00:00:00 ◼ ► Hello and welcome to this episode of the Connected Podcast from Relay. This is episode number
00:00:13 ◼ ► 579. Today's show is brought to you by our fine sponsor, Ecamm, and the Relay Give Relay
00:00:20 ◼ ► campaign for a membership. It's our membership holiday sale. We're going to talk about that
00:00:24 ◼ ► too. That's who's bringing the episode to you. My name is Mike Hurley. I am a professional
00:00:29 ◼ ► podcast introducer. And I have the pleasure of introducing the Ricky Benchman, Federico
00:00:37 ◼ ► Hello. Hi. I have been so professionally introduced today. I hope to not let the other co-hosts
00:00:44 ◼ ► of this program down with my professional introduction. We are also joined by Stephen Hackett.
00:01:14 ◼ ► It doesn't... I don't feel like a... I don't feel like 600, you know? This show feels younger
00:01:34 ◼ ► Yeah. I guess, what's the... This is a good question. I think I know the answer. What show
00:01:45 ◼ ► Yes. Well, yes, it would have to be Mac Power Users. I don't think it's possible. It could
00:02:07 ◼ ► I remember people were afraid of hitting episode 404 for the first time, but it was fine.
00:02:39 ◼ ► like at work, and I'm in a text thread with some like IT guys in Memphis, and they were
00:02:46 ◼ ► all having a pretty bad day. And I was like, yeah, my podcast website's been down for four
00:03:05 ◼ ► So, it's my main computer. So, what I'm recording on right now is a M something Pro Mac Mini.
00:03:15 ◼ ► But aside from that, all of my computing is done on an M2 MacBook Air. So, this is all of
00:03:21 ◼ ► my show prep, all of my email, everything that I do at my desk at work, and I take it home
00:03:26 ◼ ► with me every day. So, if I need to do anything at home, then I use that. So, it's absolutely
00:03:30 ◼ ► my number one computer. Such a number one computer. It's covered in stickers, because I'm in love
00:03:36 ◼ ► with this computer so much. I needed to make it mine, and it's fully mine, and I love it. But
00:03:41 ◼ ► it's getting slow, and it's chugging sometimes. This machine is slamming me down. I don't know
00:03:47 ◼ ► if I mentioned this on the show, but a couple of days ago, I came, or weeks ago, I came to
00:03:51 ◼ ► my Mac, and it just said, you've run out of system memory. You have to quit everything.
00:03:55 ◼ ► I'm like, okay, that's not good. That's not good. I think it's like a 16, it's either a 12 or
00:04:05 ◼ ► for a bit extra. So, yeah, I don't know what's going on with that thing. But Ingmar wrote in
00:04:18 ◼ ► intelligence enabled? I had a similar experience on my M1 MacBook Pro since disabling Apple
00:04:24 ◼ ► intelligence is running fine again. I assume it runs the LLM to summarize notifications, which
00:04:29 ◼ ► is the stuttering. I'll have to check. I mean, honestly, at the moment, it's chugging just
00:04:36 ◼ ► It's just, this thing is, it's getting a bit old, which is a shame because it's not that
00:04:42 ◼ ► old. And I don't want to get rid of this computer. I have no desire to upgrade it. So, maybe I'll
00:04:49 ◼ ► try this. Maybe I do have Apple intelligence on my Mac. I don't know why. I don't think it
00:05:06 ◼ ► That's actually a good question. Now that it's been, what, a year since the first wave of
00:05:24 ◼ ► I don't know what to tell you. I find it useful. How many times do you think someone in your
00:05:36 ◼ ► Never. It never... Look, those things happen and you always see them because people post
00:05:41 ◼ ► them on threads, but it doesn't happen. You know what I mean? I actually say that. I think
00:05:51 ◼ ► was. But it also does the priority notifications, which, you know, it's fine. You know? But yeah,
00:05:57 ◼ ► I use it. I use it. I don't know what to tell you. I'm the only one, but I do use it. But
00:06:03 ◼ ► I don't care about it on my Mac because notifications on the Mac is useless and a disaster.
00:06:08 ◼ ► Because it seems that no matter how many versions of macOS they go through, they just refuse to do
00:06:14 ◼ ► anything to make the notification center window any better. And if anything, just makes it worse
00:06:20 ◼ ► every time. But yeah, I think I've just set a task in Todoist once this episode is done. I'm going to
00:06:27 ◼ ► turn off Apple intelligence on my MacBook and I'll, and I will report back if I see any change.
00:06:34 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't, I have it on, on my M4 Macs, but I don't, I don't have the notification summaries on
00:06:44 ◼ ► anywhere, my phone, any, anything. I don't have the, uh, priority notifications turned on anywhere. I don't
00:06:54 ◼ ► use their writing tools. So I honestly don't know why I have it on. I think I have every feature of
00:06:59 ◼ ► it off. Yeah, that's not doing, you're not doing anything. I like the fun Siri animation. And if
00:07:04 ◼ ► you have, I learned because my wife told me to not turn Apple intelligence on, on her new iPhone.
00:07:09 ◼ ► If you have it off, you get the old Siri interface and I like the rainbow border. So yeah, the new one
00:07:15 ◼ ► is cool. The new one is cool. That's enough of a reason. It's really, it's cool. It's cool.
00:07:18 ◼ ► You got three gigabytes of memory. It's cool. Even a car play. So, uh, what about you Federico?
00:07:27 ◼ ► I have it on basically never use it. If not for the cute Siri animation that I like, that's how they
00:07:33 ◼ ► get you, man. The Siri animation is like the emoji of Apple intelligence. You upgrade just because of
00:07:38 ◼ ► it. But I'm sure, I'm sure there are the Apple intelligence power users out there. Um, and I could
00:07:46 ◼ ► see an argument for the use model action in shortcuts, but not with the foundation model,
00:07:51 ◼ ► which had GPT. I can see, I mean, because I have made those shortcuts for, for max or readers. I can
00:07:59 ◼ ► see an argument for like keeping Apple intelligence because you get to keep the use model action in
00:08:05 ◼ ► shortcuts. But boy, is that a niche? What about gemmoji? You know, using gemmoji? Oh, I guess I
00:08:10 ◼ ► am using gemmoji. They're fun. No, no, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. What about image playgrounds?
00:08:18 ◼ ► I am not. No, no. Yeah. I tried. I tried last year, you know, created some really questionable
00:08:26 ◼ ► images and never touched it again. I don't think I've ever met anyone who uses these image
00:08:33 ◼ ► playgrounds. Like non-ironically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like gemmoji. I have made some decent
00:08:42 ◼ ► gemmoji. My favorite gemmoji that I've ever made was a gemmoji interpretation of the trophy
00:08:49 ◼ ► that Tim Cook gave Donald Trump. That's the best one. I'm going to, I'm going to send it
00:08:56 ◼ ► in our group chat. Okay. I'll do a photo of it in the show notes. Yeah. That's the best one
00:09:01 ◼ ► that I've made, which is that one. Outside of that, I don't think. That's a CD on a pedestal.
00:09:08 ◼ ► Yes. I mean, that's as close as I could get. But like when you see that, you know what that is.
00:09:13 ◼ ► You know what I mean? I asked for a glass disc on a gold stand or something like that. If someone
00:09:18 ◼ ► can make a better one, go for it. It looks like if you were really fancy in the 90s and like you had a
00:09:27 ◼ ► multi-CD player and it like presents you the disc to put in, it's like, yes, here you go. Here's the
00:09:32 ◼ ► new Shania Twain or whatever. There you go. But like what's great about this gemmoji is if someone's
00:09:37 ◼ ► talking about this, like in a group thread or whatever, I can just send that and people know
00:09:42 ◼ ► what that is, which is great. You know, that's a great gemmoji. The rest of the gemmoji, not so
00:09:47 ◼ ► good. Oh, there's one other good one actually, which is an eagle with the body of an American
00:09:52 ◼ ► flag. Yeah, that one's good. Which I send also, ironically, to many of my friends. Yeah.
00:10:00 ◼ ► So, but I've said this before though, gemmoji I think is just a good feature. Like I do just
00:10:05 ◼ ► think it's a good feature and I think it got even better when they let you combine the two
00:10:09 ◼ ► emoji together, right? Like it's a good feature that exists. That's for me, you know, and I used
00:10:16 ◼ ► the notification summaries. I don't know why, but I do. Aside from that, like there isn't
00:10:21 ◼ ► really anything. And I just don't think that I needed an entire Apple intelligence, like AI
00:10:30 ◼ ► These are good. There'll be a link in the show notes for people to check those out. Poor
00:10:35 ◼ ► John. I'm just sending these gemmoji in our group thread. Yeah, I opened the connected thread.
00:10:39 ◼ ► I have any idea what's going on in it. Yeah, I don't know. It's just the first one that
00:10:52 ◼ ► Oh yeah, we're doing follow-up. Maximilian wrote in. Yeah, we're still in follow-up. Maximilian
00:10:56 ◼ ► wrote in and said, in reference to discussing pinned conversations in iMessage on episode
00:11:01 ◼ ► 578, all I want from Apple is for them to allow me to pair what conversations are pinned based
00:11:06 ◼ ► on my focus mode. When I'm at work, I'd love for my boss and coworkers to be quickly accessible,
00:11:11 ◼ ► I don't need them there when I'm at home or on the weekends. I think this is just proof
00:11:17 ◼ ► of there needs to be more work put into the pinned messages feature. That's a good thing,
00:11:22 ◼ ► but it's not what I would want, but I can see how that would be useful. But just let me just
00:11:34 ◼ ► Yeah. This comment really struck at the heart of a fear that I have about modern Apple is
00:11:44 ◼ ► that there's no one in charge of making sure, seemingly, no one in charge of making sure
00:11:50 ◼ ► that features are implemented equally. Like, Mail has focus modes that basically kind of do
00:11:57 ◼ ► this. They turn accounts on and off, but messages doesn't, right? You can use some SF symbols or
00:12:05 ◼ ► emoji and reminders, but you in maps to have a pin, you have like three icons to choose from.
00:12:12 ◼ ► Like Apple has these technologies, but they're not applied evenly throughout the system. And I just,
00:12:17 ◼ ► I don't like that. Uh, it, it, it bugs me that no one is paying attention to those details.
00:12:23 ◼ ► Seemingly. Well, I, I will be, I will, I will attempt to be fair to Apple here and say that like
00:12:28 ◼ ► there is some messages function in focus filters. Like it will actually, it can filter your conversations,
00:12:36 ◼ ► just not your pins. Right. So you can say like, just show me my coworkers. You'd set a list or just
00:12:44 ◼ ► show me my, all right. And that will turn on and off with focus modes, but it's not changing the pins.
00:12:57 ◼ ► And Mathias wrote in and said, uh, the issue of iPad software as a third-party developer comes down to
00:13:04 ◼ ► revenue. If you make a professional tool for Mac OS, you can easily charge $50 or more, but history has
00:13:11 ◼ ► shown us that if we try to charge the same, I, the same iPad OS users revolt due to Apple's push to
00:13:16 ◼ ► make app store or app store apps as cheap as possible. Users on iPad OS expect everything to be free, or if
00:13:35 ◼ ► Well, you could argue that 15 years ago, even more 17, Apple set a precedent and, um, and they,
00:13:46 ◼ ► you know, the, the, the, there could have been an alternative timeline in which, you know, three,
00:13:51 ◼ ► four, five years into the app store, maybe Apple listened and said, you know, uh, developers of
00:13:58 ◼ ► desktop class software. They're asking us to support pricing models that maybe also support higher
00:14:05 ◼ ► prices like paid upgrades, for example. And instead, very clearly they went into the subscription route
00:14:12 ◼ ► rather than, um, you know, desktop level pricing. And so I think, I think that sort of thing cuts both
00:14:20 ◼ ► ways, you know, um, that's the sort of experience that you get these days on the app store. And I think
00:14:26 ◼ ► it's quite ironic that Apple tried to make a push for desktop class software years ago on the iPad,
00:14:32 ◼ ► but the problem is that you don't really have the pricing structure. You don't have the, the sort of
00:14:36 ◼ ► economy on the app store to support a more classic, you know, uh, authored maybe, uh, level of desktop
00:14:44 ◼ ► software. And I think it's even more ironic that, um, you, you nominate for, you know, one of the finalists
00:14:52 ◼ ► for the app store awards this year on the Mac is Acorn, which is exactly the sort of experience that could
00:14:59 ◼ ► exist on iPad, but does not exist on iPad, partly because you don't, you cannot have the pricing model to
00:15:05 ◼ ► support that sort of experience on iPadOS. So just subscriptions don't count as the pricing model.
00:15:11 ◼ ► What about how many Mac apps, you know, including Acorn that don't have subscriptions? They have a
00:15:21 ◼ ► more traditional pricing system. They have a, they have a pay for updates, which you can do in the app
00:15:26 ◼ ► store. Sketch, I think is one of them. Where essentially the developer is hoping they will make
00:15:32 ◼ ► $50 a year or whatever, or whatever it might be, but they're, they're trying to convince you each time
00:15:38 ◼ ► to, to, to, to give them another 50 bucks for the, this year's features or whatever. Right.
00:15:44 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, like for developers, I actually think the subscription model is more, is, is better for
00:15:49 ◼ ► them. Like, but it's not what users want. Um, I think it's better for a developer to get $50 every
00:15:57 ◼ ► year rather than having to try and like bundle up a set of features to offer a price for. Yeah.
00:16:06 ◼ ► Yeah. But it's just, it's just not the way that the world has gone. It's not the way that people
00:16:16 ◼ ► Hey, speaking of software and developers, uh, we just Smith is hiring, which is very exciting.
00:16:24 ◼ ► There's a link in the show notes, but in short, uh, we are looking for a graphic designer to help us
00:16:30 ◼ ► with our widgets and wallpapers and some stuff in our other apps, pedometer plus plus and sleep plus
00:16:36 ◼ ► plus. Um, but primarily widget Smith, uh, looking at about 20 hours a week, we've got a whole thing,
00:16:42 ◼ ► a whole page you can go look at. But, um, if you're interested in that and you, after you read
00:16:46 ◼ ► through this and you feel like, Hey, my skills line up with this, uh, shoot us an email. There's an
00:16:53 ◼ ► Yeah. It's in the show notes or widget Smith dot app slash jobs. Uh, I will hype it up here and say
00:17:00 ◼ ► like working on widget Smith, like helping design widgets for widget Smith, your work will be seen
00:17:07 ◼ ► by just an astronomical amount of people. Like this is quite a, I think an incredible opportunity
00:17:13 ◼ ► for a designer. So please, if you, you know, if this is the kind of thing that interests you,
00:17:18 ◼ ► uh, please reach out. We're very excited about this as a group and, uh, we hope that we will find the
00:17:32 ◼ ► Well, it's fine. It's fine. You know, like maybe they made it themselves. Maybe it's like
00:17:36 ◼ ► fake Jimmoji and they just generate their own Moji. They generated their own Moji, you know?
00:17:41 ◼ ► Yeah. I would love it if we could hire someone, uh, from our audience. I think that'd be super cool.
00:17:54 ◼ ► Hello. Uh, just quickly, I want to, I wanted to mention Google Gemini 3. Um, so this is the,
00:18:00 ◼ ► this is the latest, uh, release by Google, uh, Gemini 3, uh, 3 Pro is out as of a couple of days
00:18:07 ◼ ► ago. Today, they released a Gemini 3, uh, 3.0 Pro image, which is their image generation stuff.
00:18:33 ◼ ► There are, as I told you, in total, if you count the big American companies and the Chinese ones,
00:18:45 ◼ ► And it seems that there's an ebb and flow to, to, to these companies and to these models.
00:18:49 ◼ ► And so every once in a while, there's a week, a specific week when a company decides, oh,
00:18:54 ◼ ► we're going to announce our next big thing, our next big model. The other companies to sort
00:18:59 ◼ ► of steal their thunder, uh, they also release stuff the same week. That's typically how it goes.
00:19:05 ◼ ► just sitting on stuff like all the time, like waiting for somebody else to go first. It's very
00:19:10 ◼ ► odd. It's very odd. I don't know exactly how it works. What I can tell you. So about Gemini 3,
00:19:16 ◼ ► I had early access to both Gemini 3.0 and the image generation stuff. Couldn't care less about the
00:19:22 ◼ ► image generation stuff personally. Um, seems to be quite impressive. Not really my thing. Um,
00:19:41 ◼ ► there's a whole conversation to be had about companies now optimizing for those benchmarks.
00:19:46 ◼ ► like the, it's, it's, it's actually called the benchmarking, um, is often referred to like,
00:19:52 ◼ ► they try to specifically optimize the model for specific tasks that are then measured in these
00:19:58 ◼ ► benchmarks. So Gemini 3 is topping all of the benchmarks aside from coding, where as of yesterday,
00:20:06 ◼ ► OpenAI now has the best coding model in the world, like 0.7% better than Claude, but whatever.
00:20:16 ◼ ► Uh, I didn't really like Gemini 3.0. I found it very bland and I really dislike the Gemini app. Um,
00:20:30 ◼ ► I thought the Gemini was gonna offer some kind of integrations now like MCP or external tools. No,
00:20:46 ◼ ► quite boring and bland. And then yesterday I was comparing some outputs between multiple models
00:20:51 ◼ ► and I don't know. I got better results out of, uh, out of Kimi K2 and, and Claude than Gemini 3. Um,
00:21:00 ◼ ► and there's also the classic Google problem that is now occurring in, in separate, like in,
00:21:05 ◼ ► in distinct ways, but it's the same problem, which is Google has too many similar things
00:21:12 ◼ ► that are powered by Gemini. Um, for example, I was, um, there was this post by Ethan Malik, um,
00:21:19 ◼ ► uh, saying that, uh, Google now offers four different ways to talk to chatbots about academic
00:21:26 ◼ ► papers. And, uh, uh, by my account, they offer four different ways to code with Gemini. So you have the
00:21:35 ◼ ► Gemini 3 chatbot, uh, you have Jules, which is a coding agent, you have Gemini CLI, which is a
00:21:42 ◼ ► terminal agent, and then you have Google anti-gravity, which is their new desktop IDE, sort of like VS code
00:21:49 ◼ ► fork. So this is the classic Google, you know, pretty much just like in the Google messaging days
00:21:56 ◼ ► that they used to have like four or five different messaging apps. Now they have four different ways to
00:22:01 ◼ ► use Gemini for the same tasks. So fragmentation will always be Google's issue. It seems. And look,
00:22:09 ◼ ► I'm sure, I'm sure that this is a really big and powerful model. I'm just saying that with the prompts
00:22:28 ◼ ► It is a thing for Google. And then there are like, there are specific issues of Gemini. Like for
00:22:33 ◼ ► example, Gemini is, has never been as good as Claude or, uh, GPT-5 at following your instructions.
00:22:41 ◼ ► Like for example, let's say you're vibe coding a simple HTML webpage and, and, and you tell Claude or
00:22:47 ◼ ► chat GPT, like don't touch anything else, but make this change. Like don't touch everything else is
00:22:53 ◼ ► working, but make this specific change. And chances are that Sonnet 4.5 or GPT-5 will do what you ask.
00:23:00 ◼ ► Like they will leave the rest alone and they will change that, just that specific thing that you're
00:23:05 ◼ ► asking about. Gemini will just rewrite everything. We'll just say, ah, yes, I have identified the issue.
00:23:11 ◼ ► Here's your new webpage. And you're like, no, I asked you not to touch the rest. So Gemini has always had
00:23:17 ◼ ► that tendency to do that. And it seems like Gemini 3 continues to have that. And yes, it's always been
00:23:23 ◼ ► like you have, like imagine the Venn diagram, like you have Grok, which is absolutely unhinged. And then
00:23:32 ◼ ► you have GPT-5.1, which is now trying to be a little more emotional, a little more like a 4.0. Then you have
00:23:39 ◼ ► Claude. Claude is the fancy guy, you know, the academic guys. Claude is like, oh, let me tell
00:23:43 ◼ ► you a story. You know, Claude is the more poetic one. Go figure. They ripped off a million books to
00:23:50 ◼ ► make it talk like that. And then you have Gemini, which is like supposed to be, I guess, like the
00:23:56 ◼ ► nerdy scientist of the bunch. I just find it pretty boring, to be honest. So give it a try,
00:24:09 ◼ ► I really struggle with this, like, you know, it feels like people that are more plugged in
00:24:21 ◼ ► Like, I feel like there is a lot of like moving backwards and forwards between whoever's best.
00:24:27 ◼ ► I just feel like I have not got the desire or energy to like do that, right? Like to be like,
00:24:35 ◼ ► all right, now I'm going to go here. Now I'm going to go there. Now I'm going to go here. Because it
00:24:39 ◼ ► feels like it changed. Like it feels like in like two weeks time, there's a better one. And it's just,
00:24:44 ◼ ► That's the beauty of it for me, because it's giving me that energy that I was missing from early app store days. And that part of me has been dormant for like, I can absolutely see why it tickles your brain, right? That like, here's a new to do app, here's a new to do app, here's a new, like, it's like that.
00:25:02 ◼ ► I started Max Stories because of that, because of that feeling. And I have been unable to satisfy that feeling for a long time. And so this, yes, it's frustrating. And it's a huge waste of time, if you look at it from that perspective. But there's also for some people, the beauty of it, it's like embracing the instability of it all.
00:25:26 ◼ ► Yeah, sure. No, I get it. But like, for me, at least the difference here compared to things that have come before, like those early app store days, it's like, if I'm just using ChatGPT, I'm just going to give it like a few months, and like, it will just improve again.
00:25:39 ◼ ► I think it's helpful with these things to, and I can send you, I can send you a short, I know that you don't like to read, but there's a really good article, again, by, again, by, by, by author, and he's a professor at Wharton.
00:25:56 ◼ ► Ethan Malik. There's this article titled, An Opinionated Guide to Using AI Right Now. It's like a very simple guide to like, okay, what should I use? And the gist of it is like, use any modern reasoning model, and you're gonna be fine.
00:26:26 ◼ ► Oh, I saw you posting about this. You didn't like the personality. You know, it's got new buttons where you can like...
00:26:31 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not just about that. I like, I, I appreciate the, um, more of the, uh, anthropic mindset of like, uh, reject slop as much as possible, like images and fake videos and stuff like that.
00:26:48 ◼ ► Yeah, but like, general, I get, for my taste, better vibes from anthropic than open AI.
00:26:58 ◼ ► Um, but the gist of the article is, pick a reasoning model today. You're gonna be fine. And then, to really evaluate how AI is changing, check in twice a year. Like, observe the progress every, every six months, and you're gonna see the progress. If you just stay tuned in on a week-by-week basis, and you don't want to, you're gonna lose your mind. Instead, check in twice a year, every six months.
00:27:34 ◼ ► This episode of Connected is brought to you by Ecamm. If you're a Mac user and you're creating video or podcast, you should check out Ecamm.
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00:30:05 ◼ ► The phrase, a piece of cloth, that Apple refer to the iPhone Pocket in their press release, actually is referring to a specific series of art pieces by that name created by Issey Miyake.
00:30:21 ◼ ► So, I will put a link in the show notes to a collection at the Met, which is showing this.
00:30:28 ◼ ► It's essentially, this was an idea of creating fashion and clothing with kind of this like woven material process.
00:30:44 ◼ ► A piece of cloth, or APOC, was the creation of a garment that is cut directly from a single piece of woven fabric.
00:30:58 ◼ ► The show that this innovation originally appeared in demonstrated a new way of creating a garment through 3D knitting.
00:31:08 ◼ ► And the models in Apple's press release are wearing a piece of cloth, or APOC, Able, which is a line by Issey Miyake.
00:31:15 ◼ ► And I actually, I wish I would have thought of this, because I follow someone on Instagram who creates, he's like a fashion designer.
00:31:29 ◼ ► And there is like a way that these, that T-shirts, there are these really expensive T-shirts that you can buy from Japan that are made on these like loom, like weaving machines, where it weaves them as one continuous thing.
00:32:06 ◼ ► But I thought, like everybody else did, assumably, all the people, except for the people that know about this, that that was just like a quote from Issey Miyake of like, this is what our inspiration was.
00:32:20 ◼ ► But no, it's actually referring to a thing that the titular founder of the company created as an art piece, but then turned into a way in which some of their clothing is made.
00:32:40 ◼ ► So it's like this, I guess it's just, I can kind of see it when I look at it, that it's essentially like, it's just made in one piece and then sewn together, I guess is the way that it's done.
00:32:55 ◼ ► But maybe this shows something about like, they are creating this product for a specific type of person that maybe would just know this.
00:33:06 ◼ ► I mean, this is kind of getting back to some of what we were talking about last time as to who is this for.
00:33:22 ◼ ► And also, by the way, because while I've been looking at Ariana Grande's stories throughout the last few days, she's using an iPhone 16 Pro.
00:34:22 ◼ ► Um, I could see that the long version of this would be more useful to most people than the short version, because that's the one you can actually wear around your body.
00:34:34 ◼ ► And you could do with that one, what you do with this one, which is like tie it onto things like realistically, the short version, you would either carry it like a, like a purse in your hand, or you can kind of loop it around itself and tie it onto things.
00:34:47 ◼ ► You could do with the long version, but I, I knew I would, that this wasn't going to be something that I would wear.
00:35:01 ◼ ► So like, there is this funny thing of like, there are lots of takes and lots of criticisms, but also they sold all of them.
00:35:24 ◼ ► Um, if you search for iPhone pocket on Instagram, you see lots of very stylish, fashionable people making this thing look cool.
00:35:37 ◼ ► and thought it was ridiculous, I do not think there is anything that could convince you that it is not ridiculous, right?
00:35:43 ◼ ► Like, I, I don't think that there is anything to this product that can, that would make you like, feel like, oh, actually I could be turned around on this.
00:35:52 ◼ ► Like, I, I don't, I think if you had a very, um, harsh reaction to it, that nothing's going to, going to change that.
00:36:00 ◼ ► Uh, putting the iPhone into the, into the iPhone pocket takes a little bit of getting used to.
00:36:07 ◼ ► But once you do, I can very easily see how something like this could become second nature to someone.
00:36:13 ◼ ► Like in the way that like, I have a pair of chinos that have a particular pocket for my iPhone inside of the pocket.
00:36:19 ◼ ► So like inside of my main pocket, there's a little zip and you unzip the zipper and put your phone in and zip it in.
00:36:26 ◼ ► When I first started doing that, it took me a while to get used to the action of unzip, take out, put back in, zip up.
00:36:41 ◼ ► You kind of, you take your phone, you kind of like slide it into one side in the, in the opening, and then you can essentially do the same on the other.
00:37:11 ◼ ► I think, I actually, I don't know if, I don't recall what he thought of this product, but I actually, in using it, this is, this is definitely for John Syracuse.
00:37:50 ◼ ► And like, so I imagined I would, you know, I could put this in like a travel kit or something.
00:37:56 ◼ ► You know, like if I'm on a plane and then I could like hang my phone up and like I could charge it or whatever.
00:38:01 ◼ ► You know, like I thought like that in me trying to imagine where am I going to use this thing that I now own?
00:38:07 ◼ ► Like I could imagine, you know, or like you're in a tiny hotel room and there's nowhere to put your phone.
00:38:17 ◼ ► Your phone becomes hangable and you could just put your phone in upside down and plug it in.
00:38:32 ◼ ► And in, so like, it's like this kind of like envelope with a handle on the top and the box that that comes in had a space for the handle that it was hung on.
00:38:47 ◼ ► But there was just like so much cardboard in this box to be able to kind of like hang it properly.
00:38:56 ◼ ► And on the reverse side is like all of the Apple stuff that you would find on the back of an Apple product.
00:39:02 ◼ ► So their logo, all the barcodes and like the, the, the text that they put, like the regulatory text, that was all Apple.
00:39:12 ◼ ► So my ultimate feeling on this product, the iPhone pocket is the same as I felt about it last week.
00:39:24 ◼ ► And I'm, and I mean, always intrigued and excited by Apple doing things that are weird.
00:39:35 ◼ ► And trying to understand the decisions that they make is kind of one of the things that we all enjoy the most.
00:39:41 ◼ ► And I, you know, I've been, I've found it interesting in the, in over the last week or so to try and think about why have they done this?
00:39:49 ◼ ► And the main thing that I came to is the same as I did last time, which is just like, there are just enough people, including Alan Dimeshoff, who are very focused on fashion at Apple.
00:39:58 ◼ ► And the idea of being able to do this collaboration with a very well-renowned fashion house was intriguing to them.
00:40:17 ◼ ► They, they are, they are finding many ways for people to be able to display their iPhone.
00:40:35 ◼ ► You can understand from an image of it, other than the way it feels and the way it feels, it feels like a very nice, very well-made thing.
00:41:57 ◼ ► There were years where none of us had ever heard of any of the apps, which I don't think
00:43:54 ◼ ► Integrates with calendar and reminders made by a really, really good indie team who recently released for iOS 26, Awake, which is a smart alarm clock that's based on the new alarm kit feature.
00:44:27 ◼ ► It's like, there are multiple apps that we know people that work on them, as well as things we don't.
00:44:39 ◼ ► And I also think they've done a better job of this with the Design Awards, too, over the last few years.
00:45:02 ◼ ► Prince of Persia is sad because it's made by Ubisoft, and Ubisoft shut that team down and then ported it to other platforms, which is a heartbreak.
00:46:02 ◼ ► No, I think Cyberpunk's going to win because Apple are just so grateful that they brought
00:46:08 ◼ ► Apple Arcade Game of the Year, Katomari Damacy Rolling Live, PGA Tour Pro Golf, and What the
00:46:38 ◼ ► And my theory is, this exists, so people, because I saw recently, I think it was iJustine did
00:46:50 ◼ ► It's like, I feel like something like Camo Studio exists, so things like that can be made.
00:46:54 ◼ ► But yeah, D-Day, The Camera Soldier, which I heard was like, I haven't played this one,
00:47:05 ◼ ► You can go through a bunch of stuff there for, I guess, people who are making these things
00:47:19 ◼ ► Apple Watch App of the Year, Go Club, which is a hydration and activity app, Pro Camera by
00:48:26 ◼ ► There's some apps there for like accessibility and privacy and focusing and stuff like that.
00:49:13 ◼ ► Someone was going to like, their company had dissolved and they were going to just mail
00:50:49 ◼ ► I'll be excited if people go to GiveRelay.com and become a member or give that membership
00:51:03 ◼ ► That makes a show like Connected Pro, which is the ad-free and longer version of the show
00:51:21 ◼ ► Because not only are you supporting one of the shows that you love, you're getting additional
00:51:53 ◼ ► We have very long-running bits that only occur in Connected Pro and you could get all of
00:52:19 ◼ ► Yeah, so the idea is that they're making it easier to create split views on iPad OS 26.2
00:52:36 ◼ ► One of the criticisms that I saw when iPad OS 26 was introduced from a lot of people who
00:52:43 ◼ ► used to rely on split view and slide over was that Apple was making it too difficult to just
00:52:51 ◼ ► If you just wanted to have a split screen UI with one app on one side and another app on the other side.
00:53:00 ◼ ► But a lot of people, I guess, they just wanted to have the older system where you could just pick up an icon from the dock, drop it somewhere on screen, and, you know, create a split view with two simple sort of flick gestures.
00:53:17 ◼ ► Like, there's been over the years a whole conversation about the iPad and about how multitasking was sort of implemented.
00:53:29 ◼ ► But for a lot of people, those gestures were also confusing because they accidentally got into a multitasking state that they didn't know how to get out of.
00:53:39 ◼ ► It appears that Apple is now sort of trying to find a balance of all the multitasking systems that they have had over the years.
00:53:46 ◼ ► So now, whether you're using the new iPadOS 26 windowing or stage manager, you can now drop windows on screen with the same old gestures from before.
00:53:59 ◼ ► So from the dock, from Spotlight, from the app library too, I think, you can start dragging an icon and it'll morph into the familiar sort of rectangle shape.
00:54:10 ◼ ► Now, what's different here is that they are using a visual indicator to signify what's going to happen when you let go of the rectangle that you're dragging.
00:54:31 ◼ ► And they brought back slide over with this UI element, this little translucent pulling indicator that when you hit the slide over window, you would see this pulling indicator at the edge of the display.
00:54:48 ◼ ► Now, that UI element is being used to tell you visually that when you let go of a rectangle of a window that you're dragging, it's going to become either a split view or a slide over.
00:55:09 ◼ ► You pick up an icon from the dock in 26.2, you start dragging, the icon becomes a window rectangle.
00:55:18 ◼ ► When you go to either the left or the right sides and sort of enough toward the edge of the screen, the pulling indicator comes up.
00:55:28 ◼ ► When the pulling indicator comes up, it means that if you let go, you're going to create a split screen.
00:55:37 ◼ ► However, if you actually drag the icon onto the pulling indicator, it's going to have a little animation and you're going to create a slide over instantly.
00:55:55 ◼ ► You're going to drop the icon inside the indicator that is going to morph and play a little container animation.
00:56:07 ◼ ► I mean, if you are familiar with these gestures, it is an easier way to quickly create a split view on screen.
00:56:15 ◼ ► Just pick up Safari, you know, drop it on the left, pick up Notes, drop it on the right.
00:57:01 ◼ ► If I, it felt like I couldn't take that and just drag, like, it was, I'm already looking at it.
00:57:28 ◼ ► Why can't I do, I mean, I know you don't know the answer to this, but what, I mean, I feel
00:57:36 ◼ ► They have those flick gestures for windows, which I personally find a little hard to use because
00:57:41 ◼ ► getting the momentum or like the acceleration of your finger just right can be a little challenging.
00:57:53 ◼ ► Maybe, I don't know, do a little shake of the window and you trigger a split view somehow.
00:57:59 ◼ ► But they have those flick gestures for actual windows on screen that I find kind of challenging
00:58:35 ◼ ► Now, though, they have that little triangle on the left side of the screen that is easier
00:58:40 ◼ ► to understand than, you know, a rectangle changing the shape ever so subtly under your finger.
00:58:53 ◼ ► Like, I guess what's interesting is that they haven't stopped listening to feedback for iPad
00:59:04 ◼ ► And I don't know, I had this thought this week of like, iPad multitasking, to borrow a term
00:59:18 ◼ ► But iPad multitasking is the most multi-modal version of multitasking that Apple has ever made.
00:59:43 ◼ ► Like, you have so many different ways to engage with multitasking that you just, you know,
00:59:52 ◼ ► Which makes me wonder if they're doing all this work because the Mac is also going to be a multi-modal
01:00:41 ◼ ► It's like, it's better to have a lot of options and have to explain them than just to disappoint
01:00:48 ◼ ► It feels like, you know, like they've, I think I saw Steve Trouton Smith say that like, you
01:00:53 ◼ ► know, they've done more in the last two months than they ever did during the stage manager
01:00:58 ◼ ► And, but I think that that is an important thing because I think the speed at which Apple
01:01:03 ◼ ► is iterating and adding new features suggests that the underlying technology of the new
01:01:14 ◼ ► That going back to the drawing board was actually very important because they're actually now able
01:01:20 ◼ ► to address the frustrations that people are having rather than what they had before, which
01:01:25 ◼ ► was just like, oh, sorry, like we'll rewrite it, I guess, like is essentially what we've got
01:01:40 ◼ ► I think like I'm still getting, there's still like command H seems to hide an app, not go
01:01:48 ◼ ► So like if I'm, again, this is stage manager problems, maybe just like gets rid of whatever
01:01:55 ◼ ► And if I quit an app, it still shows in the stage manager preview area rather than actually
01:02:03 ◼ ► So please, Apple, please fix, please revert whatever it was you were doing keyboard shortcut
01:02:14 ◼ ► I like that there you've added more keyboard shortcuts, but let's, let's just like refine them a little
01:02:21 ◼ ► But yeah, I think it's really interesting that they're continuing to make more and more tweaks
01:02:33 ◼ ► I hope that this will be enough for the, the split few slide over people, you know, like
01:02:39 ◼ ► that they, that they're, this will be enough, but I feel like it won't be, but I feel like
01:03:03 ◼ ► Like you can use it one app at a time, or you can use stage manager, or you can use all
01:03:16 ◼ ► And I think that's, I think that's tough, but there is something funny about Apple having
01:03:28 ◼ ► I mean, Mac OS has spaces and expose and dashboard or not dashboard, mission control, excuse me.
01:03:35 ◼ ► And all of these things, but they all are kind of on the same level, same playing field where
01:03:43 ◼ ► And I think that's good, but there is also something fun, just a little bit funny about
01:04:00 ◼ ► Like, again, it's like the, you know, the Mac, you can set up in so many ways to do exactly
01:04:06 ◼ ► And it's tweakable and hackable in a way to, you know, to really get it the way that you
01:04:12 ◼ ► So if we're not going to be able to do that with the, like the underlying platform of what
01:04:19 ◼ ► iPad OS is, at least Apple providing lots of options for people to be able to do, to like
01:04:36 ◼ ► You've got like single app mode, you've got like multiple window mode and stage manager.
01:04:42 ◼ ► And then within the two multitasking modes, you've now got, you can just drag things around
01:04:59 ◼ ► Maybe you mentioned it's Federico and I missed it, but like that you, it's better than the
01:05:05 ◼ ► old split view because you have infinite resizability between the two windows, which you didn't have
01:05:10 ◼ ► It was like there were set periods and now you can, you can make it as much as you want.
01:05:18 ◼ ► I feel like like now you can, you can really like make the split that makes the most sense
01:05:29 ◼ ► I mean, I'm sure that this is very intriguing to you, Federico, like that they keep, keep playing
01:05:35 ◼ ► I guess this is exactly the kind of thing you would want to see as someone who's cared so
01:05:58 ◼ ► Like they can't, you know, get to a certain time and they're not going to keep adding new
01:06:17 ◼ ► Because they've added in, you know, a version of the existing features, plus not really they've
01:06:28 ◼ ► So I would expect that this will probably be the last multitasking change of any significance
01:06:40 ◼ ► Is it possible that, yes, I think Apple is like following up on what Craig and Federico
01:06:54 ◼ ► I mean, adding slide over back, adding this back, like, is it listening to customers or is
01:07:08 ◼ ► But I think I get what you're saying of like, the new system allowed for this was seemingly
01:07:41 ◼ ► We just assume, oh, they're listening to people, but maybe that was the plan all along and we're
01:07:45 ◼ ► just inferring that they're listening to people because we want to feel good about ourselves
01:07:51 ◼ ► While in fact, they just, while in fact, they just had this plan and we're just saying,
01:08:05 ◼ ► As long as at the end of the day, the features that people want and depend on an iPad OS,