Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:06 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 356.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Fitbod, Hullo and Bombas.

00:00:14 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Federico Vittucci.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Hi Federico.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Hello, Myke. How are you?

00:00:20 ◼   ► I am very good, my friend. I'm very good. How are you?

00:00:22 ◼   ► I'm actually, you know, this is this.

00:00:26 ◼   ► It's way too hot in Rome right now.

00:00:29 ◼   ► So I have installed all these new HomeKit thread-enabled sensors made by Eve on my balcony

00:00:37 ◼   ► and it says 35 degrees, which is like, it's unacceptable at 7pm.

00:00:42 ◼   ► 7pm, 35 degrees is how, why?

00:00:46 ◼   ► We've been having those kinds of temperatures here over the last week, you know.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Really?

00:00:50 ◼   ► Yeah, it's been disgusting.

00:00:51 ◼   ► It really is.

00:00:52 ◼   ► It's been very rough for us.

00:00:56 ◼   ► And it doesn't help that this Mac Mini that I have, which is an Intel Mac Mini, it gets

00:01:01 ◼   ► really, it gets quite warm.

00:01:04 ◼   ► It gets surprisingly hot, those things, don't they?

00:01:07 ◼   ► Right?

00:01:08 ◼   ► Why though?

00:01:09 ◼   ► Like, I really want to get an M1 Mac Mini Pro at some point or M2, whatever it's going

00:01:14 ◼   ► to be called, I don't know.

00:01:16 ◼   ► It gets surprisingly hot, actually.

00:01:18 ◼   ► I don't know if maybe there's something wrong with my Mac Mini because it's not even warm,

00:01:22 ◼   ► it's hot.

00:01:23 ◼   ► place my hand on it. It kind of bothers me actually. My Mac Mini is way too hot and I

00:01:30 ◼   ► feel like it's contributing to the hotness of the room.

00:01:35 ◼   ► You should just replace it with another Intel NUC.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Just litter those things around the apartment.

00:01:42 ◼   ► I mean I love my NUC and we're going to talk about that later but man Windows is just gross.

00:01:48 ◼   ► I can tell you that. I mean, it's beautiful for what it does functionally speaking. I

00:01:55 ◼   ► appreciate it. But man, it's not something that... Like, it reminded me why I moved away

00:02:02 ◼   ► from Windows 13 years ago. Not for me.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Big Money Hackett isn't here today. I believe he's in a jungle somewhere taking pictures

00:02:11 ◼   ► of computers. I think that's what he's doing today.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Yeah, swimming in a pool of money.

00:02:14 ◼   ► - He's swimming in a pool of money.

00:02:15 ◼   ► - A computer safari, yep.

00:02:17 ◼   ► And then, yeah, he's swimming in his pool of money.

00:02:19 ◼   ► Which, by the way, if you wanna contribute

00:02:21 ◼   ► to that pool of money,

00:02:22 ◼   ► make the money pool a little bit bigger.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Three days to go as we're recording this

00:02:26 ◼   ► on Steven's Kickstarter.

00:02:28 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes if you wanna back it,

00:02:30 ◼   ► but this will be your final warning.

00:02:32 ◼   ► And aren't we good friends that he's not even here

00:02:35 ◼   ► and we're promoting his money pit?

00:02:37 ◼   ► - Yes, I think we are really good friends.

00:02:40 ◼   ► - I think we're good friends.

00:02:41 ◼   ► For this reason, we are entitled to 15% each.

00:02:45 ◼   ► -Ooh, that's a good, nice. -Of the proceeds.

00:02:47 ◼   ► That's a good percentage.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, you know, 30% divided by 2, 15% each.

00:02:52 ◼   ► I feel like that's a good compromise.

00:02:54 ◼   ► -We're fair. -So, Steven...

00:02:56 ◼   ► Yeah, we're really fair.

00:02:57 ◼   ► So, Steven, you can send in the check to my address.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Both of those checks I will take care of,

00:03:04 ◼   ► maybe in my... -No, I don't want to check.

00:03:07 ◼   ► -No? -No.

00:03:08 ◼   ► Who does anything with checks?

00:03:10 ◼   ► It's not 1974. I'll take electronic payment.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Some people do. Some people do use checks.

00:03:16 ◼   ► I think that's bananas. I don't understand that.

00:03:19 ◼   ► I think I've only used a check once in my life.

00:03:22 ◼   ► When I needed to rent our current apartment many years ago,

00:03:28 ◼   ► the owner wanted a down payment with a check for some reason.

00:03:32 ◼   ► I believe we used a check similarly when we were buying our house for something.

00:03:36 ◼   ► I don't remember exactly what it was for.

00:03:38 ◼   ► It wasn't like the deposit or anything, but I know that there was like one thing where they needed a check

00:03:42 ◼   ► And it was just like I don't know how this is helpful for anybody because if I I could just send you the money right now

00:03:47 ◼   ► And you'll have that immediately

00:03:48 ◼   ► Rather than waiting for me to mail this check to you and then four more days for you to receive the money

00:03:54 ◼   ► But yeah, yeah, I don't know

00:03:56 ◼   ► All people I have received my Ricky mascot

00:04:00 ◼   ► I'm jealous. I guess posts bad for you, huh? Yeah

00:04:07 ◼   ► Yes, so I'll put a link in the show notes, but you may remember this we spoke about this ages ago Ellen

00:04:12 ◼   ► Wonderful listener who's in our discord?

00:04:15 ◼   ► Shared that they had made a Ricky mascot and we then commissioned Ricky mascots for each of us

00:04:20 ◼   ► Mine has arrived and now sits next to my iMac. My Ricky mascot came with additional features. I have medals

00:04:28 ◼   ► Because I am the current reigning champion the consolidated royal leader of the Ricky's

00:04:35 ◼   ► Both annual and keynote. So I have a little annual and keynote medal one of each for my little mascot Ricky

00:04:42 ◼   ► That's incredible

00:04:45 ◼   ► Looking at me now. I love this little thing. You named him Ricky. Oh that is that is the official mascot name

00:04:52 ◼   ► It's just Ricky. I kind of feel like I wanna I wanna

00:04:55 ◼   ► Call I want to call him the Italian version of that

00:04:59 ◼   ► Maybe mine should be Richard because that's like super British right to be like Richard

00:05:04 ◼   ► So, so, but what would you, how would you say "little Richard" in, in, like, with a British way?

00:05:11 ◼   ► Like "Richie"? Is that, no, that's not British, right?

00:05:14 ◼   ► Well, I could just say "Richard". What's wrong with "Richard"? Does it have, it could be "Richie"?

00:05:18 ◼   ► Because it's "Ricky". It's like, it's a smaller version of "Richard".

00:05:22 ◼   ► Okay, we could be "Richie".

00:05:24 ◼   ► "Richie"?

00:05:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:25 ◼   ► In Italian, I guess it could be "Ricardino".

00:05:28 ◼   ► Well, that seems like you've, you've taken a long one.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Why couldn't I have "Richard", but you can have "Ricardino"?

00:05:34 ◼   ► Okay, so you can have Richard. I feel like you're going to be like "Ricci", right?

00:05:39 ◼   ► Like R-I-C-C-I. Okay, so Steven will have Ricky, you will have Richard, I will have

00:05:45 ◼   ► Ricardino. Okay, so it's Ricky, Richard and Ricardino.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Yes. By the way, I know I said it really badly,

00:05:55 ◼   ► but I also kind of like that, because you've got like all the fans like "Ricardino", that's

00:05:58 ◼   ► his name. I can roll the full R's, baby, if you want

00:06:02 ◼   ► I can do a Riccardino.

00:06:04 ◼   ► See?

00:06:05 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:06:06 ◼   ► I feel like rolling the middle R is just showing off.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Really?

00:06:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:11 ◼   ► The one in the middle.

00:06:13 ◼   ► I don't think you need to roll both of them.

00:06:15 ◼   ► Riccardino.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it comes natural.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Well, of course it does, because you're just this beautiful Italian over there.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Did you see MKBHD's video about the iPhone models?

00:06:27 ◼   ► Oh, this is the one with the...

00:06:29 ◼   ► Yeah, this is the one with the huge camera bump, right?

00:06:32 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I've seen this.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:06:34 ◼   ► So I just wanted to point it out because I think we kind of mention it every time because

00:06:39 ◼   ► history has shown that whoever it is that gets these camera models for MKBHD tends to

00:06:46 ◼   ► be pretty much on the money.

00:06:49 ◼   ► It's big camera but…

00:06:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:51 ◼   ► It's big.

00:06:52 ◼   ► It's big.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Yeah, it's chunky.

00:06:54 ◼   ► It's like half of the phone on the big phone.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Yeah, it kind of is.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I mean, this is the trend, right? You look at other phones and that camera bump is, you

00:07:07 ◼   ► know, Apple uses a square version. Huawei uses the tall rectangular one. And this is

00:07:16 ◼   ► like, these phones, the backs of these phones, they are becoming like, it's not like the

00:07:21 ◼   ► back of a phone with camera module. It's the camera module that also has the back of the

00:07:25 ◼   ► phone in it.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Yeah, we're starting to get to a point where percentages are mattering. Like how much of

00:07:31 ◼   ► percentage of the back of your phone. This is cameras. It's just all cameras. Yeah, I

00:07:36 ◼   ► mean honestly at this point considering the 12 it got so big I kind of don't care how

00:07:42 ◼   ► big it gets now because we passed like an event horizon I think on it and now it's just

00:07:47 ◼   ► like with the 12 Pro Max it's such a large camera bump I just kind of feel like at this

00:07:52 ◼   ► point I kind of don't care how much bigger it gets because it's already gotten too big,

00:07:56 ◼   ► you know?

00:07:57 ◼   ► I mean at this point if you just want to feel the entire top section, you know, and extend to the right side as well

00:08:04 ◼   ► I feel like at that point just go for it, right? That could happen with the periscope cameras

00:08:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean or you want to put like another two lenses up there

00:08:12 ◼   ► Just go for it. I mean at that point you already surpassed like the threshold of like half

00:08:20 ◼   ► You know if you draw a vertical line in the middle of the of the Apple logo on the back of the iPhone

00:08:27 ◼   ► In these mock-ups, the camera module is already way past the halfway line.

00:08:33 ◼   ► So, I mean, just go for it and fill the entire top section.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Right?

00:08:39 ◼   ► We're getting there. I think it's...

00:08:42 ◼   ► I don't know, but you look at older iPhones,

00:08:45 ◼   ► and it's like, "Huh, remember when cameras used to be small?"

00:08:49 ◼   ► And like, not this huge thing, but also...

00:08:54 ◼   ► These phones, they take incredible pictures and videos, so I'm fine with it.

00:08:59 ◼   ► And honestly, the bump doesn't really concern me because I'm using a case.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Yeah, that doesn't really bother me anymore.

00:09:06 ◼   ► But there's still a few people, when these reviews come out, that get so upset about,

00:09:12 ◼   ► "Oh, when I put my phone on the table, it wobbles."

00:09:15 ◼   ► It's funny to me that every video you see that, it's like, if it's...

00:09:19 ◼   ► That was, I think, novel when it was the first time, but it will do it every time now.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Like, I don't know who's still surprised about camera bump wobbles.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Yeah, so I'm fine with it. I use a case on my iPhone, so the bump doesn't really annoy me at all.

00:09:40 ◼   ► It's just when I look at it, I recognize, "It's a big bump. It's getting bigger and bigger every year."

00:09:47 ◼   ► So, I mean, hopefully this means that the cameras will also get better,

00:09:51 ◼   ► and I am really excited about the rumored improvements to the ultra-wide camera

00:09:57 ◼   ► coming to the iPhone 13 this year.

00:09:59 ◼   ► I feel like I really want to use the ultra-wide camera more,

00:10:02 ◼   ► but every time I do, you know, the low-light performance isn't great

00:10:06 ◼   ► and those pictures, you can really tell the difference.

00:10:09 ◼   ► You can get great pictures out of it under the right conditions.

00:10:13 ◼   ► Under the right conditions.

00:10:14 ◼   ► There has to be a lot of light, preferably direct sunlight.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Like, when I took pictures of the Coliseum in bright daytime light, those were beautiful.

00:10:25 ◼   ► And you could see that it was taken with the ultra-wide, but it was not that grainy or

00:10:31 ◼   ► low quality.

00:10:33 ◼   ► You go there in the evening or you go there on a cloudy day and you start having problems.

00:10:40 ◼   ► So I'm looking forward to these improvements in the '13.

00:10:44 ◼   ► But yeah, it's a big bump.

00:10:47 ◼   ► If you are a year over year upgrading person, this is not going to be one of those years

00:10:52 ◼   ► where you'll be able to reuse your case.

00:10:54 ◼   ► You know, like that used to be a thing and it has been a thing but I feel like it's stopping.

00:10:59 ◼   ► I reckon by the way, I can say this especially now that Steven's not here, I don't think

00:11:03 ◼   ► this is 12S, this is 13.

00:11:05 ◼   ► I feel like this is going to be a pretty decent jump year over year.

00:11:10 ◼   ► I honestly feel like they're not going to do the S upgrades anymore.

00:11:14 ◼   ► I don't think so either.

00:11:15 ◼   ► Like at all.

00:11:16 ◼   ► at all. And I think especially one of the benefits for doing this is the competition's not doing that

00:11:21 ◼   ► anymore. Exactly, so if you do it it feels like you're falling behind. Like oh yeah Samsung has

00:11:27 ◼   ► the Note 25 and you have the 13s, it's like well you're a step behind aren't you? Because they

00:11:33 ◼   ► already went up to 20 Samsung, so they're already like six in front, you can't keep going and get

00:11:40 ◼   ► that lead on you. Yeah if anything you should jump forward and say well it's so advanced that with

00:11:46 ◼   ► We decided to go from the iPhone 13 to the iPhone 17.

00:11:49 ◼   ► And like, and you gain back those numbers if you do this enough times,

00:11:53 ◼   ► sort of like Microsoft did with Windows when they jumped from Windows 8 to 10.

00:11:57 ◼   ► I wonder if Apple will ever do that.

00:11:59 ◼   ► I mean, they did that, though, once.

00:12:01 ◼   ► Yeah, they went from 8 to 10.

00:12:02 ◼   ► There was no iPhone 9.

00:12:03 ◼   ► There was no iPhone 9. So, I mean, maybe they could do that again.

00:12:07 ◼   ► I just want them to get rid of the numbers.

00:12:08 ◼   ► I'm going to keep saying this until they do it.

00:12:10 ◼   ► I don't I don't have a better solution, but I hate the numbers now.

00:12:15 ◼   ► So you're like what? Use the year? Like iPhone 2021 for example?

00:12:21 ◼   ► That wouldn't... but no, but it's still numbers though. I just don't want numbers anymore.

00:12:26 ◼   ► The new iPhone, right?

00:12:28 ◼   ► I would be, I think, mostly fine with that.

00:12:30 ◼   ► I don't know, I feel like the numbers make it easy for people to describe what it is.

00:12:34 ◼   ► But we get by with all the other products.

00:12:36 ◼   ► Like what, for example?

00:12:38 ◼   ► iPads, Macs...

00:12:42 ◼   ► Well, okay. Yeah.

00:12:45 ◼   ► But maybe the iPhone specifically requires a little bit more context

00:12:54 ◼   ► because it is one of the products that does get reviewed,

00:12:58 ◼   ► like renewed every year, which isn't typical,

00:13:02 ◼   ► but like for the rest of Apple's product line.

00:13:04 ◼   ► But I just think at a certain point, like once we're up to like iPhone 17,

00:13:09 ◼   ► I just feel like we've gone too far.

00:13:11 ◼   ► Like, you know what I mean? Like, that number, once you're kind of like on the past the midway point of the teams,

00:13:17 ◼   ► I just feel like it's getting a bit clunky now.

00:13:19 ◼   ► So, when I was a kid and I was playing Final Fantasy VIII, I thought,

00:13:24 ◼   ► "Oh, imagine when I'm older, Squaresoft used to be called Squaresoft, not Square Enix.

00:13:31 ◼   ► They will have to change the way that they name these games, because Final Fantasy XV is gonna look ridiculous."

00:13:38 ◼   ► That's what I thought when I was a kid playing Final Fantasy 8.

00:13:41 ◼   ► And now there is Final Fantasy 15 and there's Final Fantasy 16 coming out.

00:13:45 ◼   ► I get it. It's kind of ridiculous to have these large numbers as a modifier next to a product name,

00:13:52 ◼   ► but also they seem to get the job done in explaining to people what the product is.

00:13:57 ◼   ► So I think they're gonna stick around for a while.

00:14:04 ◼   ► I mean sure, iPhone 30 potentially sounds ridiculous, right?

00:14:09 ◼   ► Oh, is that the iPhone 31?

00:14:11 ◼   ► I don't think we're gonna get that far with the iPhone.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Yeah, me neither, me neither.

00:14:14 ◼   ► But I think for now the numbers will stay.

00:14:18 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is brought to you by Fitbud,

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00:16:34 ◼   ► So we were hoping to get the Federico Vittiti MagSafe PopSocket review today, weren't we?

00:16:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Nothing's arriving for you!

00:16:45 ◼   ► No, they're still stuck in Northern Italy for some reason.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Maybe they got like magnetically stuck to something.

00:16:52 ◼   ► They can't get them out of the truck, you know.

00:16:54 ◼   ► Maybe they're stuck somewhere in Milan and they're just, you know, they're stuck here.

00:16:58 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:16:59 ◼   ► The postal service here is not great.

00:17:03 ◼   ► Not great.

00:17:04 ◼   ► But I can tell you about something else MagSafe related,

00:17:09 ◼   ► which is sort of a dream come true for me from one of my favorite brands,

00:17:14 ◼   ► Friends of the... I mean, they're not really friends.

00:17:15 ◼   ► They're not friends.

00:17:16 ◼   ► or buy any. Friends in the sense of Federico buys a lot of stuff from them.

00:17:21 ◼   ► I mentioned this brand before, PITAKA. I've used their cases before. They are

00:17:30 ◼   ► carbon fiber cases. They're super thin and scratch resistant.

00:17:34 ◼   ► They're not actually carbon fiber, right? Like, this is like a whole big thing. This is a whole

00:17:39 ◼   ► big controversy in YouTube for reasons it's not worth getting into. It looks like carbon fiber,

00:17:44 ◼   ► but it's like this other material, but it's still like a super strong material.

00:17:48 ◼   ► Yes, and it looks like carbon fiber, so it's kind of to give you the sense of the pattern

00:17:53 ◼   ► that you will see on these cases. So, Pitaka, so I get an email. Actually, this is a fun story.

00:17:59 ◼   ► So I use, really friends of the show, SaneBox. I use SaneBox myself to organize my email.

00:18:06 ◼   ► And every once in a while, just to make sure that I catch false positives,

00:18:10 ◼   ► I go into my same black hole folder.

00:18:13 ◼   ► And I noticed last Friday, I believe,

00:18:16 ◼   ► that an email from Pitaka had gone to the same black hole folder.

00:18:20 ◼   ► Because maybe I accidentally trained same box a while back.

00:18:24 ◼   ► Anyway, they announced a new line of MagSafe-compatible wallets.

00:18:30 ◼   ► So they have two models, the Wallet 2 and the Wallet 2 Pro.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Now, these are modular wallets that are compatible with MagSafe.

00:18:42 ◼   ► So, in the Wallet 2 Pro, you can put...

00:18:46 ◼   ► So this is a slightly chunkier version of the Wallet 2, because you can put two chip

00:18:52 ◼   ► and pin cards and two magnetic strip cards.

00:18:57 ◼   ► That right there is one of the reasons why I wanted to get this product.

00:19:01 ◼   ► I've been using the Apple MagSafe Wallet case for the past few months.

00:19:07 ◼   ► It's not kind of falling apart at this point.

00:19:09 ◼   ► I noticed that one of the layers that holds the outer leather part is now unglued from

00:19:21 ◼   ► the inner layer.

00:19:22 ◼   ► Ah, you're perfect.

00:19:23 ◼   ► You're perfect MagSafe Wallet.

00:19:25 ◼   ► I'm not upset.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Leather products.

00:19:27 ◼   ► This happens.

00:19:28 ◼   ► This happens, right?

00:19:29 ◼   ► this happens. I've been using that a lot, but it's limited to three cards, and lately,

00:19:35 ◼   ► especially with the digital vaccine passport thing that we have called Green Pass, I've

00:19:41 ◼   ► realized that soon I will have to carry at all times a fourth card around with me, which

00:19:48 ◼   ► is called the... I mean, it's basically a card for the public healthcare system that

00:19:53 ◼   ► is issued to every Italian citizen. And I will have to carry that around, because that

00:19:58 ◼   ► contains proof of my vaccination. So I started thinking about this and I

00:20:04 ◼   ► realized, okay, well, I guess we're gonna... maybe I will not carry my credit card

00:20:10 ◼   ► around anymore but just my ATM card. But then, like, this Wallet 2 Pro came around

00:20:16 ◼   ► at just the right time. So four cards and that was enough to pick my interest. But

00:20:22 ◼   ► then I opened the product page and I noticed that they're selling this idea

00:20:25 ◼   ► of a modular design. So I believe the modular design applies to the slimmer Wallet 2 model

00:20:35 ◼   ► as well, but like I mentioned, I prefer the chunky look of the Wallet 2 Pro. So with the

00:20:43 ◼   ► modular design, what you can do is, it appears you can swap in different layers of the wallet.

00:20:52 ◼   ► So for example, you can add an extra layer if you want to store more cards.

00:20:57 ◼   ► Or you can add a money clip, which is literally like this little money clip that you attach

00:21:02 ◼   ► to the wallet if you want to store some cash with you in the wallet.

00:21:08 ◼   ► You can add a tech module.

00:21:10 ◼   ► So the tech module is this small layer where you can store lightning adapters, a SIM card

00:21:16 ◼   ► ejector tool, a USB-C cable.

00:21:21 ◼   ► You can also add, what else? There's a box layer that lets you store like keys and coins.

00:21:29 ◼   ► A little box. It's a little box. You can check out the photo. There's five coins and a key

00:21:38 ◼   ► in the box layer. And you know, I'm all about modularity, right? I'm all about making a

00:21:44 ◼   ► thing your own by adding different components to it. I feel like this product speaks to

00:21:51 ◼   ► my heart. And so I went in and I put in an order for the entire suite of accessories.

00:21:59 ◼   ► So you got the tech module. I got it all, man.

00:22:03 ◼   ► The box layer. The box, the money clip. And I walk around

00:22:06 ◼   ► with a wallet that's like six layers thick. It's gonna be bananas. You'll just be walking

00:22:11 ◼   ► around with a box that has a phone stuck to it.

00:22:14 ◼   ► So okay, real talk. Mostly I'm interested in this because I want to write about it.

00:22:20 ◼   ► But also for everyday usage, I don't think I'm going to be...

00:22:26 ◼   ► What's interesting for me about this design is I can add the parts that I need based on

00:22:32 ◼   ► what I'm doing.

00:22:33 ◼   ► So when I'm going to the beach, for example, I need to have cash.

00:22:36 ◼   ► Because the little bar that's on the beach, they don't let you pay with an ATM card or

00:22:45 ◼   ► a credit card.

00:22:46 ◼   ► It's cash only.

00:22:47 ◼   ► So I've got to have cash.

00:22:49 ◼   ► Or when, say that I'm going to the center of Rome and I need to park my car, usually

00:22:56 ◼   ► I gotta have some coins to pay for a parking ticket, right?

00:23:01 ◼   ► So I could add in the box layer in that case, for example.

00:23:05 ◼   ► So I don't know, this design I think is really intriguing.

00:23:08 ◼   ► I'm a big fan of Pitaka cases.

00:23:10 ◼   ► What is the deal with the, like, why do they say two chip and pin and two magnetic stripe

00:23:16 ◼   ► cards?

00:23:17 ◼   ► what the difference is supposed to be.

00:23:19 ◼   ► I feel like maybe the chip and pin cards are ever so slightly thicker than the magnetic strip cards.

00:23:25 ◼   ► I don't know, could be wrong.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Because they're also talking about degaussing.

00:23:30 ◼   ► So I wonder if it's like, that's like anti-magnetic.

00:23:34 ◼   ► So maybe they have like, you can put two chip and pin cards in one part,

00:23:38 ◼   ► then they have a little layer and you can put the other two.

00:23:41 ◼   ► WinterCharm is saying there is a minor thickness difference between the two.

00:23:44 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:23:45 ◼   ► Alright, fair enough. I did not know that.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:48 ◼   ► So yeah, this thing, I suppose if I add in all the layers, it's gonna look ridiculous.

00:23:55 ◼   ► And I absolutely cannot wait to do this to my phone.

00:24:00 ◼   ► I wanna see what happens.

00:24:02 ◼   ► So to prepare for this Pitaka case, I got a black leather case made by Apple.

00:24:10 ◼   ► I had a red one and I felt like, you know, maybe a black one could be a better combo, visually speaking.

00:24:16 ◼   ► So I'm using a black leather case at the moment and I'm waiting for the Pitaka wallet coming from China.

00:24:24 ◼   ► It says, so I got it in parcel and it says "Port of Departure" from the Yanwen facility.

00:24:33 ◼   ► We'll see. I'm probably gonna get this at some point in September because it's gonna use the Italian Postal Service.

00:24:39 ◼   ► decides that. So yeah, I'm probably getting this in a month if things go well.

00:24:46 ◼   ► Let's hope it'll work with your new phone.

00:24:48 ◼   ► Well, you gotta think that MagSafe at least will stay compatible, right?

00:24:52 ◼   ► You gotta hope.

00:24:54 ◼   ► You gotta hope. I mean, I really think it will. So obviously, I will have to get a new case,

00:24:59 ◼   ► but I feel like existing MagSafe accessories will stay compatible. It'll be a really silly move to

00:25:07 ◼   ► to break MagSafe compatibility on the second year of MagSafe.

00:25:12 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:25:14 ◼   ► - I did have this thought the other day

00:25:16 ◼   ► about the MagSafe battery pack,

00:25:17 ◼   ► where like what makes it better

00:25:19 ◼   ► than the other ones that they've done

00:25:20 ◼   ► is it will last more than one phone.

00:25:22 ◼   ► You know, where the cases were just,

00:25:25 ◼   ► it will last, it will work only with the phone

00:25:27 ◼   ► that you've got, possibly.

00:25:29 ◼   ► - Possibly, yes.

00:25:30 ◼   ► - I have a roundup of iPad mini rumors for you.

00:25:34 ◼   ► - Okay, this product, okay.

00:25:36 ◼   ► So last week, Chance Miller at 9to5Mac reported that a new iPad Mini would be introduced this

00:25:43 ◼   ► year with a design similar to the latest iPad Air which was styled like the iPad Pro and now pretty

00:25:51 ◼   ► much every other product that Apple makes, right? Like thin bezels, flat sides, that kind of thing.

00:25:56 ◼   ► It will be powered by the A15, it will feature USB-C and a smart connector, and there are other

00:26:03 ◼   ► reports that also suggest that Touch ID will be in the power button. What could you do

00:26:09 ◼   ► with a smart connector on an iPad Mini?

00:26:15 ◼   ► Use a magic keyboard with it.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Do you think they would make one that small? I mean I guess they could.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:26:20 ◼   ► Did Apple ever make a keyboard for the iPad Mini? I don't think so. I have used them back

00:26:26 ◼   ► in the day, but I don't think Apple ever... They don't make an iPad Mini keyboard.

00:26:31 ◼   ► Was there a smart keyboard for the iPad mini?

00:26:35 ◼   ► No, because it never had a smart connector.

00:26:38 ◼   ► Okay.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Right?

00:26:40 ◼   ► I think they're going to make it.

00:26:42 ◼   ► I feel like they're going to sell this iPad mini as a great way for iPad users to get

00:26:48 ◼   ► work done in a sort of extremely mobile scenario, right?

00:26:54 ◼   ► You're an iPad Pro user, now you can take these things with you on the go, and you still

00:26:59 ◼   ► and you still have USB-C and a Magic Keyboard for it.

00:27:03 ◼   ► It's basically like a small iPad Air,

00:27:05 ◼   ► if you consider USB-C, Smart Connector,

00:27:07 ◼   ► and Touch ID in the power button,

00:27:09 ◼   ► which I struggled, like again,

00:27:11 ◼   ► Touch ID and some other display rumors,

00:27:15 ◼   ► I struggle to believe,

00:27:16 ◼   ► but I feel like A15, USB-C, and Smart Connector

00:27:19 ◼   ► is a pretty safe bet at this point.

00:27:21 ◼   ► - I feel like if they're gonna go with the larger screen,

00:27:24 ◼   ► which we'll get to in a minute,

00:27:25 ◼   ► they have to go with Touch ID

00:27:26 ◼   ► 'cause there won't be a home button anymore.

00:27:28 ◼   ► So touch ID in the power button seems logical.

00:27:32 ◼   ► Digitimes suggested that this iPad mini would also feature

00:27:36 ◼   ► a mini LED display like the 12.9 inch iPad Pro.

00:27:40 ◼   ► Then display analyst Ross Young stated

00:27:43 ◼   ► that while this display would be 8.3 inches

00:27:46 ◼   ► because of the bezel shrinkage,

00:27:48 ◼   ► it will not feature mini LED this time around.

00:27:51 ◼   ► My personal kind of like

00:27:57 ◼   ► barometer would say would not have mini LED?

00:28:01 ◼   ► I can't imagine how that could be possible, feasible,

00:28:06 ◼   ► or within the price range right now.

00:28:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, unless like we joked on our message,

00:28:12 ◼   ► like is this an iPad Pro mini?

00:28:16 ◼   ► - But like, could they, I just can't imagine a world

00:28:18 ◼   ► where they put it in the mini before the other 11 inch Pro.

00:28:23 ◼   ► - Exactly, exactly.

00:28:24 ◼   ► - Right?

00:28:24 ◼   ► iPad Pro doesn't have Mini-LED. If they were adding Mini-LED to a smaller iPad, I think

00:28:31 ◼   ► it should be the 11" first, not the iPad Mini first. So I will agree with you and say no

00:28:37 ◼   ► Mini-LED on this iPad Mini. But I would be super happy with this device,

00:28:42 ◼   ► right? 8.3 inches, A15 processor, USB-C, smart connector, Touch ID, in that little form factor?

00:28:51 ◼   ► This is the dream.

00:28:52 ◼   ► That sounds choice, man.

00:28:53 ◼   ► I'm into it.

00:28:54 ◼   ► It is for me, like, over the past couple of years, I've talked about it on App Stories,

00:28:59 ◼   ► I've written about it on the club, I've been searching for the perfect device to get my

00:29:03 ◼   ► reading done.

00:29:05 ◼   ► And I went from an iPad Pro to an iPad Mini to a Kindle to a Kobo.

00:29:10 ◼   ► I feel like this iPad Mini, just because I keep going back to the iPad eventually, I

00:29:15 ◼   ► I like my Safari reading list, I like my shortcuts, I like the apps that I have, like Shonen Jump,

00:29:21 ◼   ► for example, to read my manga.

00:29:23 ◼   ► I keep going back to the iPad, and I feel like this iPad Mini right here could be the

00:29:29 ◼   ► dream device for me.

00:29:30 ◼   ► Like it's got the new design, doesn't have the bezels anymore, doesn't have the home

00:29:34 ◼   ► button anymore, slightly bigger display, but still much smaller than my usual iPad.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Yeah, just, I will literally throw money at the screen for this device.

00:29:45 ◼   ► I need it. I need it in my life.

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00:30:06 ◼   ► But buckwheat pillows, they stay supportive for you. And they also stay cool compared

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00:32:10 ◼   ► Our thanks to holo for the support of this show and relay FM.

00:32:16 ◼   ► We have to talk about it.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Right?

00:32:18 ◼   ► Alright, look.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Alright, now look I know, look I get you.

00:32:21 ◼   ► Listener, passionate one, I get you.

00:32:23 ◼   ► You're like, can I listen to them complain about safari again?

00:32:27 ◼   ► Can I go through this again?

00:32:29 ◼   ► Like here's the thing, what else are we going to do passionate ones?

00:32:33 ◼   ► a new beta of iOS is out, they've made even more changes to Safari.

00:32:37 ◼   ► Do you think we're just gonna stop talking about it now?

00:32:40 ◼   ► No. Here we are, we're back in it, we're back in it again, Federico, what is happening with Safari now?

00:32:46 ◼   ► Summer of Fuuuunny! No, wait, wrong show!

00:32:50 ◼   ► Summer of Pain!

00:32:52 ◼   ► Okay, so, beta 4 came out yesterday, public beta 4 came out just a few minutes ago, I believe.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Okay, Safari. Changes both on iPad and iPhone. Let's start from the iPad. So as we knew before,

00:33:14 ◼   ► the setting that we saw in Monterey Beta 3 is now available on iPad. So if you go to Settings >

00:33:22 ◼   ► Safari, you can now choose between the regular Tap Bar design or the Compact Tap Bar design. So

00:33:30 ◼   ► the compact one is the new design with the unified tab and address bar and the

00:33:36 ◼   ► other one is the the one where the address bar and the tabs are separate

00:33:42 ◼   ► however this does not mean that you get the old Safari design from iPadOS 14

00:33:49 ◼   ► you get a hybrid version where you have the address bar at the top, tabs in the

00:33:55 ◼   ► middle, and your bookmarks, your favorites, at the very bottom of the toolbar.

00:34:02 ◼   ► And tabs, they still do not look like old tabs, they look like the tappable...

00:34:08 ◼   ► I don't know how to call them... cells?

00:34:11 ◼   ► They're not buttons, they're not tabs, they look like someone poked a hole in the toolbar

00:34:16 ◼   ► and stuck a web page title in there.

00:34:21 ◼   ► So yeah, it's a separate top bar and address bar design, but with the new look of iPadOS 15.

00:34:28 ◼   ► Now, obviously I... oh, and I should say the separate design is the default one.

00:34:37 ◼   ► So like on the Mac, the new compact style UI is not the default anymore, but if you

00:34:45 ◼   ► want to, you can choose it as an option in Settings.

00:34:48 ◼   ► This makes me mad and sad.

00:34:50 ◼   ► Okay, why?

00:34:52 ◼   ► You'd spend all this time

00:34:55 ◼   ► Right?

00:34:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Designing something different

00:34:59 ◼   ► and putting in all the work and showing it off and like making it like

00:35:04 ◼   ► "Hey, this is this thing that we want to do and we have all these good reasons that we want to do it"

00:35:08 ◼   ► and then you put it out there and people don't like it and

00:35:13 ◼   ► Yeah, so you see then create a second mode, which is not the old one

00:35:19 ◼   ► It's now an adapted version. But then you ship both of them and default to the one that you

00:35:27 ◼   ► didn't think was the good idea. It's kind of like, why are you shipping them both, right?

00:35:32 ◼   ► I think my main thing, I will say for me with Safari, with all the Safari changes,

00:35:39 ◼   ► I do not hate them as much as everybody else. I don't think that they're good, right? Again,

00:35:44 ◼   ► and I will preface all this to say I've only used this on an iPad, right?

00:35:48 ◼   ► I know that a lot of the IR is actually focused on the iPhone and I can see that.

00:35:52 ◼   ► But from my experience on the iPad, I found it to be okay.

00:35:56 ◼   ► Like even with the new version, like what they've put in beta 4,

00:35:59 ◼   ► I think it's like way uglier than the version it's replacing.

00:36:04 ◼   ► Like the tiny little thin tabs now because they've put the address bar back,

00:36:09 ◼   ► I really, I don't like it. Like the really thin long tabs as well,

00:36:13 ◼   ► if you only have a couple of them.

00:36:15 ◼   ► I think visually, for me, the compact version looks better,

00:36:20 ◼   ► but I also then don't like that I have to tap each tab

00:36:22 ◼   ► to try and get the URL.

00:36:24 ◼   ► Like it's just, okay.

00:36:26 ◼   ► But the thing that like annoys me about this is like,

00:36:28 ◼   ► this whole situation,

00:36:32 ◼   ► that they're not committing to anything.

00:36:35 ◼   ► All they're doing is just like adding

00:36:38 ◼   ► or like making these little weird changes

00:36:40 ◼   ► and we've got way more of these to talk about.

00:36:42 ◼   ► And I kind of just wished they would choose a path and just either stick to it or completely...

00:36:50 ◼   ► Or like, you know, like force it through. I don't think... I just... I feel like this weird, like spread out approach...

00:36:57 ◼   ► It's just not really helping anyone. I think I saw you retweet someone who said this of just like...

00:37:03 ◼   ► "Don't ship this in point O."

00:37:05 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

00:37:08 ◼   ► Okay, so let's unpeel the layers of this big Safari onion that we have.

00:37:15 ◼   ► Okay, so first of all, I see a bunch of people on Twitter try—and this usually happens in certain circles—

00:37:24 ◼   ► "Oh, but think of the Safari engineers, what they must be living through."

00:37:29 ◼   ► Like, okay, so first of all, like, nobody died, this is fine, we're just critiquing a browser, right?

00:37:35 ◼   ► We're not going to war. I understand that there's frustration, there's people working on it.

00:37:41 ◼   ► But look, it's a browser, it's not a tragedy, we're just talking about it.

00:37:44 ◼   ► I mean, I do feel bad for these people, right?

00:37:47 ◼   ► I mean, there's worse things in the world, right?

00:37:50 ◼   ► I mean, it's a browser toolbar, right?

00:37:53 ◼   ► But hey, we're critiquing a browser, this is what we do.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Okay, so, nobody hates no one, right?

00:37:59 ◼   ► I see tweets, "Oh, the Safari team should get fired." No.

00:38:02 ◼   ► No, that doesn't make any sense.

00:38:05 ◼   ► Safari is one of the best apps for iPhone and iPad.

00:38:09 ◼   ► Nobody should get fired.

00:38:11 ◼   ► And this is the second layer.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Redesigns, sometimes they don't scale, right?

00:38:17 ◼   ► You think you have a really good idea,

00:38:21 ◼   ► and this is a byproduct of how Apple operates, right?

00:38:25 ◼   ► They design new features in secret

00:38:27 ◼   ► and they do these big reveals, right?

00:38:29 ◼   ► And sometimes, most of the times, it goes well.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Sometimes it doesn't.

00:38:35 ◼   ► And we talked about this last week.

00:38:38 ◼   ► Web browsers are one of those features where you have

00:38:42 ◼   ► decades of established UI conventions.

00:38:46 ◼   ► And especially on iPhone, you have over a decade of muscle memory

00:38:50 ◼   ► to account for.

00:38:52 ◼   ► And so it's really tricky to get a redesign right.

00:38:55 ◼   ► When you don't get a redesign right, you should get feedback.

00:39:00 ◼   ► And that's what Apple is doing. So they're moving in the right direction in terms of

00:39:04 ◼   ► how to deal with people.

00:39:06 ◼   ► They're listening, they have a public beta,

00:39:09 ◼   ► and they're opening the Mac beta to Big Sur

00:39:12 ◼   ► and Catalina users.

00:39:13 ◼   ► That's the right approach.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Now, I feel like,

00:39:17 ◼   ► at this point it's pretty clear,

00:39:21 ◼   ► so whether you agree with the people

00:39:23 ◼   ► who criticize Safari or not,

00:39:26 ◼   ► I think it's pretty clear

00:39:27 ◼   ► that it's a very polarizing design, right?

00:39:30 ◼   ► And I feel like if I were Apple

00:39:33 ◼   ► and I was looking at this, I would say,

00:39:36 ◼   ► "Okay, maybe I think it's a disaster.

00:39:39 ◼   ► "Maybe I love it."

00:39:41 ◼   ► Whatever my preference is, it's obvious at this point

00:39:46 ◼   ► that it causes a lot of reactions

00:39:49 ◼   ► and it causes a lot of discussion.

00:39:51 ◼   ► Maybe it needs more time in the oven, so to speak,

00:39:56 ◼   ► before it's ready for the public.

00:39:59 ◼   ► This is what I think is going on at the moment,

00:40:02 ◼   ► where you have this com—

00:40:04 ◼   ► you know, Apple is a big company, and, you know, over the years we've gotten to know some of the people that work at Apple, right?

00:40:10 ◼   ► And you know how sometimes—I think it's only natural—

00:40:14 ◼   ► between different teams, you have different kinds of tensions, right?

00:40:18 ◼   ► So maybe design is pushing in one direction,

00:40:21 ◼   ► maybe Safari is pushing in a slightly different direction,

00:40:24 ◼   ► and they're trying to balance it all, for the sake of the customer, obviously.

00:40:29 ◼   ► And so I feel like right now we are in this weird limbo where they're still trying to explore whether the original idea

00:40:36 ◼   ► can be tweaked enough to make it work,

00:40:40 ◼   ► because they believe in the core idea behind it, which is, and I'm

00:40:45 ◼   ► referring to the compact design in general, what if we reduced UI Chrome in a browser

00:40:52 ◼   ► and made everything more compact? They believe in the core principle of that idea.

00:40:58 ◼   ► I do too. I think that, like, in theory, good idea.

00:41:02 ◼   ► Yeah, in theory, good idea. What I think we're seeing in practice

00:41:06 ◼   ► is that on a device like the iPad, where

00:41:10 ◼   ► people want to be productive, they want to be efficient, they want to manage

00:41:14 ◼   ► a lot of tabs, right?

00:41:18 ◼   ► You know, maybe they have a different set of priorities

00:41:22 ◼   ► from what they want in a browser, right? They want to have more UI,

00:41:26 ◼   ► They want to see everything clearly. They don't want tabs to jump around.

00:41:31 ◼   ► They want to have a sort of spatial recognition of their browser environment.

00:41:35 ◼   ► They want to make sure that everything is in the right place.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Right now, even if you disable the compact design and go back to the separate address bar and top bar,

00:41:47 ◼   ► I feel like there are still too many trade-offs

00:41:51 ◼   ► with this new design. First of all,

00:41:55 ◼   ► the legibility of the tabs really isn't there. You go back and you look at Safari in iPadOS 14 with the

00:42:03 ◼   ► sort of classic tab design,

00:42:06 ◼   ► everything is just more clear to read and to look at, and it

00:42:11 ◼   ► looks more cohesive with the rest of the browser.

00:42:15 ◼   ► Another big issue of this new design is that, again, even if you disable compact mode,

00:42:22 ◼   ► It's still impossible to tell or nearly impossible to tell which one is the active tab

00:42:28 ◼   ► It's too low contrast it it's very confusing

00:42:32 ◼   ► You can hide the active tab if you scroll it away off screen

00:42:38 ◼   ► It doesn't look good. I don't think it looks good and I feel like

00:42:43 ◼   ► Yeah, the the non compact one is slightly better than compact for me

00:42:51 ◼   ► But I still look at Safari 14 and I'd be like, you know, that looks really good and now

00:42:57 ◼   ► There's a second again. This is like an onion

00:43:00 ◼   ► There's a set there's another layer to this which is am I the problem sort of like the Simpsons meme, right? Am I the problem?

00:43:07 ◼   ► No, it's the kids who are wrong. So I've thought about this. I've thought this about myself, right?

00:43:12 ◼   ► Am I the problem? Am I too, you know, am I old and

00:43:17 ◼   ► against trying new designs and new ideas. And I've had this accusation

00:43:22 ◼   ► moved against me on Twitter by a bunch of people who don't follow me, and it's a fair question, I think.

00:43:27 ◼   ► And I think about it and I'm like, well, I look at myself and the kind of person I am,

00:43:32 ◼   ► I mean, I try new things every day. I'm very open to changing my workflow.

00:43:37 ◼   ► In fact, people make fun of it sometimes, like, oh, you're constantly changing apps and changing how you work.

00:43:43 ◼   ► So I feel like I'm not the kind of person who is against change

00:43:47 ◼   ► But I've used these things long enough that I think I have a pretty good pulse on

00:43:53 ◼   ► When something works and when something doesn't now, I'm not Johnny Ive, you know, you may disagree with me. It's fine

00:43:59 ◼   ► I mean not even Johnny Ive is Johnny Ive anymore. It doesn't work at Apple. So it doesn't really matter

00:44:05 ◼   ► But I don't know I look at it. I

00:44:08 ◼   ► don't think this is gonna work and

00:44:13 ◼   ► I have the new standard design on iPad.

00:44:17 ◼   ► I still think it doesn't look nearly as good

00:44:21 ◼   ► as the old Safari.

00:44:22 ◼   ► And as I said before,

00:44:24 ◼   ► there are many things in the new Safari

00:44:26 ◼   ► that I would keep.

00:44:27 ◼   ► The customizable start page, it's great.

00:44:30 ◼   ► Tab groups, I love them. - Tab groups is so good.

00:44:32 ◼   ► Love tab groups. - Tab super,

00:44:33 ◼   ► the sidebar on iPad, very good.

00:44:35 ◼   ► - Love it, yeah, super good.

00:44:36 ◼   ► - The new look for search results

00:44:40 ◼   ► when you search for something in the address bar.

00:44:42 ◼   ► Very nice. Keep it. It's just those features, leave them in, they're really good. You don't have to use

00:44:50 ◼   ► the new UI for them. You can keep the sidebar, just go back to a regular toolbar, regular tabs,

00:44:56 ◼   ► offer a compact mode if you really want to. That to me feels like,

00:45:05 ◼   ► To go back to your point to why do you have a setting, right?

00:45:08 ◼   ► I feel like that's, I don't know, I may be wrong, it feels like the pet project of someone that

00:45:18 ◼   ► really really wanted to get rid of the extra, you know, 40 pixels on screen and be like "we don't

00:45:24 ◼   ► need tabs and an address bar anymore, nobody cares about that, nobody cares about buttons".

00:45:31 ◼   ► I don't know. I feel like that's the kind of feature that is wanted by someone

00:45:37 ◼   ► high enough to warrant, you know, live in a setting in.

00:45:42 ◼   ► Now, if that theory is correct, is that a good way to design software?

00:45:48 ◼   ► Probably not. I don't know. We'll never know the truth. So it's fine.

00:45:53 ◼   ► Let's move to the iPhone. On the iPhone, you can see what happens when a company

00:46:01 ◼   ► enters what I call "panic mode" for a redesign that is not working. The result

00:46:09 ◼   ► is that they're keeping... so on iPhone they're keeping the compact UI in Safari.

00:46:16 ◼   ► They're not offering a setting to revert to the old sort of two toolbar approach.

00:46:24 ◼   ► What they're doing is they're stuffing the tab bar full of icons and full of

00:46:30 ◼   ► buttons. So as of iOS 15 Beta 4, in the tab bar on the iPhone, you will get navigation buttons,

00:46:39 ◼   ► a reload button, a Safari reader button, a share button, and then of course there's the existing

00:46:46 ◼   ► tabs button. And I shared a screenshot on Twitter, and John Gruber sort of expanded upon my screenshot.

00:46:55 ◼   ► There's a total of, I believe, nine different touch targets in that small top bar at the bottom of the screen on iPhone.

00:47:05 ◼   ► You look at it, you look at the... everything feels like it's all over the place, right?

00:47:11 ◼   ► It feels like someone took a bunch of buttons from a drawer and just spilled them all over the top bar on the iPhone.

00:47:19 ◼   ► Like here, you wanna have buttons? Have some buttons.

00:47:22 ◼   ► It's ridiculous. It's the smallest reload button anyone's ever seen.

00:47:26 ◼   ► Like it's not even a button.

00:47:27 ◼   ► It's like reload is like a character of text that's next to like...

00:47:33 ◼   ► It's like if you just said, "Oh, do you want to reload this page?"

00:47:36 ◼   ► Just tap the letter A in the text and then it will reload for you.

00:47:41 ◼   ► And then the thing that annoys me most is sometimes it seems like,

00:47:45 ◼   ► and you can tell me I have not used this, I've just seen your videos,

00:47:48 ◼   ► that sometimes the reload buttons were placed with other buttons.

00:47:51 ◼   ► It's like different buttons in the same place, and if you got a reader view, it actually

00:47:56 ◼   ► becomes a reader button.

00:47:57 ◼   ► So how do you reload a page that has a reader button?

00:48:00 ◼   ► Well, it flashes for a second, right?

00:48:03 ◼   ► When you're opening an article, the reader symbol flashes on screen for a couple seconds,

00:48:10 ◼   ► and then is replaced again by the reload button.

00:48:13 ◼   ► So it just tells—and this has been going on for a while in Safari, but just now it

00:48:19 ◼   ► gets very confusing because you have the only place where UI is happening is this small

00:48:26 ◼   ► bar at the bottom, and it feels like everything is going on all at once in that small top

00:48:32 ◼   ► bar right there.

00:48:35 ◼   ► Amusingly enough, the reload button and the Safari reader button, and I believe the navigation

00:48:43 ◼   ► buttons as well. They break Apple's own human interface guidelines for minimum

00:48:50 ◼   ► acceptable size of a touch target on iOS, which should be 44 points. And I believe

00:48:57 ◼   ► some of these buttons are like 25 or 26 or something. So I look at this top bar

00:49:04 ◼   ► and I see, you know, this is choosing to die on a very specific hill, right?

00:49:14 ◼   ► Which is, no, we need to have a top bar at the bottom.

00:49:19 ◼   ► And you can imagine, like, there's PR, and there's, you know, people from PR talking to, you know, to folks like us,

00:49:28 ◼   ► monitoring feedback on Twitter, monitoring Reddit and articles,

00:49:33 ◼   ► And going back to these meetings and be like, "Okay, so folks have been complaining about the fact that there's no share button,

00:49:40 ◼   ► there's no reload button, and because you chose to, you know, to insist on this design, you're like, "Okay, so people miss buttons?

00:49:47 ◼   ► Well, we're gonna keep this design because we really believe in this design,

00:49:51 ◼   ► but we're giving them buttons." And the result is the equivalent of the Homer car from The Simpsons,

00:49:57 ◼   ► where like, this is trying to do all at once.

00:49:59 ◼   ► It's the Swiss Army knife of toolbars on iOS at the moment where

00:50:03 ◼   ► You want navigation you have arrows you wanna you want to have a real a reload button

00:50:09 ◼   ► It's in there, but it's small you want Oh Safari reader. It's also in there, but it's small and it flashes

00:50:15 ◼   ► What about share sure there's a share button? Well, what about I don't know opening tabs. Hey, there's a tap button, too

00:50:22 ◼   ► Okay

00:50:22 ◼   ► But I want to open the URL if you know where to tap you can actually open the address bar

00:50:28 ◼   ► Cool, great. What about swiping between tabs? Oh, we love swiping between tabs. In fact,

00:50:34 ◼   ► the tabs that you see on the left and right, those are also buttons. Okay, so I can tap those.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Well, yes, you can tap them, but you can also swipe across them. Oh, wow, fantastic.

00:50:44 ◼   ► And what about the bottom of the screen? Well, at the bottom of the screen, there's the Home indicator.

00:50:47 ◼   ► But if you swipe just above the Home indicator, you can also swipe the top bar up, and you can see the tab view.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Fantastic. What about some other menus that I missed from before?

00:50:58 ◼   ► Well, you can long press the top bar and you get a bunch of things.

00:51:02 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, well, you can press the navigation buttons and you get history,

00:51:06 ◼   ► or you can press the center of the top bar and you get a bunch of options,

00:51:10 ◼   ► or you can press tabs and you get another context menu.

00:51:14 ◼   ► How many features did I just subscribe? 20-something?

00:51:20 ◼   ► This is a UI element that is overloaded with function.

00:51:26 ◼   ► This is not even function over form. This is function exploding over form.

00:51:32 ◼   ► It's like this is so stuffed with commands and different options.

00:51:38 ◼   ► I honestly have no idea how a normal person will understand this.

00:51:43 ◼   ► I don't know where to begin.

00:51:46 ◼   ► So.

00:51:48 ◼   ► Once again to go back to the original to the first layer of the onion

00:51:52 ◼   ► Nobody hates no one here. It's just a browser, okay

00:51:57 ◼   ► We don't hate Safari engineers. We love Safari engineers. We love Safari, but

00:52:04 ◼   ► we have this problem to

00:52:07 ◼   ► Deal with right now, which is this is the browser that millions

00:52:12 ◼   ► billions of people use every day

00:52:15 ◼   ► 0.2% of those people listens to a tech podcast, right? They don't know what is going on. They

00:52:26 ◼   ► have no idea what is going on. So let's look at ourselves right now, we, bloggers and YouTubers

00:52:32 ◼   ► and tech podcasters, as sacrificing ourselves for the greater good of other people in September,

00:52:40 ◼   ► This Safari doesn't work on the iPhone.

00:52:44 ◼   ► I understand if you believe that it's convenient to put everything in a single UI element at the bottom of the screen,

00:52:53 ◼   ► but I think it's obvious enough that we have reached the point where you're trying to stuff too much functionality and UI into a single place,

00:53:05 ◼   ► place, to the point where you, Apple, as a company, are contradicting yourself and your

00:53:11 ◼   ► own human interface guidelines.

00:53:14 ◼   ► So once again, maybe there's something to this idea of a bottom UI. Maybe not, but maybe

00:53:21 ◼   ► there is. So here's my proposal. Actually, I have two proposals. The first one, which

00:53:29 ◼   ► which is trying to find the middle ground. Let's revert to the old design and offer compact

00:53:35 ◼   ► mode without some of these additional buttons from Beta 4 as an optional setting. So basically

00:53:41 ◼   ► do what you did on the iPad, return to the top toolbar and the bottom toolbar. And it's

00:53:49 ◼   ► fine.

00:53:50 ◼   ► I will say, right, if they just ship iPad Safari like this, we'll get used to it and

00:53:57 ◼   ► will live with it, I feel like... It's not great, but yeah. It's not perfect, but... I just wonder, like,

00:54:03 ◼   ► why is it necessary for it to look that? Like... Let's just imagine for some reason me and you

00:54:10 ◼   ► don't understand it is, right? Like, it's like, whatever. Okay, alright, cool. Okay, yeah. So that's my first proposal, right?

00:54:18 ◼   ► Go back to the separate approach and offer compact with fewer buttons, because right now

00:54:27 ◼   ► all those icons down there? No, don't do that. But offer that as an option. Second proposal.

00:54:34 ◼   ► Sometimes redesigns, they don't go well, and it's fine. Put this on the shelf for now.

00:54:42 ◼   ► Go back to the original Safari design, keep the features that can coexist with Safari,

00:54:52 ◼   ► the start page, tab groups, if possible, the new search results. If you can keep those,

00:54:59 ◼   ► save this design for 15.1 or 15.5 or 16 next year, and you can try this again at some other point.

00:55:08 ◼   ► That's my modest proposal, because right now, obviously, the conversation on Twitter

00:55:20 ◼   ► is all over the place. I showed this again to Sylvia, like I have... Sylvia is my test person

00:55:28 ◼   ► for Safari. I was like, "Hey, they did a bit of an upgrade on the iPhone since you last saw it in

00:55:35 ◼   ► Beta 1. Wanna look again?" And she looked at it, it's like, "Oh, it's still at the bottom, huh?"

00:55:40 ◼   ► It's like, "Yeah, yeah, I don't like it." So, I don't know.

00:55:49 ◼   ► It's also fascinating, one last thing that I wanted to mention.

00:55:52 ◼   ► Did you see that blog post from a former, current, I don't know, Google engineer,

00:55:59 ◼   ► who worked on a similar design for Chrome for iPhone years ago?

00:56:04 ◼   ► And eventually the feedback was so, once again, polarizing, that they decided it was too confusing for people

00:56:11 ◼   ► to have that kind of design on iPhone for Google Chrome.

00:56:16 ◼   ► And they moved away from it.

00:56:18 ◼   ► Now, if you ask me, those screenshots from that Chrome UI, that actually looks better

00:56:26 ◼   ► than Safari, in my opinion. Because in all this, it's like also the question of why does

00:56:32 ◼   ► that top bar on iPhone have to be a floating one? Why are you getting it in the way of

00:56:38 ◼   ► WebP... like, it's a whole thing.

00:56:41 ◼   ► I think I said this to you privately, but I was in this beta for Chrome back when I

00:56:47 ◼   ► using Chrome where they brought the all of the UI down to the bottom so the address bar

00:56:52 ◼   ► the tab bar and in Chris's article there seems to be some more radical stuff that I didn't

00:56:59 ◼   ► see I loved having it on the bottom I felt like it made sense like I love the idea of

00:57:07 ◼   ► having a bottom toolbar but it doesn't have to be the floating one with less functionality

00:57:15 ◼   ► No. There are bottom toolbars on iOS in a bunch of places. Maps, shortcuts as a thing that

00:57:24 ◼   ► expands from the bottom. And look, it's a complicated conversation because

00:57:30 ◼   ► I could have accepted or maybe understood a bit more if this Safari was coming from a place of,

00:57:41 ◼   ► Oh, look, we have this new UI convention in iOS 15 this year. Safari is using it, but if you

00:57:48 ◼   ► developers want to use it too, you can. It's a new native UI element. But no, this design is specific

00:57:56 ◼   ► to Safari and Safari only. And so there's that. And what we're seeing right now, this sort of

00:58:07 ◼   ► backtracking on iPad and sort of semi-backtracking on iPhone where they're keeping the thing,

00:58:16 ◼   ► but they're stuffing it full of buttons that people complain... like,

00:58:19 ◼   ► I feel like in previous weeks on our podcast and in blog posts,

00:58:25 ◼   ► we were not complaining about missing buttons because we meant

00:58:33 ◼   ► put them in the toolbar at the bottom, we were just saying the new design sacrifices buttons

00:58:40 ◼   ► that were previously top-level icons. And I feel like our feedback has been misunderstood, where

00:58:50 ◼   ► the feedback of "Oh, we're missing buttons" became "Oh, so what I hear you're saying is you want more

00:58:57 ◼   ► buttons in that top bar at the bottom. But no, that is not the solution to stuff that

00:59:04 ◼   ► toolbar full of icons, right? So, yeah, it's... once again, I just want to say, I don't hate

00:59:13 ◼   ► Safari, I don't hate nobody, I hate no one, honestly, I have no patience for negative

00:59:19 ◼   ► feelings, I said this before, I'm gonna repeat it again, but we're looking at a product that

00:59:24 ◼   ► as a controversial design, and I feel like it could use a ton of work.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And I don't think it's going to be ready in five weeks.

00:59:32 ◼   ► Potentially four, because Apple needs to flash the firmware on the new iPhones soon enough.

00:59:39 ◼   ► So that also explains the panic mode, right?

00:59:43 ◼   ► We think of iOS as being finalized on September 10.

00:59:47 ◼   ► No, it has to be finalized, I want to say, early August?

00:59:52 ◼   ► middle of August, right? And you can imagine how this causes a lot of problems, because

00:59:58 ◼   ► you gotta send the firmware to China to have it flashed on new iPhones, so you gotta get

01:00:04 ◼   ► moving quickly. I would say, let's pause the project. For now, go back to the original

01:00:14 ◼   ► design and we'll reconsider again next year.

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01:02:40 ◼   ► Our thanks to Bombus for their support of this show and all of Relay FM.

01:02:45 ◼   ► So I know that we were just like super negative, right?

01:02:49 ◼   ► For a bit, you know, like we have some complaints.

01:02:51 ◼   ► So Federico came up with a great idea today to end the show talking about, we're going

01:02:57 ◼   ► to talk about three things each that we really love right now. Just all positive,

01:03:01 ◼   ► all good stuff. So we're gonna round Robin between two people, which isn't

01:03:05 ◼   ► just taking turns really. It's tiny Robin. Two Robins back and forth.

01:03:11 ◼   ► That's me and you. Do you want to start? Yes. So, and for context, these are three

01:03:17 ◼   ► things that may or may not be tech related. Can be products, apps, whatever.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Just three things I love. So the first one, I have a new portable music player.

01:03:29 ◼   ► So this I guess will be called a DAP, which is different from a DAC. So this is

01:03:35 ◼   ► a portable player. It's called the Astell & Kern CAN-Alpha. So the CAN-Alpha is the

01:03:41 ◼   ► name of the model that I have. Think of this, Myke, you're familiar with the

01:03:46 ◼   ► portable Walkman that I had before? It looks a lot like it. All of these

01:03:51 ◼   ► portable players, they sort of have that style. This is a chunkier, heavier, warmer, because

01:03:58 ◼   ► it gets quite a bit warm, portable music player made by a company called Astell & Kern. They

01:04:04 ◼   ► make really good audio equipment. And this is a bit of an upgrade for me, and I got it

01:04:12 ◼   ► for a couple of reasons. First of all, Astell & Kern, one of the premium brands in this

01:04:17 ◼   ► Space, this is their first model with a 4.4mm balanced output. So they have a 4.4mm jack

01:04:26 ◼   ► that you can use on this thing, and I've increasingly switched all of my headphones to use 4.4mm

01:04:33 ◼   ► balanced cables, so that was already interesting for me. And I'm trying to keep it all consistent

01:04:40 ◼   ► in terms of the cables that I have and the sort of sockets that I use and all that kind

01:04:46 ◼   ► stuff. Now, I was looking for... I was also looking to upgrade the kind of experience

01:04:53 ◼   ► that I get from these portable music players, and this one gives me a lot more features than my Sony

01:05:02 ◼   ► player, which for context was the WN1A. That was my... and I still have it, the other Sony Walkman

01:05:11 ◼   ► that I have. So the CAN-alpha has Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi support, an LED indicator that shows

01:05:21 ◼   ► you music quality, so it turns green, blue, or purple, depending on the kind of music

01:05:27 ◼   ► file that you're listening to. It's got native DSD playback, you don't need to worry about

01:05:33 ◼   ► that, but most importantly, it runs Android, and it's a Rune-certified player. We're going

01:05:40 ◼   ► We're gonna talk about Rune later.

01:05:42 ◼   ► I just wanna mention Android.

01:05:46 ◼   ► This thing, you can install a selection of Android apps on it.

01:05:54 ◼   ► It's a quite complex process where you need to install Android file transfer on a computer,

01:06:02 ◼   ► and you need to drag APK files

01:06:08 ◼   ► that you download from directories like,

01:06:11 ◼   ► what's it called, APK Pure, and there's another one.

01:06:15 ◼   ► What's the name?

01:06:16 ◼   ► APK...

01:06:18 ◼   ► Mirror.

01:06:20 ◼   ► That's the one that I used.

01:06:22 ◼   ► These are websites that let you download,

01:06:25 ◼   ► in theory, verified APK versions of Android applications.

01:06:30 ◼   ► And you can install a selection of apps.

01:06:33 ◼   ► You cannot install, say, Twitter,

01:06:36 ◼   ► or, I don't know, Gmail on this thing.

01:06:40 ◼   ► You can only install compatible music apps.

01:06:45 ◼   ► You can install Tidal, you can install CodeBues,

01:06:48 ◼   ► and you can install Apple Music.

01:06:50 ◼   ► So that right there was one of the features

01:06:53 ◼   ► that picked my interest.

01:06:56 ◼   ► So I've mentioned this before,

01:06:58 ◼   ► how with the launch of the lossless tier in Apple Music,

01:07:02 ◼   ► I would be able to unify my music streaming habits

01:07:07 ◼   ► into a single music streaming service.

01:07:10 ◼   ► I wanna listen to Apple Music with my AirPods

01:07:13 ◼   ► or via my iPhone speakers,

01:07:15 ◼   ► when I just wanna put some music on in the background

01:07:18 ◼   ► and I don't care about music quality.

01:07:20 ◼   ► I just wanna have some music going on.

01:07:22 ◼   ► But now I can also use Apple Music with my good headphones,

01:07:28 ◼   ► with my DAC when I want to sit down and just enjoy music.

01:07:32 ◼   ► And that for me is sort of like a secondary use of Apple Music

01:07:37 ◼   ► that lets me evaluate, if you will, albums, before I go out and purchase them,

01:07:44 ◼   ► to add them to my collection.

01:07:46 ◼   ► Well, the CAN-alpha, it lets me unify everything about my music setup.

01:07:53 ◼   ► I can listen to Apple Music on this thing,

01:07:55 ◼   ► I can listen to my local library because it's got an SD card slot and I can also stream my

01:08:03 ◼   ► music collection from the Intel NUC that we mentioned last week via Rune and

01:08:10 ◼   ► Myke I absolutely love this thing. So

01:08:15 ◼   ► Using Rune on this device is quite

01:08:20 ◼   ► Incredible. So the way that Rune certified

01:08:24 ◼   ► devices work is

01:08:26 ◼   ► So you run run server on a server in your house my case

01:08:30 ◼   ► It's an Intel knock you can run it on a Mac you can run it on another PC

01:08:35 ◼   ► You can run it on a NAS you there's a bunch of ways that you can run run server

01:08:40 ◼   ► Then on the iPhone I can control I can browse my library

01:08:45 ◼   ► But we run ready devices like the can alpha

01:08:50 ◼   ► Because it's got Wi-Fi

01:08:52 ◼   ► you see it in Rune in the list of compatible output devices.

01:08:58 ◼   ► And what I can do is, I can control Rune on the CAN-alpha from the iPhone.

01:09:06 ◼   ► So I can select songs on the iPhone.

01:09:10 ◼   ► I can change the volume level of my CAN-alpha player from the iPhone.

01:09:16 ◼   ► Why would you want to do that, though?

01:09:18 ◼   ► because it's got a bigger screen and it's an iPhone

01:09:23 ◼   ► and it's like, you know, this thing has a small display.

01:09:26 ◼   ► - So you would like say, I don't know,

01:09:28 ◼   ► you've got your headphones on, it's plugged into this thing

01:09:31 ◼   ► and you would do this because it has like the,

01:09:34 ◼   ► a balanced output, if people don't know what it means,

01:09:37 ◼   ► it basically just means it can support

01:09:38 ◼   ► really great headphones and it sounds super good,

01:09:41 ◼   ► et cetera, et cetera, like we don't have to go

01:09:42 ◼   ► into the particulars, but then you see,

01:09:46 ◼   ► you just have it like plugged in and sitting on the table, whatever, you just use your

01:09:49 ◼   ► iPhone to choose the music.

01:09:50 ◼   ► Yes, yeah, exactly.

01:09:51 ◼   ► And I just use the iPhone, and if I want to text, like I'm using the iPhone, but I'm also

01:09:55 ◼   ► listening to music and, you know, having a really good time with it.

01:09:58 ◼   ► So controlling Rune, like it's incredible because when you think about it, you have

01:10:03 ◼   ► this server on a little computer that is sending lossless music over Wi-Fi to a portable music

01:10:11 ◼   ► player, but I'm controlling all of this from my iPhone.

01:10:15 ◼   ► - On a third device.

01:10:16 ◼   ► - On a third device.

01:10:18 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

01:10:19 ◼   ► And we're gonna talk about Room later.

01:10:21 ◼   ► And yeah, I've also used Apple Music for Android.

01:10:27 ◼   ► And it's nice because,

01:10:28 ◼   ► so this is a bit of an adventure,

01:10:32 ◼   ► I actually wanna mention this.

01:10:33 ◼   ► So Apple Music for Android added lossless

01:10:38 ◼   ► and high resolution lossless and spatial audio support

01:10:42 ◼   ► with version 3.6 of the Android app,

01:10:45 ◼   ► which came out last week.

01:10:47 ◼   ► Now, this has been in beta for a while.

01:10:49 ◼   ► So when I got the CAN-alpha player last month,

01:10:53 ◼   ► and I started looking around on Google,

01:10:55 ◼   ► I ran across this thread on the head-fi forums,

01:11:01 ◼   ► where someone was frustrated by the inability

01:11:07 ◼   ► to install the Apple Music beta

01:11:10 ◼   ► on the CAN-alpha player they had.

01:11:13 ◼   ► So what this person did, because you gotta install

01:11:17 ◼   ► these files in a specific format,

01:11:20 ◼   ► and that version of the Apple Music Beta

01:11:22 ◼   ► was not available in that file format.

01:11:25 ◼   ► So what this person did is they took the beta build

01:11:28 ◼   ► and they manually recompiled it

01:11:31 ◼   ► to include iResolution lossless support.

01:11:35 ◼   ► And they posted a link to download that app

01:11:39 ◼   ► from their iCloud Drive account.

01:11:42 ◼   ► Now, this sounds incredibly sketchy, right?

01:11:45 ◼   ► You're downloading an Android app that someone compiled

01:11:50 ◼   ► and posted on a forum, right?

01:11:53 ◼   ► But I really wanted to test lossless playback.

01:11:56 ◼   ► So I thought about it and was like,

01:11:59 ◼   ► boy, am I seriously considering downloading an app

01:12:04 ◼   ► that some random from a forum compiled and hosted

01:12:09 ◼   ► on an iCloud.com link,

01:12:11 ◼   ► and I gotta put in my Apple Music credentials to access this service, I gotta be careful,

01:12:16 ◼   ► right? So what I did is, it was late at night, it was like 2am, Sylvia was sleeping,

01:12:21 ◼   ► I downloaded the app that the random person from the forums made, I inspected the packages,

01:12:30 ◼   ► I downloaded the official build from Apple, and I difed the two apps side by side using

01:12:39 ◼   ► kaleidoscope on my Mac. Just to make sure that this person did not add in any weird code for,

01:12:45 ◼   ► like, stealing your password or whatever, you know? And sure enough, the only code that I

01:12:51 ◼   ► saw was different was the flags to enable lossless playback. So, you know, I just took an extra

01:12:59 ◼   ► precaution to make sure that nobody was stealing my passwords. But now, of course, Apple has

01:13:05 ◼   ► released the official version, I have it running on the CAN alpha. It's fine, right? Animations

01:13:13 ◼   ► are not as smooth as on iPhone, you get the weird Android font, but it works! And I can

01:13:22 ◼   ► listen to lossless playback on the CAN alpha, which, to sum up, it's a little device that

01:13:28 ◼   ► is quite chunky, it's a chunky boy, I love it. If you enable the high output setting,

01:13:34 ◼   ► It can drive even the most, well not the most, it can drive medium difficult headphones with

01:13:41 ◼   ► a slightly higher impedance than others.

01:13:44 ◼   ► It can get quite loud, it can get quite warm.

01:13:48 ◼   ► But I really love this thing and I wanted to mention it because if you're looking for

01:13:52 ◼   ► this kind of portable music player, check this out.

01:13:55 ◼   ► You can listen to all kinds of music with it.

01:13:58 ◼   ► So we're gonna go from your weird hobby to my weird hobby.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Yes, I was hoping this would be the case.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Yes.

01:14:06 ◼   ► I want to talk to you about the Stella 65, which is a keyboard kit made by a company

01:14:13 ◼   ► called Space Holdings.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Okay, let me see.

01:14:16 ◼   ► Okay.

01:14:17 ◼   ► This is a, I say a kit because you receive this and it is unbuilt.

01:14:23 ◼   ► It is what is known as a stacked acrylic keyboard.

01:14:28 ◼   ► So if you take a look at the images, you'll see it.

01:14:31 ◼   ► otherwise I can explain to you. It's basically a... right there's there's eight

01:14:38 ◼   ► layers of acrylic, so acrylic plastic, that you sandwich on top of each other

01:14:44 ◼   ► to make the whole case itself. And so every part has got its cutouts and you

01:14:50 ◼   ► you know you lay them on top of each other and then you always put in the PCB

01:14:55 ◼   ► which is the circuit board and then you put the other two on top right and then

01:14:58 ◼   ► and that makes the whole keyboard case,

01:15:00 ◼   ► and you end up with this kind of sandwich.

01:15:03 ◼   ► I recommend people go and take a look in the show notes

01:15:07 ◼   ► at the link, 'cause they got a bunch of images.

01:15:09 ◼   ► It will make complete sense once you've seen it,

01:15:12 ◼   ► but maybe for me to explain it could be tricky.

01:15:15 ◼   ► - Is this to, so this sandwich approach,

01:15:18 ◼   ► is it to increase customization,

01:15:21 ◼   ► to make it easier to change stuff in the future?

01:15:23 ◼   ► Like why not make it like a single piece?

01:15:27 ◼   ► It's incredibly cost effective to do it this way.

01:15:32 ◼   ► So if you were making a single piece, you have to basically either injection mold it,

01:15:37 ◼   ► which is incredibly expensive to set up the tooling on, or you'd have to take a block

01:15:42 ◼   ► of something and mill it out.

01:15:44 ◼   ► This keyboard is made by a relatively small company using machines that they can own.

01:15:50 ◼   ► So they just have a laser that can cut acrylic and they just need to cut eight of them for

01:15:56 ◼   ► each keyboard, right? Including there's some feet which are also cut from acrylic too.

01:16:02 ◼   ► And stacked acrylic keyboards, which is what this is known as, this kind of style, they

01:16:07 ◼   ► have a pretty nice sound to them. They're just known to sound pretty good. A lot of

01:16:12 ◼   ► keyboard like hobby stuff, it's design, sound and feel. Like how it feels to type on. Is

01:16:19 ◼   ► it, does it feel like there's a lot of resistance, is it stiff or is it a little bit more flexible,

01:16:24 ◼   ► kind of thing. So they're the kind of the three things and I think like for me

01:16:28 ◼   ► these stacked acrylic cases in general they kind of tick all the boxes they

01:16:32 ◼   ► look great they sound great and they feel really nice to type on. So this

01:16:39 ◼   ► is a kit in the sense of you have to not only build this keyboard you are also

01:16:44 ◼   ► doing the slaughtering of the switches into the circuit board. There are two

01:16:48 ◼   ► different ways to build keyboards you have that you also have something called

01:16:51 ◼   ► hot swap which just means you just put the switches in you just push them in and it works

01:16:55 ◼   ► but this one you have to like get a soldering iron and solder and you are soldering every switch into

01:17:02 ◼   ► the board right so it is that next level up but i will say like it is not difficult to do like it's

01:17:09 ◼   ► it's scarier than it is difficult right like just doing it for the first time is tricky.

01:17:13 ◼   ► One of the things that makes stacked acrylic just like acrylic keyboards cool and nice to look at

01:17:19 ◼   ► in general is if you have an RGB enabled PCB, right, like a circuit board, the RGB

01:17:27 ◼   ► light is diffused really nicely in this type of frosted acrylic. So I included an

01:17:33 ◼   ► Instagram post that I made of my built one. You can see like the RGB basically

01:17:38 ◼   ► flows through the entire keyboard rather than just coming up through the keys as

01:17:41 ◼   ► you might be more typically aware of like a boards made of aluminium or

01:17:45 ◼   ► something. Oh that's cool. So it looks really nice. So I've had this keyboard for a while.

01:17:52 ◼   ► I built it and I was using it with some silent switches which means it could sit on my desk

01:17:57 ◼   ► with me here and I could type on it and you wouldn't hear it but it still feels really

01:18:01 ◼   ► nice it's just quiet. They really are silent? Well I can tell you right now okay so I have

01:18:06 ◼   ► another keyboard I'm currently typing on a keyboard right now I'm just typing all the

01:18:10 ◼   ► keys and you can't hear it. But if I had another one of my keyboards you would and the way

01:18:14 ◼   ► it's done is they put these tiny little pieces of silicone into the switches. It's quite

01:18:18 ◼   ► complicated but there's still a feeling. It feels like maybe 70-80% of what a non silent

01:18:26 ◼   ► version of the switch would feel like because I have the non silent version of this exact

01:18:30 ◼   ► switch I'm using but it doesn't make sound which is obviously important to me because

01:18:35 ◼   ► I can't be sitting and clicking away all the time. I built this keyboard before like that

01:18:43 ◼   ► and I wanted to change it up because I got these switches.

01:18:47 ◼   ► So switches are what sits between the key cap

01:18:49 ◼   ► and the keyboard, right?

01:18:50 ◼   ► It's the thing that you press down on.

01:18:52 ◼   ► I got some switches that were glow in the dark.

01:18:54 ◼   ► They were made out of glow in the dark material.

01:18:57 ◼   ► And the thought that I have,

01:18:59 ◼   ► which would be pretty cool with this board,

01:19:01 ◼   ► is the RGB, like the LEDs,

01:19:04 ◼   ► would charge the glow in the dark material.

01:19:08 ◼   ► And what's cool about this board

01:19:10 ◼   ► is when you look at it from the side,

01:19:12 ◼   ► you can see inside it, so it's not frosted.

01:19:16 ◼   ► So like the acrylic is clear on the edges.

01:19:19 ◼   ► So when I turn off the IGB on this keyboard now,

01:19:22 ◼   ► all of the switches glow.

01:19:23 ◼   ► - Nice. - 'Cause it's glow

01:19:26 ◼   ► in the dark.

01:19:27 ◼   ► So this was like a fun little thing for me.

01:19:29 ◼   ► And the reason I went to bring this up specifically

01:19:31 ◼   ► is like this little project felt like a good example

01:19:34 ◼   ► of the progression that I've had over the last year

01:19:36 ◼   ► in this hobby, in the sense of like,

01:19:37 ◼   ► I've already built this board,

01:19:39 ◼   ► then I got some new components and I had an idea.

01:19:41 ◼   ► So I de-soldered the keyboard, which I have this,

01:19:44 ◼   ► it's like a reverse soldering iron, right?

01:19:46 ◼   ► I have, it's got a de-soldering gun,

01:19:48 ◼   ► which has a soldering iron to heat up the solder

01:19:51 ◼   ► and it has a vacuum pump to suck it up.

01:19:54 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:19:54 ◼   ► - It's quite an intense piece of machinery,

01:19:57 ◼   ► but it's really fun.

01:19:59 ◼   ► And so I de-soldered the entire keyboard

01:20:01 ◼   ► and I rebuilt it again.

01:20:03 ◼   ► And then one other thing that I noticed,

01:20:04 ◼   ► which also made me feel like I've come far with this is,

01:20:08 ◼   ► when I rebuilt it, the day or so after,

01:20:11 ◼   ► I noticed that one of the keys,

01:20:12 ◼   ► sometimes when I pressed it, it would repeat.

01:20:16 ◼   ► So like I was tapping the delete key

01:20:18 ◼   ► and it would start deleting more than I wanted it to.

01:20:23 ◼   ► So I was like, okay.

01:20:24 ◼   ► So I just took the board apart again

01:20:26 ◼   ► and I reflowed the solder and repaired it.

01:20:29 ◼   ► And like, and that's the thing that like, I never,

01:20:31 ◼   ► I would have been like, you know,

01:20:32 ◼   ► maybe even six months ago, like, oh, well,

01:20:34 ◼   ► I just want to press that button.

01:20:36 ◼   ► Right? Like that would have just been the way

01:20:37 ◼   ► I would have dealt with it.

01:20:38 ◼   ► But now I feel like I can diagnose these issues

01:20:42 ◼   ► and just go and fix them,

01:20:43 ◼   ► because I understand how these electronic components

01:20:47 ◼   ► work together.

01:20:48 ◼   ► So that was my Stellar 65 keyboard kit.

01:20:51 ◼   ► If you have ever done soldering or you've tried soldering,

01:20:54 ◼   ► I really recommend it.

01:20:55 ◼   ► If you haven't, you know,

01:20:57 ◼   ► this is a really fun little project

01:20:59 ◼   ► and there are other projects out there

01:21:00 ◼   ► where you can like buy cheaper kind of like

01:21:02 ◼   ► macro pads and stuff.

01:21:04 ◼   ► There's a company that I bought stuff from in the past

01:21:06 ◼   ► called Board Source.

01:21:07 ◼   ► I could just buy some cheaper projects with them

01:21:09 ◼   ► and practice your soldering on,

01:21:11 ◼   ► and then you could build something

01:21:12 ◼   ► as beautiful as my Seller 65.

01:21:14 ◼   ► - Nice.

01:21:16 ◼   ► That looks really, really lovely.

01:21:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's very nice.

01:21:19 ◼   ► I like it very much.

01:21:20 ◼   ► All right, what else have you got?

01:21:22 ◼   ► - Okay, so moving a few things around here.

01:21:25 ◼   ► I wanna mention Rune as the second thing I like.

01:21:29 ◼   ► So we covered this, I think, last week.

01:21:32 ◼   ► So, Rune, R-O-O-N,

01:21:35 ◼   ► It's an app, so it's described as the ultimate music player

01:21:40 ◼   ► for music fanatics, and I think I get it now,

01:21:45 ◼   ► now that I've been using it for a while.

01:21:47 ◼   ► So, Rune is like Plex, but just for your music,

01:21:52 ◼   ► for people who are really into music.

01:21:56 ◼   ► That's how I would describe it.

01:21:58 ◼   ► Now, what makes Rune special, again, like Plex,

01:22:02 ◼   ► It runs on a sort of server environment,

01:22:05 ◼   ► can be your PC, Mac, NAS, whatever.

01:22:08 ◼   ► You give it a folder of music files

01:22:12 ◼   ► and it analyzes those music files

01:22:14 ◼   ► and it builds a library for you.

01:22:16 ◼   ► Again, very similar in concept to Plex.

01:22:19 ◼   ► There's a couple of things that make it special

01:22:21 ◼   ► and also quite expensive as a product to license.

01:22:26 ◼   ► First one, it integrates natively

01:22:30 ◼   ► with a lot of third-party hardware.

01:22:34 ◼   ► So, makers of desktop DACs, portable DACs,

01:22:39 ◼   ► portable music players, headphone amps,

01:22:44 ◼   ► so many of them over the past few years

01:22:46 ◼   ► have been getting their equipment Roon-ready,

01:22:50 ◼   ► which means it's officially compatible with Roon,

01:22:54 ◼   ► and those devices, they show up,

01:22:56 ◼   ► to make it extremely simple,

01:22:58 ◼   ► they show up in the list of compatible outputs in Roon.

01:23:03 ◼   ► This is true for my portable music player,

01:23:05 ◼   ► and it's true for another piece of equipment

01:23:08 ◼   ► that I will mention in the post show

01:23:10 ◼   ► for connected pro members.

01:23:12 ◼   ► - Get connect to pro.co if you wanna hear more

01:23:15 ◼   ► about this software. - Thank you.

01:23:17 ◼   ► So yeah, there are Roon certified devices,

01:23:22 ◼   ► much like you have AirPlay certified devices, right?

01:23:26 ◼   ► that integrate natively with this technology.

01:23:29 ◼   ► The second thing that speaks extremely close to my heart

01:23:34 ◼   ► is amazing support for music metadata.

01:23:39 ◼   ► So you give Roon a folder of albums,

01:23:43 ◼   ► of your music collection,

01:23:45 ◼   ► and it fills in all the missing pieces for you.

01:23:48 ◼   ► Are you familiar, Myke, with the iPhone app

01:23:53 ◼   ► called MusicSmart?

01:23:55 ◼   ► Is this the one that fills in all of the, like, composer data and stuff?

01:23:59 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the iPhone app that lets you see, like, who's the composer of a song on Apple

01:24:03 ◼   ► Music or the mixing engineer or who played the cello in a specific song.

01:24:12 ◼   ► Rune has this feature taken to the extreme.

01:24:17 ◼   ► So Rune fills in all kinds of metadata you could possibly want to know about an album

01:24:23 ◼   ► or a song or a performer.

01:24:25 ◼   ► Shows you the genre, the recording date, the studio,

01:24:29 ◼   ► the composer, the mixing engineer, the production engineer.

01:24:33 ◼   ► Shows you each of every performer on a song.

01:24:38 ◼   ► And then it creates connections between this metadata.

01:24:41 ◼   ► So it's kinda like obsidian but for music,

01:24:47 ◼   ► if you think about it.

01:24:49 ◼   ► So for example, the other day I was in Rome,

01:24:52 ◼   ► And a little section popped up.

01:24:55 ◼   ► There's a Discover tab where you can go in and see

01:24:58 ◼   ► all of these suggestions.

01:24:59 ◼   ► And it was like music produced by Chris Walla.

01:25:03 ◼   ► Chris Walla, former guitar player of Dead Cab for Cutie,

01:25:06 ◼   ► also a music producer.

01:25:08 ◼   ► So what Rune did here is it noticed Dead Cab for Cutie

01:25:12 ◼   ► in my library.

01:25:13 ◼   ► And it noticed also that Chris Walla was a producer

01:25:17 ◼   ► for a bunch of other songs in my library.

01:25:20 ◼   ► And so it surfaced this very specific recommendation,

01:25:24 ◼   ► of course, with the photo of Chris Waller,

01:25:25 ◼   ► because he fetches all this metadata from the internet.

01:25:29 ◼   ► I was like, okay, that's cool.

01:25:31 ◼   ► But then you can get very specific and accurate,

01:25:36 ◼   ► because it also learns from you, suggestions over time.

01:25:41 ◼   ► So I'm looking now, for example, let's see.

01:25:45 ◼   ► Released this month in 2010, The Suburbs by Arcade Fire.

01:25:51 ◼   ► Or, let's see if I can get some more specific recommendations.

01:25:59 ◼   ► For example, if I'm scrolling, there's a featured performer. So Andrew Watt.

01:26:07 ◼   ► A performer that played guitar ukulele and a bunch of other instruments on.

01:26:15 ◼   ► "Normal F Rockwell" by Lana DeRay, "Plastic Arts" by Miley Cyrus, the 2018 album by Shawn Mendes, and "Nine" by Blink-182.

01:26:24 ◼   ► So, Andrew Watt, a performer based in New York City, seems like? Yes.

01:26:29 ◼   ► Versatile, New York-born, multi-instrumentalist.

01:26:37 ◼   ► So, Rune is the kind of product that puts the focus on the music, but not just the music.

01:26:44 ◼   ► on the people behind the music, right? Which is the kind of thing that I've talked about a bunch over the years.

01:26:54 ◼   ► No music streaming service does this, right?

01:26:57 ◼   ► Because so few people care about this kind of stuff. But,

01:27:02 ◼   ► if you think about it, this is also what software is great at, building these kinds of connections,

01:27:09 ◼   ► using metadata to find links between "oh yeah, this person actually played this instrument on different albums".

01:27:17 ◼   ► This is the kind of experience that is impossible to have in Apple Music or Spotify or Amazon Music, whatever.

01:27:24 ◼   ► You can sort of kind of get there with MusicSmart,

01:27:29 ◼   ► but it's more

01:27:32 ◼   ► full featured in Rune.

01:27:34 ◼   ► And I just love this thing. It's like it opens so many new ways to look at your music library.

01:27:44 ◼   ► And there's another thing that I want to mention, which is another feature that I've always wanted.

01:27:48 ◼   ► There's a feature called "Recordings". And this one, this feature, it shows you all the possible versions of the same song.

01:27:58 ◼   ► So, for example, in the recordings section of "Champagne Supernova" by Oasis, I can see

01:28:05 ◼   ► the regular version of "Champagne Supernova", or the remastered version, or the live version

01:28:12 ◼   ► at Wembley, because I have an album of that.

01:28:15 ◼   ► And that is so cool, because, like, yeah, I am the kind of person who wants to listen

01:28:19 ◼   ► to different recordings of the same song, like a demo version, or a remaster, or a live

01:28:25 ◼   ► version, you know?

01:28:26 ◼   ► Again, the kind of stuff that no music streaming service does, Rune does, and it does really well. So

01:28:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I love it. It's expensive, but if you're the kind of person who

01:28:36 ◼   ► wants to take your

01:28:39 ◼   ► personal music library to the next level

01:28:42 ◼   ► This is cool. So the website is runelabs.com

01:28:47 ◼   ► I'm going to

01:28:49 ◼   ► reinforce my love for Croft

01:28:53 ◼   ► You know all the cool kids these days. They're running arms open towards obsidian

01:28:58 ◼   ► And I want to talk about why I think crafts perfect for someone who's just like me

01:29:05 ◼   ► I think the more that I am putting into craft the more I am learning to love it

01:29:12 ◼   ► They also make a lot of advancements to the application to the service

01:29:17 ◼   ► and I appreciate them even if they're features that I don't want to use because I feel like they do a good job of

01:29:23 ◼   ► Not disrupting the product so like they just added this like calendar daily pages kind of mode

01:29:31 ◼   ► But I never see it because it's in its own view and so unless I press the calendar view

01:29:36 ◼   ► I don't see that part of the application so that's fine. It's there

01:29:39 ◼   ► It's doing a saying great for people that want it, but that's not how I use it. I think craft does

01:29:45 ◼   ► as

01:29:47 ◼   ► as good a job of dealing with mixed media as any app like this I've ever tried.

01:29:53 ◼   ► Text images, links, sketches, and these are things, this is exactly what I want.

01:29:57 ◼   ► I want sometimes singular notes that include all of those things in them.

01:30:03 ◼   ► It's really nice and easy to format text.

01:30:06 ◼   ► I like that it has the backlinks features, like I can link two notes together if I want

01:30:11 ◼   ► to.

01:30:12 ◼   ► I've done this with a few notes, but I don't want to do it all the time, but I like that

01:30:15 ◼   ► there if I want it. I love how easy it is to share an entire note as a web link

01:30:22 ◼   ► with somebody. So I just find this super useful for like if I've already done all

01:30:27 ◼   ► the work with something and someone wants to see it or I want to share it with

01:30:29 ◼   ► somebody I could just create a private URL link that I can give to them and

01:30:33 ◼   ► they can just look at the note. But then it also has the full-on collaboration

01:30:37 ◼   ► stuff too, right, where you can add people in and you can collaborate on a note

01:30:42 ◼   ► together and I assume that this is gonna become like they're gonna have like a

01:30:46 ◼   ► hybrid between the two of these things for their web version like that's my

01:30:51 ◼   ► expectation right it's basically like more could be more like Google Docs I

01:30:54 ◼   ► guess and I'm keen to see how that progresses like their syncing is pretty

01:30:59 ◼   ► fast and if they can keep improving that then we could be entering Google Docs

01:31:03 ◼   ► level of like functionality which would be great right I just think that for me

01:31:08 ◼   ► For me, craft is just what I need. It looks great, it works great, and it's just got the right amount of features without being over complicated.

01:31:16 ◼   ► And I find the overall experience of using the application to feel really good on all platforms.

01:31:22 ◼   ► It feels native everywhere because I think it pretty much is native everywhere.

01:31:28 ◼   ► It's by far and away the best catalyst app that I've ever used.

01:31:32 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:31:33 ◼   ► It doesn't feel like one at all.

01:31:36 ◼   ► I only knew it was a Catalyst app because there was a bug in Catalyst apps on Mac OS,

01:31:42 ◼   ► which is nothing that they could do.

01:31:43 ◼   ► And it was when I saw this bug, I was like, "Oh, it's Catalyst."

01:31:48 ◼   ► And so that was a big surprise to me.

01:31:50 ◼   ► I adore Kraft.

01:31:52 ◼   ► I think it's fantastic.

01:31:53 ◼   ► And so I thoroughly recommend it.

01:31:56 ◼   ► Nice.

01:31:57 ◼   ► And obviously, my final thing is going to be about Obsidian, right?

01:32:01 ◼   ► You just mentioned Kraft, so I just wanted to mention something about Obsidian.

01:32:04 ◼   ► Of course you do.

01:32:05 ◼   ► You're a hipster.

01:32:06 ◼   ► Yes, I am. I am a Markdown hipster.

01:32:09 ◼   ► Okay, so this is an Obsidian plugin made by...

01:32:16 ◼   ► How do I get the developer's name right?

01:32:18 ◼   ► Made by...

01:32:20 ◼   ► How do you open profiles on GitHub?

01:32:23 ◼   ► Christian...

01:32:24 ◼   ► Bae...

01:32:26 ◼   ► Christian...

01:32:27 ◼   ► Christian Begerbach...

01:32:29 ◼   ► Hooman.

01:32:30 ◼   ► Hooman. I'm sorry.

01:32:31 ◼   ► That's quite a great name.

01:32:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I kind of love it.

01:32:34 ◼   ► Christian Begebach-Humann.

01:32:37 ◼   ► QuickAdd.

01:32:38 ◼   ► This is the hot plugin in the Obsidian community at the moment.

01:32:43 ◼   ► This plugin has it all.

01:32:45 ◼   ► Like, what's the...

01:32:46 ◼   ► The Stefan...

01:32:47 ◼   ► It's got templates.

01:32:49 ◼   ► That's good. That's good.

01:32:53 ◼   ► No, but seriously, QuickAdd.

01:32:56 ◼   ► So this plugin, it lets you capture

01:33:00 ◼   ► text into existing notes.

01:33:04 ◼   ► It lets you create new notes starting from a template, or it lets you execute multiple actions, one after the other, with a macro system.

01:33:15 ◼   ► Now, this plugin, it feels like... the reason I love it is that it feels like it's made by someone who thinks exactly like me,

01:33:24 ◼   ► and has exactly my preferences when it comes to dealing with notes and dealing with markdown.

01:33:33 ◼   ► So, I pasted a screenshot in the show notes. I don't know if we can use it somewhere to show you the kind of tool.

01:33:43 ◼   ► I'll find a way.

01:33:45 ◼   ► Thank you. Myke finds a way, just like nature, to show you the kind of setup that I have with QuickAdd.

01:33:53 ◼   ► So, I created a menu in Obsidian. That's one of the things you can do with QuickAdd.

01:33:59 ◼   ► you can create your own custom menu that does a bunch of things.

01:34:03 ◼   ► So the first thing you can do with QuickAdd, you can type text into a prompt,

01:34:11 ◼   ► and that text, you can choose to have it appended to a section of a Markdown document.

01:34:19 ◼   ► So, say you have a Markdown Note, and you have a section of that note, like an H2 section.

01:34:27 ◼   ► In QuickAdd, when you're building these actions, you can say, "Yeah, I want to add this text

01:34:34 ◼   ► at the end of this section." So you can see in my note, for example, I have an iOS Review Dashboard

01:34:45 ◼   ► note. There's multiple sections in the note. One is called "Tweets." And so what I can do in QuickAdd

01:34:52 ◼   ► is I can go in, I tap the thing, and it says "IUS 15 tweets". I choose that one, I paste

01:34:58 ◼   ► the tweet, and it gets appended not to the very bottom of the document, but to the bottom

01:35:04 ◼   ► of the section. Which, for the kind of weirdo like me who likes to structure notes using

01:35:10 ◼   ► headings, this is like, you're gonna instantly fall in love with this feature. Second thing

01:35:17 ◼   ► you can do. You can combine QuickAdd with another plugin called "Hotkeys for Starred Files"

01:35:27 ◼   ► to make a button that opens a specific file. So you can see in my menu there's two buttons

01:35:37 ◼   ► called "Open Table of Contents" and "Open Review Ideas". If I tap that button, QuickAdd executes a

01:35:44 ◼   ► a macro and it opens a specific file for me. You can go even deeper with macros and you

01:35:53 ◼   ► can chain multiple steps together. This is the case for the last button that you can

01:35:58 ◼   ► see in my screenshot called "Open Dashboard and Preview". So, quick add here, it allowed

01:36:05 ◼   ► me to create a macro that said "Open a specific file", wait, like there's a wait action that

01:36:14 ◼   ► you can put in the middle. And then the last step is Toggle Preview Mode. So basically

01:36:21 ◼   ► you can chain together multiple steps to create a macro, and the macro you can then execute

01:36:26 ◼   ► from a button. What's incredible about this is that what I'm showing you right here is

01:36:32 ◼   ► a pretty primitive example of what you can do with QuickAdd. Other Obsidian users are

01:36:37 ◼   ► building incredible things with QuickAdd, because in addition to what I'm showing you

01:36:42 ◼   ► here, you can integrate with templates. So you can create really complex notes from a template.

01:36:50 ◼   ► You can run JavaScript in QuickAdd, which is not something I've tried because I don't have the time

01:36:57 ◼   ► for it, but if you want you can install scripts and run them from QuickAdd. In the macro section,

01:37:06 ◼   ► you can chain together any command from Obsidian.

01:37:11 ◼   ► There is literally a search bar in QuickAdd

01:37:14 ◼   ► that says search for a command,

01:37:17 ◼   ► and you can chain 10, 15, 20 different commands together.

01:37:22 ◼   ► So a good way to think about QuickAdd,

01:37:24 ◼   ► it's like, imagine a very, very, very small version

01:37:29 ◼   ► of shortcuts built into Obsidian,

01:37:32 ◼   ► where you can create your own enhancements

01:37:35 ◼   ► for Obsidian, which is already kind of a powerful tool,

01:37:40 ◼   ► QuickAdd lets you take it a step beyond.

01:37:42 ◼   ► So all this to say, this plugin is free.

01:37:45 ◼   ► So go check it out, say thanks to Christian,

01:37:49 ◼   ► and I won't be surprised if this becomes

01:37:53 ◼   ► a core built-in plugin in Obsidian in the future.

01:37:58 ◼   ► It's really, really good.

01:37:59 ◼   ► - Does seem nice.

01:38:01 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:38:02 ◼   ► - Last thing, TrainBeacon.

01:38:04 ◼   ► This is an iOS app for checking train times

01:38:07 ◼   ► and checking routes and stuff.

01:38:09 ◼   ► - Oh, is it UK only?

01:38:12 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:38:13 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:38:14 ◼   ► - I use this app for one thing, it has a widget.

01:38:18 ◼   ► - Ooh.

01:38:19 ◼   ► - So I have set up two widgets in like the one,

01:38:23 ◼   ► you know, the small widget size.

01:38:25 ◼   ► One is for my train that I need to get

01:38:27 ◼   ► from home to the studio.

01:38:29 ◼   ► And one is for the train from studio to home.

01:38:32 ◼   ► And then on my home screen all the time I have the upcoming train times from now for the next four or five trains so I can plan my routes.

01:38:41 ◼   ► This app has a bunch of other stuff like it's got like this big AR but I never open the application. I use it just for this one thing. It's exactly what I wanted and it's perfect.

01:38:51 ◼   ► It's really great. It tells me just when the next train is. I love it. It's very simple. But if you're like me, this probably is for you.

01:39:01 ◼   ► This looks nice.

01:39:02 ◼   ► It's very nice.

01:39:03 ◼   ► I like it, I like it.

01:39:04 ◼   ► Good pick.

01:39:05 ◼   ► So we have now restored balance to the episode.

01:39:08 ◼   ► So see we like things, but just like we like things, we love things with a passion.

01:39:14 ◼   ► So we get passionate with things that we don't like or we feel like could get better.

01:39:24 ◼   ► We want to like things, that's all.

01:39:27 ◼   ► then sometimes we love too much and then too much love comes out as anger.

01:39:35 ◼   ► Thanks so much to our sponsors for this week's episode, that is Fitbud, Hallo and Bombas.

01:39:40 ◼   ► And also thank you to members.

01:39:41 ◼   ► If you can go to getconnectedpro.co you can also support the show, you'll get access to

01:39:46 ◼   ► the Relay FM members Discord, but also longer ad-free episodes of every episode of Connected.

01:39:53 ◼   ► If you'd like to find us online you can go to maxstories.net for Federico's work and

01:39:57 ◼   ► He is @Vittici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.

01:40:00 ◼   ► You can go to follow me on Twitter as well.

01:40:03 ◼   ► I feel like @imike, I-M-Y-K-E, and Instagram as well.

01:40:06 ◼   ► And you can find Steven.

01:40:08 ◼   ► He's @512pixels.net.

01:40:09 ◼   ► And @ismh, don't forget, there's a couple of days left

01:40:12 ◼   ► to back his Kickstarter campaign.

01:40:15 ◼   ► Federico, if we were going on a first date together--

01:40:21 ◼   ► I have a question for you.

01:40:22 ◼   ► If we were going on a first date together

01:40:25 ◼   ► And you had your really expensive little hi-fi thing.

01:40:30 ◼   ► What is it called?

01:40:32 ◼   ► The--

01:40:32 ◼   ► - The CAN alpha.

01:40:34 ◼   ► - CAN alpha.

01:40:35 ◼   ► We had that with you.

01:40:36 ◼   ► And we were somehow in range of your NUC

01:40:40 ◼   ► so it could pick up your audio.

01:40:43 ◼   ► Do you actually put audio files on it as well?

01:40:46 ◼   ► So you have some-- - Oh yeah.

01:40:47 ◼   ► - Okay, great.

01:40:47 ◼   ► So you have some audio files on it.

01:40:48 ◼   ► - They're plugged in, they're stored

01:40:49 ◼   ► on a Samsung Thunderbolt drive, yeah.

01:40:55 ◼   ► Wait, what?

01:40:57 ◼   ► Oh, you mean the NUC, right?

01:40:58 ◼   ► No, no, I mean on the CAN alpha.

01:41:01 ◼   ► Oh, on the alpha, oh yeah, there's an SD card, yes.

01:41:03 ◼   ► Okay, I was like, wait, what?

01:41:05 ◼   ► No, no, no, I meant-- I was actually

01:41:06 ◼   ► confused about that.

01:41:07 ◼   ► The tangible drive is connected to the NUC,

01:41:09 ◼   ► the SD card is into the CAN alpha.

01:41:10 ◼   ► Perfect, okay, that makes more sense now.

01:41:13 ◼   ► So we're on a date, on our first date.

01:41:16 ◼   ► Okay.

01:41:17 ◼   ► And I noticed this Walkman of yours.

01:41:19 ◼   ► I keep calling it all the different wrong names,

01:41:21 ◼   ► I apologize.

01:41:24 ◼   ► And I say "what is that thing?" and you explain it to me and I say

01:41:27 ◼   ► "Let me hear it, play me a song. What song would you choose?"

01:41:31 ◼   ► Ahh, just one?

01:41:33 ◼   ► It's the first song I'm gonna be able to listen to from this thing.

01:41:36 ◼   ► Which song?

01:41:37 ◼   ► So this is the first date, this is like a romantic date.

01:41:42 ◼   ► So you're probably trying to impress me.

01:41:45 ◼   ► Okay.

01:41:46 ◼   ► Right?

01:41:47 ◼   ► And like, if I also set the mood, like what kind of mood?

01:41:51 ◼   ► Okay.

01:41:53 ◼   ► Well you tell me, you're the one who can choose.

01:41:55 ◼   ► You know, you're either set in the mood here

01:41:57 ◼   ► or you're trying to like impress me

01:42:00 ◼   ► with how good your music taste is or something.

01:42:03 ◼   ► - Okay, okay, okay.

01:42:04 ◼   ► Let me give you three different mood scenarios, okay?

01:42:12 ◼   ► We've been drinking, come back.

01:42:16 ◼   ► I want to impress you with some music

01:42:19 ◼   ► but also kind of fun, groovy mood.

01:42:22 ◼   ► I got just the right song for you.

01:42:24 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:42:25 ◼   ► - "Lose Yourself to Dance" by Daft Punk.

01:42:27 ◼   ► - Ooh, that's good.

01:42:28 ◼   ► You're on a Daft Punk kick right now, aren't you?

01:42:30 ◼   ► - I am. - Yeah.

01:42:31 ◼   ► - Once again.

01:42:32 ◼   ► But that song, you know,

01:42:34 ◼   ► with the Nile Rodgers playing in the background

01:42:38 ◼   ► and, you know, Pharrell doing the vocals,

01:42:42 ◼   ► just an exquisite song to listen to.

01:42:44 ◼   ► - Really good, very good.

01:42:46 ◼   ► - Very good song. - Great pick

01:42:47 ◼   ► for the first pick.

01:42:48 ◼   ► We are in a more sort of a pensive mood, you know?

01:42:53 ◼   ► Okay, we're reflecting on things.

01:42:57 ◼   ► "Exile" by Taylor Swift and Bon Iver.

01:43:00 ◼   ► - Ooh, okay, very moody.

01:43:03 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:43:03 ◼   ► Just when the vocals from,

01:43:08 ◼   ► when Justin Vernon comes on at the beginning of the track,

01:43:12 ◼   ► you know, he's got a baritone voice, I believe,

01:43:16 ◼   ► And that really comes through depending on the gear that you're listening to.

01:43:21 ◼   ► We're going to talk about that in a few minutes in the pro show,

01:43:24 ◼   ► but I feel like you listen to that.

01:43:26 ◼   ► The first, the first minute of that song at just the right volume level,

01:43:31 ◼   ► glass of red wine, perhaps the match made in heaven.

01:43:35 ◼   ► Or we can be in a really cheesy,

01:43:41 ◼   ► romantic mood.

01:43:42 ◼   ► It's sort of like a wrong calm scenario, right?

01:43:46 ◼   ► You just, you know, you want to go for the hits.

01:43:48 ◼   ► You want to go for the classics.

01:43:50 ◼   ► Okay.

01:43:51 ◼   ► I would say I'm going to be that guy.

01:43:54 ◼   ► And I am going to say, I put on XO by John Mayer.

01:44:00 ◼   ► You know, just classic John Mayer song.

01:44:04 ◼   ► It's, you know, a lot of people make fun of John Mayer

01:44:08 ◼   ► because he's John Mayer.

01:44:09 ◼   ► I think, you know, I also make fun of John Mayer, but he's also a really good guitar

01:44:14 ◼   ► player and I love John Mayer's voice.

01:44:17 ◼   ► So I'm going for the cheesy one, it sounds great.

01:44:21 ◼   ► Anything from old John Mayer, like I have, what's in my library, I have "XO" is a single,

01:44:27 ◼   ► but I also have "Continuum" from 2006, and I also have a...

01:44:34 ◼   ► I'm totally blanking out on the names of John Mayer albums.

01:44:37 ◼   ► The search for everything from 2017, it sounds great.

01:44:42 ◼   ► Really, the guitar and the voice, you know, it's got that sort of darkish, warm voice

01:44:50 ◼   ► with the right headphones or the right speakers.

01:44:53 ◼   ► It's John Mayer.

01:44:54 ◼   ► You cannot go wrong.

01:44:55 ◼   ► So yeah, quite a selection of songs.

01:45:00 ◼   ► Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Connected.

01:45:02 ◼   ► We'll be back next time.

01:45:03 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye, Federico.

01:45:04 ◼   ► Adiós, deché!

01:45:05 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:45:09 ◼   ► ♪ You just love to dance ♪

01:45:14 ◼   ► ♪ You just love to dance ♪

01:45:18 ◼   ► ♪ You just love to dance ♪

01:45:22 ◼   ► [Music]

01:45:24 ◼   ► [