼   ► You know?

01:23:02 ◼   ► - Because you can't do that on the iPad.

01:23:03 ◼   ► and the entire purpose of Launchpad

01:23:05 ◼   ► is to replicate the iPad home screen on macOS.

01:23:08 ◼   ► - Well, where's App Library?

01:23:09 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:23:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, put my widgets in here.

01:23:14 ◼   ► Where's the dashboard?

01:23:15 ◼   ► Can I get back to the dashboard?

01:23:17 ◼   ► No.

01:23:18 ◼   ► - I just moved an app to the trash.

01:23:20 ◼   ► That's hilarious.

01:23:21 ◼   ► So I dragged an app to the trash.

01:23:23 ◼   ► It then bounced back to its position

01:23:26 ◼   ► and a pop-up came up.

01:23:27 ◼   ► So do you want to delete this app?

01:23:29 ◼   ► - Oh, now you're wrong, by the way.

01:23:31 ◼   ► You're wrong about there not being updates to Launchpad

01:23:35 ◼   ► because they added when TestFlight for Mac was added,

01:23:40 ◼   ► they added a folder in which your TestFlight apps go.

01:23:46 ◼   ► Yeah, pretty big stuff.

01:23:50 ◼   ► - Where is that?

01:23:51 ◼   ► - I don't know, it's right next to my TestFlight app

01:23:53 ◼   ► 'cause I've got TestFlight installed.

01:23:54 ◼   ► Do you have TestFlight installed on your?

01:23:55 ◼   ► - I have TestFlight installed and I do have a TestFlight app.

01:23:57 ◼   ► - Do you have a TestFlight app?

01:23:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's just out there on its own.

01:24:01 ◼   ► - Oh, mine is in a little folder.

01:24:02 ◼   ► I've got TestFlight and then a little TestFlight folder

01:24:04 ◼   ► with one app in it.

01:24:05 ◼   ► - Well, that made yours. - One lonely app.

01:24:07 ◼   ► - At least.

01:24:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, well.

01:24:10 ◼   ► Oh, look, I made a folder with two Adobe,

01:24:12 ◼   ► faceless Adobe utilities in it.

01:24:15 ◼   ► That was great.

01:24:16 ◼   ► All right.

01:24:17 ◼   ► That's my launchpad used for this year.

01:24:19 ◼   ► - This year, this five years.

01:24:22 ◼   ► But Blake, you know what, Blake?

01:24:24 ◼   ► You do you.

01:24:25 ◼   ► If it works for you, great.

01:24:26 ◼   ► - It's not like you used an old version

01:24:29 ◼   ► and got Launchpad that they took away

01:24:31 ◼   ► and you brought it back because you have to have Launchpad.

01:24:34 ◼   ► You're literally using a basic function

01:24:36 ◼   ► of the operating system.

01:24:37 ◼   ► So how weird could you be?

01:24:38 ◼   ► - If you would like to send in a question of your own,

01:24:43 ◼   ► maybe you want to find out how weird you are

01:24:45 ◼   ► for the way that you use your Mac.

01:24:46 ◼   ► Ask us, #askupgrade or use question mark askupgrade

01:24:50 ◼   ► on the in the RealFM members Discord that you get access to.

01:24:54 ◼   ► If you sign up for Upgrade Plus, go to getupgradeplus.com.

01:24:57 ◼   ► You can sign up, $5 a month or $50 a year

01:25:00 ◼   ► and you get longer, ad-free versions of Upgrade

01:25:05 ◼   ► every single week.

01:25:05 ◼   ► On Upgrade Plus this week, I'm gonna ask Jason

01:25:08 ◼   ► for some Stream Deck inspiration.

01:25:11 ◼   ► Stream Deck inspo.

01:25:13 ◼   ► - Oh no. - As we call it in the biz.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Thanks to Electric, DoorDash and Memberful

01:25:18 ◼   ► for their support of this week's episode.

01:25:20 ◼   ► Thank you for listening.

01:25:21 ◼   ► If you wanna find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com

01:25:23 ◼   ► and these @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L.

01:25:26 ◼   ► You can go to @imike for me, I am Y-K-E.

01:25:30 ◼   ► And if you would like to buy a theme system journal,

01:25:33 ◼   ► I think that might be of interest to you,

01:25:34 ◼   ► go to theme system.com and you can read about that

01:25:37 ◼   ► and maybe buy one for yourself.

01:25:39 ◼   ► We'll be back next time.

01:25:40 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye, Jason Stell.

01:25:43 ◼   ► - All right, new folder, 45 minutes, swearing.

01:25:48 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:25:52 ◼   ► [ Music ]

01:25:56 ◼   ► [ Silence ]