Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:07 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected episode 531 for Wednesday, December 11th, 2024.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My name is Stephen Hackett and I'm joined by Ricky Benchman, Mike Hurley.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hello, happy to be back. And I am the Ricky Benchman and I have the pleasure of introducing Federico Vittucci. Hi Federico.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:29 ◼   ► My time could be coming to an end on the Benchmanship, which is very sad.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Yeah. I haven't actually looked at the annual Ricky's and how we're doing on that.

00:00:37 ◼   ► I'll leave that for another day, but I hope I win because I don't want to lose the Benchmanship.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, this is a good time for me to let people know what's coming up on the show.

00:00:47 ◼   ► That's a good point.

00:00:48 ◼   ► This is episode 531. It is the last normal episode of the year because next week we will be performing

00:00:56 ◼   ► the Annie's is our year in review episode and we grade each month based on the tiki scale.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Classic Connected show.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Definitely something that me and Federico remembered happened.

00:01:08 ◼   ► It didn't have to be reminded before the start of the show this week that we do that.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Yeah. So that'll be December 18th. January 1st will be a special guest episode.

00:01:19 ◼   ► What are you talking about? We've never had guests on the show.

00:01:22 ◼   ► That's true.

00:01:22 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:01:23 ◼   ► Yeah, scratch that.

00:01:24 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:01:24 ◼   ► And then January 8th, we will be grading our annual picks for 2024 and making our annual picks for 2025.

00:01:34 ◼   ► So a very exciting month of content coming up here on the Connected program.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Yeah, we really stack the end of the year, don't we?

00:01:40 ◼   ► We do. We really do. But Mike.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:46 ◼   ► You have the ultimate end of the year announcement.

00:01:50 ◼   ► I guess I do. Yeah, so if you follow me on social media, you may have seen this by now.

00:01:57 ◼   ► But if you don't, then I'm very happy to let you know, dear listener.

00:02:01 ◼   ► Personally.

00:02:02 ◼   ► A passionate one. A passionate one. That my wife and I are expecting our first child.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Yay!

00:02:06 ◼   ► And they're due in February. So soon. Very soon. But yeah, we have a baby girl coming at the end of February is the due date.

00:02:15 ◼   ► Who knows when it will actually be. But yeah, very, very excited. As you can imagine, this is something that we have wanted for a very long time.

00:02:23 ◼   ► And we feel very, very fortunate that we're at a place now where my wife is pregnant. She's doing great.

00:02:29 ◼   ► Adina's handling it so well. And yeah, everything's going fine. And we're very, very excited.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:36 ◼   ► Deepest congratulations and love to the Hurley family.

00:02:39 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:02:40 ◼   ► Much love to both of you. To all of you. Yes, yes.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Yes. The three of us. You can love the three of us.

00:02:47 ◼   ► The three of you.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Imagine that.

00:02:49 ◼   ► We have a related question about this very topic. Peter wrote in.

00:02:54 ◼   ► Many congratulations and much happiness to Mike and Adina. My question is for Federico.

00:03:00 ◼   ► Who are you going to call daddy on this show going forward?

00:03:10 ◼   ► Should your co-hosts dedicate the next podcast-a-ton to deciding who the best daddy is? Now, Peter, obviously, Stephen is always going to be our daddy.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Yes, both of us.

00:03:21 ◼   ► I propose that we refer, starting next year, we will start referring to Mike as Father Mike.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Oh, OK. I was going to suggest Big Daddy, Little Daddy, but you can.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Me too. I was also going to suggest that.

00:03:36 ◼   ► And I could be Little Daddy.

00:03:38 ◼   ► We could go with that. We could go with that. I would prefer Father Mike.

00:03:41 ◼   ► Father Mike.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Gives him a certain gravitas.

00:03:46 ◼   ► I think it's stolen valor, but I'll take it.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Stephen, how particularly do you feel about me being called Father Mike?

00:03:56 ◼   ► I mean, that's not my particular flavor of things.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Oh, so it's OK.

00:04:00 ◼   ► It's OK.

00:04:02 ◼   ► It really feels like you're moving on a little wedgie. You know, we got to also contend with that.

00:04:07 ◼   ► What about what about like Daddy and Papa or something?

00:04:10 ◼   ► Papa is nice.

00:04:11 ◼   ► Did you consider that?

00:04:14 ◼   ► We could go with the Italian, but we could be like Padre Mike. That would be an idea.

00:04:18 ◼   ► Oh, Padre.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Once again, I feel like I'm stealing valor. I feel like there's no good way around this one.

00:04:28 ◼   ► Would you consider calling me the Pope? Would that work for you?

00:04:32 ◼   ► That's a step too far. Now I'm offended.

00:04:34 ◼   ► It's a step too far?

00:04:36 ◼   ► You've been cancelled. Now you've been cancelled.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll think about it, Peter. But to answer your question, in the strict sense of the Daddy energy, Stephen is always going to be the Daddy.

00:04:48 ◼   ► Yeah. Big Daddy energy.

00:04:50 ◼   ► Big Daddy energy.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Follow up.

00:04:54 ◼   ► Many people wrote in saying that their Macintosh screensaver gets stuck on green.

00:05:00 ◼   ► So I will continue to fight for you, dear listeners.

00:05:05 ◼   ► Who owns this notion?

00:05:07 ◼   ► Nobody.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Can we kick Stephen out of the notion?

00:05:11 ◼   ► No, it's mine. I pay for it out of my own pocket.

00:05:14 ◼   ► I think it's actually Stephen.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Thanks.

00:05:18 ◼   ► It's kind of expensive, but it's fine.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Have you... Actually, I'll save that for another time.

00:05:23 ◼   ► Wait, what?

00:05:25 ◼   ► No, no. Another time. Another time.

00:05:27 ◼   ► I'm kind of concerned now?

00:05:29 ◼   ► No, it's fine. It's fine.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Darren wrote in hearing... I just noticed that Darren misspelled your name.

00:05:37 ◼   ► Hearing Frederico, like the Christmas tree place, try to upload all his articles in notebook LM but being limited by the number of files made me think.

00:05:46 ◼   ► Since these files are... I guess they're in Obsidian. They're just marked down.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Could you combine them into one mega review file and upload that?

00:05:59 ◼   ► I was thinking the same thing when hearing you talk about it last time.

00:06:03 ◼   ► That's an interesting idea. I wonder... I mean, there has to be a character limit at some point.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Yeah, or file size.

00:06:11 ◼   ► There has to be something.

00:06:14 ◼   ► We recently exported the entire, like, entire Mac Stories archives.

00:06:21 ◼   ► So not just my articles, but all of Mac Stories. 15 years of Mac Stories.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Hey, are you using my writing for training?

00:06:28 ◼   ► Oh, sick. Yes.

00:06:32 ◼   ► Did you not check the contract?

00:06:36 ◼   ► I own all of your rights, Steven.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Wait.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Including 512.

00:06:43 ◼   ► Oh no!

00:06:45 ◼   ► You got OTJ'd.

00:06:48 ◼   ► No, but seriously, looking at 15 years of work in a folder that is 150 megabytes, there's something strange about that.

00:07:04 ◼   ► It's humbling.

00:07:06 ◼   ► It's not a lot, is it?

00:07:08 ◼   ► It's not a lot. It's a lot for plain text.

00:07:13 ◼   ► Yeah, but...

00:07:15 ◼   ► But in aggregate...

00:07:16 ◼   ► It's like one podcast.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Did you just do, like, the XML export out of WordPress?

00:07:24 ◼   ► I don't know. Rob did it.

00:07:26 ◼   ► I'm going to do that. I'm going to see how big mine is.

00:07:29 ◼   ► How long is that going to take, do you think? Like, is this an immediate thing you can give us an answer to?

00:07:33 ◼   ► I will follow up during the show.

00:07:36 ◼   ► You reckon it will be done by the end of the show?

00:07:38 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Hang on a second. You don't have this all stored already?

00:07:42 ◼   ► Well, I looked and my previous backup is a month old, so I want to give a...

00:07:46 ◼   ► Oh my god. Oh my god, I can't believe it.

00:07:49 ◼   ► I do it every 15th?

00:07:50 ◼   ► What if your computer caught on fire?

00:07:51 ◼   ► No, every 15th. Look, it's backed up in real time, thanks to VaultPress.

00:07:55 ◼   ► To where?

00:07:56 ◼   ► Okay, here it is. My XML is 53 megabytes.

00:07:59 ◼   ► Oh, you're like a third of Federico.

00:08:02 ◼   ► In this regard, yes.

00:08:04 ◼   ► In our regards.

00:08:07 ◼   ► Fight-wise, we're pretty close.

00:08:09 ◼   ► I don't know, you both seem pretty small to me.

00:08:12 ◼   ► Wow. Wow.

00:08:14 ◼   ► John Cena is my AI now.

00:08:16 ◼   ► Speaking of feeling small.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Yeah, this is incredible. I had an update for the Meta Ray-Bans, which took away my ability to do some AI tasks.

00:08:26 ◼   ► That's like a whole thing, but whatever.

00:08:29 ◼   ► But now I can choose to have John Cena speak to me instead of the Meta voice, and it's incredible.

00:08:34 ◼   ► When I put my glasses on and John Cena tells me the battery level, it's so good every time.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Amazing.

00:08:39 ◼   ► They have a bunch of choices.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Kristen Bell is there.

00:08:42 ◼   ► But yeah, John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key, or Quafina.

00:08:46 ◼   ► These people, I guess, got paid a bunch of money by Meta.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:50 ◼   ► You know what's actually kind of funny?

00:08:52 ◼   ► I posted this. I think I posted this on Blue Sky.

00:08:54 ◼   ► I think someone said, "Hope they're getting paid for that."

00:08:58 ◼   ► And it's like, "Come on. Come on."

00:09:01 ◼   ► Do you think Meta just took that?

00:09:03 ◼   ► And we're like, "Oh, it's fine. We'll just take John Cena's voice. It's fine."

00:09:07 ◼   ► He won't care. Of course they got paid for that.

00:09:11 ◼   ► Yeah. Famously, in June, Kristen and Bell told Instagram to get rid of AI and then took their money.

00:09:18 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think that's the perfect way to deal with it.

00:09:21 ◼   ► If they're not going to take your information out of it, so you might as well get paid from them.

00:09:26 ◼   ► It's true. This feels like the new version of...

00:09:30 ◼   ► Do you all remember if you had a Garmin GPS in your car and you could download different voices?

00:09:35 ◼   ► This is just the new version of that.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Uh-huh.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Meta, call me.

00:09:41 ◼   ► Oh, you would do it?

00:09:43 ◼   ► If you want somebody who has a vaguely Southern accent whose voice cracks pretty often, I'm your guy.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Whoa. What a deal.

00:09:50 ◼   ► It is remarkable that I talk for a living.

00:09:53 ◼   ► I mean, maybe, but both of those things are because you talk for a living, especially the accent.

00:10:00 ◼   ► You think you have a vaguely Southern accent?

00:10:02 ◼   ► It's not nearly as bad as it used to be.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Go back and listen, man.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Oh, yeah?

00:10:07 ◼   ► Like, what is the name of the computer device that you have in your pocket, Steven?

00:10:11 ◼   ► An iPhone.

00:10:12 ◼   ► What did it used to be?

00:10:14 ◼   ► iPhone.

00:10:15 ◼   ► iPhone.

00:10:16 ◼   ► iPhone.

00:10:17 ◼   ► iPhone.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Phone.

00:10:19 ◼   ► It's changed.

00:10:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:23 ◼   ► It's changed.

00:10:24 ◼   ► What's going on with WordPress?

00:10:26 ◼   ► Oh, man. So much.

00:10:28 ◼   ► So we have spoken about this on and off the WordPress WP Engine feud that I'm sure people are familiar with.

00:10:33 ◼   ► A judge in California awarded a preliminary injunction against automatic for blocking WP Engine.

00:10:42 ◼   ► So remember, they cut off WP Engine's access to WordPress, and then they had a checkbox in WordPress that you have to, like, swear on your heart that you're not involved with WP Engine.

00:10:52 ◼   ► That's all been set aside for now.

00:10:55 ◼   ► There will be a trial that will decide how all that goes.

00:10:59 ◼   ► But just before, basically as we started recording, Samantha Cole at 404 Media, which, like, they're doing some great work.

00:11:08 ◼   ► I pay for their stuff. Like, 404 Media is awesome.

00:11:11 ◼   ► I'm going to read from Samantha's article.

00:11:14 ◼   ► In the immediate aftermath of the decision, automatic founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg asked for his account to be deleted from the PostStatus Slack, which is a popular community working on WordPress's open source tools.

00:11:28 ◼   ► This is what Matt wrote according to screenshots.

00:11:31 ◼   ► He's taking it well.

00:11:33 ◼   ► It's hard to imagine. Listen to this.

00:11:36 ◼   ► Listen.

00:11:38 ◼   ► This is what the founder, automatic founder and CEO wrote.

00:11:42 ◼   ► It's hard to imagine wanting to continue to work on WordPress after this.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Woof.

00:11:48 ◼   ► I'm sick and disgusted to be legally compelled to provide free labor to an organization as parasitic and exploitative as WP Engine.

00:11:58 ◼   ► I hope you all get what you want.

00:12:00 ◼   ► I hope you all get what you and WP Engine wanted.

00:12:04 ◼   ► His username on that Slack has been changed to "Gone" with the skull emoji.

00:12:08 ◼   ► With the skull emoji.

00:12:09 ◼   ► Posting through it.

00:12:11 ◼   ► Posting right through it.

00:12:12 ◼   ► Yeah, he's posting.

00:12:13 ◼   ► I actually know I don't think he wants to anymore.

00:12:15 ◼   ► I think he wants to stop posting.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Look, I don't really understand what's going on here, but I do at least feel sympathy for the fact that he is clearly very upset.

00:12:27 ◼   ► Whatever it is that he feels, he feels it very deeply.

00:12:32 ◼   ► I would love to know more about what is going on with him, but I can see that he is very emotionally affected by WP Engine.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Which again, I will say, terrible name, WP Engine.

00:12:47 ◼   ► WP Engine.

00:12:48 ◼   ► WP Engine.

00:12:49 ◼   ► WP Engine.

00:12:50 ◼   ► I subscribed to his blog when this started happening because he also just posted on his blog "Noticably Silent" today.

00:12:59 ◼   ► Anyways.

00:13:02 ◼   ► I mean, it's not fun to be on the losing end of a court battle.

00:13:08 ◼   ► We've all been there.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Sure.

00:13:11 ◼   ► I have received my fair share of injunctions back in my day.

00:13:16 ◼   ► Could OTJ text us what an injunction means, please?

00:13:20 ◼   ► What is injunction?

00:13:27 ◼   ► Speaking of injunctions.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Okay.

00:13:31 ◼   ► MaxStory Selects Awards have been handed out.

00:13:34 ◼   ► Are you issuing an injunction?

00:13:36 ◼   ► That is not the meaning.

00:13:38 ◼   ► Did John Antaxa text us yet? No one knows. No, I'm just kidding. I was just looking for a segue. Federico, tell us about this.

00:13:45 ◼   ► Who won? Why didn't I get one for being a good podcaster?

00:13:49 ◼   ► That's a great point. Why haven't I gotten one too?

00:13:52 ◼   ► I'm holding out for the Upgradies Hall of Fame.

00:13:56 ◼   ► Which if we don't get, I will burn Relay to the Ground.

00:14:00 ◼   ► Look, I was going to say I don't control the Upgradies. I absolutely 100% do.

00:14:05 ◼   ► It's not looking good.

00:14:06 ◼   ► We haven't even done it yet, but Jason has gotten me hooked on his favorite podcast.

00:14:11 ◼   ► The rest is history? They don't even care about the Upgradies. We're one away from being...

00:14:16 ◼   ► Stephen, I'm going to break it to you.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Lifetime achievement.

00:14:19 ◼   ► Nobody cares about the Upgradies except podcasters, it seems, which is very funny.

00:14:23 ◼   ► I care very deeply about that.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Look, our listeners do, me and Jason do. That's important.

00:14:28 ◼   ► I'm just saying.

00:14:29 ◼   ► It's looking bad. It's looking bad.

00:14:30 ◼   ► I could bookend the back half of my year with St. Jude Creator of the Year and Upgrady Lifetime Achievement.

00:14:38 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you have to hope that the Upgradians have voted in their droves for Connected, because that might sway Jason.

00:14:46 ◼   ► I'm going to ask chat. I will not...

00:14:48 ◼   ► How you can flood a Google form with answers.

00:14:50 ◼   ► I will not vote for my own show. I cannot do that.

00:14:54 ◼   ► Jason.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Jason's listening live, I believe. He's in the Discord. Jason.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Okay.

00:14:59 ◼   ► Well, Apple pay you 20 bucks.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Oh, 20 dollars.

00:15:03 ◼   ► Look, I know you just bought a MacBook Pro and that's partially my fault.

00:15:06 ◼   ► Yeah, you're probably not in his good books right now unless he really likes that computer.

00:15:11 ◼   ► I hope he does.

00:15:12 ◼   ► It's like, what, 20 dollars against like three grand or something? Like, I don't know. It's not permanent helping.

00:15:17 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is brought to you by FitBod.

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00:17:03 ◼   ► It also integrates with your Apple Watch, Wear OS Smartwatch, and apps like Strava, FitBit, and Apple Health.

00:17:10 ◼   ► I really like FitBod. One of my favorite things is that collection of demonstration videos.

00:17:15 ◼   ► I've got a home gym, and that means there's not someone looking out for me if I am doing something incorrectly.

00:17:21 ◼   ► But with those demonstration videos, I can be confident that I'm doing things safely.

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00:17:51 ◼   ► Our thanks to FitBod for the support of the show and all of Relay.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Anyways, I'm sorry, Federico, tell us about MaxStory Select.

00:18:02 ◼   ► What do you want to know? This is our annual award ceremony to award our favorite apps of the year.

00:18:10 ◼   ► Let's talk about spoilers, because this came out a couple of days ago.

00:18:14 ◼   ► Best new app, we chose Croissant, the cross-crossing utility.

00:18:21 ◼   ► We felt that there's been a bunch of well-deserved new apps this year,

00:18:28 ◼   ► but this one in particular, I think, it sort of checks all the boxes in terms of the utilities that we're looking for.

00:18:34 ◼   ► And it's of the moment, right? Like this is a very of the moment app.

00:18:38 ◼   ► It's a new, right now, it's like you say, all of the moment. It's getting better.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Now it's on the iPad, it's on the Mac.

00:18:47 ◼   ► So we felt that it was the right choice for best new app.

00:18:51 ◼   ► We selected, I wanted to mention some of the other ones, Moom 4 on the Mac.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Yeah, that's good.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't use a Mac, but I mean, obviously it looks really nice.

00:19:03 ◼   ► Every day Moom asks me to upgrade, and every day I say I really want to do that and don't.

00:19:09 ◼   ► And I will eventually get to it. I have a tab open for Moom 4, because I use Moom.

00:19:15 ◼   ► So getting the award is like another thing where I'm like, yep, I definitely want to upgrade to that, but I've just not gotten around to it yet.

00:19:22 ◼   ► Nice. You should do it.

00:19:24 ◼   ► I'm not going to.

00:19:25 ◼   ► A couple of awards for Play, the Watch Later app.

00:19:31 ◼   ► We selected it for the best new feature for the channel inbox feature that allows you to more easily follow your favorite channels on YouTube

00:19:40 ◼   ► and see just the videos from those channels and quickly save them for later in Play.

00:19:45 ◼   ► We selected it, but it also won the runoff in the Cloud Max Stories Discord by just a handful of votes for the Reader's Choice Award.

00:19:56 ◼   ► So, yeah, it got two awards for Play.

00:19:59 ◼   ► TGTabs got robbed.

00:20:00 ◼   ► Yep.

00:20:01 ◼   ► What would you have done if you were in my position?

00:20:05 ◼   ► Well, I really wanted to put my thumb on the scale for this one, but I didn't think you would appreciate it. So I did.

00:20:11 ◼   ► Mike, you have your own awards. Just give it an upgrade.

00:20:15 ◼   ► Hey, look, again, I can't just go around like granting these things.

00:20:20 ◼   ► You know what? I'm going to do it.

00:20:22 ◼   ► This is the first, Jason's listening, the first annual 512 pixels award ceremony of awards.

00:20:37 ◼   ► The name needs a little work.

00:20:40 ◼   ► I'm giving TGTabs Mac App of the Year.

00:20:45 ◼   ► And I'm giving Mac, I did say Mac App, iPhone, iPad app.

00:20:50 ◼   ► This award ceremony is terrible.

00:20:51 ◼   ► I'm doing it on the fly, man.

00:20:53 ◼   ► This is like when they gave the Oscar to the wrong movie. That's like what you're doing.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Oh, I forgot about that. Whoever did that, they got like lambasted on social media for it too.

00:21:03 ◼   ► Well, you would, wouldn't you?

00:21:05 ◼   ► TGTabs is Apple Ecosystem App of the Year.

00:21:08 ◼   ► OK.

00:21:09 ◼   ► Connected is an eternal achievement award-winning show beyond our lifetimes. Our children will carry it on.

00:21:21 ◼   ► Incredible.

00:21:22 ◼   ► And I'm going to give, I feel like I should give some sort of media award.

00:21:30 ◼   ► OK.

00:21:31 ◼   ► Why do you feel like that?

00:21:32 ◼   ► So I'm going to give Best Blog About Retro Max to 512 pixels.

00:21:37 ◼   ► So wait, your three awards, you gave yourself two of them?

00:21:41 ◼   ► You know, it's the will of the people.

00:21:44 ◼   ► OK.

00:21:45 ◼   ► And I am nothing if not a man of the people.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:21:49 ◼   ► Maybe Jim would cut all that. Or maybe it stays in.

00:21:52 ◼   ► No, no, no, we've got to keep it in. Can't cut all your failures.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Delta is App of the Year. Couldn't believe that Delta came out this year.

00:22:03 ◼   ► I felt like I really loved that.

00:22:07 ◼   ► That was all this year. I mean, obviously, Delta technically didn't come out this year, but at the App Store, it was a 2024 thing.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Like I had to think, because again, thinking through the whole year, like the Vision Pro was this year too.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:22:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:25 ◼   ► Did you consider a Vision Pro award, Federico?

00:22:29 ◼   ► Yeah, we decided not to do it because there's like 20 apps for the platforms.

00:22:33 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:34 ◼   ► I will accept it for Widget Smith, though, if you want to do it right now.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Widget Smith is on Vision Pro. Come on.

00:22:41 ◼   ► This doesn't sound like it's going well.

00:22:43 ◼   ► The silence is deafening.

00:22:44 ◼   ► This doesn't sound like it's going well.

00:22:46 ◼   ► No, I will give you the award in spirit.

00:22:49 ◼   ► I don't want the trophy.

00:22:51 ◼   ► But do you actually print out a trophy for you?

00:22:56 ◼   ► What's in it for me, you know?

00:22:58 ◼   ► 20 bucks. If Jason doesn't claim it.

00:23:00 ◼   ► What is it with these 20 bucks?

00:23:03 ◼   ► Do you have one $20 bill? Is that what you're dealing with?

00:23:06 ◼   ► It's all the money I have in my name.

00:23:08 ◼   ► Did you find it on the ground or something? Like, you don't know how to use it.

00:23:13 ◼   ► So I picked this up from my dad because he has this sense of humor.

00:23:19 ◼   ► But I was asked for my ID somewhere the other day, and I was like picking up an online order in a store.

00:23:26 ◼   ► Were you getting arrested?

00:23:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:23:29 ◼   ► I was going clubbing, as I often do.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Wow. Okay.

00:23:32 ◼   ► And I handed this younger than me person my ID.

00:23:37 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, yeah, I just found this one in the parking lot."

00:23:40 ◼   ► And they were like, "Wait, what?"

00:23:42 ◼   ► The dad joke whizzed over their head like a missile.

00:23:45 ◼   ► And then I just had to explain that I wasn't very funny.

00:23:48 ◼   ► And then she gave me my order, and I will never go back to that store.

00:23:52 ◼   ► Sorry about that.

00:23:53 ◼   ► It's rough.

00:23:54 ◼   ► What are we talking about?

00:23:56 ◼   ► We're still talking about Backstory Select Awards.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Yes.

00:24:00 ◼   ► So Delta is the app of the year.

00:24:02 ◼   ► We felt that it was the app that was the conversation for a few weeks during the year.

00:24:09 ◼   ► And it also was a symbol of this new category of apps that are possible on the App Store, gaming, emulators.

00:24:16 ◼   ► And I don't know, it felt like the obvious choice.

00:24:21 ◼   ► It's on the iPhone, it's on the iPad, it syncs with iCloud.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Now they have online multiplayer for Nintendo DS games, for example, which is wild.

00:24:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:29 ◼   ► So I believe Jon has already shipped the awards.

00:24:33 ◼   ► So they are now traveling to each respective winner.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Have you had to have them made in a new place?

00:24:39 ◼   ► No.

00:24:41 ◼   ► No.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Okay, because I just figured Jon's moved, right?

00:24:43 ◼   ► No, no, no, but we still have our awards guy.

00:24:46 ◼   ► You have an awards guy? That's cool, right?

00:24:48 ◼   ► We have an award.

00:24:49 ◼   ► To have a trophy guy?

00:24:50 ◼   ► I got a trophy guy?

00:24:51 ◼   ► It's like to have a trophy guy.

00:24:52 ◼   ► That is cool.

00:24:53 ◼   ► Yeah, that is cool.

00:24:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:55 ◼   ► What is the font that says the name?

00:24:58 ◼   ► Is that one of the classic Apple fonts?

00:25:01 ◼   ► You know, where it's got like Moon 4, mini tricks, selected as best Mac app by the Mac

00:25:05 ◼   ► Stories team.

00:25:06 ◼   ► Do you know what that font is?

00:25:07 ◼   ► I have no idea because Silvia did it.

00:25:09 ◼   ► It looks like...

00:25:10 ◼   ► No, actually, no.

00:25:12 ◼   ► No, Silvia didn't do that part.

00:25:13 ◼   ► The awards guy did that thing.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Oh.

00:25:16 ◼   ► It looks like...

00:25:18 ◼   ► I can't tell.

00:25:20 ◼   ► It looks like one of the classic Apple fonts.

00:25:23 ◼   ► Could it be Myriad?

00:25:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's Myriad.

00:25:25 ◼   ► It may be...

00:25:26 ◼   ► There's something very close to it.

00:25:27 ◼   ► You see what I mean?

00:25:28 ◼   ► It is that like classic Apple font.

00:25:31 ◼   ► Tell you what, I'm going to take a screenshot of this.

00:25:33 ◼   ► I'm going to ask an AI.

00:25:35 ◼   ► What font is this?

00:25:37 ◼   ► You know, I never thought to do that because there were like apps and services, right,

00:25:40 ◼   ► that would do that.

00:25:41 ◼   ► But I guess the AI tool should be able to do that now.

00:25:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:25:44 ◼   ► We're going to find out.

00:25:45 ◼   ► We're going to find out together.

00:25:47 ◼   ► What font is in this photo?

00:25:49 ◼   ► Let's see what the chat GPT app says on the Mac.

00:25:56 ◼   ► The font used in the image resembles Gil Sands.

00:25:59 ◼   ► I think it is Gil Sands, actually.

00:26:01 ◼   ► It's Gil Sands.

00:26:02 ◼   ► Is that what Apple used?

00:26:04 ◼   ► No, but it's...

00:26:05 ◼   ► But it's close to it, though, right?

00:26:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:08 ◼   ► And Gil Sands is very popular, so...

00:26:09 ◼   ► Yeah, they look really good.

00:26:10 ◼   ► I love the clear look.

00:26:13 ◼   ► Do you think it was named after Gil Amelio?

00:26:16 ◼   ► Oh, my God.

00:26:17 ◼   ► Was it?

00:26:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:26:19 ◼   ► If it was at the beach, it'd be Gil Sands.

00:26:21 ◼   ► And...

00:26:22 ◼   ► Even?

00:26:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:24 ◼   ► And if...

00:26:25 ◼   ► Just ignore that.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Just ignore that.

00:26:27 ◼   ► Oh, no, it was designed by somebody called Eric Gil.

00:26:31 ◼   ► Oh, I was going to ask if there was like a modern version.

00:26:35 ◼   ► We could call it Tim Sands.

00:26:38 ◼   ► I don't think this is Gil Sands.

00:26:41 ◼   ► I think it kind of looks like it.

00:26:43 ◼   ► Gil Sands is like used by the British railway system,

00:26:46 ◼   ► and it's a thicker weight font than this.

00:26:49 ◼   ► I don't think that's Gil Sands.

00:26:50 ◼   ► You're a thicker weight font.

00:26:52 ◼   ► I am.

00:26:53 ◼   ► I really am.

00:26:54 ◼   ► I've just been in America.

00:26:55 ◼   ► I'm a thicker weight font than I was a couple of weeks ago.

00:26:57 ◼   ► I'll tell you that.

00:26:59 ◼   ► I'm Mike Bold right now.

00:27:02 ◼   ► Ugh.

00:27:06 ◼   ► Anyway, Federico, good awards.

00:27:09 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:27:10 ◼   ► I always enjoy this.

00:27:11 ◼   ► There's always at least one app that I pick up from this every year.

00:27:14 ◼   ► And what is it this year?

00:27:15 ◼   ► It's two, actually.

00:27:17 ◼   ► Chronicling, which is I want to try again.

00:27:19 ◼   ► That's on the watch.

00:27:20 ◼   ► This feels like it's even more helpful on the watch.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And I want to try out Play, because I was aware of Play,

00:27:27 ◼   ► but never really felt like I needed it.

00:27:29 ◼   ► But the way that you describe the channel inbox kind of feature

00:27:33 ◼   ► and the fact that it's got chapters like a podcast,

00:27:35 ◼   ► like a chapter selection like a podcast,

00:27:37 ◼   ► for certain channels that I subscribe to,

00:27:41 ◼   ► this actually looks like it could be really, really good.

00:27:43 ◼   ► It looks like it could actually be a nice way to use YouTube as a podcast app.

00:27:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:52 ◼   ► If you want to start fresh, you can obviously import your channels manually.

00:27:57 ◼   ► You can also automate it with shortcuts, like throw a bunch of URLs together.

00:28:03 ◼   ► It's going to subscribe to those.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Or if you want to exactly replicate your YouTube setup,

00:28:08 ◼   ► you can use the Google takeout export file

00:28:11 ◼   ► and import all of your existing subscriptions from YouTube.

00:28:16 ◼   ► Mmm.

00:28:17 ◼   ► Not to be outdone, we have the App Store Selects 2024.

00:28:23 ◼   ► They don't call it that.

00:28:24 ◼   ► Apple has done some things.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Who won?

00:28:28 ◼   ► Did we win?

00:28:29 ◼   ► Well...

00:28:30 ◼   ► Well...

00:28:31 ◼   ► Connected won best podcast of the year.

00:28:35 ◼   ► Wow.

00:28:36 ◼   ► Wow.

00:28:37 ◼   ► That's actually not true.

00:28:38 ◼   ► I know that one.

00:28:40 ◼   ► What was it?

00:28:41 ◼   ► It was a podcast with a dude on it.

00:28:43 ◼   ► Let's see, Apple Newsroom.

00:28:44 ◼   ► That's great.

00:28:45 ◼   ► You really, really...

00:28:46 ◼   ► There are many of such podcasts.

00:28:48 ◼   ► There are some.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Hysterical.

00:28:50 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Hosted by Dan...

00:28:54 ◼   ► Morin.

00:28:55 ◼   ► Okay, no, not Dan Morin.

00:28:57 ◼   ► Morin!

00:28:58 ◼   ► Look at that, like, "Well, congrats Dan on having the most popular podcast of the year."

00:29:01 ◼   ► Congrats Dan.

00:29:02 ◼   ► Good job.

00:29:03 ◼   ► So to run through the list quickly, iPhone app of the year, Kino,

00:29:07 ◼   ► the video app by the Halide folks.

00:29:09 ◼   ► iPad app of the year, Moises, music app, I think.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Mac app of the year.

00:29:16 ◼   ► Guys, you're never gonna guess this one.

00:29:19 ◼   ► It's Adobe Lightroom.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Wow.

00:29:21 ◼   ► friendship ended with Microsoft.

00:29:23 ◼   ► Adobe is my best friend.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Apple Vision Pro app of the year.

00:29:26 ◼   ► There are some of those.

00:29:28 ◼   ► It's What If, an immersive story.

00:29:30 ◼   ► This is so good though.

00:29:31 ◼   ► Like, this is...

00:29:32 ◼   ► This is so good.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Like, even if there were lots of Vision Pro apps, this one could still win.

00:29:37 ◼   ► No.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:39 ◼   ► The Apple Watch app of the year, it's Lumi.

00:29:42 ◼   ► This is a good app.

00:29:44 ◼   ► It's a really nice utility for, like, tracking sunlight and sunsets and, like, planning outdoor stuff.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Like, photographers, for example, can use it.

00:29:57 ◼   ► It's really nice.

00:29:59 ◼   ► And the Apple TV app of the year, it's F1 TV.

00:30:04 ◼   ► Mike, is F1 TV a good Apple TV app?

00:30:07 ◼   ► Don't.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And can't use F1 TV.

00:30:09 ◼   ► It's not available on the iPad.

00:30:10 ◼   ► Okay.

00:30:11 ◼   ► Well, there you go.

00:30:12 ◼   ► And as for games, we got AFK Journey on the iPhone, Squad Busters on the iPad.

00:30:18 ◼   ► Sick.

00:30:19 ◼   ► Now, finally, a good one.

00:30:20 ◼   ► Mac Game of the Year.

00:30:22 ◼   ► Thank goodness you're here.

00:30:23 ◼   ► From Paim.

00:30:24 ◼   ► A game I recommend to both of you to play if you've not played it.

00:30:27 ◼   ► We got the Apple Vision Pro Game of the Year.

00:30:29 ◼   ► It's Thrasher, an arcade odyssey.

00:30:32 ◼   ► And the Apple Arcade Game of the Year, of course.

00:30:36 ◼   ► It's Balatro Plus.

00:30:38 ◼   ► It should win Game of the Year.

00:30:40 ◼   ► It's only one Apple Arcade Game of the Year because they were lucky enough.

00:30:43 ◼   ► Well, not lucky enough.

00:30:44 ◼   ► They paid enough money to get it on Apple Arcade.

00:30:47 ◼   ► Oh, my God.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Balatro's so good.

00:30:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:50 ◼   ► I also wanted to quickly mention the Cultural Impact winners.

00:30:52 ◼   ► We got Okey OKO, EF Hello, Daily Art, New York Times Games, The Rec, and Do You Really

00:31:01 ◼   ► Want to Know 2.

00:31:03 ◼   ► So that's the Cultural Impact winners.

00:31:06 ◼   ► I think it's a decent list.

00:31:09 ◼   ► They've gotten better.

00:31:11 ◼   ► We said this in the nominations.

00:31:12 ◼   ► They've gotten better.

00:31:13 ◼   ► They've gotten better.

00:31:14 ◼   ► Like, even just to me, like Kino winning iPhone App of the Year is like, this is a narrow

00:31:22 ◼   ► use case application in the sense of like the whole app store.

00:31:26 ◼   ► Right?

00:31:27 ◼   ► Sure.

00:31:28 ◼   ► And it's a great app well made by people that know what they're doing.

00:31:32 ◼   ► And I'm happy that Apple have recognized that.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it's nice.

00:31:35 ◼   ► It's also like it's an iPhone app that costs ten bucks.

00:31:38 ◼   ► And like, it's not the kind of app that most people will need.

00:31:42 ◼   ► But it's also like it's using like the latest technologies, the latest integrations.

00:31:47 ◼   ► It's from an indie team.

00:31:49 ◼   ► It's nice that Kino won.

00:31:52 ◼   ► It's an example of what good apps can be.

00:31:55 ◼   ► Right?

00:31:56 ◼   ► And I think actually all of these are.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Like I think in each category, these are apps that are like, this is what a good app can

00:32:04 ◼   ► be.

00:32:05 ◼   ► I mean, I would maybe, I mean, I know people like Lightroom, but like, I would like to

00:32:10 ◼   ► see a better example of user interface design that actually feels like a Mac app.

00:32:15 ◼   ► As Mac App of the Year, then an Adobe app, which feels like Adobe apps.

00:32:20 ◼   ► But by and large, I do think they're picking really good examples of what these things

00:32:25 ◼   ► can be.

00:32:26 ◼   ► Like Thank Goodness You're Here is a really good game and is a good example of the type

00:32:30 ◼   ► of game that can run on a Mac, which is like, realistically, like not the biggest stuff.

00:32:37 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:32:38 ◼   ► Like, I know they're getting better.

00:32:40 ◼   ► I'm actually surprised that it wasn't like, I don't know, they give it to Death Stranding

00:32:45 ◼   ► or something.

00:32:46 ◼   ► So I'm happy that they didn't do that and they won't be this game.

00:32:49 ◼   ► So it's great.

00:32:50 ◼   ► Which is published by Panic, by the way.

00:32:52 ◼   ► This is one of the games published by Panic.

00:32:54 ◼   ► That's nice.

00:32:55 ◼   ► They didn't make it, they publish it.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Right.

00:32:58 ◼   ► It's made by the developer, I think it's Cole Supper, is the developer's name.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Cole Supper.

00:33:03 ◼   ► But Panic published it.

00:33:06 ◼   ► Just another success for Panic.

00:33:08 ◼   ► Yeah, they're killing it.

00:33:10 ◼   ► Within the next five years, if it hasn't already happened, I would expect that they are majorly

00:33:15 ◼   ► a game publisher rather than a Mac app developer.

00:33:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they're well on their way to that.

00:33:21 ◼   ► Yeah, they are doing hit after hit.

00:33:23 ◼   ► Even if you take Playdate out of this, they have very good taste for games.

00:33:30 ◼   ► They keep publishing games.

00:33:33 ◼   ► They either win or get game of the year nominations.

00:33:37 ◼   ► They published multiple games this year.

00:33:40 ◼   ► That game's on the Mac?

00:33:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:42 ◼   ► This is what they do as well.

00:33:43 ◼   ► They make sure these games find their way to Apple platforms.

00:33:46 ◼   ► So what we're saying is that Mac gaming is more successful than FTP apps on the iPad.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Just let that soak in.

00:33:55 ◼   ► Yes, you could say that.

00:33:58 ◼   ► I mean, no, because it isn't only on the Mac.

00:34:03 ◼   ► They put it on the Mac, but this game's life is on PlayStation, right?

00:34:08 ◼   ► No one's ever even heard of it.

00:34:09 ◼   ► True.

00:34:10 ◼   ► I mean, I played it on Steam Deck.

00:34:12 ◼   ► Cool.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Go all these winners.

00:34:17 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is made possible by Ecamm.

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00:35:40 ◼   ► and add up to eight Zoom participants as camera sources

00:35:44 ◼   ► in your broadcast or recording.

00:35:46 ◼   ► This is really cool and unlocks a lot of potential.

00:35:49 ◼   ► Plus you can automatically create individual participant audio

00:35:53 ◼   ► and video recordings and add Zoom chat messages to your broadcast

00:35:57 ◼   ► or recording as text overlays.

00:35:59 ◼   ► To get one month free today, go to ecamm.com/connected

00:36:04 ◼   ► and use the code "connected."

00:36:06 ◼   ► Again, that's one month free at ecamm.com/connected.

00:36:11 ◼   ► Our thanks to Ecamm for their support of the show.

00:36:14 ◼   ► Final call for membership sale. GiveRelay.com.

00:36:18 ◼   ► You've got to go. If you want to support the show, which I know you do,

00:36:21 ◼   ► and you want to get longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week,

00:36:24 ◼   ► go to GiveRelay.com where you can sign up for Connected Pro

00:36:28 ◼   ► with a 20% discount if you sign up for a year.

00:36:31 ◼   ► You just pay that one time and you've got a whole year of us

00:36:34 ◼   ► and you can go back and listen to the entire back catalogue

00:36:37 ◼   ► of ad-free episodes that we've done since, I don't know, what, 2020?

00:36:42 ◼   ► So you've got years of extra content that you can go back and listen to.

00:36:45 ◼   ► We use chapters so you'll know which stuff is extra, which is good,

00:36:48 ◼   ► so you can go and get that.

00:36:49 ◼   ► You also get a bunch of other bonus content for being a Relay member,

00:36:52 ◼   ► monthly shows that are only available to Relay members,

00:36:55 ◼   ► and access to our Discord and the email newsletter and so much more.

00:36:59 ◼   ► And as I believe Steven has written in a document,

00:37:02 ◼   ► this show now helps support four children, three dogs, one cat,

00:37:05 ◼   ► one fish, one snake, gross,

00:37:08 ◼   ► and an untold number of handheld gaming PCs.

00:37:11 ◼   ► So like, you know, we've got a bunch of other stuff

00:37:14 ◼   ► that we've got to do to help support these.

00:37:16 ◼   ► So like, you really should go and sign up.

00:37:18 ◼   ► Go to giverelay.com and find out more about it.

00:37:21 ◼   ► Look, if you don't sign up, Mike's child is going to starve.

00:37:25 ◼   ► That's true.

00:37:26 ◼   ► I mean, it's not impossible.

00:37:29 ◼   ► So if you would like to support my growing family,

00:37:32 ◼   ► you should go to giverelay.com and sign up for a membership.

00:37:35 ◼   ► Yeah. Is this emotional blackmail? Yes.

00:37:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Do we care? No.

00:37:41 ◼   ► I have no problem with that.

00:37:43 ◼   ► Do you have anything else you would like to add?

00:37:45 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, it's like, thank you.

00:37:48 ◼   ► The direct support has really allowed us to continue to do this.

00:37:53 ◼   ► You know, the ad market is up and down and all over the place,

00:37:56 ◼   ► and Relay and us as hosts,

00:38:00 ◼   ► we're in much more stable ground with membership.

00:38:04 ◼   ► So go check it out.

00:38:05 ◼   ► You do get Connected Pro, which is longer and ad-free,

00:38:09 ◼   ► but you get the Discord server, a newsletter,

00:38:12 ◼   ► a couple members only podcasts.

00:38:14 ◼   ► It's a great deal, and now's a great time to do it,

00:38:17 ◼   ► because you're going to get 20% off.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:21 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:38:24 ◼   ► I knew it.

00:38:26 ◼   ► We get it.

00:38:31 ◼   ► Welcome back to The Quizzies, the quiz show within a podcast

00:38:34 ◼   ► where I'm Mike Hurley, quiz my Connected co-hosts randomly

00:38:37 ◼   ► and by surprise on a variety of varying subjects.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Welcome back to The Quizzies.

00:38:42 ◼   ► This is going to be the final quizzes of the year.

00:38:47 ◼   ► It's always entrapment.

00:38:49 ◼   ► I always have to say I have some other topic in the document.

00:38:52 ◼   ► I know.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Or it can't be by surprise.

00:38:55 ◼   ► I just put the screenshot from Notion into the chat.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Your topic was, "Mike has some observations, secret thoughts,"

00:39:03 ◼   ► and I had written, "If this is The Quizzies, I will throw myself down the stairs."

00:39:07 ◼   ► So you're going to do that, or are you a liar?

00:39:09 ◼   ► Well, in hindsight, maybe after the show.

00:39:12 ◼   ► We'll see how it goes.

00:39:13 ◼   ► Do you even have access to stairs?

00:39:14 ◼   ► Where are the closest stairs?

00:39:16 ◼   ► Where would that be?

00:39:18 ◼   ► Going into my attic.

00:39:19 ◼   ► And they're actually getting replaced as we speak.

00:39:22 ◼   ► So you could actually conceivably fall down those stairs.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Right, that's a big hole.

00:39:27 ◼   ► That's convenient.

00:39:28 ◼   ► It doesn't have stairs anymore, so that's why you wrote it in the document.

00:39:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Wow, conspiracies.

00:39:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:36 ◼   ► So this is the points for the year so far.

00:39:39 ◼   ► Steven is at 540.

00:39:42 ◼   ► Federico is at 580.

00:39:45 ◼   ► Wow, I'm winning.

00:39:46 ◼   ► Coming from behind, boys.

00:39:48 ◼   ► These are the final quizzes of the year.

00:39:52 ◼   ► So the winner today takes the year.

00:39:56 ◼   ► I will remind you of the previous two years.

00:39:59 ◼   ► In 2023, Federico had 2,000 points and Steven had 2,020 points.

00:40:06 ◼   ► Ominous number, but he won that year.

00:40:08 ◼   ► In 2022, Federico had 8,801 points and Steven had 10,673 points and he won that year too.

00:40:19 ◼   ► I've really tried to calm the scoring down over time.

00:40:23 ◼   ► You've got to do some deflation.

00:40:25 ◼   ► I got a little out of hand.

00:40:26 ◼   ► I got a little out of hand in year one, but here we are and I have a special game.

00:40:32 ◼   ► I have a new game today and there is some setup for this.

00:40:36 ◼   ► Boys, I need you both to close Discord.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Okay.

00:40:41 ◼   ► Okay.

00:40:42 ◼   ► Gone.

00:40:43 ◼   ► And confirm to me that you have done this.

00:40:45 ◼   ► I have done this.

00:40:46 ◼   ► It's closed.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Welcome to a new game.

00:40:49 ◼   ► It's called the Jer-i-mees.

00:40:51 ◼   ► What?

00:40:52 ◼   ► The Jer-i-mees?

00:40:53 ◼   ► Jer-i-mees?

00:40:54 ◼   ► Jer-a?

00:40:55 ◼   ► The Jer-i-mees and the Annie's?

00:40:57 ◼   ► Nope.

00:40:58 ◼   ► It's J-E-R-A-I-M-I-E-S.

00:41:03 ◼   ► I have created 10 Genmoji that I would like you to guess the prompt that I asked for.

00:41:09 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:41:10 ◼   ► I will show you both at the same time the Genmoji image over Zoom screen sharing, which

00:41:17 ◼   ► I will set up in a moment.

00:41:18 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:41:19 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:41:20 ◼   ► Oh, I should probably make sure you can screen sharing.

00:41:23 ◼   ► Well, we'll find out.

00:41:24 ◼   ► The first one to guess the prompt I have used gets the points.

00:41:27 ◼   ► When you see it and you have your guess, you need to say your name aloud.

00:41:32 ◼   ► Wait.

00:41:33 ◼   ► And then I will ask who I hear.

00:41:35 ◼   ► That's the buzzer.

00:41:36 ◼   ► That's the buzzer.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I will ask who I detect is the first person to buzz in to give me their answer.

00:41:43 ◼   ► If you get your answer correct or close enough, I will give you the points.

00:41:49 ◼   ► If you do not, I will ask your competitor to give their guess.

00:41:56 ◼   ► From that point, you can take alternate guesses until somebody gets it.

00:42:00 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

00:42:02 ◼   ► So you're not going to keep buzzing in forever.

00:42:04 ◼   ► But why do we have to close Discord?

00:42:06 ◼   ► Because I'm going to share the image in full with Discord so that they can see the image.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Because I don't want to be doing a lot of file management.

00:42:16 ◼   ► So they're going to see all of it.

00:42:19 ◼   ► And Stephen and I have created chapter artwork for you, which I will share with you after the show.

00:42:23 ◼   ► I have to do a chapter per pic?

00:42:25 ◼   ► No, no. Just a full grid.

00:42:27 ◼   ► A full grid of art.

00:42:28 ◼   ► The same way as we do the Jeremy's.

00:42:30 ◼   ► This was an hour and a half of work yesterday.

00:42:34 ◼   ► Thank you for doing this.

00:42:35 ◼   ► Getting this ready.

00:42:36 ◼   ► We'll see how you feel about that afterwards.

00:42:38 ◼   ► So I will be giving the points if you get close enough.

00:42:41 ◼   ► If your guess is close enough, this will be judged by me and nobody else.

00:42:45 ◼   ► There will be 20 points available for each correct guess.

00:42:49 ◼   ► Okay.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Alright.

00:42:51 ◼   ► So you've both closed Discord?

00:42:53 ◼   ► Yes.

00:42:54 ◼   ► Alright, I'm going to share the artwork with the Discord so that they can follow along.

00:42:58 ◼   ► And now I'm going to be sharing with you both.

00:43:03 ◼   ► So let me do this.

00:43:04 ◼   ► Where am I looking? In Zoom?

00:43:05 ◼   ► You are going to be looking at screen sharing.

00:43:07 ◼   ► In Zoom.

00:43:09 ◼   ► Please confirm to me that you both see what should currently be a grey box.

00:43:13 ◼   ► I do.

00:43:14 ◼   ► Alright.

00:43:15 ◼   ► I'm about to show you the first one.

00:43:17 ◼   ► Are you ready?

00:43:18 ◼   ► What do you both have to do when you have an answer?

00:43:20 ◼   ► Say your name.

00:43:21 ◼   ► I'm going to say Tichi.

00:43:22 ◼   ► Tichi.

00:43:23 ◼   ► Okay.

00:43:24 ◼   ► Okay, you ready?

00:43:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:26 ◼   ► This is number one.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Steven.

00:43:28 ◼   ► Tichi.

00:43:29 ◼   ► I heard Tichi first.

00:43:30 ◼   ► A fish with three eyes.

00:43:33 ◼   ► Okay.

00:43:34 ◼   ► Steven, you have a guess.

00:43:37 ◼   ► Weird fish.

00:43:38 ◼   ► Correct.

00:43:39 ◼   ► That is Steven's points.

00:43:42 ◼   ► I hope now at this stage that you both can understand the way in which these prompts

00:43:47 ◼   ► may have been given.

00:43:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:49 ◼   ► Right?

00:43:50 ◼   ► Okay.

00:43:51 ◼   ► You ready for the next one?

00:43:52 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:43:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:54 ◼   ► Steven.

00:43:55 ◼   ► Tichi.

00:43:56 ◼   ► I heard Tichi first again.

00:44:02 ◼   ► You got it.

00:44:03 ◼   ► Orange men.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Steven?

00:44:05 ◼   ► Daddy.

00:44:06 ◼   ► Federico?

00:44:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:44:08 ◼   ► Neither of you have gotten it.

00:44:13 ◼   ► Okay.

00:44:14 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:44:15 ◼   ► What I should say is if you have another guess, you can give it now, Federico.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:44:23 ◼   ► Okay.

00:44:24 ◼   ► Sure.

00:44:25 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:44:26 ◼   ► Donald Trump?

00:44:27 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:44:28 ◼   ► Steven, do you have another guess?

00:44:31 ◼   ► Moustache man.

00:44:32 ◼   ► No.

00:44:33 ◼   ► I'm going to cut it there.

00:44:34 ◼   ► Okay.

00:44:35 ◼   ► The prompt was Joe, it's orange.

00:44:36 ◼   ► Okay.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Okay.

00:44:39 ◼   ► So I'm going to at this point let you know, these are all connected memes.

00:44:44 ◼   ► Okay.

00:44:45 ◼   ► Okay.

00:44:46 ◼   ► All right.

00:44:47 ◼   ► Here's the third one.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Tichi.

00:44:50 ◼   ► Federico?

00:44:51 ◼   ► Green Gate.

00:44:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:44:53 ◼   ► You got it.

00:44:54 ◼   ► You got it.

00:44:55 ◼   ► What's the little statue?

00:44:56 ◼   ► What is this?

00:44:57 ◼   ► What is this?

00:44:58 ◼   ► What is the little statue?

00:44:59 ◼   ► I will let you know.

00:45:00 ◼   ► I did just go with the first one, right?

00:45:01 ◼   ► Like what I did was I gave it the prompt and I would scroll through it and my phone was

00:45:03 ◼   ► so hot.

00:45:04 ◼   ► My phone was like nuclear by the end of this.

00:45:07 ◼   ► And I kind of went for something that I wanted it to at least hint to what I was asking for.

00:45:14 ◼   ► And also in most instances, some of them maybe never got there, but I wanted to include it

00:45:20 ◼   ► anyway.

00:45:21 ◼   ► But also if something was peculiar, I wanted to include it.

00:45:23 ◼   ► And I liked this little statue.

00:45:24 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:45:25 ◼   ► I just said Green Gate and it gave me a gate, which is very peculiar that the gate is not

00:45:31 ◼   ► completely attached to itself in some places and there's a little golden man inside.

00:45:37 ◼   ► It looks very fancy.

00:45:38 ◼   ► There's a lot of questions about this one.

00:45:40 ◼   ► What is this?

00:45:41 ◼   ► I'm not sure what's going on there.

00:45:42 ◼   ► So are you ready for Genmoji number four?

00:45:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:46 ◼   ► Steven.

00:45:47 ◼   ► Federico?

00:45:48 ◼   ► Timer Koala Sin.

00:45:49 ◼   ► Perfect.

00:45:50 ◼   ► Perfect.

00:45:51 ◼   ► I think I'm at a disadvantage because he's closer to you physically.

00:45:57 ◼   ► My voice is taking longer to get to you.

00:46:00 ◼   ► I don't think that's true.

00:46:01 ◼   ► The biggest issue that I had with this game is how I would show you this.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Cause like originally I was like, Oh, I can send it to you via iMessage.

00:46:07 ◼   ► But then I was worried about like data connections.

00:46:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:11 ◼   ► No, this is, this is a very smart way of doing it.

00:46:13 ◼   ► This is the only way of doing it.

00:46:16 ◼   ► So currently in this game, Steven, you're on 20 points and Federico you're on 40 points.

00:46:22 ◼   ► Are you ready for the fifth?

00:46:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:24 ◼   ► Genmoji.

00:46:25 ◼   ► Gosh.

00:46:26 ◼   ► What am I looking at?

00:46:29 ◼   ► I mean, it's obvious, isn't it?

00:46:32 ◼   ► Not really.

00:46:33 ◼   ► Here's what I'm going to do for you both.

00:46:36 ◼   ► This one, this, this doesn't at all, not even close, get close to what I was asking for.

00:46:42 ◼   ► So at this point, Federico?

00:46:46 ◼   ► Round robin.

00:46:47 ◼   ► Nice.

00:46:48 ◼   ► That's not it.

00:46:49 ◼   ► But I liked that.

00:46:50 ◼   ► I liked that.

00:46:51 ◼   ► I'm going to continue saying what I was saying.

00:46:53 ◼   ► Just think of connected things, connected related things for this one is the best that

00:46:57 ◼   ► I can give you because it really, this image doesn't in any way, uh, suggest what I prompt

00:47:04 ◼   ► it, but it was so funny that I put it in there.

00:47:06 ◼   ► Steven, do you have a guess?

00:47:09 ◼   ► I honestly don't.

00:47:10 ◼   ► I am at a loss.

00:47:12 ◼   ► Federico, do you have any more guesses?

00:47:15 ◼   ► No, I don't know.

00:47:16 ◼   ► Triple J. What?

00:47:19 ◼   ► Can you believe?

00:47:20 ◼   ► I just figured this one was going to be very easy.

00:47:22 ◼   ► Uh, but what it gave me was a spinning top and there were many variations of the spinning

00:47:25 ◼   ► top with the three diamonds.

00:47:27 ◼   ► So many variations of this.

00:47:30 ◼   ► I would love to know from the passionate ones, uh, when you, this is going to be fun actually.

00:47:36 ◼   ► Send me your genmoji for triple J. I just want to know if this is like what it gives

00:47:42 ◼   ► for everybody.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Uh, send those to me on social media.

00:47:45 ◼   ► I would like to see them.

00:47:46 ◼   ► Uh, this is, so it's a very fancy spinning top with three jewels.

00:47:50 ◼   ► I guess the triple is the three jewels and then like maybe this is, maybe this is a spinning

00:47:56 ◼   ► top called a J and I just didn't know about that or something.

00:48:00 ◼   ► All right, here comes the next one.

00:48:02 ◼   ► Did you?

00:48:05 ◼   ► Federico?

00:48:06 ◼   ► Uh, fiber snake.

00:48:09 ◼   ► It's a, the, the, the, the thing with the snakes in the fiber cabinet.

00:48:14 ◼   ► Stephen, give me a guess.

00:48:18 ◼   ► I mean, I think that's what it's referring to in terms of the prompt.

00:48:22 ◼   ► I'm going to say, uh, internet snake.

00:48:28 ◼   ► I'm going to give it to Federico because he understood.

00:48:30 ◼   ► He got, he was first and understood it.

00:48:32 ◼   ► The prompt was internet service provider snakes.

00:48:36 ◼   ► That was the only way I could get anything close.

00:48:40 ◼   ► My answer was closer than his.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Yeah, but you, but you only, but you were building on his answer, right?

00:48:46 ◼   ► No, I knew what it was.

00:48:47 ◼   ► He just beat me to it.

00:48:48 ◼   ► What is it?

00:48:49 ◼   ► He gave me enough context for it, right?

00:48:52 ◼   ► Like snakes in the fiber cabinet, you know?

00:48:55 ◼   ► Also the internet cable.

00:48:56 ◼   ► Yeah, what's going on there?

00:48:58 ◼   ► It real messed up.

00:48:59 ◼   ► No, it's plugged in.

00:49:01 ◼   ► To what?

00:49:03 ◼   ► The another cable.

00:49:04 ◼   ► The left side kind of looks like a firewire connector.

00:49:08 ◼   ► It does.

00:49:09 ◼   ► Yeah, it does look like a firewire connector.

00:49:11 ◼   ► I don't like this one at all, by the way.

00:49:13 ◼   ► No, it's bad.

00:49:14 ◼   ► It's gross.

00:49:15 ◼   ► It's very upsetting.

00:49:16 ◼   ► All right, you're ready for the seventh gemmoji?

00:49:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:18 ◼   ► Steven.

00:49:19 ◼   ► Steven?

00:49:20 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:49:21 ◼   ► It's the benchman.

00:49:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:23 ◼   ► That's it.

00:49:24 ◼   ► The Ricky benchman is the full prompt that I'm going to give that to you.

00:49:28 ◼   ► Look at the Ricky benchman.

00:49:29 ◼   ► I really wanted it to be me, but I couldn't get it to be me.

00:49:33 ◼   ► It wouldn't work.

00:49:34 ◼   ► So it's very sad.

00:49:35 ◼   ► I want it to be, I want it to be the vice sitting on the bench, but then it would have

00:49:39 ◼   ► been the Mike benchman and that would have been cheating.

00:49:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Ready for the next one?

00:49:43 ◼   ► This is my favorite one.

00:49:46 ◼   ► Steven.

00:49:47 ◼   ► Steven.

00:49:49 ◼   ► It's the Money, Money, Money song with Jason Snell.

00:49:52 ◼   ► No.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Federico?

00:49:54 ◼   ► It's Jason flipping a coin.

00:49:56 ◼   ► It's the Jason coin flip.

00:49:58 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:50:00 ◼   ► It looks like it, but Jason flips a coin too.

00:50:02 ◼   ► So I'm happy that Image Playgrounds understands this.

00:50:05 ◼   ► The gemmoji gets it, you know?

00:50:08 ◼   ► That is a Jason coin flip if I've ever seen one.

00:50:12 ◼   ► He's so tan, right?

00:50:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:14 ◼   ► This is the gemmoji I've made of this, Jason.

00:50:17 ◼   ► Why is it so puffy with the red cheeks?

00:50:20 ◼   ► It gets worked up flipping a coin.

00:50:25 ◼   ► You know what he does?

00:50:26 ◼   ► It's a full body workout when he flips a coin.

00:50:30 ◼   ► So all right.

00:50:32 ◼   ► Gemmoji number nine.

00:50:34 ◼   ► Teach you.

00:50:36 ◼   ► Federico?

00:50:39 ◼   ► Red gate?

00:50:40 ◼   ► Steven.

00:50:41 ◼   ► Steven?

00:50:42 ◼   ► His gate.

00:50:43 ◼   ► Yeah, nice.

00:50:44 ◼   ► His gate.

00:50:45 ◼   ► Oh boy, that one.

00:50:47 ◼   ► I didn't know what I wanted.

00:50:52 ◼   ► This wasn't it, but I liked it anyway.

00:50:54 ◼   ► The gate's burning hot.

00:50:55 ◼   ► It's hissing.

00:50:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:57 ◼   ► This is probably too late to have said this.

00:50:59 ◼   ► Obviously this image will also be in the show notes.

00:51:00 ◼   ► I hope people have worked that out by now.

00:51:02 ◼   ► Okay.

00:51:03 ◼   ► Send me an image.

00:51:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I will.

00:51:05 ◼   ► I've got it all for you.

00:51:06 ◼   ► Don't worry.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I've got a Photoshop file if you want to mess around with that.

00:51:09 ◼   ► I'm going to send you everything.

00:51:10 ◼   ► Don't you worry about that.

00:51:11 ◼   ► Perfect.

00:51:12 ◼   ► The seventh and final gemmoji in the joraimis is...

00:51:16 ◼   ► Steven.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Federico?

00:51:18 ◼   ► It's a hammer time for the hammer theater.

00:51:24 ◼   ► Hammer theater.

00:51:25 ◼   ► We have done so many shows.

00:51:28 ◼   ► Wow.

00:51:29 ◼   ► This was a bit of a...

00:51:31 ◼   ► You know what?

00:51:32 ◼   ► Not too bad actually.

00:51:33 ◼   ► No, I feel like I got beaten pretty thoroughly.

00:51:37 ◼   ► It felt worse than it was score-wise, I think.

00:51:40 ◼   ► So Steven, you got 60 points and Federico, you got 100 points.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Nice.

00:51:47 ◼   ► So that means, Federico, you have finally won a Quizzies.

00:51:54 ◼   ► I did it.

00:51:55 ◼   ► I told you.

00:51:56 ◼   ► 2024 was going to be my year.

00:51:57 ◼   ► Yeah, there it is.

00:51:58 ◼   ► The 2024 score ends.

00:52:01 ◼   ► Steven at 600 points and Federico at 680 points.

00:52:05 ◼   ► Federico, you'll be very happy that I am now putting the trophy next to your name, which

00:52:09 ◼   ► denotes that you are the winner of the Quizzies for this year.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Quizzies will return next year.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Thank you so much to everybody who has listened and at this point I will return you to your

00:52:21 ◼   ► regularly scheduled programming.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Oh boy, that felt good.

00:52:26 ◼   ► Good job.

00:52:27 ◼   ► Congratulations.

00:52:28 ◼   ► Yeah, thank you.

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00:54:39 ◼   ► Guys, I did it.

00:54:43 ◼   ► I flipped and flopped.

00:54:46 ◼   ► I did it.

00:54:47 ◼   ► I felt so bad for you listening to last week's episode.

00:54:52 ◼   ► Because this is one of the issues with the job that we have, which is like, we're not

00:54:58 ◼   ► allowed to change our mind in peace.

00:55:02 ◼   ► So do you want to talk about what you've done?

00:55:05 ◼   ► As I suggested last week, I thought I was going to try and switch back to the iPhone

00:55:11 ◼   ► 16 Pro Max, which I was using before the 16 Plus out of my concern that because of the

00:55:17 ◼   ► camera in the 16 Plus, I was not taking enough pictures.

00:55:22 ◼   ► And I did it.

00:55:24 ◼   ► And for the past week I've been using the 16 Pro Max again.

00:55:30 ◼   ► And I've taken way more pictures, way more photos that I really love with the 5X lens.

00:55:38 ◼   ► It's like it all comes down to photos and that lens in particular, which I really like

00:55:47 ◼   ► using it for dog pictures, for portraits in general, for taking product shots, which is

00:55:55 ◼   ► something that I was doing today.

00:55:56 ◼   ► I've been taking photos for the last big article of the year that I want to publish next week.

00:56:04 ◼   ► I guess it's one of those things where I didn't know what I was missing until I didn't have

00:56:08 ◼   ► it anymore.

00:56:10 ◼   ► But the asterisk here is the weight of the phone compared to the 16 Plus and the lack

00:56:18 ◼   ► of color.

00:56:20 ◼   ► That kills me.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Like every time I pick it up, I'm like, it's heavier and it's boring.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Like you're going to put it in a case, maybe a phone case.

00:56:29 ◼   ► I don't think so, because I don't want to use a silicone case.

00:56:35 ◼   ► And all of the phone cases are silicone these days.

00:56:39 ◼   ► I have on order the Nomad Leatherback again, which is what I used to use with the 15 Pro

00:56:46 ◼   ► Max last year.

00:56:47 ◼   ► Should get delivered tomorrow, actually.

00:56:50 ◼   ► But those pictures, man, like those photos, the amount of photos and great photos that

00:56:56 ◼   ► I've taken in the past week alone.

00:56:58 ◼   ► I don't know, there's something about it that even though I dislike how it feels in the

00:57:03 ◼   ► hand, I dislike the color or lack thereof.

00:57:07 ◼   ► Just having that gallery of photos in my library, it's just so nice.

00:57:14 ◼   ► I wanted to ask you a question about this, because I think you kind of got into this

00:57:17 ◼   ► last week, but I wanted to get a clarification with you.

00:57:22 ◼   ► Are you taking that many photos with the 5X or is it just an opportunity cost thing where

00:57:27 ◼   ► you're just not doing it?

00:57:29 ◼   ► I really am.

00:57:30 ◼   ► I really am.

00:57:31 ◼   ► And I think I am because like most of the time, most of those pictures tend to be Zelda

00:57:39 ◼   ► and Ginger either sleeping or doing something funny on the couch.

00:57:45 ◼   ► And I typically work in the living room from a distance.

00:57:50 ◼   ► And so that's why I use that 5X a lot.

00:57:55 ◼   ► And most of my pictures are like that.

00:57:57 ◼   ► Like either I, or maybe for example, I walk into the bedroom and I see Zelda sleeping

00:58:01 ◼   ► on the bed in a funny way, like without waking her, like from a distance, I switch to 5X

00:58:06 ◼   ► and take a photo.

00:58:07 ◼   ► So that's what I do.

00:58:09 ◼   ► It's mostly dog pictures at 5X.

00:58:11 ◼   ► That's what it is.

00:58:12 ◼   ► Okay.

00:58:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:14 ◼   ► I guess just an aside, you may remember the long-term piece of follow-up for why I got

00:58:20 ◼   ► the smaller phone is because we were having a baby.

00:58:22 ◼   ► Oh yes.

00:58:23 ◼   ► Oh yes.

00:58:24 ◼   ► That was the thing that I didn't share at the time.

00:58:25 ◼   ► It's like I wanted to be able to use my phone in one hand more easily because I expect there

00:58:29 ◼   ► will be a lot more times where I'll just have one hand free.

00:58:31 ◼   ► So that's one of the, that's the main reason why I wanted to get the smaller phone.

00:58:36 ◼   ► So that was why I flopped, but I have not gone back.

00:58:39 ◼   ► I love the smaller iPhone.

00:58:42 ◼   ► Did you consider that by the way, like the pro rather than the pro max?

00:58:46 ◼   ► I did, but I know myself, even though I dislike the weight of the 16 pro max, I know myself,

00:58:53 ◼   ► I like a big screen, you know?

00:58:55 ◼   ► You know, the screen is quite big.

00:58:58 ◼   ► I know, I know because I have Sylvia's 16 pro to compare it with and I try to use it,

00:59:03 ◼   ► but every time I pick it up, I'm like, ah, this is so small for a phone.

00:59:07 ◼   ► I don't have that problem.

00:59:08 ◼   ► I don't have that problem with the 11 inch iPad pro that I've been using for like almost

00:59:13 ◼   ► six months in December.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Kind of like kind of six months now.

00:59:17 ◼   ► I don't have, I don't miss the 13 inch iPad pro at all, but with the phone, I just, the

00:59:23 ◼   ► pro is still too small.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Okay.

00:59:26 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:59:29 ◼   ► So yeah, that's, that's a sad story of something that, you know, with these things that like

00:59:37 ◼   ► you said before, Mike, unfortunately because of what we do, like everything needs to be

00:59:43 ◼   ► an announcement, you know?

00:59:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Like, ah, because otherwise you get people like today, today, today I posted a screen

00:59:53 ◼   ► recording on blue sky and threads for a shortcut that I'm working on for this week.

01:00:00 ◼   ► And of all the feedback, there was the person who saw the screen recording and saw my home

01:00:05 ◼   ► screen and was like, to do ist question.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Mark to do ist.

01:00:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Oh wow.

01:00:12 ◼   ► Look at that.

01:00:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:15 ◼   ► You know, you get that cause like, Oh, is that what you're using?

01:00:16 ◼   ► And I get it and I get it because like, I'm not complaining.

01:00:18 ◼   ► I'm not complaining.

01:00:19 ◼   ► It just, it comes with the job.

01:00:21 ◼   ► You know that you need to explain every single detail of what you have, what you do, what

01:00:25 ◼   ► you use.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Because we do right.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Like that's what we do.

01:00:28 ◼   ► We explain these details and, and it is this like funny thing of like, um, you know, this

01:00:32 ◼   ► is like a microcosm of just like a lot of the problem with media.

01:00:37 ◼   ► And I see this, it's in everything, but I see it a lot in gaming media, right?

01:00:42 ◼   ► Where like, if you say something and ever change course people like, but you said you

01:00:48 ◼   ► were going to do this.

01:00:49 ◼   ► Right?

01:00:50 ◼   ► Like change your mind.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:52 ◼   ► You're like, Oh, you're such a hypocrite.

01:00:53 ◼   ► You said you wouldn't do this.

01:00:54 ◼   ► And it's like, yeah, I understand.

01:00:55 ◼   ► And I really wanted to do it some way or not do it a certain way, but that's just not how

01:00:59 ◼   ► things shook out.

01:01:00 ◼   ► Like we had to adapt, but it's like, yeah.

01:01:02 ◼   ► But you said, you said you would never charge for this.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And now you're charging for this.

01:01:06 ◼   ► Like, I can't believe you've done this to me.

01:01:07 ◼   ► How could you do this?

01:01:08 ◼   ► You're a liar.

01:01:09 ◼   ► And it's like one of these things of like, ah, it's only because everything I say is

01:01:13 ◼   ► recorded.

01:01:14 ◼   ► Like if I didn't record everything, maybe you wouldn't notice so much, you know, like,

01:01:19 ◼   ► it's just like one of these funny things of like, of media in general.

01:01:21 ◼   ► And this has happened to you here where, you know, I'm sure you could go back to that episode

01:01:25 ◼   ► and you said something along the lines of, Nope, I'm set.

01:01:28 ◼   ► Nothing's going to change my mind.

01:01:29 ◼   ► I love the regular phone.

01:01:31 ◼   ► I I'm so happy and I don't need, and you even said it in the show, right?

01:01:35 ◼   ► You said like, I bet I said, I don't need the bigger camera.

01:01:37 ◼   ► I'll just get closer.

01:01:39 ◼   ► But you know, opinions change, people change and now you're back to the fun.

01:01:43 ◼   ► And also, and also like, I may have been wrong in what I wrote, you know, just, I thought

01:01:50 ◼   ► it was going to be something and it didn't turn out to be.

01:01:53 ◼   ► And it's like, you know, Sue me, I guess.

01:01:57 ◼   ► I don't know what you want to do.

01:01:58 ◼   ► You know, you got excited.

01:02:00 ◼   ► You're excited.

01:02:01 ◼   ► That's not wrong with that.

01:02:02 ◼   ► I still miss that blue color though.

01:02:03 ◼   ► So much.

01:02:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:06 ◼   ► So much.

01:02:07 ◼   ► So much.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And I really don't.

01:02:09 ◼   ► Just let me buy a pro phone with fun colors.

01:02:13 ◼   ► Like why does it have to be so difficult?

01:02:16 ◼   ► Have you ever considered a skin?

01:02:19 ◼   ► I okay.

01:02:22 ◼   ► So here's the thing about skins for me.

01:02:25 ◼   ► I have tried so many times over the years to get into skins.

01:02:29 ◼   ► The D brand ones, some of the other ones I've tried, I don't know if it's the skins or if

01:02:35 ◼   ► there's something wrong with my hands.

01:02:38 ◼   ► I cannot for the life of me, given all the possible instructions, given all the possible

01:02:43 ◼   ► tools that they send you, I cannot apply a skin in a way that looks as good as they make

01:02:49 ◼   ► it look good on the website or the promo videos.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Steven, I bet you can apply a skin well, can't you?

01:02:55 ◼   ► I don't want to hire like a skin person to do this.

01:03:03 ◼   ► Skin person is a phrase I never want to hear again.

01:03:05 ◼   ► No, I do.

01:03:06 ◼   ► I bet you're good at this, Steven.

01:03:08 ◼   ► I bet you could do this.

01:03:09 ◼   ► I probably could.

01:03:10 ◼   ► You never done it?

01:03:11 ◼   ► No, I'm also not really a skin person.

01:03:18 ◼   ► Remember the time I told you on the show that when you think about it, skin is like human

01:03:23 ◼   ► leather.

01:03:24 ◼   ► It's like a dry.

01:03:26 ◼   ► It is.

01:03:27 ◼   ► It's just the undried form, I guess.

01:03:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:31 ◼   ► So anyway, maybe actually the thought that I had was maybe I could get like a custom

01:03:37 ◼   ► painted iPhone, but like I don't want to send my iPhone for a custom paint job somewhere

01:03:43 ◼   ► and then wait for it to come back.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:46 ◼   ► My concern with all these kinds of things is like, it's so much effort and money for

01:03:50 ◼   ► something that you only keep for another 10 months, less than that.

01:03:54 ◼   ► Good luck next year selling the phone.

01:03:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:57 ◼   ► Like a custom colored iPhone.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:00 ◼   ► Well, congratulations.

01:04:03 ◼   ► I don't think you're happy about it, right?

01:04:08 ◼   ► It's like, it's a weird feeling that I'm like, I am begrudgingly happy about it.

01:04:14 ◼   ► It's like you're satisfied.

01:04:16 ◼   ► I'm satisfied.

01:04:17 ◼   ► But like, it's a sort of thing where like I look at this phone and like my first reaction

01:04:22 ◼   ► will be to insult the phone, but also the same time I appreciate the photos.

01:04:28 ◼   ► It's like a love hate relationship going on right now.

01:04:31 ◼   ► When I'm like, look at this thing, but at the same time, look at those photos and they

01:04:37 ◼   ► make me happy.

01:04:39 ◼   ► Is there anything else that you prefer in it?

01:04:43 ◼   ► Not really.

01:04:44 ◼   ► Okay.

01:04:45 ◼   ► It really is just the camera.

01:04:48 ◼   ► The display is slightly taller.

01:04:50 ◼   ► It's nice that I get like an extra line of text, but it's not a big deal.

01:04:57 ◼   ► Promotion I am ambivalent about because now that I look at it, I'm like, yeah, that's

01:05:01 ◼   ► nice.

01:05:02 ◼   ► It's more fluid, but I was that like promotion.

01:05:04 ◼   ► I was totally fine.

01:05:06 ◼   ► You got used to it, didn't you?

01:05:08 ◼   ► I got used to it.

01:05:09 ◼   ► It was okay.

01:05:10 ◼   ► It was okay.

01:05:11 ◼   ► Yeah, it's really mostly about the photos, about the third camera.

01:05:17 ◼   ► When you think about this, do you get concerned for like, you know, there's maybe going to

01:05:23 ◼   ► be this like slim iPhone, right?

01:05:25 ◼   ► Very much so.

01:05:27 ◼   ► I am very concerned right now.

01:05:29 ◼   ► The next year we're going to be in this situation where there's going to be the high end fancy

01:05:33 ◼   ► new design phone with the lesser camera system.

01:05:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:39 ◼   ► Or something, right?

01:05:40 ◼   ► Like it's probably camera.

01:05:41 ◼   ► It's definitely actually no, it's definitely camera if it's thin, right?

01:05:43 ◼   ► It's kind of like all they can do.

01:05:45 ◼   ► And like, what are we going to do then?

01:05:47 ◼   ► Like we're going to have to make a decision between do I want to get the best possible

01:05:52 ◼   ► camera, the best possible performance and all of that, or do I want to get... because

01:05:57 ◼   ► the last time they did it, like with the iPhone 10 or the iPhone X, as most people call it,

01:06:03 ◼   ► it was like, it was both.

01:06:04 ◼   ► It was the best possible camera and the brand new iPhone design.

01:06:09 ◼   ► Everybody got, nobody got the iPhone 8 or the 8 plus.

01:06:12 ◼   ► Everybody got the 10 and it was the combination of those two.

01:06:15 ◼   ► It's like, it's the best phone with the new design.

01:06:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:18 ◼   ► They went maximum on that one, didn't they?

01:06:19 ◼   ► Like that was kind of the point of that phone.

01:06:22 ◼   ► What an incredible phone that was.

01:06:24 ◼   ► That continues to be an S tier phone in hindsight.

01:06:27 ◼   ► Did we put that in S tier in our tier list?

01:06:30 ◼   ► I think we did.

01:06:31 ◼   ► I think we had to, right?

01:06:32 ◼   ► If we didn't, we may have to redo it, but surely we put it in S tier.

01:06:37 ◼   ► But like, yeah, that was like very high up there.

01:06:40 ◼   ► Like that was a great iPhone.

01:06:43 ◼   ► And like, yeah, if they do, I mean, this next potential error of iPhone design, the things

01:06:47 ◼   ► that are going to be solving for are going to cause downsides.

01:06:50 ◼   ► It's going to be really interesting to see.

01:06:53 ◼   ► It's probably the same with the Apple Watch too, right?

01:06:57 ◼   ► Like we've all spoken about it.

01:06:58 ◼   ► Like at some point they're going to come out with a new Apple Watch, which isn't the ultra.

01:07:01 ◼   ► We're going to have to decide if we want to let go of the battery or not.

01:07:06 ◼   ► But that's because there's like solving for different things.

01:07:08 ◼   ► And it's going to be interesting to see what the next few years looks like.

01:07:14 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is brought to you by Masterclass.

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01:09:15 ◼   ► So today as we're recording, iOS 18.2 is available for everybody, which includes a variety of

01:09:24 ◼   ► features, a lot of the generative AI stuff.

01:09:26 ◼   ► So image playgrounds, gemmoji, image wand.

01:09:29 ◼   ► It includes chatgpt integration, an expansion of the writing tools, but also expands Apple

01:09:36 ◼   ► intelligence outside of the US.

01:09:38 ◼   ► So if you're in the UK, for example, you can now download and use any of the Apple intelligence

01:09:43 ◼   ► stuff, including the stuff that was in point one.

01:09:45 ◼   ► So that would include the new Siri design.

01:09:48 ◼   ► That would include the way you get all the writing tools, but it include notification

01:09:52 ◼   ► summaries and email summaries and stuff like that.

01:09:55 ◼   ► Federico, you had a big article about it that I really enjoyed.

01:10:00 ◼   ► You kind of took the tact of like, ah, the generative stuff, whatever, which I think

01:10:05 ◼   ► is good.

01:10:06 ◼   ► And then Steven, you did a good article too, kind of like talking about some of the generative

01:10:10 ◼   ► stuff and like showing off some examples.

01:10:12 ◼   ► I mean, I think at this point, anyone that's listening to this show has seen examples of

01:10:16 ◼   ► the image stuff too, right?

01:10:19 ◼   ► But it's good to get some side by sides and to kind of get those things out there in the

01:10:22 ◼   ► world.

01:10:24 ◼   ► But Federico, in your article, you focused on chatgpt the most, actually, which I found

01:10:29 ◼   ► to be interesting.

01:10:32 ◼   ► I think that the things that you show, and maybe you'll get into some of them, I think

01:10:37 ◼   ► really underscore that this was rushed.

01:10:41 ◼   ► Because there are some very interesting things that Siri can use chatgpt for, but they're

01:10:49 ◼   ► very limited.

01:10:51 ◼   ► But it shows a potentially exciting future, is kind of what you're talking about.

01:10:54 ◼   ► Yeah, this is the kind of integration where you can tell that it was done very quickly.

01:11:00 ◼   ► In the sense that there are so many chatgpt functionalities that you cannot access, first

01:11:05 ◼   ► of all.

01:11:06 ◼   ► If you have a chatgpt account, you know there are features like, for example, the ability

01:11:10 ◼   ► to store data in your personal memory in chatgpt.

01:11:14 ◼   ► And you can do that by explicitly saying chatgpt, remember this about me.

01:11:18 ◼   ► I don't know, I live in Rome and I'm 36.

01:11:21 ◼   ► And chatgpt will say, okay, I remember that about you.

01:11:24 ◼   ► That will be used for future questions.

01:11:26 ◼   ► You cannot access your personal memory storage when you invoke chatgpt via Siri at all, or

01:11:34 ◼   ► via writing tools, for example, even if you're not using Siri.

01:11:40 ◼   ► There's no, like, the most important thing to understand about this integration, I think,

01:11:44 ◼   ► is that it is chatgpt, but it's not the conversational standalone, you have your chats, you can go

01:11:56 ◼   ► back there days later, style of chatgpt experience.

01:12:01 ◼   ► This is chatgpt coming in when Siri thinks that it cannot answer your question for you,

01:12:09 ◼   ► or when you manually say Siri, ask chatgpt about this.

01:12:15 ◼   ► By default, first of all, the chatgpt integration is disabled by default, you need to turn it

01:12:20 ◼   ► on.

01:12:21 ◼   ► The system tells you there's a splash screen and everything.

01:12:24 ◼   ► You can use it for free, you can use it while staying logged out, or you can sign into your

01:12:30 ◼   ► OpenAI account, and you can even upgrade to a chatgpt plus account directly from settings.

01:12:38 ◼   ► Of course you can.

01:12:40 ◼   ► So do you think Apple's taking 30% when you do that?

01:12:43 ◼   ► Hang on a second, is that an actual question?

01:12:46 ◼   ► Do you think?

01:12:48 ◼   ► Well, I don't know, like it is kind of an actual question.

01:12:53 ◼   ► Of course they are, it's a subscription.

01:12:56 ◼   ► Of course they're doing that.

01:12:59 ◼   ► You think they are?

01:13:00 ◼   ► Yes, of course they're doing that.

01:13:02 ◼   ► I think it must be something less than 30.

01:13:04 ◼   ► I think it's less than 30, but they are taking something.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Nope, I think they're taking 30%.

01:13:09 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:13:10 ◼   ► Absolutely no world in which they're not taking 30%, in my opinion.

01:13:15 ◼   ► When did they not do that?

01:13:16 ◼   ► They always do that.

01:13:18 ◼   ► They will get there at 30.

01:13:20 ◼   ► To be fair, OpenAI is giving them a really favorable free use for chatgpt.

01:13:25 ◼   ► Apple does not see it that way.

01:13:28 ◼   ► Apple says to OpenAI, you're so lucky that you get to be integrated into the iPhone and

01:13:34 ◼   ► you're the premier partner.

01:13:36 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:13:37 ◼   ► There is no world in which Apple considers themselves the helped one here.

01:13:43 ◼   ► But they are.

01:13:44 ◼   ► I know they are, but they don't go into the conversations that way.

01:13:48 ◼   ► In any case, Siri by default tries to determine whether it can answer your question or...

01:13:56 ◼   ► No, shut up, Siri.

01:13:57 ◼   ► It activated on my phone.

01:14:00 ◼   ► If the assistant thinks that it cannot answer your request, it goes to chatgpt.

01:14:06 ◼   ► Again, by default, there's a confirmation prompt.

01:14:10 ◼   ► You can also turn that off in settings.

01:14:13 ◼   ► I've been using this thing for the past month.

01:14:18 ◼   ► After much deliberation, a lot of reading, a lot of trying things, this is what I do.

01:14:23 ◼   ► I try things all the time.

01:14:24 ◼   ► For the past month, I've really tried a bunch of AI things.

01:14:30 ◼   ► And coming out of this experiment, I think I addressed this on the show before, I am

01:14:35 ◼   ► more convinced than ever that I absolutely do not care about generative AI stuff like

01:14:42 ◼   ► create images, create videos, replace human creation for something else.

01:14:48 ◼   ► I think there are some use cases that are not creepy for those things, but I am just

01:14:55 ◼   ► personally not interested.

01:14:57 ◼   ► I am very interested, however, in basically treating AI as the future of automation.

01:15:05 ◼   ► I've always been into automation.

01:15:06 ◼   ► I've always been into the idea of the computer, the software, doing things for me because

01:15:11 ◼   ► I couldn't be bothered to learn how to do those things or do those things manually.

01:15:17 ◼   ► It used to be URL schemes, then it became Python for a bit, and then obviously workflow

01:15:21 ◼   ► turning into shortcuts.

01:15:23 ◼   ► I've always been into automation.

01:15:24 ◼   ► And when you think about it, this modern flavor of AI, it is a kind of automation, but it

01:15:29 ◼   ► is an automation that you trigger via natural language.

01:15:32 ◼   ► You just literally tell the computer what to do.

01:15:37 ◼   ► And so that's what for the past month I've been using Chai GPT and Clod a lot for my

01:15:41 ◼   ► work, not for editing stories, but for research, coding tasks, looking up, to give you an example,

01:15:50 ◼   ► looking up how to do regular expressions in shortcuts, for example, like that sort of

01:15:56 ◼   ► thing.

01:15:57 ◼   ► And so I've been comparing Chai GPT, the vanilla, standalone Chai GPT experience, versus the

01:16:03 ◼   ► kind of Chai GPT that you get in iOS 18.2.

01:16:08 ◼   ► And to say that it's an approximation of the full Chai GPT experience will be an understatement.

01:16:13 ◼   ► And this is basically Chai GPT coming in to answer a question.

01:16:18 ◼   ► If you want anything more, you've still got to go to the Chai GPT website or app.

01:16:25 ◼   ► If you are logged in, your Siri conversations will be saved in your OpenAI account.

01:16:32 ◼   ► And fun fact, there's a screenshot in the story that shows you how those conversations

01:16:37 ◼   ► get saved.

01:16:38 ◼   ► It's so annoying.

01:16:40 ◼   ► It's literally...

01:16:41 ◼   ► I wish they didn't do this.

01:16:43 ◼   ► This is an example of like, was this integration done quickly?

01:16:46 ◼   ► There must have been a way to do this in a more polished way.

01:16:50 ◼   ► Put them in a folder, like by default or something.

01:16:53 ◼   ► In a folder, like, a conversation gets saved in your sidebar and your original request

01:17:02 ◼   ► from an iPhone or Mac or iPad is a bit of JSON code where you have keys and values for

01:17:12 ◼   ► the prompt and the surrounding text.

01:17:16 ◼   ► It's like programmer level presentation of what's going on here.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Still, despite all these limitations, I have seen a couple of interesting use cases that

01:17:32 ◼   ► I have documented in the story when it comes to working with Apple Notes and Chai GPT together

01:17:38 ◼   ► that I thought were pretty cool.

01:17:41 ◼   ► So the notes stuff that you're doing, like there's a couple of things that you showed

01:17:45 ◼   ► that were notes, right?

01:17:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:47 ◼   ► I think what you...

01:17:50 ◼   ► You have a very good way of doing this that I appreciate in that you think to do things

01:17:57 ◼   ► that I would never consider, but in hindsight are so obvious.

01:18:03 ◼   ► There's one where you have a list, you have basically a note that has no formatting and

01:18:08 ◼   ► you just say, basically give it some parameters to format that note for you.

01:18:13 ◼   ► Now it's like, oh, I would have just sat and formatted that note.

01:18:19 ◼   ► I think it's going to take me a long time to internalize the thought of asking the system

01:18:24 ◼   ► to do this for me, but it's incredibly good that you can just be like, hey, put some headers

01:18:31 ◼   ► on this, format all the numbers as euros.

01:18:37 ◼   ► Stuff like that is the kind of user automation that Apple should be making very easy for

01:18:43 ◼   ► people to do because that is like basic user stuff, right?

01:18:47 ◼   ► Things that people could do all day, every day and are likely to come across all the

01:18:50 ◼   ► time.

01:18:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:53 ◼   ► Because like create an email on my behalf or like make this sound more professional

01:18:57 ◼   ► or summarize this.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Like we've all seen that sort of stuff and like everybody's doing it now.

01:19:02 ◼   ► There is almost no email app on the App Store.

01:19:06 ◼   ► This is one of those research things that I've done lately.

01:19:09 ◼   ► I went to the App Store and I was like, I haven't looked for new email clients in a

01:19:13 ◼   ► while.

01:19:14 ◼   ► Let me see what it's like now.

01:19:15 ◼   ► And boy, it's really different from three or four years ago.

01:19:19 ◼   ► Now every single modern client has a compose feature and a summarization feature.

01:19:26 ◼   ► It's become the new, I don't know, smart inbox categorization.

01:19:32 ◼   ► AI in an email app has no table stakes for an email app.

01:19:36 ◼   ► If you're making an email app, you have to put this in there.

01:19:39 ◼   ► Now everybody has it.

01:19:41 ◼   ► Everybody has it.

01:19:42 ◼   ► And Apple has it now too.

01:19:43 ◼   ► They can compose text and summarize text.

01:19:45 ◼   ► But what I think is much more fascinating and where I think the real opportunity is

01:19:51 ◼   ► for Apple is Apple owns the operating system.

01:19:55 ◼   ► So instead of putting AI features into this standalone apps like, okay, your email client

01:20:04 ◼   ► can now write emails for you.

01:20:06 ◼   ► Well, like what if we took it to the next level and what if we could do things at a

01:20:11 ◼   ► system level?

01:20:12 ◼   ► And right now you have a few examples.

01:20:14 ◼   ► Like you have your visual intelligence that lets you like, you know, just press a button

01:20:17 ◼   ► on your phone and you can ask, hey, what's this?

01:20:20 ◼   ► And you can actually have a back and forth with Chai-GPT.

01:20:24 ◼   ► You have writing tools, which are integrated system wide.

01:20:28 ◼   ► And there's actually an API for developers to optimize their text fields for writing

01:20:34 ◼   ► tools.

01:20:35 ◼   ► So if you use something like Obsidian that is not optimized for writing tools and you

01:20:39 ◼   ► still try and invoke writing tools, it's not going to work.

01:20:43 ◼   ► But if you use something like Ulysses, for example, which has optimized for the writing

01:20:48 ◼   ► tools, SDK APIs in 18.1 a few months ago, that's going to work just like in Apple Notes.

01:20:55 ◼   ► So Apple has this advantage to say, it's not just like putting AI into your Gmail client.

01:21:02 ◼   ► What if we took these AI features and put them everywhere across the operating system?

01:21:09 ◼   ► There are some early signs of that, but obviously Apple has revealed already much bigger plans

01:21:16 ◼   ► for the iOS 18 cycle.

01:21:21 ◼   ► So in 2025, at some point, probably in the spring, we're going to get an 18.3 or 18.4

01:21:28 ◼   ► release, and that's going to have the app-intense functionality that will, in theory, allow Siri

01:21:35 ◼   ► to string together multiple actions, kind of like shortcuts, like multiple actions from

01:21:41 ◼   ► multiple apps.

01:21:43 ◼   ► Those are, in fact, based on shortcuts actions, but all of that will be done with natural

01:21:48 ◼   ► language.

01:21:50 ◼   ► And what I think is interesting there is that now, I don't know how tuned into the latest

01:21:57 ◼   ► AI news you guys are.

01:21:59 ◼   ► I've been trying to read more about that space lately.

01:22:03 ◼   ► Now the hot new term is agents.

01:22:07 ◼   ► Everybody's doing agents.

01:22:08 ◼   ► Agenic AI, agents here, agents there.

01:22:12 ◼   ► And I think it's interesting that what Apple has previewed at WWDC a few months ago is

01:22:20 ◼   ► basically their own native take on agents in a way, in a very roundabout way, where

01:22:29 ◼   ► basically you're treating apps on your phone as the agents that can do things for you.

01:22:35 ◼   ► Now I think it's going to be fascinating to see how much of that promise comes true when

01:22:45 ◼   ► the feature actually lands on our devices.

01:22:49 ◼   ► I'm skeptical because if there's anything I learned about modern Apple software is that

01:22:59 ◼   ► shortcuts is based on a shaky foundation.

01:23:04 ◼   ► It's the kind of app that breaks on every single iOS release every year.

01:23:10 ◼   ► They have changed that framework multiple times over the years.

01:23:16 ◼   ► It's a weird mix of like, right now if you open shortcuts, you can still use legacy actions

01:23:26 ◼   ► for apps that build shortcuts with like iOS 12 technology.

01:23:32 ◼   ► And most of those still work.

01:23:35 ◼   ► There's a lot of legacy code in there that I'm sure like dates back to the workflow days

01:23:42 ◼   ► even.

01:23:43 ◼   ► I'm fairly certain that you can go on Mac stories to an article from 2015 or something,

01:23:52 ◼   ► click on a workflow downloadable link, and that's going to install a shortcut for you

01:24:00 ◼   ► in the shortcuts app in iOS 18 today.

01:24:03 ◼   ► I'm pretty convinced that's going to work.

01:24:06 ◼   ► There's a lot of like legacy stuff going on in shortcuts and something about that makes

01:24:11 ◼   ► me a little skeptical about like, okay, but is this really ready for a large language

01:24:16 ◼   ► model next year?

01:24:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:24:19 ◼   ► I hope I'm wrong.

01:24:20 ◼   ► >> I mean, there's also I think one of the things that this year has taught us is that

01:24:28 ◼   ► developers aren't necessarily just willing to go along with whatever Apple wants them

01:24:33 ◼   ► to do.

01:24:34 ◼   ► And like for this new smart like personal context Siri to work and to take actions on

01:24:40 ◼   ► our behalf as they say it will do, it requires developers to support app intent.

01:24:45 ◼   ► And of course there are lots of developers that have, but I would expect Netflix has

01:24:50 ◼   ► not, right?

01:24:51 ◼   ► And won't, Google has not and won't unless there's a good reason given to them to like

01:24:59 ◼   ► deeply integrate every element of their application with app intent, which is what Apple wants

01:25:05 ◼   ► them to do.

01:25:06 ◼   ► But why would they?

01:25:08 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I'm thinking if there's anything else that I covered.

01:25:13 ◼   ► I primarily focus my story on chat GPT and there's another example of like the sort of

01:25:19 ◼   ► thing that is impossible now if you just want to use chat GPT via Apple.

01:25:25 ◼   ► The whole custom GPT feature that you can get via the main chat GPT website or app.

01:25:35 ◼   ► There's an example in which I took a screenshot of a list in the reminders app and there were

01:25:42 ◼   ► some tasks in that.

01:25:44 ◼   ► And I asked chat GPT both on the web and via Siri.

01:25:49 ◼   ► I told it like this is a screenshot of a project in the reminders app.

01:25:55 ◼   ► There are two tasks in this image.

01:25:57 ◼   ► I want you to extract the title of the task and the details that you can understand.

01:26:05 ◼   ► Like if there's a due date, if there's a repeat pattern, I want you to extract all of this

01:26:10 ◼   ► info.

01:26:11 ◼   ► And in both cases it did it because chat GPT on iOS, it does have image recognition, it

01:26:17 ◼   ► does have vision capabilities.

01:26:19 ◼   ► You can send it images or you can send it even full documents like PDFs, for example,

01:26:24 ◼   ► you can do that.

01:26:25 ◼   ► So in both cases it worked.

01:26:28 ◼   ► But then after that request, I was like, okay, now that you know these tasks, can you create

01:26:34 ◼   ► reminders for me based on these tasks?

01:26:37 ◼   ► And on iOS chat GPT said, well, I cannot do that.

01:26:42 ◼   ► I don't have that integration.

01:26:44 ◼   ► Siri obviously did not understand at all what I meant.

01:26:48 ◼   ► Siri had left the room at that point.

01:26:49 ◼   ► I was like, Siri, can you take that information that chat GPT assembled?

01:26:53 ◼   ► Can you do something with that?

01:26:56 ◼   ► I don't remember the response.

01:26:57 ◼   ► It was like, I'm pretty sure I have a screenshot somewhere that said I don't see a calendar

01:27:01 ◼   ► event scheduled for that.

01:27:03 ◼   ► I was like, okay, whatever.

01:27:07 ◼   ► But in chat GPT, after it extracted the information from the screenshot, I was able to invoke

01:27:15 ◼   ► the Todoist GPT and say, can you create tasks for that in this project in Todoist?

01:27:23 ◼   ► And after 10 seconds, it was like, yeah, done, no problem.

01:27:27 ◼   ► So that idea of putting the large language model in between you and the work you got

01:27:36 ◼   ► to do, right?

01:27:38 ◼   ► Take this complex thing, extract image from it, and put it in my task manager, I think

01:27:43 ◼   ► that's a really fascinating kind of automation.

01:27:47 ◼   ► And it's something that I hope at some point we're able to do on the iPhone and on the

01:27:52 ◼   ► iPad as well.

01:27:55 ◼   ► It's almost like right now chat GPT on the iPhone is like a message in a bottle kind

01:28:01 ◼   ► of thing where it's getting a request and it sends the request back, but that's the

01:28:08 ◼   ► end of it.

01:28:09 ◼   ► It has no ability or function to be able to do anything past that.

01:28:14 ◼   ► It's just like, here's what I can tell you.

01:28:17 ◼   ► You can't then continue to ask it stuff like you could if you were using the application.

01:28:22 ◼   ► It's like Siri asks the question, it gets the answer, it displays the answer to you,

01:28:27 ◼   ► and that's it.

01:28:28 ◼   ► And sometimes you can ask another question and maybe if you're lucky, you might get it,

01:28:31 ◼   ► but it isn't, you know, it's not reliable in that way.

01:28:35 ◼   ► It's the same in like the attempts that I've had of trying to invoke chat GPT while talking

01:28:42 ◼   ► to the assistant is also like unreliable.

01:28:45 ◼   ► Well, sometimes you just say, ask chat GPT and it will do it.

01:28:49 ◼   ► Sometimes it will ask me a question, I'll ask a question, I don't get the answer that

01:28:53 ◼   ► I want and I say, hey, ask chat GPT this.

01:28:56 ◼   ► Half the time it will do it and half the time it's like, I don't know what you're talking

01:28:59 ◼   ► about.

01:29:00 ◼   ► It's like, what is going on?

01:29:02 ◼   ► This is, I just, I'm really intrigued for how the next few weeks are going to go.

01:29:08 ◼   ► Right?

01:29:09 ◼   ► So like 18.2 is now out to the world.

01:29:12 ◼   ► And up until now, it's been nerds like us who have used it.

01:29:17 ◼   ► But we kind of had a feeling of what we were going to get before we got it.

01:29:21 ◼   ► Right?

01:29:23 ◼   ► Apple has been telling the world that Apple intelligence is a big deal.

01:29:27 ◼   ► Like when I was in the States, you know, TV on a bit like and there's every ad, every

01:29:33 ◼   ► time they mention the iPhone, they say with Apple intelligence, right?

01:29:37 ◼   ► They just say it like all the time.

01:29:38 ◼   ► They just say it like it's a big deal.

01:29:40 ◼   ► And I'm just really interested to see what is the response to these features?

01:29:46 ◼   ► What is the response to if Siri is smart or not?

01:29:50 ◼   ► What is the response to chatgpt integration?

01:29:53 ◼   ► What is the response to image playgrounds?

01:29:55 ◼   ► What is the response to gemmoji?

01:29:56 ◼   ► Is there even going to be one?

01:29:58 ◼   ► Like, I'm really intrigued for what these next few weeks will look like because people

01:30:02 ◼   ► actually start using these features and getting like, what are the reports going to be?

01:30:10 ◼   ► Are there going to be any scandals?

01:30:11 ◼   ► You know, like, what is the next few weeks going to be like?

01:30:15 ◼   ► I'm really interested.

01:30:16 ◼   ► I'm sure there are a lot of people at Apple that are incredibly nervous.

01:30:19 ◼   ► I give it 36 hours before there is some post about image generation doing something it

01:30:26 ◼   ► should not have done.

01:30:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:29 ◼   ► I wonder if it's still going to generate the things that I saw months ago.

01:30:33 ◼   ► I never tried again.

01:30:34 ◼   ► I hope not.

01:30:35 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:30:36 ◼   ► If it comes out, if it comes out, we'll talk about it on the show.

01:30:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:41 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:30:42 ◼   ► Because people are going to try the same way as you did, right?

01:30:44 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:30:45 ◼   ► Right now.

01:30:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:49 ◼   ► There was one last thing I wanted to mention.

01:30:52 ◼   ► I liked your, the way you kind of sum up the art of Querférico was pretty good.

01:30:56 ◼   ► And it was a take that I enjoyed where you say that, kind of talking about Apple being

01:31:03 ◼   ► behind, right?

01:31:04 ◼   ► Which we all feel that they are behind.

01:31:08 ◼   ► It's clear to see that there are multiple years behind their competitors.

01:31:12 ◼   ► But you say, will OpenAI, Anthropic or Meta have a mobile operating system or line up

01:31:17 ◼   ► computers of different form factors in two years?

01:31:20 ◼   ► I don't think they will.

01:31:21 ◼   ► And that buys Apple some time to catch up.

01:31:23 ◼   ► I like that take.

01:31:25 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:31:26 ◼   ► Because it's valid, right?

01:31:28 ◼   ► Like, I mean, maybe Apple, even with those two years, they're still going to be behind,

01:31:34 ◼   ► but like, can they get closer?

01:31:36 ◼   ► I mean, and they definitely can, it seems more feasible that Apple can get closer to

01:31:43 ◼   ► the AI companies than those companies can get close to having conceived.

01:31:48 ◼   ► Like, okay, great.

01:31:50 ◼   ► Sam Altman and Johnny Iver working on something together, right?

01:31:55 ◼   ► How good can it be?

01:31:56 ◼   ► Right?

01:31:57 ◼   ► To version one, how good could it possibly be that it could take a dent out of Apple?

01:32:02 ◼   ► Even if it's incredible, like going against the phone, you know, it needs to be incredible,

01:32:10 ◼   ► right?

01:32:11 ◼   ► Which is like a level of incredibleness that we can't even imagine.

01:32:17 ◼   ► Because it has to be, it has to make us want to stop using the iPhone.

01:32:21 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't know, man.

01:32:26 ◼   ► Probably going to be a pin.

01:32:27 ◼   ► That seems like the future.

01:32:30 ◼   ► I still think that form factor is good.

01:32:33 ◼   ► Right?

01:32:34 ◼   ► Like something that can see what you can see, but yeah, I don't know.

01:32:39 ◼   ► I saw that they had an update the other day.

01:32:41 ◼   ► I was like, wait, Humain's still around?

01:32:43 ◼   ► Aren't they licensing their Cosmos operating system now?

01:32:48 ◼   ► That is their new thing.

01:32:50 ◼   ► They're trying to make their OS something that other people might want to buy.

01:32:55 ◼   ► Which to be fair, probably a better idea than the pin.

01:32:59 ◼   ► Well, I think this should show a concern because it means that they couldn't get someone to

01:33:04 ◼   ► buy them for the hardware.

01:33:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:07 ◼   ► Also that.

01:33:08 ◼   ► And that's not good.

01:33:09 ◼   ► Didn't they want like a bajillion dollars?

01:33:11 ◼   ► They wanted, yeah, a lot of money.

01:33:13 ◼   ► And apparently like HP was in the conversation.

01:33:15 ◼   ► Ah yes, the people that saved webOS.

01:33:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:33:20 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:33:21 ◼   ► Not great for them.

01:33:22 ◼   ► No.

01:33:23 ◼   ► Man, rest in peace webOS.

01:33:27 ◼   ► Is it gone?

01:33:28 ◼   ► It's not on the TV.

01:33:29 ◼   ► No, it's living on TVs, but you know, it's not.

01:33:31 ◼   ► It's on my TV.

01:33:32 ◼   ► It's on your TV.

01:33:33 ◼   ► Well, there you go then.

01:33:34 ◼   ► If anything, you know, it's had a good life.

01:33:36 ◼   ► That's right.

01:33:37 ◼   ► It's the home and away on my LG.

01:33:41 ◼   ► Steven and I have a question for you before we wrap up.

01:33:43 ◼   ► From the developer perspective.

01:33:45 ◼   ► Yes.

01:33:46 ◼   ► Which, you know.

01:33:47 ◼   ► I am developing perspective.

01:33:49 ◼   ► Yes.

01:33:50 ◼   ► I was surprised to see that there are developers that can integrate image playgrounds into

01:33:56 ◼   ► their apps.

01:33:57 ◼   ► I didn't know you could do this.

01:33:58 ◼   ► I mean, it's just you're just invoking the UI and it will like drop in.

01:34:01 ◼   ► I saw it.

01:34:02 ◼   ► I think it was Charlie Chapman did it for dark noise.

01:34:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:05 ◼   ► It's something that I don't want to spoil any plans or whatever, but is this something

01:34:10 ◼   ► that you're thinking about?

01:34:11 ◼   ► Yeah, we've had conversations around it.

01:34:13 ◼   ► You know, I think it, there could be interest there of like, oh, you want to make a widget

01:34:18 ◼   ► with like this AI art you made.

01:34:21 ◼   ► But have no announcements to make.

01:34:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:25 ◼   ► Like a Phil underscore staring at me through the internet.

01:34:28 ◼   ► Wow.

01:34:29 ◼   ► Wow.

01:34:30 ◼   ► Makes sense.

01:34:31 ◼   ► Makes sense.

01:34:32 ◼   ► I don't want you to get in trouble with the boss.

01:34:33 ◼   ► I will say the image playgrounds app, it like, it's kind of confusing.

01:34:37 ◼   ► It has its own image library within the app and then you can save them out or share them,

01:34:45 ◼   ► but sometimes it doesn't work.

01:34:46 ◼   ► At least in the last beta I had issues like copying images out of it.

01:34:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:34:51 ◼   ► I was very pleased when doing my work for the Geriemies to find that you can, in Genmoji,

01:34:57 ◼   ► can just airdrop an image to someone.

01:35:01 ◼   ► I don't think that that was in from the beginning, but I was very happy about that.

01:35:05 ◼   ► Like, because what I thought I was going to need to do was send myself a bunch of Genmoji

01:35:09 ◼   ► and then screenshot them all.

01:35:11 ◼   ► So I was very happy that I could just hit that little three dot thing and just, just,

01:35:15 ◼   ► just fire away, you know?

01:35:16 ◼   ► But yeah, that was good.

01:35:17 ◼   ► We'll see what the future holds with app adoption of image playgrounds.

01:35:24 ◼   ► Are you getting anybody to contact you about this federal record?

01:35:27 ◼   ► Are you seeing anyone trying to use the Apple intelligence tools in any interesting ways

01:35:31 ◼   ► in the third party apps?

01:35:33 ◼   ► I honestly haven't.

01:35:34 ◼   ► Okay.

01:35:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:35:36 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not surprised because there's only so much you can actually do right now.

01:35:40 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:35:42 ◼   ► Yeah, okay.

01:35:43 ◼   ► Fair enough.

01:35:45 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:35:46 ◼   ► Well, I think that does it for this week.

01:35:50 ◼   ► If you want to find links to the stuff we spoke about, look in your podcast player or

01:35:54 ◼   ► on the web at relay.fm/connected/531.

01:35:59 ◼   ► You want to get connected pro, which is a longer ad free version of the show.

01:36:03 ◼   ► It's 20% off for another week.

01:36:06 ◼   ► Go to give relay.com.

01:36:08 ◼   ► That link is also in the show notes.

01:36:10 ◼   ► And if you do support us directly, thank you for your membership.

01:36:14 ◼   ► You can find us online.

01:36:16 ◼   ► Federico is the editor in chief of maxstories.net.

01:36:19 ◼   ► Lots of great coverage of the point two updates.

01:36:23 ◼   ► And of course, Max Story Selects, lots of stuff going on over there.

01:36:27 ◼   ► And you can find Federico across the fractured social media landscape as Vitici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.

01:36:35 ◼   ► You can find Mike on a bunch of other shows here on relay.

01:36:39 ◼   ► You had your yearly themes episode of Cortex that came out yesterday.

01:36:44 ◼   ► I'm about halfway through it and I'm really enjoying it.

01:36:46 ◼   ► Good work.

01:36:48 ◼   ► Good themes.

01:36:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:36:51 ◼   ► That sort of fell apart on me.

01:36:53 ◼   ► Go check it out and your work of course at Cortex brand.

01:36:57 ◼   ► And you are iMike across social media.

01:37:00 ◼   ► Not really though.

01:37:01 ◼   ► Or Mike Hurley or Mike.

01:37:03 ◼   ► I'm just going with find me.

01:37:05 ◼   ► You know, you'll find me.

01:37:06 ◼   ► Find him.

01:37:07 ◼   ► If you want to that badly, you can do it.

01:37:09 ◼   ► I believe in you.

01:37:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a nightmare.

01:37:11 ◼   ► You can find me as ismh86 because I have a coherent social media strategy.

01:37:17 ◼   ► And I write at 512pixels.net and host Mac Power users here on relay.

01:37:24 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week, Fitbaud, Ecamm, Squarespace, and Masterclass.

01:37:30 ◼   ► And until next week, gentlemen, say goodbye.

01:37:33 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:37:34 ◼   ► Cheerio.

01:37:35 ◼   ► Bye, y'all.

01:37:35 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]