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Connected

499: Without Any Morals

 

00:00:00   [MUSIC]

00:00:07   From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 499.

00:00:12   Today's show is brought to you by Jam, 1Password, and Fitbod.

00:00:17   My name is Mike Hurley. I am joined by Federico Vattici.

00:00:20   Ciao Federico.

00:00:21   Ciao Mike. How are you?

00:00:22   I'm good. How are you?

00:00:24   I'm good. We are without Dad this week.

00:00:27   Yes, no Dad.

00:00:29   No Dad.

00:00:30   Yeah.

00:00:31   Federico, do you know where Steven is?

00:00:34   No, actually I don't.

00:00:35   That's okay. He's in Memphis.

00:00:38   But there's a big thing going on for St. Jude right now.

00:00:41   They're bringing in creators.

00:00:43   And so Steven's there, Kathy's there, Casey and Jason are there too.

00:00:48   So like they've brought some people in.

00:00:51   It's kind of like a creator summit, they call it, for fundraisers.

00:00:55   Steven texted me today to tell me there's a lot of gamers here.

00:00:59   A lot of gamers?

00:01:00   Yeah, it's mostly gamers.

00:01:01   It's gamers and then a few tech podcasters.

00:01:05   I think that's the...

00:01:06   And then some people from the community are there too.

00:01:08   So people from Discord who raised money,

00:01:11   like did some of the fundraising stuff, they're there.

00:01:13   So it's basically you've got gamers, Relay Discord members,

00:01:17   and a couple of Relay podcast hosts.

00:01:19   Loads of gamers.

00:01:20   Shout out to the gamers.

00:01:22   They're going to rise up.

00:01:23   Yes, as always.

00:01:25   Gamers rise up.

00:01:26   We have some follow up.

00:01:28   OK.

00:01:29   First off, I would just like to give a shout out to new listener Diggy.

00:01:33   Diggy?

00:01:33   Who wrote in Discord and said,

00:01:35   "I listened to Connected for the first time ever this week

00:01:38   and was mostly entertained but lost.

00:01:40   It's a win for me and I'll keep listening."

00:01:42   OK, OK.

00:01:44   Well, thank you Diggy for starting...

00:01:46   Sticking with us.

00:01:47   You know, sticking with us and listening to the show.

00:01:49   I understand that there's a lot of like at this point

00:01:53   inside jokes and things and references that maybe could...

00:01:56   You know, maybe somebody should put out a...

00:01:58   Maybe somebody should prepare like a compendium.

00:02:00   Whoa.

00:02:01   Like a read me for the podcast?

00:02:03   Like a read me, like a little connected encyclopedia or something.

00:02:07   God, that would be good.

00:02:08   As Emma says in the Discord, the lore.

00:02:12   Yeah, someone needs to put together a lore document for the show.

00:02:15   Because I think either last week or the week before,

00:02:20   we were talking about the idea.

00:02:21   I think it might have been during Teach Italian,

00:02:23   which is taking a break this week because Steven's not here.

00:02:25   Because obviously Steven needs Teach Italian more than anyone else.

00:02:30   -Obviously. -Obviously.

00:02:31   We were referencing the fact that this show must be like impossible to start.

00:02:38   But turns out Diggy found it possible.

00:02:40   So shout out to Diggy, you know?

00:02:42   Yeah, yeah. Be like Diggy.

00:02:44   Just get started.

00:02:45   I'm going to close the loop finally on my Craig...

00:02:49   What did Craig Federighi say it?

00:02:51   Follow up from the last two weeks.

00:02:54   Obviously the person to help me was _DavidSmith,

00:02:56   who texted me the other day to say,

00:02:58   "I found the clip that I think you were after with Apple using training data.

00:03:03   It was in the 2016 WWDC live talk show.

00:03:07   At 53 minutes and 19 seconds into the episode,

00:03:10   Craig was talking about mountains."

00:03:13   Ah, not trees.

00:03:14   So he says,

00:03:15   "It turns out if you want to get pictures of mountains,

00:03:18   you don't need to get it out of people's personal photo libraries.

00:03:21   We found out we could find some pictures of some mountains.

00:03:24   We did tough detective work and we found them."

00:03:26   It's like he was making a joke,

00:03:28   but that's the idea of like,

00:03:30   they don't need people's photos.

00:03:33   They're just data sets they could buy.

00:03:35   That was what I was talking about and that was what they ended up doing.

00:03:37   So thank you _ for that.

00:03:40   Finally, you know?

00:03:42   I tried myself using this and I couldn't do it,

00:03:44   but it's really only _.

00:03:46   Are you at peace now?

00:03:47   You found what you were looking for with this?

00:03:50   Yeah.

00:03:51   Okay, good.

00:03:52   We're no longer Mandela'd.

00:03:54   Okay.

00:03:55   It's a good thing.

00:03:56   Yeah.

00:03:57   No more Mandela.

00:03:58   What's going on, Mike, what's going on with fine woven cases?

00:04:02   Oh yeah, so fine woven may be gone, it seems.

00:04:07   So there were fine woven cases potentially on the way out.

00:04:10   Leaker Kousutami,

00:04:12   he's a Twitter leaker who had some good stuff about cases in the past,

00:04:16   which is just hilarious.

00:04:17   It's very niche.

00:04:18   I am a case leaker.

00:04:22   They said that it seems like there's one more set of colors left,

00:04:25   one more seasonal color set that they're going to do,

00:04:28   but then that's going to be the end of the--

00:04:31   So one final outing for the fine woven lineup and then it's done forever.

00:04:38   That's the end.

00:04:39   That's the end.

00:04:40   I guess what was left in the supply chain.

00:04:45   Maybe Apple were just like, you know what, just paint them pink or something.

00:04:49   Do anything.

00:04:51   But I guess they got this one, they were working on it,

00:04:54   but yeah, it seems like they're going to do something else.

00:04:56   I mean, I saw somebody saying that maybe Alcantara might be an option

00:05:00   because it's another pseudo leather.

00:05:02   I think they need to just give it up and just do all silicon.

00:05:05   That's what I think.

00:05:07   Or just do plastic leather or something.

00:05:10   It's fine.

00:05:12   Yeah, but see, the problem is that though,

00:05:14   and this is going back to exactly what I was talking about before,

00:05:17   so I'm sorry for repeating myself.

00:05:18   A lot of the plastic leathers, pleathers,

00:05:22   they are not good for the environment.

00:05:24   And so at some point you might as well just go back to leather again.

00:05:28   And this is the thing, it's not just about replacing leather

00:05:33   for the sake of replacing leather.

00:05:34   They're trying to make a more environmentally friendly case.

00:05:39   And a lot of these things out there are not great.

00:05:45   And so like Josie says in the chat,

00:05:46   "Silicon feels weird because it's plastic."

00:05:49   My assumption is that Apple have a process

00:05:51   where they're able to use recycled materials for the cases,

00:05:54   otherwise they wouldn't do them.

00:05:55   Like I think that's kind of where they are right now.

00:05:58   I think Apple at some point, while they like the money,

00:06:01   would prefer to be able to commit to their environmental pledges

00:06:04   because that's important for them for one reason or another.

00:06:08   Yeah, I guess.

00:06:09   I have a MagSafe stand for you that I saw on The Verge.

00:06:12   I was looking at these pictures and I am so tempted.

00:06:16   It is just a plastic stand that looks like a Game Boy Advance SP

00:06:20   that you can put a MagSafe into and charge your phone on a Game Boy.

00:06:25   Oh, this is so nice.

00:06:26   Does it actually have a MagSafe pack inside

00:06:29   or do you need to provide your own?

00:06:31   Oh, man.

00:06:33   I prefer providing your own ones

00:06:35   because then you get the good MagSafe, you know,

00:06:39   rather than...

00:06:40   Unless they do the whole thing.

00:06:42   My beloved cube does the speed that I want, my Anker cube.

00:06:45   But there you go, Federica.

00:06:46   I thought that this would fit for you.

00:06:48   And this is totally my...

00:06:50   Oh, and it's made by a Lago, of course.

00:06:52   The Lago make loads of this kind of stuff, right?

00:06:54   They made Mac ones and stuff like that.

00:06:58   They have on their website right now,

00:07:00   they have an old Game Boy stand for Apple Watch charging.

00:07:05   You can get a case,

00:07:09   a silicon case for a plug that looks like a Game Boy.

00:07:14   Yeah, I used to have the...

00:07:16   Was it made by a Lago?

00:07:18   I think a case for my AirPods Pro

00:07:21   that looked like a Nintendo Switch or something.

00:07:23   Yeah.

00:07:23   But at some point I had that.

00:07:25   I think it was a Lago, but I may be mistaken.

00:07:27   They make loads of this kind of stuff.

00:07:29   It's a niche little thing to make.

00:07:30   I like it.

00:07:33   Meta Ray-Bans are getting cooler all the time.

00:07:37   Oh, yeah.

00:07:37   And I just bought a pair.

00:07:38   So let's talk about this.

00:07:39   OK, OK.

00:07:41   I was hoping this would happen.

00:07:43   But there's a...

00:07:43   So I've been keeping an...

00:07:44   I've been literally keeping an eye on this for a while.

00:07:46   But there was the issue.

00:07:49   So before we talk about the news, just let me contextualize here.

00:07:52   I think this is a really interesting product

00:07:54   because first of all, it's sunglasses and it's Ray-Bans.

00:07:57   And I like the look.

00:07:59   But also, as I mentioned before,

00:08:00   like I'm very intrigued by this idea.

00:08:02   Same as I said for the Humanae AI pin,

00:08:04   like this idea of having a camera that allows me to record stuff,

00:08:08   like moments with my dogs at the park, for example,

00:08:11   without having to pull out my phone.

00:08:13   I'm very intrigued by this category.

00:08:15   And also, these are actually pretty decent Bluetooth speakers, it seems like.

00:08:19   So I've been meaning to purchase them for a while.

00:08:22   But the Italian Ray-Ban website is so weird

00:08:25   because there's no mention whatsoever of getting a prescription version.

00:08:31   There's a link in a support page buried in another page that says,

00:08:36   "Just go to a..."

00:08:38   I don't remember, some kind of like optic center with a specific name.

00:08:43   Turns out it's an American company that has retailers only in America.

00:08:48   So it doesn't apply to Italy at all.

00:08:50   And so I started thinking about this.

00:08:52   I literally thought about this for the past month.

00:08:55   I was like, "How am I going to do this?

00:08:57   I need to use prescription if I want to drive with these glasses."

00:09:00   And then I had an idea.

00:09:02   So I emailed my friends at Lensology.

00:09:07   This is a company based in the UK

00:09:09   that provided me in the past for prescription lenses for my X-Real glasses.

00:09:13   Remember those months ago?

00:09:15   -Oh, yes. -Yeah.

00:09:16   I used Lensology, great UK-based company.

00:09:19   So I sent them an email yesterday.

00:09:21   I was like, "Hey, so I want to do this.

00:09:23   I want to buy this Ray-Ban Meta in Italy.

00:09:26   Can I ship this to you?

00:09:28   And can you apply prescription sunglass lenses for me

00:09:33   and then ship them back to me?"

00:09:35   And they were like, "Yeah, totally. We can do this.

00:09:37   Just here's our address. Just buy the glasses, send them to us,

00:09:41   and we'll calculate the total for the lenses that you want,

00:09:43   and then we'll ship them back to you."

00:09:45   And so, yeah, that's what I'm going to do.

00:09:47   I put in an order for the basic model of the Wayfarer Ray-Ban Meta.

00:09:53   And as soon as they arrive, I'm going to unbox them,

00:09:55   make sure everything is OK,

00:09:57   package them up again, send them to Lensology in the UK,

00:10:01   and then wait for the glasses to come back with prescription lenses,

00:10:06   which apparently I cannot get in Italy in any official way.

00:10:10   Right. Did you buy the Ferrari ones?

00:10:13   -Oh, no, I did not do that. -Did you see the Ferrari ones?

00:10:15   I saw them this morning.

00:10:17   I was like, "No, I am not going to do that."

00:10:19   They're a limited edition Ferrari.

00:10:21   They're blue because Ferrari's doing a whole blue thing right now.

00:10:24   Yeah, no, I'm going with...

00:10:25   I went with the standard black frame model.

00:10:28   What I find frustrating, because I was looking at these two today,

00:10:31   is that all of the product imagery shows these semi-translucent ones,

00:10:35   which I know you can get, I think, maybe in the States,

00:10:38   but you can't buy those on the UK website.

00:10:40   But the imagery is all over showing the semi-translucent ones,

00:10:44   which look really cool.

00:10:45   Aren't those like the... Are those the transition lenses?

00:10:49   No, they have the actual body of the Ray-Ban.

00:10:54   You can see into it.

00:10:55   -They're like... -Oh, yeah.

00:10:57   Oh, the translucent frame.

00:10:59   Interesting. Yeah, I saw that.

00:11:01   Yeah, I just got the standard black.

00:11:04   I'm excited to hear what you have to say about them.

00:11:06   There's a couple of things.

00:11:07   One, they got official Apple Music support.

00:11:09   That was why I finally decided I got to do it.

00:11:14   -Yeah, Apple Music. -The reason I want these

00:11:17   is also the reason I'm not buying them right now, I think.

00:11:21   So they just got support for Meta's multimodal AI.

00:11:25   So you can look at something and I think you say like,

00:11:28   "Hey, Meta, look at this and da-da-da-da-da."

00:11:30   And it takes a picture, uploads it, I think, via your phone, probably,

00:11:35   and then tells you what you're seeing.

00:11:39   So I'm going to give a couple of quotes from Victoria's song

00:11:42   over at The Verge.

00:11:43   The song says, "To me, it's the mix of a familiar form factor

00:11:47   and decent execution that makes the AI workable on these glasses.

00:11:50   Because it's paired to your phone,

00:11:52   there's very little wait time for answers.

00:11:53   It's headphones, so you feel less silly talking to them

00:11:56   because you're already used to talking through earbuds.

00:11:59   In general, I found the AI to be the most helpful

00:12:02   at identifying things when we're out and about.

00:12:03   It's a natural extension of what I do anyway with my phone.

00:12:06   I find something I'm curious about, snap a picture and look it up.

00:12:09   Provided you don't need to zoom really far in,

00:12:11   this is a case where it's nice to not pull out your phone."

00:12:14   And I've also included in the show notes an Instagram reel

00:12:17   that Cleo Abram made that just show a good example

00:12:21   of the kinds of things you could use something like this for.

00:12:25   Where I just think it's at the moment,

00:12:27   I think that the Meta Raybans are the best realisation

00:12:32   of any of this kind of product.

00:12:35   And I haven't used them,

00:12:36   but I'm even including something like Division Pro.

00:12:39   They have a very simple set of things that this thing does

00:12:43   and it looks like it does them really well.

00:12:45   And people like it.

00:12:46   And it looks good because the thing that is the most surprising

00:12:51   is these legitimately just look like a pair of Raybans.

00:12:54   Like there's nothing weird about them.

00:12:56   So...

00:12:57   Yeah, that's why I'm very intrigued.

00:13:01   But it's just a pair of Raybans and they have the cameras

00:13:04   and the microphones and the speakers,

00:13:06   but otherwise you're just wearing sunglasses

00:13:08   and nobody thinks their sunglasses are weird.

00:13:11   So, and it's like, it seems to be that kind of tech

00:13:17   that's like wearable, but doesn't make you look like an idiot.

00:13:21   And also is mostly stays out of the way.

00:13:25   Like I'm gonna use this like mostly like when I'm,

00:13:29   I like to take long walks with the dogs at the park

00:13:33   just by myself with the dogs when Sidwe is at work.

00:13:35   And just listen to a podcast or listen to music

00:13:38   or call my mom or just to take videos of my dogs.

00:13:43   But especially when I have like, I'm handling two dogs

00:13:46   and I need to pull out my phone, like it's inconvenient.

00:13:48   And so having basic access to those functionalities

00:13:51   via sunglasses, it seems pretty neat.

00:13:54   So I'm looking forward to them.

00:13:57   Peter.

00:13:57   - But yeah, the thing that I didn't mention

00:13:59   is this multimodal AI is just in the US right now.

00:14:02   - Yeah, yeah.

00:14:03   - So, you know, this is the thing where I have my eye on it.

00:14:06   Like I think I'm very interested

00:14:08   in getting a pair of these.

00:14:10   I think I need a pair of sunglasses.

00:14:12   So the next time I get a pair of sunglasses,

00:14:14   I'm probably just gonna buy these.

00:14:15   'Cause I like the way first style anyway.

00:14:17   And so maybe I'll just go for this.

00:14:20   And even if I just use them to take photos

00:14:22   on my next vacation, like I'll be happy.

00:14:24   But I want the other features that this thing seems to have.

00:14:28   So it seems pretty cool.

00:14:29   - Peter in Discord said,

00:14:32   "Federico, you can go to an optometrist in Italy

00:14:35   with the glasses and ask them to change the lenses."

00:14:37   Hmm.

00:14:38   - Yeah, I mean, they're just Ray-Ban lenses.

00:14:40   Like any optometrist should have those.

00:14:42   - I could just order the lenses and go to an optometrist

00:14:47   and say, "Hey, here's the lenses."

00:14:49   - I don't even think you need to order them.

00:14:51   You could just go to an optometrist in Italy and say,

00:14:53   "Can you put lenses in these?"

00:14:55   They're just Ray-Ban lenses.

00:14:56   So provided they're the same sizes, which I assume they are,

00:15:00   I expect that any optometrist in Italy

00:15:03   would have Ray-Ban lenses that it could give you.

00:15:06   - So here's what I'm gonna do.

00:15:08   I'm gonna receive the glasses.

00:15:09   And then I'm gonna go to the,

00:15:11   there is an optometrist basically in front of my house.

00:15:15   So I'm gonna go down there and be like,

00:15:17   "Hey, can you actually change?"

00:15:19   And if the answer is no for whatever reason,

00:15:21   I will use lensology because I have a backup plan.

00:15:24   - But that is a very good suggestion.

00:15:26   'Cause it should be relatively trivial for them to do it.

00:15:31   - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:32   Maybe I'll just need to order them with my prescription

00:15:35   if they don't have available those types of lenses.

00:15:39   But that seems easier to do than doing the back and forth

00:15:43   with the UK.

00:15:44   - 'Cause I think like Ray-Bans,

00:15:46   they just pop them in and out.

00:15:47   Like I don't think it's like a particularly complicated.

00:15:51   - Cool.

00:15:52   Worst case scenario, I do have a backup plan.

00:15:54   But yeah, thank you, Peter.

00:15:55   That's actually a much more reasonable suggestion.

00:15:57   So yeah, we'll see.

00:15:58   They should arrive next week.

00:16:00   - I'm excited to hear about that.

00:16:02   We also got some first impressions of the Rabbit R1.

00:16:05   We've been talking about this over the last couple of weeks.

00:16:07   That's just gonna happen.

00:16:08   I'm gonna read a couple of quotes

00:16:10   and a couple of things from David Pierce's

00:16:13   Hands On at The Verge.

00:16:15   He says, "Where Humane's AI pin feels like

00:16:17   "a carefully sculpted metal gem,

00:16:19   "the R1 feels like an old-school MP3 player

00:16:22   "crossed with a fidget spinner."

00:16:24   He says that it's a fun little toy.

00:16:26   It does some interesting stuff.

00:16:27   It still has some of the same lag issues

00:16:30   that the AI pin does.

00:16:31   But the fact that it has a screen

00:16:33   which shows loading animations and stuff

00:16:34   makes it feel better.

00:16:36   But similarly to the AI pin,

00:16:38   the Rabbit R1 is missing tons of features

00:16:41   that have been already demoed.

00:16:44   And Pierce says, "So far this thing seems like

00:16:47   "it's trying to be less like a smartphone killer

00:16:49   "and more like the beginnings of a useful companion."

00:16:52   We don't have full reviews yet.

00:16:53   I'm expecting the review will not be glowing, but I think...

00:16:56   When I originally read this,

00:16:59   I thought maybe could at least be better than the AI pin,

00:17:01   but then I saw this thing about a virtual machine

00:17:03   which people seem upset about, and I don't understand it.

00:17:05   - I am sorry, but I cannot take this product seriously

00:17:08   if all it's doing with the apps

00:17:10   is running them in a virtual machine.

00:17:12   - Can you explain it to me?

00:17:13   I don't understand.

00:17:14   - So the idea would be that you don't actually

00:17:17   have the apps running on this device.

00:17:19   You have a virtualized environment,

00:17:21   like say it's running VMware or Parallels or something,

00:17:25   and you log into your accounts on that virtual machine.

00:17:30   So there's like a Mac Mini or a PC somewhere

00:17:34   in the Rabbit cloud,

00:17:36   and it's running a virtual machine for an operating system.

00:17:40   It could be Windows or MacOS or whatever,

00:17:43   and you're logging into those apps, Spotify,

00:17:47   mid journey, I believe.

00:17:50   You're logging into those apps with your credential

00:17:53   on those virtual machines with like no clue

00:17:58   as to what kind of security practices they have in place.

00:18:02   And this to me just smells like amateur hour,

00:18:06   and also like a really serious potential security risk.

00:18:10   Like you're asking people to log into their accounts

00:18:14   with credit cards on file, for example,

00:18:17   on a virtual machine somewhere

00:18:20   that's then streaming down data to the R1.

00:18:24   Like, no, thank you.

00:18:26   I am not doing that.

00:18:28   No, no.

00:18:32   Absolutely not.

00:18:33   And there's actually a GitHub repo called Rabbit Scam.

00:18:38   I don't know how accurate this is.

00:18:43   Oh, it seems like the, huh, interesting.

00:18:45   So real-time followup, that repo is gone.

00:18:47   It is no longer on GitHub.

00:18:49   - Good, good, good.

00:18:50   It's all going great.

00:18:52   - So I actually did check out the repo a few minutes ago.

00:18:58   This person reverse engineered the Rabbit R1 code

00:19:02   and found that all they were doing

00:19:05   was talking to a VM in the cloud.

00:19:07   And there was actually no sign of the large action model

00:19:12   as the Rabbit folks called it.

00:19:16   It was basically just running a bunch of,

00:19:20   oh, what was the name?

00:19:22   They were running essentially a bunch of like browser scripts

00:19:27   instead of like actually automating anything.

00:19:32   I don't recall the name.

00:19:33   It was like a browser scripting technology.

00:19:36   Yeah, nothing too fancy.

00:19:37   And it was mostly talking to a VM.

00:19:40   So, and the Verge, by the way,

00:19:43   the Verge also confirms that it's running the apps

00:19:45   in a virtual machine.

00:19:46   And also David Pierce is concerned

00:19:48   about the security approach there.

00:19:51   So-

00:19:51   - All right.

00:19:52   I expect we'll know more.

00:19:53   Like when people actually reviewing it,

00:19:55   maybe they'll ask more questions of Rabbit.

00:19:57   But this is where we are right now with it

00:19:59   is it seems like a little bit janky to say the least.

00:20:04   This episode is brought to you by Jam.

00:20:08   If you're a web developer and you work on a team,

00:20:11   you'll know sometimes your teammates send you bug reports

00:20:13   with very little context.

00:20:15   Like maybe just a text description with no screenshot,

00:20:17   console logs or a user ID.

00:20:20   I do this by the way.

00:20:21   This is how I report bugs to Steven.

00:20:23   I just say it, send him screenshots of things.

00:20:26   If that, or like, just like, hey, this thing doesn't work.

00:20:29   But instead of fixing it,

00:20:30   you have to go to the person who made the ticket

00:20:32   to hunt down the right information

00:20:34   or go back and forth over weeks in the ticket comments

00:20:36   to find out if it was local storage APIs,

00:20:38   the response from a network request, cookies at the time,

00:20:41   the time zone you're in.

00:20:42   And it ends up being really frustrating

00:20:44   trying to figure out exactly what went wrong.

00:20:46   You may have heard of Jam.

00:20:47   It's used by more than 90,000 people

00:20:50   because it's a free tool that saves web developers

00:20:52   and designers a ton of time and frustration.

00:20:54   It ensures that your teammates

00:20:55   make the perfect bug report every time.

00:20:58   Maybe Steven's going to make me use Jam now.

00:21:00   They literally can't do it wrong.

00:21:01   It automatically includes a video of the bug,

00:21:03   console logs, network requests,

00:21:05   all the information you need to debug,

00:21:07   like even what was their internet speed.

00:21:09   This sounds awesome.

00:21:10   It even automatically lists out the steps

00:21:12   to reproduce the bug.

00:21:14   It's so easy to get your teammates to use it

00:21:16   because it's just a Chrome extension.

00:21:18   When they see a bug, they just click a button

00:21:20   and right away it creates a ticket in your issue tracker.

00:21:23   So it saves time for them

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00:21:26   and meetings to debug it.

00:21:27   If you're a web developer

00:21:29   and you would rather spend your time writing code

00:21:31   than responding to comments in your issue tracker,

00:21:33   send your team to jam.dev.

00:21:36   That's jam.dev, or you can just click the link

00:21:39   in our show notes.

00:21:39   Our thanks to Jam for their support of this show

00:21:42   and Relay FM.

00:21:43   So last week we were talking about the,

00:21:48   Phil Schiller said to a, I think it was to a German

00:21:52   antitrust hearing or something like that.

00:21:54   - Yeah, I think so, yeah.

00:21:55   - That people at Apple take no notes.

00:21:57   And we didn't believe that that was the case.

00:22:01   So we put the call out.

00:22:02   - We were right.

00:22:03   - We put the call out and we got tons of,

00:22:07   many, not tons, many, many connected listeners

00:22:10   wrote in anonymously to share their feedback.

00:22:14   And I can personally vouch for two of these.

00:22:17   So like some of them were just sent into us,

00:22:19   but some was sent directly to me.

00:22:21   And I think maybe Steven got one or two as well.

00:22:24   And like, these are people that I can vouch for them.

00:22:26   So I can believe them.

00:22:27   So we have eight pieces of follow up here.

00:22:30   So person one says, there's a role at Apple

00:22:34   called an engineering project manager

00:22:36   who makes sure that the trains run on time

00:22:39   for product development.

00:22:40   They are frequently the ones who take notes

00:22:42   at all meetings so they know what needs to be done,

00:22:45   who needs to do it and when it needs to be done by.

00:22:48   All right, so point one, there's people in every meeting

00:22:51   who are taking notes.

00:22:52   So that's the first part.

00:22:54   So even if you're not doing it, someone is.

00:22:56   Which makes sense, right?

00:22:56   The project manager has to keep track

00:22:59   of what everyone says they're gonna do.

00:23:01   How on earth are they gonna do that

00:23:03   if they're not taking notes?

00:23:04   Like this is just the way that teams work together, right?

00:23:07   So two, I work at Apple and take notes

00:23:11   in every meeting for my own use.

00:23:13   There's also almost always someone else specifically

00:23:16   assigned to take notes, which is probably

00:23:18   the engineering project manager, right?

00:23:20   If not a minutes person.

00:23:22   Person three, yes, Apple employees take notes in meetings.

00:23:25   There's a particular type of person that I hate.

00:23:27   The people who lead regular meetings,

00:23:30   like weekly project update meetings

00:23:32   and don't have an agenda or take notes

00:23:34   and send out the minutes afterwards.

00:23:35   I don't go to their meetings because they waste people's time

00:23:38   when they have no structure.

00:23:39   I mean, this just sounds like corporate meeting culture.

00:23:42   This is exactly what we were saying.

00:23:44   I would not believe that Apple does not work

00:23:46   like every other business in the world.

00:23:48   That there are people that take notes

00:23:49   and people that don't,

00:23:50   and the people that take notes are effective, right?

00:23:53   Person four, people absolutely take notes at Apple.

00:23:57   I mean, I don't for the most part,

00:23:58   but at the very least our project manager emails

00:24:01   out brief notes after every meeting.

00:24:03   There's certainly no policy against it

00:24:05   and I've never heard of such a thing.

00:24:07   - Okay, all right.

00:24:08   So at what point do we start believing

00:24:11   that Phil Schiller personally never took any notes?

00:24:15   - I actually, in a minute there is, let me jump to this one.

00:24:18   So person seven wrote in to say the quote,

00:24:20   "No notes thing" was the case with the old God.

00:24:24   This was for taking meeting notes

00:24:25   and for having notes in presentations.

00:24:28   The sound of pencils was considered unacceptable.

00:24:31   But this is changing.

00:24:33   Not only do people take notes in all meetings,

00:24:35   usually people even have teleprompters now

00:24:38   for their presentations.

00:24:39   So like, this was a Steve Jobs thing.

00:24:41   For sure.

00:24:42   - They have gone from a vibes based product direction

00:24:46   to teleprompters.

00:24:47   That's a great improvement.

00:24:49   - But like, look, I think this is exactly the thing

00:24:52   that we expected was the case.

00:24:53   Was like Steve Jobs had some weird ideas about note-taking

00:24:57   and then people who have been there for long enough

00:25:00   kind of just got used to the way that he does things.

00:25:02   But that doesn't mean that it's good or whatever.

00:25:04   It's just not the way that people work now.

00:25:06   - Yeah.

00:25:07   Person five said of taking notes

00:25:09   in basically every single meeting I've ever been in,

00:25:11   including ones with higher ups,

00:25:13   and so does everyone else.

00:25:14   It's kind of weird if someone isn't.

00:25:16   - There you go.

00:25:17   And I know person five.

00:25:19   This is one of the ones that's into me.

00:25:20   And I know the kind of people that they meet with.

00:25:23   And so like, you know, maybe Phil's not taken his notes,

00:25:28   but there are notes taken in meetings with people

00:25:30   on his level, for sure.

00:25:31   - Maybe Phil never noticed that notes were being taken

00:25:34   in his presence.

00:25:35   - He just doesn't know what note-taking is?

00:25:38   No, Phil is gonna listen to this episode

00:25:40   and be like his whole life is gonna flash before his eyes

00:25:43   and be like, people were taking notes around me.

00:25:45   - 'Cause he's like, stop it, all of you.

00:25:47   (laughing)

00:25:49   - You all were taking notes for the past 30 years

00:25:51   and I never noticed.

00:25:53   - Person six.

00:25:54   I am an individual contributor at Apple.

00:25:57   I don't know what that means,

00:25:58   but they say we absolutely take notes during meetings,

00:26:01   but we do not keep detailed minutes.

00:26:03   Often the organizer or presenter

00:26:05   or someone from their team will jot down

00:26:06   all the action items that need to be revisited

00:26:09   or key decisions that were made.

00:26:10   We don't capture discussion details usually

00:26:12   as they're not as useful later.

00:26:14   These notes are frequently emailed to meeting participants.

00:26:17   Sometimes entire discussions happen only over email.

00:26:20   - Okay.

00:26:21   - Somebody, Zach in the chat says,

00:26:23   individual contributor means not a manager.

00:26:25   I have never heard of this phrase.

00:26:27   This may be something that's popped up in the last 10 years

00:26:29   that I've been out of the corporate world.

00:26:31   Individual contributor, isn't everyone?

00:26:36   - So I guess it just means employee?

00:26:39   - I guess, but that is a very weird phrase to me.

00:26:42   It's common in software development apparently.

00:26:46   It still doesn't help me.

00:26:47   Like I understand it's being proven to us

00:26:50   that people say this,

00:26:51   but I don't know why you would use that phrase.

00:26:56   So Carl says it also means a person

00:26:58   who does not have any direct reports.

00:27:00   Again, an employee.

00:27:02   I don't understand, nevermind.

00:27:05   - There was already a word in the English language for it.

00:27:07   - Yeah.

00:27:08   - And now we're using two words.

00:27:09   - Again, that's corporate culture though, right?

00:27:11   Like creating terms and phrases

00:27:13   where there are already terms and phrases,

00:27:15   but we have new ones.

00:27:16   - Hey, here's a hot take for you.

00:27:18   Is corporate culture and corporate language

00:27:21   actually bad for the environment

00:27:22   because of carbon emissions from people's mouths?

00:27:24   - Possibly.

00:27:26   And finally person eight says,

00:27:28   my experience is most meetings have a shared document

00:27:31   usually quip or confluence

00:27:34   in which someone keeps track of what was discussed.

00:27:36   Although there are often meetings

00:27:38   without any notes taken such as demo sessions,

00:27:40   but individuals are free

00:27:41   to take personal notes as they please.

00:27:43   So let's, I think we can put it to rest

00:27:45   that people do take notes at Apple.

00:27:47   Most people seem to take notes at Apple

00:27:49   and it doesn't seem to matter who you're meeting with.

00:27:52   Maybe Phil Schiller isn't taking his own personal notes,

00:27:55   but there are notes of the meetings that Phil's in.

00:27:58   - Yeah, yeah.

00:27:59   Phil, you should have taken some notes

00:28:00   and you should have noticed

00:28:02   that people around you were taking notes.

00:28:03   - He doesn't know, he has no idea.

00:28:05   Phil's never taken a note, doesn't take a note.

00:28:07   (laughing)

00:28:08   - And I may, if I may, Phil, if you're listening to this,

00:28:12   the notes app is pretty good.

00:28:15   - Yeah, you should check it out.

00:28:17   You make a good one.

00:28:18   I can't wait to see what you do with it, Phil.

00:28:21   (laughing)

00:28:22   This did make me wanna ask

00:28:24   how we're taking notes right now.

00:28:28   I see your notes in the documents,

00:28:29   so I'm gonna come to you second.

00:28:31   (laughing)

00:28:32   - I think maybe I should start with you.

00:28:35   So for me, my note taking right now happens in three places.

00:28:38   So Apple Notes, Apple Notes is like where I put

00:28:41   all my little bits of text, all random stuff,

00:28:43   and it's also where I keep links for a show to prep

00:28:45   and stuff like that.

00:28:46   But Apple Notes is the place that I usually go to first,

00:28:49   unless it's something to do with Cortex brand

00:28:52   where everything goes in Notion, everything.

00:28:54   And so, 'cause I just like that,

00:28:57   it keeps it nice and sequestered

00:28:59   and I'm able to link everything together and stuff like that.

00:29:02   But then I also take a lot of physical notes,

00:29:04   which I use my Sidekick notepad for mostly,

00:29:07   for my note taking.

00:29:09   'Cause I like physical notes for meetings

00:29:11   or for just for when I'm working at my desk,

00:29:14   if I'm on a call with someone, I'll take physical notes.

00:29:18   So that's kind of me.

00:29:19   How are you taking notes right now?

00:29:21   - I'm gonna channel my inner CGP Grey here with you, Mike.

00:29:26   I mean, what are notes?

00:29:28   - What is it about my life that people keep saying

00:29:32   this to at me?

00:29:33   You know what I mean?

00:29:34   I have multiple people now who just keeps,

00:29:36   what are notes really?

00:29:38   Like, I don't understand what's hard to understand.

00:29:41   No?

00:29:44   - No, no, we're not making this about you right now.

00:29:47   - Right, right, okay.

00:29:48   Fair enough.

00:29:49   - No, but really. - Makes sense.

00:29:52   - No, but really this is something

00:29:53   that I'm struggling with, like for real.

00:29:56   So my thing is, I've thought about this

00:30:00   for the past few weeks.

00:30:01   We touched upon it in the Obsidian episode of App Stories

00:30:05   with Jon.

00:30:07   The thing is, I've realized something about myself

00:30:09   is that I don't really take notes.

00:30:11   What I do is I take notes that become articles.

00:30:16   I take notes that become podcast show notes.

00:30:19   But I've realized that it's been a while.

00:30:22   Like, I don't really take notes that stay notes.

00:30:25   That's my thing right now,

00:30:27   like this realization that I've had.

00:30:29   That feels, most of my notes are notes to become a thing.

00:30:34   Like, it starts as a note,

00:30:36   but will become something else later on.

00:30:38   Like, I kind of see notes as a transient place.

00:30:43   - Right, right. - A note is either

00:30:45   gonna become something or I get rid of it.

00:30:48   And they'll just stay forever as this little text.

00:30:52   - Right, so that's exactly what I tried to explain to Jon.

00:30:55   And that is like a huge change for me

00:30:57   over the past six months,

00:30:58   as being my embrace of the inbox in the Things app,

00:31:02   my task manager.

00:31:04   I guess I'm using that for notes.

00:31:08   Like, just over the past six months,

00:31:10   it's become a habit for me.

00:31:12   Just anything that I find and that I'm like,

00:31:17   "Oh, this looks cool, I wanna deal with it later."

00:31:19   Or, "Oh, this is nice, I need to remember it."

00:31:21   Like, it goes into my Things inbox.

00:31:24   I have a recurring reminder in Things.

00:31:27   Every two days, review my inbox.

00:31:30   So every two days, I go there,

00:31:31   I'm like, "Okay, what did I save?"

00:31:33   And I'm gonna maybe dislike,

00:31:34   "Okay, this is something that I need to buy.

00:31:36   "I'm gonna buy it right now."

00:31:37   Or maybe this is something for later,

00:31:39   it needs to go into a project.

00:31:40   So I guess the inbox is a place

00:31:43   for some of those transient notes.

00:31:46   But like, some people would say,

00:31:47   "Well, no, those are tasks.

00:31:49   "Those are not notes.

00:31:49   "Those are tasks that you're then sitting down

00:31:52   "and following the GTD methodology.

00:31:55   "You're now processing your inbox."

00:31:57   And I'm like, "Okay, so maybe those are not notes."

00:31:59   And therefore, I am left with this thought of like,

00:32:03   I use Obsidian, and I really like using Obsidian.

00:32:06   I do have some long-term notes,

00:32:11   usually thoughts about site redesign or something.

00:32:16   But mostly, my Obsidian is just outlines

00:32:22   and drafts of things I need to turn into articles,

00:32:25   eventually. - Yeah.

00:32:27   That's a note to me.

00:32:28   For me, a note is a piece of text

00:32:31   that something will happen to later on.

00:32:34   Either it could be a phone number

00:32:37   or an address that I've just taken down in a note

00:32:39   'cause I couldn't put it in the place it was supposed to go.

00:32:42   It's always kind of like, it lives in a place,

00:32:44   and then it becomes something else,

00:32:46   or it goes somewhere else.

00:32:48   I take a bunch of notes about a project that I'm working on,

00:32:51   and then those notes become the project, right?

00:32:55   It's just like a temporary spot.

00:32:57   - Okay, so I guess then I'm using Obsidian,

00:32:59   and I'm using the Things inbox,

00:33:01   especially with my own shortcut, Things box,

00:33:05   that I shared a few months ago in Club Max Stories.

00:33:09   I'm personally using that a lot.

00:33:11   Like, it's on my home screen. - That makes sense.

00:33:12   - Yeah, yeah, that's what I...

00:33:13   Yeah, the inbox, it's a nice place to be.

00:33:16   - I will just say, Jose, you put this so perfectly.

00:33:19   Mike is creator of notebooks.

00:33:21   Everyone in Mike's life

00:33:22   questions the mere existence of notes.

00:33:24   (laughing)

00:33:26   Yeah, maybe that's the sort of vibe you're giving off.

00:33:29   Like, you as the creator of notebooks,

00:33:30   and everybody around you is like, what are notes, Mike?

00:33:34   - What is it then?

00:33:35   I could just destabilize it more.

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00:36:17   Our thanks to 1Password for their support

00:36:19   of this show and Relay FM.

00:36:20   (upbeat music)

00:36:23   - He isn't here as we mentioned.

00:36:24   - Yeah.

00:36:25   - But he left us something in the document.

00:36:27   It says, "Don't click this until you're alive."

00:36:30   Should we click it?

00:36:31   - Okay, we are live, so we should click it.

00:36:33   - Okay, I've clicked it.

00:36:35   I've got to Android authority.

00:36:36   - Oh my God, no, Stephen, no, no.

00:36:39   - God damn this guy.

00:36:41   Report, Samsung phones are developing a green line issue

00:36:46   after software updates.

00:36:47   - He trolled us from far away.

00:36:49   - This is like the Stephen version of a Rick roll,

00:36:52   like a green roll.

00:36:53   Like what would it be?

00:36:54   Like, I don't know.

00:36:56   Well, that was a waste of, I was excited for this.

00:37:01   You know what I thought?

00:37:02   I thought we bought a new computer.

00:37:03   That's what I thought.

00:37:04   - That was a waste of time, Stephen.

00:37:06   Not thank you.

00:37:07   What is the opposite of thank you?

00:37:09   Well, we cannot say.

00:37:11   - Well, we can't say on the show, I think.

00:37:13   (both laughing)

00:37:15   But you know, it sounds like thank you at least.

00:37:18   - Yes.

00:37:19   - You know?

00:37:21   Moving on, let's talk about, because Stephen's not here,

00:37:23   now we can talk about video games.

00:37:25   - Yes, yes.

00:37:27   - I wanted to check in with you actually,

00:37:28   'cause on last week's episode, you installed Alt Store.

00:37:32   - Oh yeah, I did.

00:37:33   - And there was something I didn't ask you,

00:37:35   'cause I know that Delta and Clip

00:37:38   is the clipboard manager on Alt Store.

00:37:40   Is there anything else on Alt Store?

00:37:42   - No, no, it's nothing else.

00:37:45   Nothing else.

00:37:48   And for context, I am using the US App Store version

00:37:52   of Delta, but I am using obviously Clip from Alt Store.

00:37:57   And man, Clip has been a game changer in the past week,

00:38:02   to the point where it's earned a spot on my home screen.

00:38:08   I'm actually thinking about putting it in the dock.

00:38:10   And it's one of those things where it makes you realize,

00:38:15   how did I go all these years without this functionality?

00:38:19   It's copy and paste level of a game changer for me.

00:38:22   Like now, whenever I copy something,

00:38:25   a notification pops up and I'm like,

00:38:27   yeah, I wanna save this

00:38:28   and I'm coming back to this in a minute.

00:38:29   Like it's been especially useful for like research,

00:38:32   like we talked about this in the pre-show,

00:38:34   researching motors that I may check out

00:38:37   to replace my studio display.

00:38:38   There's the whole story in the pre-show.

00:38:40   Where can people get the pre-show, Mike?

00:38:42   - Get connected to Pro.co.

00:38:43   - Thank you.

00:38:44   So I was comparing different monitors

00:38:46   and I was copying the model numbers of the monitors

00:38:50   I wanted to check out.

00:38:51   And before I would have to like,

00:38:53   okay, copy this model number,

00:38:54   but then I also need to copy another one.

00:38:56   But first, let me save this in like an iMessage to myself

00:39:00   or somewhere in the Notes app.

00:39:02   But now, no, I'm just copying the things that I need,

00:39:06   confirming the Clip notification,

00:39:08   and then I'm going back to Clip

00:39:09   and I find all the things that I copied.

00:39:11   It's like, it's so much easier than before.

00:39:14   I do wish that Clip had some,

00:39:17   like all of these, like both Delta and Clip and Alt+R,

00:39:21   they seem pretty bare bones to me.

00:39:23   Like Clip doesn't have any shortcuts integration,

00:39:25   for example.

00:39:26   I would like to have some shortcuts actions for Clip

00:39:28   where I can like do things like get the latest,

00:39:32   I don't know, 10 items from my clipboard

00:39:34   and merge them together.

00:39:35   Like that sort of thing, I wish that I could do.

00:39:38   Sometimes I get like random Clip pop-ups,

00:39:43   like conditions for like your clipboard changed

00:39:47   and it actually didn't.

00:39:49   So I think it's a combination of bugs with the Clip app,

00:39:52   but also I realized that universal clipboard.

00:39:56   - Oh, so it's gonna be my guess.

00:39:57   - Yeah, yeah.

00:39:59   So if I copy something on my Mac right now,

00:40:02   like I'm copying something,

00:40:03   a notification pops up on my phone.

00:40:05   - Isn't that pretty cool though, in a way?

00:40:08   Like it's not doing what you put,

00:40:09   that's now like it is a universal clipboard manager.

00:40:14   - Yes, yes, it's very cool.

00:40:16   And I guess maybe the downside is that it may lead

00:40:20   to some of these Phantom activations for clipboard changes,

00:40:24   but it's okay.

00:40:25   I will happily live with that trade off

00:40:28   if I can have a clipboard manager on my phone.

00:40:30   - Can you imagine if it was giving you that like,

00:40:33   that pop-up, do you remember it was that like,

00:40:36   remember when we had that pop-up

00:40:37   like that came up on the phones for a while?

00:40:39   Like with every time you used a clipboard

00:40:41   and it would pop up on the top of the screen?

00:40:43   - Yes, yes.

00:40:45   (laughing)

00:40:46   You do get that pop-up still.

00:40:48   - There is a version of it, but it's not as bad as it was.

00:40:50   - On the Vision Pro, on the Vision Pro,

00:40:52   whenever you copy something, there's that pop-up

00:40:54   and there's no way to say turn it off,

00:40:56   at least in the current version of Vision OS.

00:40:59   So yeah.

00:41:00   But no other updates from Alt Store

00:41:02   and no third-party sources yet that I've seen.

00:41:06   - Okay.

00:41:07   Let's talk about Delta.

00:41:09   So Delta is the emulator, it came out last week's show.

00:41:12   I have been putting an immense amount of time

00:41:17   into playing Pokemon on my iPhone,

00:41:20   which I will tell you right now

00:41:21   is one of the greatest things that's ever happened to me.

00:41:24   I love it.

00:41:25   One of the things that I'm noticing,

00:41:29   I've put 16 hours into Pokemon HeartGold,

00:41:33   which I realize I only play once.

00:41:38   - Yeah, me too, actually, I think.

00:41:41   - And people always say that HeartGold

00:41:43   is maybe the best game,

00:41:44   so I'm having a great time playing through it right now.

00:41:47   And it's also been a good test of an upcoming app

00:41:50   from friend of the show, Ben McCarthy, called CatchUp,

00:41:53   which is a absolutely beautiful Pokedex app.

00:41:58   I'll put a link in the show notes.

00:42:01   - We're gonna have a review on Mac stories tomorrow.

00:42:03   It's excellent utility.

00:42:05   If you're a Pokemon fan,

00:42:06   Ben did some incredible work to parse

00:42:09   the millions of lines of data

00:42:12   that involve hundreds of Pokemon from multiple generations.

00:42:17   It's incredible work.

00:42:19   - It's really amazing.

00:42:20   I'm gonna put a link in the show notes

00:42:22   to Ben's Threads account,

00:42:25   'cause I know that there'll be posted about it there.

00:42:27   Yeah, but also look out for the review on Mac stories.

00:42:30   Yeah, it comes out tomorrow as we call it on the 25th,

00:42:32   but I've been testing it out, and it is superb.

00:42:36   I've used a lot of these apps in the past,

00:42:38   like this is the one.

00:42:39   And so it's been, you know, it was funny,

00:42:41   when Ben sent it to me, I was like,

00:42:42   "Oh, it looks really nice."

00:42:43   And I gave them some feedback, but I was like,

00:42:45   "I don't have a use for it right now."

00:42:47   Then I started playing Pokemon.

00:42:49   Let's go, baby, I need to know.

00:42:51   What's the moves from my red Gyarados?

00:42:52   You know, someone's gonna tell me.

00:42:55   So I'm having a great time with that.

00:42:58   But yeah, I got the Razer Kishi Ultra controller.

00:43:02   - Nice, nice, okay.

00:43:04   I am on your side, you mentioned this on Unwind, I think,

00:43:08   the idea of having a controller

00:43:10   that could hold the iPhone in portrait.

00:43:11   - Ah, I have something for you, Mike.

00:43:13   - Okay.

00:43:15   - So go to this link, it's called the JoyPhone.

00:43:18   It's a 3D printed attachment for JoyCons

00:43:22   that you can place to the sides of your phone

00:43:25   in portrait mode.

00:43:26   I, yeah, so I had to have John buy them for me

00:43:31   because they were not shipping to Italy,

00:43:33   but maybe they will ship to the UK.

00:43:35   So that's the link, the JoyPhone.

00:43:38   I've seen a bunch of people on Reddit

00:43:40   over the past week or so come up with similar designs,

00:43:45   and this seems to be the better one so far.

00:43:49   - I will say, though, at least for playing,

00:43:52   'cause I'm playing a Nintendo DS game, right,

00:43:54   using the Razer Kishi in landscape is really nice

00:44:00   because Delta just gives you the two screens next

00:44:03   to each other.

00:44:04   - Yeah, but they're put side by side,

00:44:06   whereas for the DS, it's supposed to be one above the other.

00:44:09   - I know, but it is more comfortable.

00:44:12   - It's good enough, though.

00:44:13   - In a landscape orientation to play.

00:44:16   And the Kishi is a great controller.

00:44:19   It's also this controller, it can natively extend

00:44:23   to put an iPad Mini in it.

00:44:26   - Oh yeah, that's nice. - Which is kinda cool.

00:44:27   Yeah, the Kishi is nice, it's got great buttons,

00:44:29   the whole effect and all that kinda stuff.

00:44:31   Something else that I was doing, which was awesome,

00:44:34   I was playing on my Vision Pro,

00:44:38   'cause you can download the iPhone app.

00:44:40   I was playing Pokemon with a controller

00:44:44   while also watching a YouTube video while in an environment.

00:44:47   Dude, it was amazing.

00:44:50   It was incredible.

00:44:51   And all of it's kept in sync using Delta Sync over Dropbox,

00:44:56   which is, it works, but you have to,

00:44:58   it's just one of these things where like,

00:45:00   make sure you have uploaded

00:45:02   and then make sure you've downloaded to save, right?

00:45:04   It's not hard, but it's like,

00:45:06   it's honestly better than Steam Sync.

00:45:09   (laughing)

00:45:11   - Not a high bar.

00:45:12   So I wanted to bring something to the show.

00:45:16   So I don't know if I sent you this link a few days ago.

00:45:20   I don't know if any of our listeners are familiar with it.

00:45:22   So there's this fork of Delta called Ignited

00:45:28   that seems to be like based on Delta.

00:45:31   And then like the developer has been working on it

00:45:35   for over a year and it's still in test flight beta mode.

00:45:39   I believe they're working to release it

00:45:41   on the App Store soon,

00:45:43   but there have been like over 50 updates for the,

00:45:47   it requires a Patreon membership.

00:45:49   There've been over 50 updates to the app.

00:45:51   And so I signed up out of curiosity

00:45:54   and it seems to be based on Delta.

00:45:56   Like it's got the structure of Delta.

00:45:58   I'm not sure what the deal is between Delta and Ignited.

00:46:01   Like if there's some kind of like actual collaboration

00:46:05   or deal between them, I don't know the details.

00:46:07   I just know that Ignited is like the power user version

00:46:10   of Delta, essentially.

00:46:12   - If I, so now I've been playing so much in Delta.

00:46:15   Wouldn't I save? - No, it doesn't matter.

00:46:18   It doesn't matter because the GBA emulator

00:46:20   is always saving the files in a specific format

00:46:22   that is GBA universal.

00:46:24   Like you can actually- - So like it's saving it

00:46:26   to my ROM file?

00:46:28   - No, it's creating a separate .sav file

00:46:32   that you can actually take that .sav file

00:46:36   and put it on your Mac or something and keep playing there.

00:46:40   Like it's totally fine. - What?

00:46:42   Where?

00:46:42   Where is that?

00:46:43   I mean, like where?

00:46:45   I'll find it.

00:46:46   I'm sure it's saving it somewhere.

00:46:47   - Just long, long press on your game

00:46:49   and say export save file, I think.

00:46:52   - Oh, so I would do it in Delta.

00:46:53   - In Delta, in Delta.

00:46:54   And it gives you a .sav file and you can take that

00:46:59   and use it anywhere.

00:47:00   Any other emulator. - So what do you like

00:47:01   about Ignited?

00:47:02   Like so many of them.

00:47:03   - I think it's got a better UI.

00:47:06   Like the default theme is really well done.

00:47:09   I think it has, it's kind of difficult

00:47:11   because there's a whole documentation page

00:47:14   that I still need to read.

00:47:15   I think what it does offer is a lot of like

00:47:20   quality of life features.

00:47:22   Like better messages whenever you start playing a game.

00:47:26   Like there's an easier way to access the emulator menu.

00:47:30   There's like a native screenshot functionality.

00:47:33   There's a way to apply themes and controller skins

00:47:38   to specific games.

00:47:39   Like there's a lot of, it's the,

00:47:42   I don't know how to describe it.

00:47:43   Like it's the iCAB of Delta.

00:47:46   - Okay, I get you now.

00:47:47   Yep, yep. - You know?

00:47:48   Okay?

00:47:49   And it's frequently updated.

00:47:51   I mean, to be fair, Delta has been,

00:47:53   Delta has stayed the same for the past few years.

00:47:56   It's, and I think Riley considers

00:47:59   maybe Delta feature complete.

00:48:00   And this is like something based on Delta

00:48:04   that continues to add options for gamers.

00:48:08   - Even if Riley considered that the case,

00:48:11   surely that's changing now.

00:48:12   Like if you have been like still top three

00:48:17   most downloaded app in the UK here,

00:48:19   and I assume it's the same in the US,

00:48:21   like you must've gotten enough feedback by now

00:48:23   that there are some features that you thought you might add.

00:48:26   Right?

00:48:26   Like even though you maybe thought you wouldn't otherwise.

00:48:29   - I hope so.

00:48:31   I hope that's the case because,

00:48:32   but yeah, it's cool to see this version of Delta

00:48:35   with more power user features and frequent updates.

00:48:38   And yeah, I mean, it doesn't really matter.

00:48:41   You can just, you can take your games and your saves

00:48:44   and you can just move between emulators.

00:48:46   That's the beauty of emulation.

00:48:48   You can do that.

00:48:50   I wanted to mention a couple of other things, Mike.

00:48:52   So I am in the process of, I think my,

00:48:55   so I'm working on this project to,

00:48:58   I've been digitizing my GameCube

00:49:01   and Nintendo Wii collection,

00:49:02   actually scanning my own discs and ripping my own CDs

00:49:06   and mini discs from the GameCube.

00:49:09   So I'll have more on that soon

00:49:11   because I do wanna play some GameCube games.

00:49:15   But in terms of Delta and iOS emulation,

00:49:19   I actually would like to start

00:49:21   with Super Nintendo emulation first before GBA,

00:49:25   because I also wanna play Pokemon, right?

00:49:27   But first I think I wanna play some Super Nintendo games.

00:49:29   And specifically I've been itching

00:49:31   for the past couple of years to replay Chrono Trigger.

00:49:36   And so I am waiting for,

00:49:39   it's called the Open Source Cartridge Reader.

00:49:43   This is a, it looks like a crazy device.

00:49:46   It's like a PCB board with a bunch of card readers on top.

00:49:51   I got it from this company, Save the Hero Builders.

00:49:56   It's made in Japan.

00:49:57   And it's a board that allows you to plug in NES,

00:50:02   Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64,

00:50:04   Game Boy and Genesis cartridges onto this board

00:50:10   and digitize the contents of the cartridge

00:50:14   onto your computer.

00:50:15   So I will be scanning my own Super Nintendo games

00:50:19   that I still have at my mom's place.

00:50:21   But of course, as you can imagine,

00:50:24   I am struggling in terms of finding a copy

00:50:29   of Chrono Trigger that doesn't cost a kidney.

00:50:31   So that will be interesting

00:50:34   because I am really making a point.

00:50:36   And I do feel much more comfortable

00:50:38   knowing that in an emulator I am playing my own stuff.

00:50:41   Like, I don't know, there's something that makes me

00:50:42   feel nice, makes me feel good about it.

00:50:45   So I need to find a copy.

00:50:46   Unfortunately, I never owned Chrono Trigger

00:50:49   when I was a kid.

00:50:51   And when I did play Chrono Trigger as a kid

00:50:53   in an emulator 20 years ago, I didn't have any ethics.

00:50:56   And now I do.

00:50:58   I guess, you know, I was younger without any morals.

00:51:00   I was like, yeah, piracy, whatever, no.

00:51:02   Like now I need to find a copy of Chrono Trigger.

00:51:05   So I will keep you posted.

00:51:06   And I will be playing that in Delta when the time comes.

00:51:10   - You know, emulation and all this kind of stuff,

00:51:14   it's interesting and weird and odd.

00:51:17   But for me, I do feel like it's, if you own the game,

00:51:22   it's fine, it's your game.

00:51:24   I don't subscribe to the idea of like,

00:51:27   I'm buying a license to play the game.

00:51:29   Like, I know that that's what they put

00:51:30   in the legal documents.

00:51:32   I just don't find that acceptable.

00:51:34   - If you physically own the object, it's yours.

00:51:36   - And arguably, I would say,

00:51:37   if you downloaded a game as a file,

00:51:42   like all the, if you remember a few years ago,

00:51:44   when Hideo Kojima released PT, the demo on PlayStation,

00:51:49   and then with the whole Konami thing went down

00:51:54   and PT was removed from the PlayStation store.

00:51:56   But people hand onto the PT downloaded file.

00:51:59   And there have been, there's a whole community of people

00:52:01   who like re-released PT or like modded PT

00:52:06   or recreated the PT demo for public release

00:52:11   on the internet.

00:52:13   And I think, yeah, I absolutely agree.

00:52:15   Like if you purchase something

00:52:17   and you either have a physical object

00:52:18   or a file in your possession, it's yours.

00:52:21   Nobody can take that away from you.

00:52:22   Don't believe the licenses.

00:52:23   - We are not legal professionals.

00:52:27   - No, but this is how we feel.

00:52:29   It's good life advice, yes.

00:52:31   - I am, you know, this is no shade.

00:52:34   Like, you know, there are a lot of,

00:52:35   I have some of my favorite games of all time

00:52:38   are iPhone games, like threes is up there, right?

00:52:41   Like it's even one of my greatest games of all time,

00:52:44   but you ain't touching Pokemon, man.

00:52:46   Like some of these Nintendo handheld games,

00:52:49   like they are next level kind of experience.

00:52:52   And being able to play those on my iPhone,

00:52:56   being able to, on my commute home,

00:52:59   play Pokemon is incredible.

00:53:02   It's incredible.

00:53:04   And I really wondered what the experience would be like

00:53:06   with the touchscreen controls.

00:53:08   And it's fine, like it's totally fine, you know?

00:53:12   - The one that bothers me with Pokemon games,

00:53:15   because I know myself,

00:53:17   is that because you're playing in an emulator,

00:53:20   when you're done playing the game,

00:53:22   you will not be able to transfer those games,

00:53:24   those Pokemon to Pokemon Home.

00:53:26   - Yeah, I never got into Home.

00:53:28   - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:53:31   They will always, I mean, I,

00:53:34   hmm, I do want, as I say this, I'm just correcting myself.

00:53:39   I do wonder if--

00:53:41   - Is there a way, maybe.

00:53:42   - Well, maybe, I mean, technically,

00:53:44   you could take the save file and use a GB operator

00:53:47   to inject the save into the cartridge.

00:53:50   - Yeah, I'm having an issue right now

00:53:53   where I'm building power with a Kadabra.

00:53:58   Like I can't do anything.

00:54:01   - Yeah.

00:54:02   - Like there's no way for me to evolve this Pokemon,

00:54:04   'cause I can't trade it with anyone.

00:54:06   - Ah, see, yeah, yeah.

00:54:09   These emulators, for sure, Ignite does.

00:54:14   They do support local multiplayer.

00:54:16   So technically you get another iPhone

00:54:21   and have Adina play SoulSilver.

00:54:24   - Do you think that would be possible?

00:54:27   - I, hold on, I think so.

00:54:32   For sure, Ignite, it does support local multiplayer,

00:54:37   because I think I saw it in the documentation.

00:54:40   - I mean, I haven't tried it, but my thought is just like--

00:54:43   - Yeah, it does have local multiplayer.

00:54:44   - Yeah, but I just can't imagine that the Pokemon game

00:54:47   knows what's going on.

00:54:49   That's kind of how I feel.

00:54:50   - I think it does.

00:54:53   I think if the system is--

00:54:56   - Just giving it what it thinks it needs.

00:54:57   - I look into this for you, but I think--

00:54:59   - Hold on to that.

00:55:00   I have seen people on Reddit mention that they were able

00:55:03   to get it to work using Ignite and local multiplayer.

00:55:06   - That would be crazy.

00:55:07   If you know that, I would love to know that.

00:55:09   I mean, I'll check out Ignite.

00:55:12   I signed up for the--

00:55:13   - Yeah.

00:55:15   - I've signed up for the Delta Patreon,

00:55:16   just like, I wanna give these guys awesome money,

00:55:19   like, 'cause I'm just having such a great time

00:55:22   with this emulator.

00:55:23   It's fantastic, I'm loving it.

00:55:25   - Yeah, and another one that people should keep an eye on

00:55:27   that's coming out, I hope soon, it's PSPPP.

00:55:30   The PSP emulator.

00:55:33   I use that on Android.

00:55:34   It's a really, really, really good

00:55:37   PlayStation Portable emulator.

00:55:40   There's a whole catalog of PSP games from, again,

00:55:44   20 years ago at this point, I guess.

00:55:46   You know, your GTA Liberty City Stories,

00:55:51   or your Final Fantasy Tactics, The War of the Lions.

00:55:56   - Let's go, baby.

00:55:57   - There's a whole catalog of PSP games

00:55:59   that may be supported without JIT.

00:56:02   That's the thing, I don't think PSPPP--

00:56:03   - Yeah, no, it doesn't, I just checked.

00:56:05   I just checked, it doesn't.

00:56:06   'Cause this is the thing, JIT,

00:56:07   or Just-In-Time Compilation is effectively,

00:56:11   we'll just say it's code emulation,

00:56:12   like emulating a chip, like,

00:56:15   stuff that the GameCube and the Wii

00:56:17   use PowerPC processors so it can't run natively,

00:56:20   so they use what's called Just-In-Time Compilation.

00:56:23   But Apple won't allow for JIT with emulators,

00:56:26   so it seems like we won't get any GameCube emulators,

00:56:30   which I'm so bummed about.

00:56:32   Like, I really wanna play GameCube games on my iPad,

00:56:36   but it doesn't look like that's gonna be a possibility,

00:56:40   which is a real shame.

00:56:42   - No.

00:56:43   - I will say, though, like, I'm looking at pictures,

00:56:45   some screenshots here of some PSP games.

00:56:47   Like, PSP games don't age

00:56:50   in the way that Game Boy games age.

00:56:52   - No, no, no, the 3D ones don't.

00:56:54   - So, but there's some really cool-looking, like, 2D.

00:56:58   And one of my all-time favorite, like, niche games

00:57:01   from the PSP era was "Jean D'Arc."

00:57:05   It tells the story of Jean D'Arc,

00:57:08   you know, from the Middle Ages,

00:57:11   done as, like, a "Final Fantasy Tactics"-style game

00:57:14   with some magic elements.

00:57:15   It's a super well-done game

00:57:16   that never got a follow-up, unfortunately.

00:57:19   And that is also one that I,

00:57:21   I do own a modded PSP that I bought

00:57:25   during the lockdown in the pandemic,

00:57:27   and that allows me to rip my own UMDs.

00:57:31   If you recall the weird format

00:57:33   that PSP games were released on, the UMD.

00:57:37   - I saw someone on threads the other day say, like,

00:57:40   that one of the weirdest things they ever did

00:57:42   was to buy and watch the two pilot episodes

00:57:46   of "Lost" on PSP UMD.

00:57:48   (laughing)

00:57:51   - That's incredible.

00:57:52   - UMD was a weird vibe, man.

00:57:55   - Yeah, it was.

00:57:56   I had, I watched the Eminem movie "8 Mile" on UMD.

00:58:01   - Oh, incredible.

00:58:03   - I still have it somewhere at my mom's house, I think.

00:58:06   - Palms are sweaty.

00:58:08   - Yeah, yeah.

00:58:09   Mom's spaghetti.

00:58:10   (laughing)

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00:58:29   which is why Fitbud uses data to make sure

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00:58:33   Fitbud will adapt as you improve

00:58:35   to make sure that every workout is challenging,

00:58:37   pushing you to make the progress that you're looking for,

00:58:40   because you're going to make the most progress

00:58:42   when a workout program is tailored to meet you.

00:58:45   Fitbud stores all this information

00:58:46   in your Fitbud gym profile.

00:58:48   It's going to track your muscle recovery

00:58:49   so you're avoiding burnout and keeping up momentum,

00:58:52   and they build the best possible workouts for you

00:58:54   by combining AI with exercise science.

00:58:58   Fitbud have analyzed billions of data points

00:59:00   that have been fine-tuned by certified personal trainers,

00:59:03   and you can be sure that learning the new movements

00:59:06   the right way is going to be easy,

00:59:07   thanks to their more than 1,000 demonstration videos.

00:59:10   Muscles improve when working in concert

00:59:13   with your entire muscular system,

00:59:14   so overworking some muscles while underworking others

00:59:17   can negatively impact results,

00:59:18   so Fitbud make sure to track your muscle fatigue

00:59:20   and recovery to design a well-balanced workout routine,

00:59:24   but it also means you're not going to get bored

00:59:25   because they're going to mix up

00:59:26   the exercises that you're doing.

00:59:28   The Fitbud app is really easy to use.

00:59:30   You can stay informed with their progress tracking charts,

00:59:33   weekly reports, and sharing cards

00:59:34   so you can keep track of your achievements

00:59:36   and share them with your friends and family.

00:59:38   It also integrates with your Apple Watch,

00:59:39   Wear OS Smartwatch, and apps like Strava,

00:59:41   Fitbit, and Apple Health.

00:59:43   I really like the Apple Watch integration

00:59:45   because it tells me what exercises

00:59:46   I'm going to be doing,

00:59:47   so if I know what they are,

00:59:48   I can just do them without needing to grab my phone

00:59:50   and watch the videos,

00:59:51   but if I don't know, the videos are there for me

00:59:53   to help explain exactly the exercise

00:59:55   and how to perform it.

00:59:56   Personalized training of this quality can be expensive,

00:59:59   but Fitbud is just $12.99 a month, or $79.99 a year,

01:00:03   but you can get 25% off your membership

01:00:06   by signing up today at fitbud.me/connected.

01:00:09   So go now and get your customized fitness plan

01:00:11   at F-I-T-B-O-D.me/connected,

01:00:14   that is fitbud.me/connected for 25% off.

01:00:18   A thanks to Fitbud for their support of this show

01:00:20   and Relay FM.

01:00:21   - I do have some multiplayer follow-up for you, Mike.

01:00:25   - Oh, great.

01:00:25   - Unfortunately, by local multiplayer,

01:00:27   they meant that you can connect multiple controllers

01:00:30   to the same device and play on the same device.

01:00:33   So yeah, you cannot do...

01:00:36   Apparently, there was like one emulator

01:00:39   that was spoofing the Nintendo servers

01:00:42   with a custom DNS to allow for running their own servers

01:00:47   for Nintendo DS online multiplayer,

01:00:50   but that's a different thing.

01:00:51   And yeah, there's a lot of people asking

01:00:54   in the Ignited Discord about local multiplayer

01:00:58   for Pokemon games, but there's no solution yet at the moment.

01:01:01   - So I may just have to cadaver Goa at some point.

01:01:05   It's fun. - That's a, yeah, yeah.

01:01:06   - So I'm not that attached to it,

01:01:07   it's just a bit of a workhorse for me right now.

01:01:10   - Yeah.

01:01:12   - So I'm actually kind of surprised

01:01:14   that we've gotten this far into the episode

01:01:16   without referencing this an iPad event coming.

01:01:20   - Oh, yeah.

01:01:22   Yeah, that's also happening. - It's coming in two weeks.

01:01:25   So the 7th of May.

01:01:28   So yeah, we'll be doing Ricky's next week for episode 500,

01:01:31   which is very exciting.

01:01:32   Everyone's very excited Ricky's in episode 500.

01:01:35   It's gonna be a video only event on May the 7th

01:01:39   at 7 a.m. Pacific.

01:01:41   They very kindly invited the media to watch the video,

01:01:44   which is also what they did in October, which is funny too.

01:01:47   Couple of details about this

01:01:50   and we can talk about it a bit more.

01:01:52   There are multiple logos for like Apple logos

01:01:55   in a bunch of different styles that are being shared

01:01:58   that are very artistic.

01:01:59   It reminds me of, I think it was the 2018

01:02:02   iPad Pro announcement.

01:02:04   They did a similar thing, right, where it was in New York

01:02:07   and they had a bunch of different artistic interpretations

01:02:10   of the Apple logo.

01:02:12   I think you got some stickers.

01:02:13   You were at that one, right? - Yeah, yeah.

01:02:15   I was at the one and I did get the stickers, yes.

01:02:17   - And then also reading from 9 to 5 Mac,

01:02:20   Tim Cook shared the artwork for the event

01:02:23   with the caption quote, "Pencil us in for May 7th."

01:02:26   The executive also added a pencil emoji to the post

01:02:29   and there's a lot of pencil involved in the artwork itself.

01:02:34   So, I mean, we knew it was iPads.

01:02:37   They're leaning maybe heavier than I expected

01:02:39   on the Apple pencil.

01:02:40   I don't know what to read into that.

01:02:42   If much, like I figured there'd be a new one,

01:02:44   but like, is it gonna be the star?

01:02:46   Probably not, right?

01:02:48   But they're doing it anyway.

01:02:50   So, yeah, it's coming.

01:02:53   Well, I'm excited about it.

01:02:54   I've been really anticipating this.

01:02:57   I've definitely gotten to the point where I'm imagining

01:03:00   what a bigger iPad could fit in my life.

01:03:02   You know what I mean?

01:03:02   Like I'm doing that thing where I'm like,

01:03:04   oh, if only I had a bigger iPad at this moment

01:03:06   because I'm thinking I'm gonna get one,

01:03:09   provided that there is a smaller OLED,

01:03:11   which I'm assuming there will be,

01:03:12   but I feel like they've, for me once,

01:03:15   you know, kind of thing with Apple assuming

01:03:16   they're gonna update the smaller one

01:03:18   with the screen technology I want.

01:03:20   Yeah, I think I'm pretty set at the moment

01:03:22   with getting the 11-inch OLED.

01:03:23   I've been really liking my time with the 11-inch iPad Pro

01:03:26   and I don't imagine going back to a big one at this point.

01:03:30   Imagine you're gonna get your OLED upgrade for your Mac.

01:03:32   I'm gonna get an OLED Mac years before.

01:03:35   Years before, if ever before.

01:03:37   Yeah.

01:03:39   How are you feeling about the event though?

01:03:40   Like are you expecting an interesting one or like,

01:03:45   you know, the last event we had was the October event

01:03:48   for Macs and people were like, oh man, snooze fest

01:03:51   because we kind of knew everything and,

01:03:54   you know, the products themselves were revisions.

01:03:58   Are you expecting this to be an exciting event in any way?

01:04:01   I think it's gonna be more exciting than the Mac one,

01:04:04   but obviously not as exciting as an iPhone event.

01:04:09   I mean, obviously, or like when they used

01:04:11   to do the spring events, you know,

01:04:13   like I think it's gonna be better,

01:04:15   like that Mac event, I mean, let's face it,

01:04:16   it was kind of boring, you know,

01:04:18   like it was a bit of a nothing.

01:04:21   Yeah, it was, I mean, it was just like

01:04:25   a bunch of revisions, right?

01:04:27   It was fine.

01:04:28   Yeah, it was like, okay.

01:04:30   But at least this one, it's new,

01:04:33   at least one new product, right?

01:04:35   With the bigger iPad Air and also we're expecting it,

01:04:40   like some significant improvements

01:04:42   to the iPad line across the board.

01:04:43   Yeah, and whenever redesigns of any sort are involved,

01:04:48   it makes it interesting.

01:04:50   And here you're looking at an iPad with a new display,

01:04:54   possibly a new chassis, sorry,

01:04:56   a redesign of the iPad itself.

01:04:57   A redesign of the Pencil.

01:04:58   I don't know about that, you know,

01:04:59   do you really think, like, I can't imagine

01:05:01   how different they're gonna make it look.

01:05:03   The slightly thinner bezels and camera on the landscape side.

01:05:07   That's enough, and thinner, right?

01:05:09   So it's gonna be thinner.

01:05:10   I forgot about the thinner.

01:05:12   Yeah, so that's exciting.

01:05:13   Then you're gonna have the redesigned Pencil,

01:05:16   possibly like new features, maybe a button,

01:05:19   maybe a gesture, who knows?

01:05:21   But also the redesigned Magic Keyboard.

01:05:22   So like, those changes, because are new

01:05:27   and so far they haven't leaked.

01:05:31   Like, you haven't seen a mock-up of the,

01:05:33   you haven't seen a leak of the Magic Keyboard.

01:05:35   Like, that's interesting.

01:05:36   And so that I think will be for sure a nicer event

01:05:40   than the Halloween-themed Mac one,

01:05:44   which in hindsight, they probably did the Halloween-themed

01:05:47   thing because there was, like, the rest was pretty boring.

01:05:50   And at the very least--

01:05:51   - They like jazzed it up visually.

01:05:52   - They jazzed it up, they had a hook for you.

01:05:54   So they're like, "Oh, nice, Apple is doing Halloween."

01:05:57   But yeah, I think this one will not have

01:05:59   any funky theme going on.

01:06:01   It'll just be new products,

01:06:02   and that's gonna be interesting.

01:06:04   - I'm surprised they are doing a video, though.

01:06:06   Like, I think we had all just resigned to the fact

01:06:09   that this was gonna be a bunch of press releases, right?

01:06:11   And no, they-- - Video seems to,

01:06:12   yeah, these videos, they seem to be the new, like,

01:06:15   in between.

01:06:16   They're like, these videos, if you wanna follow along

01:06:20   to this Pokemon analogy, because we were just talking

01:06:23   about Delta and Pokemon.

01:06:24   So the press release is Bulbasaur.

01:06:29   The video is Ivysaur, and the keynote is Venusaur, right?

01:06:34   So that's, and so the videos are like that in between

01:06:40   for, like, it's better than a press release,

01:06:41   but it's not a keynote.

01:06:43   Yeah, I mean, it's, I like it, I like it.

01:06:46   I like spicing things up with these announcements, for sure.

01:06:50   - I appreciate that you picked the best Gen 1 starter,

01:06:52   by the way. - Oh, of course, of course.

01:06:54   - We are Bulbasaur bros for life.

01:06:56   Bulbasaur is the absolute best Gen 1 starter,

01:07:00   and there is like, there's no--

01:07:01   - Yeah, people who were like, people who were like,

01:07:04   30 years ago, were like, oh, I wanna have Charizard,

01:07:06   like, those are like, those are, you know,

01:07:09   you don't wanna be friends with those kids.

01:07:12   - Good luck with the first two gems, you know what I mean?

01:07:14   - Yeah. - Like, good luck.

01:07:15   - And also, and also like, so there's like,

01:07:18   I'm just imagining the chart of people, like,

01:07:22   Bulbasaur was the right choice.

01:07:25   Having Charizard at the end was like, the boring, like,

01:07:29   oh, I wanna be overpowered kind of choice,

01:07:32   but good luck with the first gems.

01:07:33   Like, but I do also appreciate the chaos of people

01:07:38   who wanted to have Squirtle and Blastoise.

01:07:40   - Yes. - So those people,

01:07:42   I appreciate.

01:07:43   - Yeah, they're, I feel like Squirtle is a refined choice

01:07:48   because, because, you know, like, Bulbasaur

01:07:51   is the right choice for like, playing the game.

01:07:53   Like, that is the correct choice for playing the game.

01:07:56   Charizard is the flashy one.

01:07:58   If you decided like, no, I want Squirtle, like,

01:08:01   I wanna, I wanna have a tough time to start the game out.

01:08:05   And like, and then I want the okay final evolution.

01:08:10   - Yeah.

01:08:14   - I respect the Squirtle choice.

01:08:15   - And let's not forget that you got Warthoril in the middle.

01:08:18   So there's like, you know. - We're rough, we're rough.

01:08:21   - You know, the middle evolutions, feel bad for them.

01:08:24   You know, like, I feel bad for the middle evolutions.

01:08:26   They don't get the love, you know?

01:08:28   - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:29   But yeah, iPads, okay, yeah.

01:08:32   - Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty excited about it.

01:08:35   I'm intrigued to see what they're gonna do.

01:08:36   It's weird to have a middle of May product release

01:08:41   'cause you're so close to WWDC now, you know?

01:08:46   Although that is, you know,

01:08:47   I'm expecting WWDC to be pretty busy this year.

01:08:50   Like they should have a lot of stuff to talk about.

01:08:52   And also these iPads don't make much of a thing.

01:08:54   But this really, we feel like should have been in March.

01:08:57   Right?

01:08:58   Like this should have happened months ago.

01:09:00   - Yes, yes.

01:09:01   - But yeah, the mid-May product announcement

01:09:04   and product release is gonna be, I mean, look,

01:09:07   in what is usually a quiet time, thankful for that, right?

01:09:10   - Yes, exactly.

01:09:12   Yes, I agree.

01:09:13   - I wanna finish out today by marking an important time,

01:09:17   which is 15 years of Max Stories.

01:09:20   You celebrated a couple of days ago, April 20th.

01:09:24   Blaze it.

01:09:25   Blaze it.

01:09:27   I forget that it's Blaze it Day.

01:09:28   Congratulations, 15 years is pretty, pretty massive.

01:09:34   - Thank you, thank you.

01:09:35   - And I just kind of wanted to get a sense for you

01:09:37   for like celebrating.

01:09:40   Like it doesn't really feel like you did anything.

01:09:43   - Yeah, no.

01:09:45   So we did it when we celebrated 10 years.

01:09:47   We had a whole like 10 years of Max Stories,

01:09:50   retrospectives from previous writers, and it was fun.

01:09:54   We did it five years ago.

01:09:55   And of course, the whole pandemic thing happened

01:09:58   and it's kind of weird to think about

01:10:00   that it was five years ago.

01:10:02   But the thing about me is I don't like to talk about

01:10:04   like myself or like our accomplishments too much

01:10:09   because like, yeah, okay, I get it.

01:10:11   We're celebrating ourselves.

01:10:13   But we did it five years ago.

01:10:15   And over the past few months, I have really,

01:10:20   or the past year actually, because of all the things,

01:10:24   we've been working on this side project for a long time.

01:10:27   And we've been working on a redesign for Max Stories

01:10:31   for an even longer time.

01:10:32   And that project took a,

01:10:33   now even though nothing about it is public,

01:10:35   behind the scenes, it took a few turns over the years.

01:10:38   And so I was like, you know, 15 years,

01:10:41   over the past couple of years,

01:10:42   we've been working behind the scenes on new stuff

01:10:44   that it's still not ready.

01:10:46   I don't like the idea of doing once again,

01:10:49   a whole celebratory thing.

01:10:52   It's like, you know, cool, let's post it

01:10:55   and let's get back to work.

01:10:58   I'm sure we'll celebrate again at 20 years.

01:11:01   But I, and I also feel like I posted it on Mastodon

01:11:07   and I got so many nice messages from people.

01:11:09   It's so heartwarming to see, you know,

01:11:12   to hear nice stuff from people

01:11:17   in terms of like when they started reading Max Stories

01:11:19   and maybe they, you know,

01:11:22   they became developers because of Max Stories like that.

01:11:25   It's so wholesome to see,

01:11:28   but I don't like to dwell on it for too long.

01:11:32   - Yeah, I understand that.

01:11:33   Like in the first five years of Relay,

01:11:35   we made like a big deal out of every, for every year.

01:11:38   And then when we hit five, it was like, okay.

01:11:41   And now we're hitting 10.

01:11:42   I'm obviously making a big deal out

01:11:44   of the 10 year anniversary, which is this year.

01:11:47   And then I don't know if we'd make a big deal out of 15,

01:11:51   maybe like, but I see where you're coming from

01:11:54   of like you kind of, you could, at first you celebrate

01:11:58   'cause you're making it work and then you hit a milestone

01:12:00   and then you hit a next milestone.

01:12:01   And then the real, the next big milestone worthy

01:12:04   of that kind of like pump goes further

01:12:07   into the distance, right?

01:12:08   I kind of understand that.

01:12:10   Like I always find it funny when like,

01:12:11   and I think it's just because social media managers

01:12:13   need something to talk about,

01:12:14   like companies celebrating every single year

01:12:16   of them being around.

01:12:17   Like, they're just like, all right,

01:12:20   you've been, if we're at 77 years,

01:12:22   like it's not so much more exciting than it was for 76,

01:12:26   but you know, you do you, I suppose.

01:12:28   - Yeah, yeah.

01:12:29   But obviously I am so thankful

01:12:33   that there's still people who read Mac stories

01:12:35   and pay attention to what we do

01:12:37   and that support us directly or not.

01:12:41   Like I just appreciate having an audience for our,

01:12:45   I hope useful and I recognize often weird projects

01:12:49   that I especially do because, you know,

01:12:53   weirdness is the spice of life with these things for me.

01:12:57   And so, yeah, thank you.

01:12:58   And, but like I said, back to work.

01:13:01   - Yeah, I feel like, you know,

01:13:02   saying about the support, the things that we do,

01:13:04   like I've been doing reflecting, right?

01:13:08   As Relay, we're getting ready to celebrate, right?

01:13:11   Like it's the celebration start in July

01:13:14   with the live show, which by the way,

01:13:15   we do have some tickets available

01:13:17   for the very top section, they're unreserved seats.

01:13:20   But if you wanna come to our live show in London in July,

01:13:23   go to relay.fm/london.

01:13:24   There are a small number of tickets still available.

01:13:26   We'd love to see you there.

01:13:27   Federico's gonna be there.

01:13:29   We're gonna have a great time.

01:13:30   I'm very excited.

01:13:31   We're finishing the bunch of planning stuff.

01:13:33   So if you wanna come see us and to help celebrate

01:13:35   our 10th anniversary of us,

01:13:37   you can come see us in London in July.

01:13:39   I bumped into a listener in the street yesterday

01:13:40   who told me he was coming to the show.

01:13:42   - Nice.

01:13:43   - So that was pretty cool.

01:13:44   Something that I've come to realize,

01:13:47   and I was thinking about this for you with 15 years,

01:13:50   and I was thinking about for us, we're the end.

01:13:54   - We're the end of what?

01:13:56   - Of the thing that we do.

01:13:57   - Oh. - I can think about this,

01:14:00   especially for the types of podcasts that we make.

01:14:04   People don't really do this now.

01:14:07   They do other things.

01:14:09   - Or they don't do blogs anymore.

01:14:11   - People don't write blogs anymore.

01:14:14   People don't do conversational tech podcasts anymore

01:14:16   in the way that we do them, I feel like.

01:14:18   Or at least it's, what I say is these things appear less

01:14:23   than when we start.

01:14:23   When we were starting, everyone was,

01:14:25   every week there was a new blog or podcast

01:14:28   appearing on the scene.

01:14:29   And I feel like now people are focusing their time

01:14:32   on YouTube or they're focusing their time on TikTok

01:14:36   or Instagram.

01:14:37   Like if you wanna be a new creator today,

01:14:40   you're focusing on the social platforms,

01:14:42   the algorithm-led platforms.

01:14:44   Because of course, why would you not do that?

01:14:48   But it's kind of making me realize that we're kind of,

01:14:52   I think, at the end or the tail end

01:14:56   of the type of content that we make.

01:14:58   And it's just because we were there

01:15:00   at just that right moment before it shifted.

01:15:02   And that's just been like a strange thing to think about.

01:15:06   - Are we an extinct species?

01:15:09   - Not yet.

01:15:10   'Cause this is the thing, I know that these things pop up.

01:15:12   I see people starting new stuff all the time.

01:15:14   But it is like, unless you were there,

01:15:16   like if you were there 10, 15 years ago,

01:15:19   the scene was very different.

01:15:21   - Oh man, those were the times.

01:15:24   I feel so old saying that.

01:15:25   But it was like those days, like 2008 to 2012-ish,

01:15:30   the days of Twitter, Twitter clients.

01:15:39   - When the social networks were so small

01:15:41   that you could actually meet people really easily.

01:15:43   - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:15:45   And it's like even, and I look back on this,

01:15:49   like sometimes I check out like old Mac Stories articles.

01:15:54   The overall vibe was different.

01:15:57   Like talking to developers,

01:15:58   how developers approached the press,

01:16:02   how, I don't know, just the way we worked was different.

01:16:07   And so, yeah.

01:16:11   On one hand, I do miss those days.

01:16:14   - Well, you're always nostalgic.

01:16:15   I mean, I think there are so many ways

01:16:17   in which it is better now than it was then.

01:16:19   Like, you know, if really,

01:16:21   if you were offered to go back, you wouldn't.

01:16:23   But like that's just nostalgia for you, you know?

01:16:25   - Yeah, but I'm not gonna be like one of,

01:16:28   and I hope this is this kind of vibe

01:16:29   that maybe transpires from Mac Stories

01:16:32   and what I do on the shows in general.

01:16:34   I am nostalgic because it's, I believe it's generically,

01:16:38   you know, it's intrinsic to the human species

01:16:43   to be nostalgic.

01:16:44   But I prefer my job now.

01:16:47   Like I think- - 100%.

01:16:48   Oh my God.

01:16:51   10 years ago, I was depressed as hell, right?

01:16:54   'Cause I couldn't do what I wanted to do, you know?

01:16:57   - Yeah, like what I wanted to do 15 years ago

01:17:01   or 10 years ago, I am doing now.

01:17:04   And so I think, you know,

01:17:08   maybe it's something that we should say more often

01:17:10   that like this is what we wanted to do

01:17:13   when we get to do it now.

01:17:15   And so, yeah, I am nostalgic.

01:17:17   No, I don't think iOS 6 was better

01:17:20   than what we have today.

01:17:21   And yes, I prefer what I do now and how I do it now.

01:17:26   Not just because hopefully I'm a better writer

01:17:28   and hopefully that I have less of an Italian accent,

01:17:31   but just because like the overall structure

01:17:35   and the tech that we have,

01:17:37   the technology that we have is better now.

01:17:39   It's more powerful and easier to use

01:17:41   and more people have access to it and that's awesome.

01:17:44   - Yeah, I'm definitely getting into my thankful feeling

01:17:49   more and more as the year goes on.

01:17:50   And like this idea that I have--

01:17:52   - Are you in your thankful era?

01:17:54   - I think this is my thankful era.

01:17:56   I think I'm in it.

01:17:57   And like really thinking about the fact

01:18:00   that I do feel this way,

01:18:02   that we were just at the right time

01:18:06   before the types of things that we wanted to do

01:18:09   became harder to break through or it was just different.

01:18:13   And I'm just very thankful that we got to where we did

01:18:18   at the time that we got there.

01:18:20   Because we did start at the same time.

01:18:21   Like I started podcasting 15 years ago, like 14 years ago.

01:18:25   But like I just was all over the place.

01:18:27   Like it was this funny thing.

01:18:28   Like I feel like there's creators that I follow

01:18:30   that I'm not friends with.

01:18:31   It's like seems like something was happening in 2010.

01:18:34   Like that a lot of people were starting to do

01:18:35   this kind of stuff like around that time.

01:18:37   - Yeah, yeah.

01:18:38   - And I'm just so thankful that we were where we were

01:18:41   when we were and that our audience found us

01:18:44   and they stick with us.

01:18:45   'Cause I really do believe that the majority of the audiences

01:18:48   we have and we've been talking about it a bit

01:18:50   on the show recently.

01:18:52   Like there are people that have stuck around.

01:18:54   Like we have a stickiness I think to our shows

01:18:57   and to our blogs and people they enjoy our work

01:19:01   and they continue to support us.

01:19:02   And it's like, it's such a great feeling

01:19:05   where I don't need to care about an algorithm at all.

01:19:10   - Yeah, it's oh my God. - I don't care about

01:19:11   algorithms at all.

01:19:12   - Thank you for saying that.

01:19:14   Like sometimes I get in conversations with people

01:19:17   and when they talk about like what I do

01:19:19   and it's like, hey, what's your job like?

01:19:20   And so, and they start saying,

01:19:21   so how do you optimize for the algorithm?

01:19:23   And I just stare at them.

01:19:25   - You don't need to.

01:19:26   - I don't.

01:19:26   And they look at me like I'm some kind of lunatic

01:19:29   or something. (laughs)

01:19:31   And I'm like, no, really the model is different.

01:19:34   I don't need to chase that.

01:19:35   And yeah, thank you for mentioning that.

01:19:38   It's an important point because otherwise I just feel

01:19:40   like I would be depressed and constantly stressed

01:19:44   and anxious about, and it works for some people

01:19:48   and more power to you if it does.

01:19:49   - You can find massive success, right?

01:19:52   - Yes.

01:19:53   - 'Cause like, with the stuff that we do with Cortex,

01:19:56   I've seen more of these kinds of effects, right?

01:19:59   So like we put the show on YouTube

01:20:01   and sometimes the episodes explode.

01:20:03   But like for me, none of that's all additive.

01:20:06   Like I don't care about that.

01:20:07   I care about like what are the audio numbers, right?

01:20:10   'Cause they're the people that have chosen

01:20:12   to listen to the podcast, right?

01:20:14   So like that's the thing I focus on most.

01:20:16   And we have like a baseline number that we hit on YouTube,

01:20:18   but it goes up and down and up and down.

01:20:20   And then also with our Instagram account recently,

01:20:22   we had like a video that went viral.

01:20:25   And it's like, it's interesting to me to see it,

01:20:27   but like I don't feel like the algorithm dictates what I do

01:20:32   because I have these other outlets to be able

01:20:35   to talk about things, you know?

01:20:37   And like to share stuff.

01:20:39   And like we have the podcast to be able to talk

01:20:43   about the things that we're doing.

01:20:44   And that's where it actually matched me.

01:20:46   And all this other stuff is just gravy.

01:20:48   But if I had to imagine that like my entire audience,

01:20:52   even the people that had chosen to subscribe,

01:20:55   it was dictated by an algorithm, I would hate that so much.

01:20:58   Like our podcast listeners,

01:21:00   they choose to subscribe to our podcasts

01:21:02   and then they listen to the podcast

01:21:03   because it's in their queue.

01:21:05   The thought that like,

01:21:07   and something for this was just so awesome for me

01:21:10   was there's been this big hubbub

01:21:12   in the wider podcast community

01:21:13   about Apple making a change to Apple podcasts

01:21:17   where it stopped downloading every episode

01:21:19   if you weren't listening.

01:21:21   And like the wider podcast community was like,

01:21:23   "Oh, they're stealing our listeners."

01:21:25   Like it didn't do anything to us

01:21:27   because the people that subscribe to our shows

01:21:29   actually listen to the shows 'cause they want them.

01:21:32   Like it wasn't a show that they just press subscribe to once

01:21:35   and never thought about it.

01:21:36   And it's like the same with the algorithms,

01:21:37   like on YouTube and stuff, right?

01:21:39   You press subscribe,

01:21:40   but then you don't necessarily see all the videos.

01:21:42   And like, I hate that thought.

01:21:43   Like as a creator, it's not interesting to me.

01:21:47   - As time has gone on,

01:21:50   I have really understood how the fortune that we have

01:21:55   is to have people who don't consider us,

01:22:01   who don't consider us like background noise,

01:22:05   but when you, even if you,

01:22:08   like we don't have millions of readers

01:22:10   or millions of listeners like, I don't know,

01:22:13   MKBHD does or The Verge does.

01:22:15   But even if you do get like a thousand or 5,000 people

01:22:20   who sometimes think about you,

01:22:24   like they're like, "Hey, I wonder what Mike is up to."

01:22:26   Or like, "Hey, I wonder what Federico has done on me."

01:22:28   Like when people think even just once a month

01:22:34   about what you create, now that's a fortune

01:22:37   and you gotta hold onto it

01:22:38   because it's a rare thing these days.

01:22:40   And you don't wanna be,

01:22:42   when you have that privilege and that luck

01:22:47   to be somebody who doesn't depend on a real coming up

01:22:51   in the algorithmic timeline on Instagram,

01:22:54   that's something you gotta protect because it's precious.

01:22:58   And yeah, that's sort of a-

01:23:01   - And it means that when we need help,

01:23:03   people show up, right?

01:23:05   Like, if you truly value this, which we all do,

01:23:08   it means that like when COVID happens

01:23:13   and all the advertisers go away,

01:23:15   we can say, "Please give us money."

01:23:18   And people do.

01:23:20   And so like, that's the benefit.

01:23:24   That's what's so important.

01:23:26   And I just, I value it so much.

01:23:29   And it's just like looking at the 15 years of MaxLore

01:23:32   has just made me think about this stuff

01:23:34   where it's like, you guys have been around doing your thing

01:23:37   and you have more people than ever probably

01:23:39   reading you now.

01:23:41   And it's because the people that go to MaxLore's,

01:23:44   they know what they're gonna get and they want it.

01:23:46   It's as simple as that.

01:23:47   I mean, what more could you ask for?

01:23:49   - Yeah, or maybe they don't, which is also the point.

01:23:51   Like maybe they don't know what they're gonna get,

01:23:53   but they know that it's gonna be interesting.

01:23:56   And that's sort of, I guess, looking ahead at the future,

01:23:59   that's my strategy.

01:24:00   Maybe they know, like producing content

01:24:03   that people maybe don't know what it is,

01:24:06   but they're gonna be interested in it anyways.

01:24:09   That's sort of like my recipe for success.

01:24:12   I hope, I hope.

01:24:14   - And if I may pay a compliment to you and Jon and the team,

01:24:17   like I said on threads that you're the best at what you do,

01:24:20   like the best in the business.

01:24:22   And while I think you guys are amazing,

01:24:25   what I mean is no one does what you do

01:24:28   and that's what makes it so great.

01:24:29   Like Max stories, you could say like has competition,

01:24:34   but it kind of doesn't.

01:24:35   Like you guys make what you make

01:24:38   and nobody else is making that.

01:24:39   And that's what makes it so great.

01:24:41   - Thank you.

01:24:42   - It's the creativity that you have

01:24:43   and that you all continue to work on

01:24:46   is what I believe means that after 15 years,

01:24:50   the website is better than ever.

01:24:52   - Thank you, thank you.

01:24:53   - Congratulations to everybody.

01:24:55   How long has Jon, has Jon done half now?

01:24:56   - Jon is actually being part of Max stories

01:25:00   for more than half of its life.

01:25:02   Jon joined eight years ago.

01:25:07   So yeah, over half.

01:25:08   - That's great.

01:25:10   That's great, I love that.

01:25:11   That's weird though.

01:25:12   'Cause he just like, he just started, right?

01:25:14   (laughing)

01:25:15   - It does feel, it's weird because on one hand,

01:25:18   it does feel like he just started,

01:25:20   but on the other, it feels like he's been doing this

01:25:24   with me forever at the same time.

01:25:26   - I don't know.

01:25:27   - Yeah, 'cause I imagine,

01:25:28   and this I completely understand,

01:25:30   is this idea that like,

01:25:32   how could you even imagine running the site without him now?

01:25:38   - Yep, exactly.

01:25:39   - It's like that kind of thing.

01:25:40   - I couldn't, I couldn't.

01:25:41   - Couldn't do it, yeah.

01:25:42   - No, no, no, no, no.

01:25:43   It would need to go back to being like a personal blog

01:25:45   or something, like very, very different business.

01:25:48   - Yeah, there's no way.

01:25:49   Thank you so much for listening

01:25:52   to this week's episode of Connected.

01:25:53   If you wanna find us online,

01:25:54   there's a bunch of places you can do that.

01:25:56   Find Federico, he is @vitiici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.

01:26:00   I'm dropping the Mastodon servers now, by the way.

01:26:03   I don't say 'em anymore.

01:26:04   I figure people can just work it out,

01:26:05   'cause there's threads too, right?

01:26:07   I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:26:09   Steven is @ismh, although this is the problem,

01:26:12   because Steven's a flip-flopper.

01:26:13   On threads, he's @ismh86.

01:26:15   I guess that's why we still have the two different ones

01:26:18   in the show notes at the bottom for this show,

01:26:20   which Steven usually does,

01:26:21   because if you go to @ismh, it's not him, it's somebody else.

01:26:24   So @ismh86 on threads.

01:26:27   He's gotta do something about that at some point, right?

01:26:31   - I hope so, I don't know.

01:26:34   - Go to phytopixels.net, go to maxstories.net,

01:26:37   that's the place to be, go celebrate.

01:26:38   You can go check out my products at cortexbrand.com.

01:26:41   If you want longer ad-free versions of this show

01:26:43   each and every week, go to getconnectedpro.co,

01:26:48   and you can sign up, and we'll appreciate you.

01:26:50   And we'll be back next week for episode 500.

01:26:55   So we'll see, we're in our gratitude era, man.

01:26:57   It's happening.

01:26:58   And it's also gonna be a Ricky's,

01:27:00   where we're making predictions for the iPad.

01:27:03   I'm not ready yet, but I got another couple of weeks to,

01:27:06   no, I got another week to think about it.

01:27:07   - Another week, yes. - I'll work it out.

01:27:09   We always do.

01:27:10   Thank you so much to our sponsors,

01:27:12   Fitbud, 1Password, and Jam.

01:27:15   But most of all, thank you for listening.

01:27:16   We'll be back next time.

01:27:17   Till then, say goodbye, Federico.

01:27:19   - Arrivederci.

01:27:20   Papa!

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