00:00:00 ◼ ► This is Upgrade, episode 630 for July 27th, 2026. Today's show is brought to you by Backblaze, Claude, and Sentry. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell.
00:00:24 ◼ ► Hi, Mike Hurley. It doesn't feel like July 27th. It doesn't, because it is the Summer of Fun!
00:00:30 ◼ ► And we're recording this episode like a week early, because we're, I think, both traveling?
00:00:39 ◼ ► This one's on me? All right, I'll take this one. So we're actually going to do a fully out-of-time
00:00:45 ◼ ► episode today, and we've got a fun thing planned. But before we talk about that, I have a Snell
00:00:51 ◼ ► This comes from Stephen Hackett, who wants to know, does Jason still shut down his Mac at
00:01:10 ◼ ► No. It won't be. No, no, no. Because I'm doing it here, and Stephen's not on that episode,
00:01:18 ◼ ► We're recording so far in advance because of my travel. I am traveling this week, last week,
00:01:26 ◼ ► It's summer. This is why we do the Summer of Fun. And actually, the way that this was phrased
00:01:30 ◼ ► when I first saw it was, does Jason still shut down his laptop at night? But that misses the
00:01:42 ◼ ► And at the end of the day, I would leave my garage, and that was it for the day. And I wasn't going to
00:01:51 ◼ ► come back in here and do another couple of things or whatever. And so I would shut down because it
00:01:56 ◼ ► has the advantages of sometimes things get weird after the Mac has been running for a little while.
00:02:00 ◼ ► I would just shut down in the morning. I'd start up. It also meant that I had a switching power
00:02:04 ◼ ► power strip. So when I shut down the computer, it would turn off my studio display. I have some
00:02:12 ◼ ► USB devices that I don't want. I really just don't want the USB device on 24 hours a day.
00:02:17 ◼ ► They're attached to the studio display. So when the computer goes down, all the power goes down,
00:02:23 ◼ ► and that means the USB devices go down. It's a very good system. When I got a laptop, I did change
00:02:29 ◼ ► things, because now that I have a laptop, I feel like you don't shut down a laptop at night. You just
00:02:37 ◼ ► laptop, you just put it to sleep. And in fact, since I'm doing the single cable life, what I do at the
00:02:43 ◼ ► end of the day is unplug the cable. And that does everything you need, doesn't it? And in fact, it turns
00:02:50 ◼ ► out that although it's a little bit more carefully set, I have a, I have a Thunderbolt hub and the
00:02:57 ◼ ► Thunderbolt hub draws power because it's powering the laptop and that I can set that. So when I unplug
00:03:06 ◼ ► my laptop, the Thunderbolt dock knows it's not plugged in anymore. It's not drawing power, at which point my
00:03:12 ◼ ► switching power supply turns off and my studio display loses power, my USB interface to audio
00:03:20 ◼ ► loses power, everything shuts down. And that's what I want. So that's the method now is I don't put my
00:03:26 ◼ ► computer to sleep at the end of the day. I unplug it and it's usually lid closed. So I literally,
00:03:32 ◼ ► literally just pull the plug out and then walk away. And so it's asleep sitting on my desk. And in fact,
00:03:38 ◼ ► if I need to do something, I can come back in and plug it back in, or I can pick up the laptop.
00:03:42 ◼ ► I had that happen the other week where I was working on something out here late in the evening.
00:03:46 ◼ ► Lauren was working late and I was working out here on, um, on, uh, something using cloud code. I was
00:03:53 ◼ ► building a tool for us to use for design in California. And, um, I was still in it and, uh,
00:04:00 ◼ ► she came home, we watched some TV and I was like, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta finish this thing.
00:04:04 ◼ ► And I thought about like, maybe I could do like a screen share for my iPad. And I thought, Oh,
00:04:10 ◼ ► into the house and keep working on it, which is a thing you can do with a laptop, which is nice.
00:04:15 ◼ ► So that's my answer is I have a similar setup, but, uh, and I find value just as I found value in
00:04:22 ◼ ► shutting down at the end of the day, because it's creating a little bit more of a barrier
00:04:25 ◼ ► for going back out and doing a little more work. Cause I try to, when I'm done for the day,
00:04:31 ◼ ► I try to mark it as done for the day, especially since I do a lot of podcasts in the evening for
00:04:35 ◼ ► incomparable and stuff. Like when it's a day where I feel like, you know, this is it. And I'm, I'm,
00:04:41 ◼ ► it's going to be dinner and watching some TV and stuff like that. Uh, I want there to be a little bit
00:04:48 ◼ ► more of a barrier there. It's just, now it's the pulling the plug instead. Pull, I pull that
00:04:52 ◼ ► Thunderbolt cable out. I'm happy. Cause if you was shutting down a laptop every day, that would be
00:04:57 ◼ ► madness. That's madness. That's how, that's not how you do it. I just need a barrier. And so that's
00:05:02 ◼ ► my, that's my little ceremony is, uh, I pull the plug and that's my, that's it. Yeah. If you would
00:05:10 ◼ ► like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of upgrade, just go to upgradefeedback.com
00:05:15 ◼ ► and send in your snow talk question. So today's episode is a Macintosh workflow special. We're going
00:05:22 ◼ ► to talk about our Macs. We're going to talk about how we use them and how we got our stuff done and
00:05:27 ◼ ► also recommend some of our favorite utilities, uh, for people to use. And this came from a couple of
00:05:33 ◼ ► questions that we've gotten recently ish. Pierre-Luc wrote in and said, I bought an M3 Pro MacBook Pro
00:05:39 ◼ ► in April, and I'm still wondering what are some of the best utilities you think are essential for you?
00:05:44 ◼ ► What are some recommendations you have? And Dylan wrote in and said, I just replaced my MacBook Pro
00:05:49 ◼ ► with an M5 MacBook Air. It's been so long since I got a new OS that I've forgotten things I may have
00:05:54 ◼ ► missed out on. What should be first on my list of things to try? Yeah. You left out the important
00:05:58 ◼ ► thing. Dylan replaced a 2014 MacBook Pro. Oh yes. Wow. Okay. That's a good time. You're going to have a
00:06:04 ◼ ► good time. So this, thank you for that. I, I, when I saw 2014, I was like, that wasn't that long ago.
00:06:11 ◼ ► That, that was the thought I had in my head, but no, that's, that's a very long time ago. Uh, and so
00:06:15 ◼ ► when thinking about, you know, we knew we had this episode, you, as you suggested, like we've kept
00:06:20 ◼ ► some of these questions in a document for a while. It's like, oh, we could build whole episodes around
00:06:24 ◼ ► this. And so this is a great time to do it. Um, and we have like a few different things that we're
00:06:29 ◼ ► going to do in today's episode, but I wanted to start out Jason and just kind of give a refresh of
00:06:35 ◼ ► our kind of our max our base, the basics of them and some of the specs that we have. So you were just
00:06:41 ◼ ► talking about your laptop. What is your laptop? Uh, I have an M4 max MacBook pro the, the 14 inch,
00:06:51 ◼ ► the smaller one. And again, it's closed most of the time. Although, um, when I visited you in London,
00:06:57 ◼ ► you, as we'll get to in a moment, you have two monitors attached and I, I found some of your,
00:07:03 ◼ ► I found your ways interesting and intriguing. And I thought, could I attach another monitor to my setup?
00:07:11 ◼ ► And then I thought to myself, wait a second, I have another monitor attached to my setup. It's my laptop.
00:07:16 ◼ ► Yeah. So since then, when I'm recording a show, I actually open the MacBook pros, beautiful display
00:07:25 ◼ ► that I almost never use. I open it and, um, and I'm monitoring our recording over on that display.
00:07:34 ◼ ► It's not a display I need to really interact with, which is one of the reasons why I don't really love
00:07:37 ◼ ► multiple displays is that I just, I I'm always going to look at the display in front of me. And the idea
00:07:42 ◼ ► of doing any detailed work on a display that's kind of like off to the side is not something that
00:07:47 ◼ ► interests me, but it's, it's been very useful. I also will occasionally during the world cup,
00:07:52 ◼ ► I was putting a world cup games over there while I was doing work. I just have them on over there in
00:07:56 ◼ ► the corner or a baseball game or whatever. And they just kind of like are there and it's ambient. It's,
00:08:01 ◼ ► it's not my focus, but it's around. Um, so I'll do that. But primarily I have a studio display.
00:08:06 ◼ ► Um, I have a Cal digit, uh, Thunderbolt dock that is attached. So that's providing power. I had that
00:08:13 ◼ ► single cable, um, coming off of there. I've got my, you know, audio interface and I've got a backup
00:08:18 ◼ ► drive. Um, trick to the backup drive for when you're yanking a cord out of your laptop every
00:08:24 ◼ ► night is, uh, there's, I wrote about this at six colors. You can set, uh, a USB drive to not auto
00:08:30 ◼ ► mount in Mac OS. And then I use carbon copy cloner to, to clone to that drive. And, uh, it mounts it at
00:08:38 ◼ ► like two 30 in the afternoon. It mounts it, it, it does a run and then it dismounts it. So when I
00:08:42 ◼ ► unplugged the computer at, at, at, you know, five or six or whenever I'm done for the day,
00:08:47 ◼ ► I'm not making everybody angry because I pulled a plug while there was a drive connected. So that's,
00:08:55 ◼ ► that's part of my strategy there. So yeah, a bunch of those peripherals and, uh, uh, the specs,
00:09:02 ◼ ► it's 36 gigs of Ram, uh, and a two terabyte SSD and, uh, and, and yeah, that, and it's in,
00:09:14 ◼ ► Only my rainbow, six color rainbow Apple decal on top of the Apple logo, but otherwise no.
00:09:21 ◼ ► So the machine that I'm talking to you on right now is my M4 Pro Mac mini. Uh, it has 64 gigabytes
00:09:29 ◼ ► of Ram, uh, two terabyte SSD. Um, and it's connected to my old studio display that I've had for a while
00:09:40 ◼ ► I have a Dell monitor, um, which was the monitor that I had before. Um, actually I had, I had an LG
00:09:48 ◼ ► and a Dell monitor. They, they were one of those monitors I was using before the studio display came
00:09:54 ◼ ► out. So with my Mac book on my second desk, cause I have a specific desk for recording podcasts,
00:09:59 ◼ ► which is more kind of like enclosed in my studio. People see it in the video and I have,
00:10:04 ◼ ► it's more soundproofed, right? Cause that's, yeah, you've got stuff, you've got panels around you.
00:10:08 ◼ ► Yeah. And a big curtain it's, and it's like a smaller, more enclosed kind of focus desk. And so
00:10:13 ◼ ► that's, I have like a, you know, like a fixed computer for that. And, and I, and I was using an,
00:10:17 ◼ ► an LG just, I was using a LG display here and I had a Dell display, um, on my, uh, the desk that I set
00:10:23 ◼ ► out to just do work. That's not recording podcasts. When the studio display came out, I then brought that
00:10:29 ◼ ► other monitor over and put it in portrait mode and put it to the side just to have audio hijack on
00:10:34 ◼ ► when I'm recording. So audio hijack just lives there. It's on the right hand side. Um, and, and it just
00:10:39 ◼ ► means that I, I never have to, I never get into a scenario where I could accidentally click something
00:10:45 ◼ ► that I don't want to. And, and I can always see it running whenever I want to look over and see it
00:10:50 ◼ ► running. I love it. That's what I'm doing right now. It's that, that I, I appreciate that approach.
00:10:54 ◼ ► I think it's very clever. This monitor is way too big though for this purpose. Like I think at some
00:10:59 ◼ ► point I would like a much smaller monitor that I could use this for, but it was kind of like, I have
00:11:03 ◼ ► it. So why not just use it for that? Just to make a suggestion, if at some point you have a leftover
00:11:11 ◼ ► unused iPad that supports, uh, what's it? Sidecar. Cause I've got, I've got an arm, an iPad mounting arm.
00:11:23 ◼ ► Yeah. And I can set it up where my iPad is right next to my display and a sidecar works. Okay.
00:11:35 ◼ ► Hmm. No, I don't. I mean, you do have to enable it, but it might connect every time after that.
00:11:42 ◼ ► I don't know. If it does automatic reconnection, then I would do it, but. But otherwise you could,
00:11:47 ◼ ► you could just get a small, a nice little. I want to get a little one. Hang out. Little guy.
00:11:51 ◼ ► Yeah. Cause this one is way too big, but it's just like, I have them huge and they're good
00:11:56 ◼ ► monitors. So it's like, well, I'm just going to use them, but it's, it goes way too tall.
00:11:59 ◼ ► You look like you're some weird commodities trader. Who's like, got the, got the data up
00:12:08 ◼ ► Uh, it does, it does introduce an issue for me, which I will talk about when we talk about some
00:12:13 ◼ ► essential apps and utilities right on in the episode. Um, uh, the main Mac that I use every
00:12:21 ◼ ► day is now my M5 MacBook air, which has 32 gigabytes of Ram, two terabytes of SSD. So I had an experience
00:12:29 ◼ ► yesterday where I was bouncing a logic project. I was like, I was getting ready to, to post an episode
00:12:34 ◼ ► of cortex, which again, summer of fun might be out like before. Anyway, who knows, but this is where
00:12:41 ◼ ► we are in the time vortex. Everybody knows who that guest is. Wow. What a guest you got on.
00:12:45 ◼ ► What a guest it's this computer is so much faster. Yeah. Like this was, this is like the thing where
00:12:51 ◼ ► I've noticed it the most of like watching logic bounce previous computer you were using for logic.
00:12:56 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So like from the M2 to M5. Yes. Yeah. It's a little bit like faster
00:13:03 ◼ ► processor, faster storage. Yeah. Yeah. And the, you know, I also like we make, I make YouTube
00:13:08 ◼ ► videos where it's kind of, I use an app called fusion cast to kind of just take a video, you give
00:13:12 ◼ ► it a thumbnail and just like makes it for you. It was done so quickly. Like, so I've, I've really
00:13:16 ◼ ► can note the speed now in a way that I haven't experienced yet. And also just in general as an
00:13:26 ◼ ► on that, um, desk, man, using a Mac in high refresh rate all the time is a treat. It is
00:13:36 ◼ ► a treat. Um, I, I love it. Like just surfing the web is so much nicer because like the pages
00:13:43 ◼ ► will just scroll smoothly. It really is excellent. Um, I have one more Mac in my life, which is
00:13:50 ◼ ► my M1 max MacBook pro, which has 64 gigabytes of Ram and two terabytes of storage that is
00:13:57 ◼ ► now kind of sitting as a network attached computer. Um, and it's doing some backup stuff for me.
00:14:04 ◼ ► And I'm going to do some file management stuff with that. There is still like a, it's like
00:14:10 ◼ ► a question in the air of what I'm going to do with that computer, but it's there now. It's
00:14:19 ◼ ► Okay. And it's open. It's open. Yeah. Yeah. That's the, that's the weird thing about using
00:14:25 ◼ ► a laptop as a server is you've got a laptop sitting there and you've got to put that sign on it.
00:14:29 ◼ ► That says, this is a lot. This is a server. Please do not touch. Yeah. But luckily no one's
00:14:33 ◼ ► ever here. It's got me. So that's true. Uh, Jason, where do you put the doc on your Mac?
00:14:39 ◼ ► Oh, are we doing that? Um, I am always a right doc person. Yeah. Me too. Right. Right doc is the
00:14:47 ◼ ► best place. It's just, I used to be when you could do it, a bottom right doc person. Yeah. Was that,
00:14:54 ◼ ► were you doing that with like P list hacks or, or was it, was it an option? I forget whether there was
00:15:01 ◼ ► an option or where there was a fairly simple utility that did it or whatever, but you could, you, you used
00:15:04 ◼ ► to be able to pin it at the bottom and now you have to just, and it's been so long now that I don't even
00:15:09 ◼ ► know if I would want it at the bottom. Cause it's been at the, in the center of the side for so long.
00:15:12 ◼ ► I think maybe the reason I liked it at the bottom is because the trash can is at the bottom. And that
00:15:17 ◼ ► means that's where the trash can was on the desktop on classic Mac OS was bottom, right? So maybe it felt
00:15:24 ◼ ► at home there. And then to specify about my doc, I have, I'm going to, I'm going to say here, one,
00:15:29 ◼ ► two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. I think I have 10 apps that are permanently in the
00:15:35 ◼ ► dock. And then three that are currently running in there. And then on the other side of that line,
00:15:41 ◼ ► I currently have three items, uh, which is my downloads folder, a, an experiment I am trying,
00:15:49 ◼ ► which is a saved search and the trash save search. You can save searches in finder and you can, uh,
00:16:01 ◼ ► drag them to the dock. And my thought there was, I wanted a list of my recent items in my stories
00:16:07 ◼ ► folder. My stories folder goes back. It auto files. I have Hazel auto file it, but it goes back,
00:16:13 ◼ ► you know, two or three weeks of the stories. These are stories that I've written or I've edited or I'm
00:16:19 ◼ ► working on. And what I wanted was like a little narrower view, like just show me the stories that
00:16:23 ◼ ► have been modified in the last five days or something like that. Because once you get a lot of things in a
00:16:27 ◼ ► folder in the dock, accessing the folder in the dock, it becomes a little more problematic. Um,
00:16:33 ◼ ► I'm trying it out. I'm not sure whether I will keep the saved, uh, or not, but I'm, I'm giving it,
00:16:39 ◼ ► I'm giving it a go. I think it's an interesting idea. I may just go back to putting my stories
00:16:43 ◼ ► folder in there. Um, I wish, I wish there were better options in, uh, how folders display in the dock.
00:16:53 ◼ ► That's a, that's a thing I should write about at some point. I wish, cause having quick access to
00:16:58 ◼ ► stuff on my Mac is really good. And I find that I go through this rigmarole of like, oh, the server
00:17:05 ◼ ► isn't connected. So I got to do this and then I click this and I bring this or like, I need to bring
00:17:08 ◼ ► these two windows up and I I'm realizing I might need to actually think of, um, some methods to make
00:17:15 ◼ ► those simpler because you know, me, and this is going to be a theme today. I like, I like an automation,
00:17:21 ◼ ► but it's truer to say what I don't like is repeating the same eight steps several times a
00:17:25 ◼ ► day when they're always the same. It's like, why am I doing this to myself? Yeah. So we may get
00:17:31 ◼ ► there. So I save search right now, but I may just go back to having my stories folder in there
00:17:35 ◼ ► because it's auto filing old stories into an archive folder. It's never that long. Um, but I was,
00:17:42 ◼ ► I was playing with the idea of it having to be even more constrained. It's like only five or six items,
00:17:46 ◼ ► which means I can very quickly open a story I'm working on. It's a nice idea. Uh, yeah, I'm
00:17:50 ◼ ► dark on the right side. I have like on this Mac, I have like 20 something apps in the doc. I actually
00:17:56 ◼ ► started, I mean, they're just things that I use a lot. I was thinking recently of like, I don't think
00:18:01 ◼ ► I ever launch apps from the doc. Like I don't even, Oh man, I don't even think I need one. Like I'm just
00:18:07 ◼ ► all spotlight. That's why I, that's why I have those apps over there is that they're the apps.
00:18:12 ◼ ► They're the apps I basically want on almost all the time. Yeah. And if they're not on, I like to see
00:18:18 ◼ ► that they're not on and be able to just get them on immediately. So like music, which I use, I use
00:18:24 ◼ ► music to play music while I'm working. It's in the doc and it's in the doc. It's not always running,
00:18:30 ◼ ► but it's there and I will get to it immediately. It's true. Could I not just do command space and launch
00:18:35 ◼ ► music? Well, I could, but I don't, I don't, I use that for like miscellaneous. So yeah, I could,
00:18:41 ◼ ► I mean, I could probably survive without a doc at all, but, uh, that's how I've chosen to use my doc
00:18:47 ◼ ► is, is for those like the top eight or whatever that, that if they're not open, they're probably
00:18:51 ◼ ► going to be open soon. And then, and then the running apps too. Yeah. Yeah. So I get it. Right.
00:18:57 ◼ ► Like I feel like I used, I just think over time, I just never really find myself clicking things in the
00:19:02 ◼ ► doc very much. I get it. I'm just, it should, my habit has been that way. Um, I know this of you,
00:19:09 ◼ ► but I want to talk about it. Desktop usage. I know that you use your desktop, right? You put things on
00:19:15 ◼ ► the desktop. Yep. And I have previously, I would say either made fun of you or said like, what are you
00:19:23 ◼ ► doing? Why do you do that? Jason, I'm becoming an active projects in the desktop kind of guy.
00:19:34 ◼ ► The thing is, is so we, we share project files with Dropbox and with a lot, the many things that
00:19:43 ◼ ► have gotten worse of Apple's file provider APIs. One of them is logic projects unzipped become a
00:19:55 ◼ ► There can be lots of issues. And so we have to zip them to share them with each other. And we're doing
00:20:00 ◼ ► a lot more of that. So when I unzip them, I have to put them on my desktop. There's nowhere else to
00:20:05 ◼ ► And so I'm becoming more of a like, and then everything's getting put on the desktop. And then
00:20:09 ◼ ► when the edit is complete, zipping up, moving all those files up into the cloud and then not doing
00:20:15 ◼ ► it anymore. So I'm becoming more of an active projects on the desktop kind of guy. Cause it's
00:20:19 ◼ ► the place. I don't know where else I put it. And the desktop is like the perfect place.
00:20:22 ◼ ► So yeah, I, um, desktop has always been a place where I put stuff that I want quick access to.
00:20:29 ◼ ► I currently have like three folders out on the desktop, but those are ones like there are reasons
00:20:39 ◼ ► I had lots of other places, but it is the, the whole idea. Like, like, first off, I will say
00:20:45 ◼ ► Apple lets you put things on the desktop for a reason, right? It's not for people. I hear from
00:20:51 ◼ ► people who are like, Oh, I don't like anything on the desktop. It's like, well, okay, that's your
00:20:54 ◼ ► choice. But like, it's not unnatural to have files on the desktop. In fact, I would say it's natural to
00:20:59 ◼ ► have files on the desktop because that's why you can do that. They let you do that. So I use it as
00:21:05 ◼ ► that. I try not to be messy. I try to organize things in folders when I, when I have that we're
00:21:11 ◼ ► working, you know, I'm working on this video, uh, tool for design in California. And I've got a bunch
00:21:18 ◼ ► of reference files for that in order to test it. And I could have them scattered all over or I could
00:21:24 ◼ ► have them in the problem with the Dropbox file provider stuff is after a while, uh, the file
00:21:29 ◼ ► provider is like, this file is pretty big. I'll just delete it. And you can download it later.
00:21:33 ◼ ► And it's like, I don't want to download it later because I'm going to need it later and
00:21:40 ◼ ► out on the desktop in a folder. Um, the thing that has changed. So I, I used to be worse at
00:21:46 ◼ ► this. I used to have, I mean, I have a memory of a John Syracuse that needed to print a boarding
00:21:50 ◼ ► pass for his plane when he was out at WWDC. And I had him do it in my office at Macworld.
00:21:55 ◼ ► And that meant that he, it meant John got to see what my computer was like. And it was very much
00:22:00 ◼ ► one of those, like, I don't know how you live like this moments for John. He's like, this is,
00:22:04 ◼ ► what are you doing? And I'm like, just print your boarding pass, John. Um, I'm neater about it than I
00:22:10 ◼ ► used to be. I, I have more things in my finder sidebar where I can just drop things. I've, I'm more
00:22:16 ◼ ► organized. I have a stories folder where my working stories go in and they're not out on the desktop.
00:22:21 ◼ ► But the other thing that I've done that I don't do anywhere else because everywhere else on the,
00:22:27 ◼ ► in the finder, I am in list view. I'm a list view person. I've always been a list view person,
00:22:32 ◼ ► but on the desktop, it's obviously not list. You can't have a list on the desktop. It's icon view
00:22:42 ◼ ► on the desktop. And so I have it set to arrange. So it arranges itself automatically by, what is it?
00:22:56 ◼ ► By name. Okay. So basically I, I can't mess it up. The, the visual like files sitting out on the
00:23:06 ◼ ► desktop, they're always start at the top, right? And they're always going, I think by their name
00:23:10 ◼ ► alphabetically. And so if I drag something else out there, it kind of goes in this, in, in a spot.
00:23:14 ◼ ► They don't, they're not all scattered and messy anymore. They're just kind of in a, I don't use any
00:23:20 ◼ ► of this. I don't use stacks or anything like that to organize them. I just want it to be, um,
00:23:27 ◼ ► a little bit easier. So it's sort by name too. I feel like you've got to, got to do that. For me,
00:23:34 ◼ ► the, the thing that becomes a problem is my wife's desktop is like this. Things just start stacking on
00:23:41 ◼ ► top of each other because there's no more place for them anymore. And I think that is when we get
00:23:45 ◼ ► too far. Like if, if you can't see your desktop anymore because you just have like so much stuff
00:23:56 ◼ ► Yeah. Don't do it. Don't do it. At that point you should use the grouping stats or whatever
00:24:00 ◼ ► they've got. I said that to her. She's like, don't touch it. I was like, okay, fair enough. I'm looking,
00:24:04 ◼ ► you know, I get it, right? Like I get it. Uh, my last question for you in this segment.
00:24:11 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, like I just said, it's list for me. Okay. I, I, I am a, I'm somebody who comes from
00:24:18 ◼ ► classic Mac OS. Yeah. List view is the preferred view. And, uh, I know what you're going to say.
00:24:24 ◼ ► And so I'll just say from my perspective, people can do what they like. I find column view. Yeah.
00:24:31 ◼ ► An abomination. Okay. Foisted upon us by Steve jobs and the other people from next. And I hate it.
00:24:38 ◼ ► Okay. Well, I'm appreciative of it because I like column view. That's how I tend to navigate.
00:24:43 ◼ ► Uh, but I also enjoy list view. So like when I'm finding what I want, I'll use column view to get
00:24:48 ◼ ► there. And then I'm like, great. Now I can go into list view and arrange stuff. I like the combo.
00:24:57 ◼ ► Like, it's just like, I want you to look at this view and it's like, I don't want that,
00:25:01 ◼ ► but thank you for trying. It's also true. Yeah. It, um, there used to be like alternate browsers for the
00:25:07 ◼ ► Mac before OS 10 came out that, that were like, like column view. They were like little
00:25:12 ◼ ► disc browsers. And I, I never understood them either. And then when next, uh, came in and,
00:25:18 ◼ ► and obviously they liked, I mean, that's one of those things that I think it's just down to,
00:25:23 ◼ ► it's maybe more than Steve jobs was like, Steve jobs, like that view. And so it's in the Mac now.
00:25:27 ◼ ► Um, it's just like how Steve jobs really liked next email client. And that's why we have Apple mail.
00:25:32 ◼ ► It's because Steve jobs was like, yeah, well, are you kidding? I'm not reading my email on some
00:25:37 ◼ ► other program, bring it over. And they're like, yeah, yes, Steve. And probably they agreed. Cause
00:25:41 ◼ ► there are a bunch of next people too, but yeah, that's, that's fine. That's my column. I see the
00:25:45 ◼ ► utility of it. I see the, the, the kind of weirdness of me kind of doing command down to enter into a
00:25:50 ◼ ► folder and command up and navigating that way through the file system. It's a little bit weird.
00:26:01 ◼ ► This episode of upgrade is brought to you by backblaze. A question worth sitting with. If
00:26:12 ◼ ► iCloud will keep your current files in sync. Time machine is going to save those local snapshots for
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00:26:35 ◼ ► restrictions, a full year of version history, always accessible from any device. One install runs
00:26:42 ◼ ► quietly upgrade listeners get 20% off. You can start your free 15 day trial, no credit card required
00:26:48 ◼ ► at backblaze.com slash upgrade with the code upgrade 20. Our thanks to backblaze for their
00:26:54 ◼ ► support of this show and relay. So for this segment of the show, I believe you have some
00:27:01 ◼ ► questions for me. Yeah. I was inspired by your work on Cortex. Thank you. So, um, for the last
00:27:08 ◼ ► year or two, year and a half, year and a bit, year and a bit, um, you've been doing the gray is on leave
00:27:15 ◼ ► and you've been doing the state of the workflow interviews where you're talking to very interesting
00:27:19 ◼ ► people about how they get their work done. Yeah. And I was thinking it would be interesting to talk
00:27:27 ◼ ► about the state of your workflows and how you get some things done because that's not a, that's not
00:27:33 ◼ ► a thing that has happened on, on Cortex. You're, you're, you're asking the questions, not, although
00:27:38 ◼ ► I'd love you to get some like incredibly famous person on and say, let me tell you how I do my job.
00:27:43 ◼ ► So, so someone, a previous guest has wanted to do this. And so there is a possibility that I will do it
00:27:50 ◼ ► at some point in the future, but not, not in any time soon. Interesting. So, uh, I thought I'd start
00:27:55 ◼ ► with this show. What is your process for prepping for upgrade? Okay. So it's actually, it is an all week
00:28:04 ◼ ► thing with the majority of the work happening on Monday. So when I see things online that I think
00:28:12 ◼ ► are worth considering for conversation. So people posting articles, news breaking, things being shared
00:28:19 ◼ ► with me, um, I save them all in an Apple note. Um, I really love this system, like Apple note, the Apple
00:28:27 ◼ ► note share extensions really good. Um, and then I could just save links. And I like that in Apple notes,
00:28:32 ◼ ► it does the kind of rich link. So then when I go back and look at it later, I can very easily see
00:28:38 ◼ ► what the link is before I even click it. Like I get a little preview of like the headline and who wrote
00:28:42 ◼ ► it and that kind of thing. So I will add these things all through the week, but on Monday mornings,
00:28:48 ◼ ► I will sit down and go through my RSS feeds. Um, and I try to keep my RSS feeds relative, like the amount
00:28:54 ◼ ► of subscriptions relatively lean. Um, I've definitely gotten into that trap before I have way too many.
00:29:00 ◼ ► And at this point, I feel pretty good about what I've got. And especially for this show,
00:29:03 ◼ ► you know, I have a few trusted sources and I can, of news and I can get everything I need
00:29:08 ◼ ► from those. And it's the same thing that will go through my RSS feeds. I'm not reading the articles.
00:29:13 ◼ ► I'm finding the things that I think could be interesting. And then I'm adding them again
00:29:17 ◼ ► into that Apple note. Then, uh, I will go into the Apple note and I will rearrange these articles,
00:29:25 ◼ ► like the links into kind of chunks. So like the segment chunks. Right. Um, and then for building
00:29:32 ◼ ► and so that maybe I'm jumping ahead now, but then I will take those, I will open them all up,
00:29:37 ◼ ► uh, for each segment. I will read through all the articles and then I will start building the Google
00:29:43 ◼ ► Doc outline for that. Okay. So that's, that's when it goes to Google is after you open them out of,
00:29:49 ◼ ► out of notes. Then we build, cause we use a Google Doc. Yeah. Nothing's going into Google Docs until
00:29:54 ◼ ► I'm like, all right, I'm, I'm, I'm right in the show now. Okay. And this is where we take advantage
00:29:58 ◼ ► of, uh, our time difference because I'm, um, I'm sleeping, but it's daytime for you. So you,
00:30:04 ◼ ► you, because we, we record this at 9am my time, 5pm your time, which means you have a work day on
00:30:11 ◼ ► Monday and I don't. So I will get up on Monday morning and open Google Docs and see what the
00:30:21 ◼ ► you know, for me, I will spend, it's probably a couple of hours now on Mondays. Um, most weeks
00:30:29 ◼ ► getting upgrade ready that has increased in time over time. I'm not entirely sure why. Um, but I'm
00:30:37 ◼ ► happy with the amount of work that, that is going in. Like I'm, it's when I'm doing the majority of my
00:30:43 ◼ ► reading of what is occurring. Um, like there will be, I was, you know, if I see a link, you know,
00:30:49 ◼ ► if everyone's talking about, say like, uh, just talk about the lawsuit stuff, right. From a couple
00:30:53 ◼ ► of weeks ago with open AI, I didn't read the articles until Monday because I want to kind of
00:31:02 ◼ ► immerse myself in the news on the day that we record the show. That is my preference because that really
00:31:09 ◼ ► helps me be very aware of what I'm going to be talking about. Um, like I had this thing like on last
00:31:16 ◼ ► week's episode with the public betas, I had written all my notes the week before. And so when I came
00:31:23 ◼ ► to the show, when we ended up talking about it, I had to read through it all again to get it back in
00:31:29 ◼ ► my head again. I wouldn't have needed to do that. And I don't typically need to do that. Like you see
00:31:34 ◼ ► the, our show document, I write in like full sentences, but I very rarely am reading what I've
00:31:41 ◼ ► written. Yeah. But by seeing it right now, I remember what I was thinking a few hours ago,
00:31:47 ◼ ► and then it helps me kind of get all my thoughts out. So I like that process of kind of ingesting the
00:31:52 ◼ ► information, digesting it in the way that I need to pulling out the things that are important. And
00:32:00 ◼ ► Right. And we should say we use Google docs, partly it's historical, but really it's just
00:32:07 ◼ ► It's the best one. And so, you know, as we move through the show, if a segment's running
00:32:12 ◼ ► along, you know, you'll see Michael pull the sponsor breakup and, you know, we'll, we'll
00:32:17 ◼ ► cut something out and, you know, we'll move things around. We had, uh, in last week's episode,
00:32:21 ◼ ► there were like three things we had to cover at the end of a segment. And then you sort of
00:32:25 ◼ ► naturally flowed into one. Yeah. That was not, that was the third one listed. And I noticed,
00:32:31 ◼ ► I saw you take the other two and copy them or cut them and paste them below so that they
00:32:36 ◼ ► remained in the right sequence for us to, to cover the other issues. So that's, you just
00:32:47 ◼ ► quote unquote real time collaboration. Google is the only instant one. The rest all can take
00:33:00 ◼ ► And when you're recording live, like we do, the last thing you need is a, some sort of lag that
00:33:06 ◼ ► slows everybody down and confuses people coming up with ideas for things that are beyond just like
00:33:12 ◼ ► I saw a headline. Yeah. Um, you know, cause we do other stuff here. We have other concepts. We're
00:33:17 ◼ ► like, you know, are we going to do a draft or are we going to talk about this? Or are we, uh, do we,
00:33:23 ◼ ► you know, is there something interesting for the summer fun or whatever it is beyond just sort of
00:33:36 ◼ ► the news cycle just never ends. You know, like we've, we've say this a bunch of times with the
00:33:41 ◼ ► summer of fun of like, we actually need to do fewer summer of fun episodes because there's quote,
00:33:57 ◼ ► this is just ideas that we keep. And the idea for this episode was collected in like a similar way
00:34:02 ◼ ► that I would do this kind of stuff. If I have an idea, I would just throw it in the Apple note.
00:34:06 ◼ ► Like there are a few topics that are all that are basically completed in our Apple note that if we
00:34:12 ◼ ► ever have a big hole in an episode, I have a bunch of things that I'm ready to just drop in.
00:34:22 ◼ ► but we didn't get to them, but they're timeless. So I keep them or there are things that I think
00:34:28 ◼ ► would be interesting to talk about. And I will just write a couple of lines down and I just save them
00:34:33 ◼ ► in my Apple note and I'll get to them when I need them. Sometimes I will be sitting and working on a
00:34:39 ◼ ► show like upgrade or any of my shows. It's like, there's nothing to talk about. I need to come up with
00:34:44 ◼ ► something. And that is where the time zone difference helps me because I can sit 20, 30 minutes and be
00:34:50 ◼ ► like kind of brainstorm some ideas or some things you might want to talk about. But like with me and
00:34:56 ◼ ► you, I can spend that time in the, like in my early afternoon. And I know I have many hours to try and
00:35:03 ◼ ► come up with some kind of topic. So sometimes it does require brute forcing, but that isn't very much,
00:35:10 ◼ ► All right. Yeah. I, I end up dashing things off in the show doc. Yeah. Sometimes in the Apple
00:35:16 ◼ ► note, sometimes in the show doc itself, we have a little space down at the bottom, which is like
00:35:19 ◼ ► other good ideas and other summer fun ideas and things like that. If I have an idea for something,
00:35:26 ◼ ► I'll just throw it in there. And then, you know, later, months later, you're desperate and you look
00:35:31 ◼ ► Yeah. There is also the, the incredibly wacky summer of fun document, which has just some truly
00:35:36 ◼ ► unhinged ideas in it that maybe one day we'll take. Yeah. We have ticked some of those off over
00:35:42 ◼ ► time. Oh yeah. The jingles were in there. The jingles episode. I mean, all that stuff is recording
00:35:46 ◼ ► outside. Yeah. The wild, the wild ideas are definitely there. You want to talk a little bit about how,
00:35:52 ◼ ► how we collaborate on this show. Yeah. I think that like, you know, you've kind of touched on it already
00:35:59 ◼ ► that on the face of it, what it appears like is I write the document, you open it up and then you read
00:36:08 ◼ ► it and then we do the show. And like, that is kind of like the, the simplest way of boiling down upgrade.
00:36:16 ◼ ► But I actually think of our collaboration as like this asynchronous thing where you are doing the work
00:36:22 ◼ ► for upgrade every day. And I only do it on Mondays because you're, you are working on six colors.
00:36:30 ◼ ► Right. So you don't need to read everything on Monday. Like I don't, I think it's very rare that
00:36:36 ◼ ► I would put in a big topic and you have not come across this, right? Unless it's something I've had
00:36:41 ◼ ► to create. Right. Right. Um, so I, I think that there is, you know, I, I draw a lot from what you write
00:36:48 ◼ ► in six colors. Sure. If, you know, if, if something is of interest to you that you've written about it,
00:36:53 ◼ ► I will always consider it for a topic because like we have already spent a bunch of time thinking about
00:36:58 ◼ ► it. That's the like virtuous cycle of all of this in, in the ideal is, you know, either I write about
00:37:05 ◼ ► something and then it becomes fodder for upgrade or, or we talk about it on an upgrade and it becomes
00:37:09 ◼ ► fodder for a post or one of those. Yeah. But then it's in general, I think the reason that this show is
00:37:15 ◼ ► good, which I think it is, is because we work very well together. Like we creatively match quite
00:37:22 ◼ ► well. And we, we also fill in gaps that the other one has. Like I think we're, we're a very good,
00:37:27 ◼ ► uh, team, which is why we're now, you know, very happy and very eager to be launching new projects
00:37:35 ◼ ► together. Cause it's, yeah, we work well together. Yeah. Yeah. We've got a proven track record.
00:37:39 ◼ ► Mm-hmm. Um, the, the show doc, anything more we need to say about the show doc document itself in,
00:37:45 ◼ ► in Google docs, you, you do your reading and building. Yeah. I come in in the morning drinking
00:37:50 ◼ ► my tea, looking at it. Um, I don't know that, I mean, I will sometimes I, you get texts from me
00:37:58 ◼ ► sometimes, right? Where, where it's like, Oh, Jason's up and moving now. It's a, it's 3 PM on Monday in
00:38:03 ◼ ► London. And you're like, Oh, and this is where I will be like, I don't know if we should talk about
00:38:09 ◼ ► that. Or maybe this should be, sometimes it's very minor. Sometimes it's, it's like, I'm uncomfortable
00:38:14 ◼ ► with this topic or do we really have to do this topic? Or sometimes I have memory of us also doing
00:38:19 ◼ ► the thing where I'm like, I don't know about this topic. And you're like, well, we have to talk about
00:38:22 ◼ ► it. And I said, can we just like, let's not overdo it. Let's keep it minimal. And you're like,
00:38:27 ◼ ► yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. Where it's sometimes it's as simple as me saying, I don't want to make
00:38:31 ◼ ► this a big thing. Let's make it a small thing because I, I, I, I could see how it could get
00:38:36 ◼ ► overblown. And I, a lot of times there's a topic where I'm like, uh, like I'm sick of the topic or
00:38:40 ◼ ► I think that the topic is overblown. I'm like, let's not go too far down. And other times I'm
00:38:44 ◼ ► like, Oh, this is a, this is a great topic and, and things I, the last couple of weeks I've had cases
00:38:50 ◼ ► where I basically like done some strikethrough or deletion of a couple of things where I'm like,
00:38:54 ◼ ► eh, that's not that much of a story. Like last week there was that NBC story about that guy who emailed
00:39:00 ◼ ► the wrong person and like people talked about it a lot, but, um, I thought Gruber had a good take
00:39:06 ◼ ► on it, which is like, this is kind of nothing and like probably has no impact at all. But the NBC was
00:39:11 ◼ ► so breathless about like, Oh, we've got details of a secret thing that probably somebody from open AI
00:39:16 ◼ ► told them about this thing. And, and they ran with it. And, and so I mentioned it in passing,
00:39:24 ◼ ► The funny, what was very funny to me last week, and maybe there's a, is if there is the luck of it
00:39:30 ◼ ► being a two shot in our video, you'll see me smile at the time where you referenced it with about the
00:39:36 ◼ ► exact amount of time I wanted to spend on it. Oh, interesting. But had previously said, let's cut
00:39:41 ◼ ► it. And I thought that was very funny. Well, honestly, that was my thought though, is I don't mind
00:39:46 ◼ ► mentioning it in passing, but what I don't want, I didn't think it merited you saying NBC is reporting
00:39:53 ◼ ► that. I wanted to be more like me going, did you see that NBC report that was dumb? I kind of wanted
00:40:00 ◼ ► I wanted to make the point, like basically agreeing also with, with John Gruber's point of like,
00:40:05 ◼ ► this is a thing that open AI believed is something that is important. They are like, aha, we've got a
00:40:11 ◼ ► smoking gun. It's like, no, they don't. This is nothing. And you know, like just because there was
00:40:17 ◼ ► this mix up, which is just a clerical error. It's like, well, this doesn't now mean that you're
00:40:24 ◼ ► exonerated, you know, nothing's changed, but sometimes that happens where I just, I I'm reading
00:40:29 ◼ ► through the dot you've assembled it. And then I'm, I'm giving it a straight down read. And sometimes
00:40:34 ◼ ► things will jump out at me and I'll be like, I don't know about this or what about this or all
00:40:37 ◼ ► that. Not a lot. It doesn't happen a lot, but every now and then, you know, I will send you a text and
00:40:41 ◼ ► go, oh, I think we should take this out or whatever. And that, that tends to happen. I would say, you
00:40:46 ◼ ► know, uh, seven, seven 30, my time. So, you know, 90 minutes to two hours, maybe an hour before we
00:40:58 ◼ ► warning time for you to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it, I, what I also like in some,
00:41:06 ◼ ► there have been times in the past where you'll say that and I'll say, I disagree. And this is why I
00:41:11 ◼ ► disagree. And then we all do the topic. Like it's, it's, I don't ever think of it of, and I'm sure you
00:41:18 ◼ ► don't intend it to be that this is like, well, what I say goes, it's like there, there is a conversation
00:41:22 ◼ ► to be had, but most of the time there are things to say, I don't want to talk about this. And it's like,
00:41:28 ◼ ► I will just take it out because I'm not married to it. But sometimes there are things where I'm like,
00:41:33 ◼ ► I think we should discuss this in some way. And most of the time that happens, I end up
00:41:39 ◼ ► being happy. We talked about it. Yeah. Yeah. So it says something how, so how does this differ from the
00:41:47 ◼ ► other shows that you do in terms of prep? So I think the key difference for upgrade compared to my other
00:41:55 ◼ ► shows is I do the lion's share of the prep, like basically all of it, like from, you know, you do the outline when
00:42:02 ◼ ► you're, you're, you're not going to be here next week. Yeah. And I will do the outline and
00:42:06 ◼ ► I can do the outline. I mean, like I'm also a host of shows and stuff, right? Like I can do it, but for this
00:42:12 ◼ ► show, I don't do it. You do it. Yeah. So how does that, how does that work? Is it, you know, there's
00:42:18 ◼ ► not, if Steven doesn't make the outline for connected, you're all throwing things in the hat.
00:42:21 ◼ ► So I would say that for connected, Steven is kind of like the keeper of the outline, but we're all
00:42:28 ◼ ► putting things in. It's more, more shared. Okay. And some weeks it might be more one person show than
00:42:34 ◼ ► the other. For the pen addict, Brad does for me what I do for you. Ah, okay. So Brad does the whole
00:42:41 ◼ ► document and then I will go in and add what I need to add. Um, and then Cortex, I don't even, it's kind
00:42:47 ◼ ► of at the moment, especially is, is not really comparable because it's an interview show. So it's
00:42:51 ◼ ► like, of course I'm writing all the questions, but it's, it's a very different type of show prep,
00:42:56 ◼ ► I would say. Um, but also like my other regular shows thoroughly considered an analog. They're also
00:43:06 ◼ ► I initially thought that I would be doing more of the prep work for upgrade and practically speaking,
00:43:13 ◼ ► the time difference that is a great advantage for us is the driver of why you, you push the outline
00:43:21 ◼ ► because I feel like the alternative is that I'm working on the outline on a Friday afternoon
00:43:26 ◼ ► and the danger there is that stuff will happen. Um, and also Friday afternoon is not the, I mean,
00:43:33 ◼ ► I have done some upgrade prep work on Friday afternoons. In fact, when I'm doing, uh, when
00:43:38 ◼ ► I'm hosting the show without you, uh, it's either Sunday afternoon or Friday afternoon, I'm doing the
00:43:43 ◼ ► bulk of the work, but, um, I think it's generally made more sense for you to do it because you're the
00:43:48 ◼ ► one who's got a full work day before we do upgrade on, I would need to do it over the weekend,
00:43:53 ◼ ► which I'd rather not do or on Friday afternoon, which again, it's like, I don't know, I can do
00:43:59 ◼ ► it, but it, it is not as natural to, to do it then as it is to do it on Monday morning. So I like to do
00:44:05 ◼ ► it though. Cause it forces me to really pay attention for us. Yeah, it works for us. It works for us. It's,
00:44:12 ◼ ► it's how I feel confident in the things we're going to talk about. It's like, yeah, I've done the work.
00:44:17 ◼ ► No, we've got, I mean, we've been doing this so long now that that is, we've, we've kind of figured
00:44:21 ◼ ► out a way that works for us. I want to ask you a question. That's a David Sparks, uh, question every
00:44:26 ◼ ► year. I haven't done it this year. I need to do it. I do this personal offsite where I basically
00:44:31 ◼ ► go somewhere that is not my office. And I like write up a bunch of things and think about my job
00:44:36 ◼ ► and I'll talk to other people. I've talked to you and Steven and gray and Dan Morin and like Lex
00:44:41 ◼ ► Friedman, lots of people I'll bring in as like guest speakers to talk about what I do and what
00:44:46 ◼ ► I should be doing and things like that. I think it's a very useful exercise. Um, and for me, the
00:44:52 ◼ ► thing that was, is maybe the most interesting as a part of that exercise is the question of how many
00:45:01 ◼ ► jobs you have, what are your different roles? What are your different jobs? Because I discovered the
00:45:05 ◼ ► first time I did this that I had like 12 different jobs, some of them big, some of them little, but I
00:45:11 ◼ ► considered myself sort of like a 12 thing per worker. And you know, the natural outcome of that was
00:45:18 ◼ ► that's too many jobs for one person to have. Yeah. And, um, and so I was wondering how many jobs do you
00:45:31 ◼ ► five big buckets and then maybe each of those buckets might have a couple of different jobs in
00:45:40 ◼ ► them. So, all right. So I'm a podcast co-host, right? That's one of them. But sometimes I'm also
00:45:45 ◼ ► a podcast editor. Um, and being a podcast co-host means hosting and producing. So that's a few jobs.
00:45:53 ◼ ► Uh, and I do three weekly and four monthly shows that is not including designed in California,
00:46:00 ◼ ► which is both a weekly and monthly show, depending on how we think about it. It's like, it's, it's kind
00:46:04 ◼ ► of always on, I guess. So there's that I have the business of relay, right. And like looking after
00:46:13 ◼ ► business stuff with cortex brand, I have business and also product and marketing. Cause it's a tiny
00:46:22 ◼ ► business really like with a lot of people working in it. So you kind of, everybody does a bit of
00:46:27 ◼ ► everything and then working with cross forward, which is mostly marketing. But again, it's like
00:46:34 ◼ ► everyone kind of gets involved, right? Where like everyone's doing testing and everyone's making
00:46:41 ◼ ► feature suggestions and all of this kind of stuff. So I would say I have, I have lots of jobs, but
00:46:47 ◼ ► they're in buckets, I would say. So a lot, a lot. I mean, we could break some of those down
00:46:54 ◼ ► though also and say, you're, you know, you're an upgrade, you're the upgrade, uh, co-host and, um,
00:46:59 ◼ ► document generator, right? Like there, and, and then it becomes even more, you have even more
00:47:06 ◼ ► jobs then. Right. Like it's a lot, it's a lot. Right. And this is, I think it's not ideal, but
00:47:12 ◼ ► the, the bottom line is if I think what I tell people is if I could, if I could only have a couple
00:47:20 ◼ ► of jobs, I would probably be much happier. Yeah. But my jobs don't pay enough for me to only have
00:47:27 ◼ ► one or two jobs. I have to have more jobs because that's how you, as an independent person, you have to
00:47:34 ◼ ► make more jobs and do the, and bring in your income. And that requires you to, you know, I, I,
00:47:42 ◼ ► I can't, I can't, you know, say I'm only doing two projects, right? I just, I can't. And neither can you.
00:47:47 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, there, I have a, I have a, an asterisk on that though, just the type of person I am.
00:47:55 ◼ ► Like someone else could run relay. Sure. And like financially, I would be okay from that.
00:48:06 ◼ ► Yeah. That's the, that's the challenge is like, like, so I, I stopped doing downstream and I'm not
00:48:10 ◼ ► doing macro columns anymore. So those are things I don't have to do, but a bunch of stuff that I,
00:48:15 ◼ ► I did, I also delegated. And, and that, that's what it comes down to. Remember you used to edit this show
00:48:21 ◼ ► and now you don't. So you can, you can divest yourself of some of the work, but others of the
00:48:26 ◼ ► work, you're like, I'm not going to, this is a part of what I am or, or who I want to be, or,
00:48:31 ◼ ► or I feel like I am the person who needs to do this in order for it to be right. Yeah. I think that's
00:48:36 ◼ ► reasonable. I am just like, you know, how I have been in my life and especially over the last 10 years
00:48:44 ◼ ► or whatever, I'm, if I'm doing something creative like this, I, I have to be a driving force for it
00:48:56 ◼ ► you know? Yeah. But yeah, I think, I think it would be an, a scary exercise for me to list it out.
00:49:04 ◼ ► So atomically, like you've mentioned, right? Like if I was to sit and take each of those shows and
00:49:09 ◼ ► what are my responsibilities in each of those shows, I would say I have a lot on my plate.
00:49:16 ◼ ► Uh, that is, I think fine for me. I think it is kind of what I, I like to be busy. I don't think,
00:49:25 ◼ ► I do not enjoy not having something to do and I'm pretty good at prioritizing. Um, like, you know,
00:49:34 ◼ ► my, my life is run by my task manager. I have things that have to be done on certain days and I know what
00:49:41 ◼ ► they are when I look at the lists and then I also have things that I can then start to, you know,
00:49:45 ◼ ► chip away at when I need to. Um, and I also, I have a lot of help around me to, to do right. Like I
00:49:53 ◼ ► have, I have an assistant, like a personal assistant. Um, and then also in my businesses that I'm a part
00:49:59 ◼ ► of, there are people that are there to help. Sure. So, you know, like these aren't things where I'm
00:50:07 ◼ ► handling every piece. I am pretty good at delegating because I, I don't think I could do the stuff that
00:50:13 ◼ ► I do without some form of delegation. And to do list. Yeah. It's to do list and delegation is how I'm
00:50:22 ◼ ► like manage. And I think I manage. Okay. At least I don't feel like, so I think a key thing about
00:50:30 ◼ ► wherever you understand if you're managing is do the people around you feel like you're reliable?
00:50:34 ◼ ► And I would say that the people around me feel like I'm reliable. I don't think that, I mean,
00:50:40 ◼ ► you never know what people, but yeah, I mean, you, yeah, I feel like people can rely on me and I
00:50:46 ◼ ► don't feel burned out. I'm actually like, you know, you've asked, you've got a note in here
00:50:52 ◼ ► about my yearly theme. And so I'm just going to jump to that real quick, right? Okay. You know,
00:50:55 ◼ ► this year is the year of new for me. And that is, you know, weird for me to think about because I'd
00:51:03 ◼ ► kind of decided I didn't want to tackle new projects for a bunch of reasons, but this year I've been
00:51:08 ◼ ► doing that, you know, and it started with working with David and Steven at Crossforward. That was like
00:51:13 ◼ ► a new opportunity that I was really excited about and has led to me learning a lot of things.
00:51:18 ◼ ► And it kind of kicked me into thinking that maybe I had gotten a bit stuck in my ways and it was time
00:51:27 ◼ ► to start thinking about new stuff to do. And designed in California would not exist if I hadn't set my
00:51:35 ◼ ► yearly theme as the year of new, because there is no world in which I would have suggested to you,
00:51:43 ◼ ► It would just never would have been a thing I would have considered. Um, and so I feel,
00:51:49 ◼ ► and at the moment I feel very satisfied with my work in general. Um, I've gone through periods of
00:51:58 ◼ ► feeling burned out, but like, even though right now I think I have more on my plate than I've had in
00:52:03 ◼ ► years, I am excited about these, about my projects. And I, I'm excited. I'm, I look forward to the work
00:52:11 ◼ ► that I do. So I think that there will always be, as there always have been times of adjustment for me.
00:52:18 ◼ ► And I absolutely expect that a few years down the line, the thing, everything I've just told you that
00:52:24 ◼ ► I'm doing, it's not going to look exactly the same as it does right now. Like there's going to be more
00:52:28 ◼ ► delegation, but I also like delegating because it means I get to like help other people, you know,
00:52:36 ◼ ► like I get to, if, if I'm able to hire someone to do something for me, it means that that's somebody
00:52:42 ◼ ► else who I'm able to enable from my work to like, to be independent on their own. So I like to do it
00:52:49 ◼ ► Talked about the year of new and design in California. Um, are there specific things about that project that,
00:52:55 ◼ ► that are, um, make you change or create new workflows? I would imagine so for both of us, right?
00:53:00 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, the, the biggest one is the, is the schedule is like trying to juggle that schedule.
00:53:06 ◼ ► And I'm still very much under trying to understand that. And that's, I think that's probably gonna
00:53:12 ◼ ► be months and months into the future before I feel like I have a good handle on it. And it's,
00:53:18 ◼ ► and it is through the project, just having more moving parts and also having a lot of people
00:53:23 ◼ ► touching it. So that's the thing that I'm working out. But luckily we're kind of ahead of ourselves a
00:53:31 ◼ ► bit right now, which is, which is good. Um, so that's going to be something that is going to take a lot
00:53:36 ◼ ► of effort and I'm, I'm trying to understand new tools to help me get good at that. Um, I do also
00:53:44 ◼ ► feel like there is, there is opportunity to make this project complicated that I am interested in
00:53:55 ◼ ► pursuing, right? In ways that I haven't done before. So like taking transcripts of episodes and saving them
00:54:05 ◼ ► in places to be referred to later on, it's like a thing that I've, I've only ever done this for Cortex.
00:54:13 ◼ ► I've never, I've not really done it for any of my other shows and I don't really feel like I use it
00:54:17 ◼ ► very well for Cortex, but I can imagine a scenario where it could become useful in the future. So adding
00:54:23 ◼ ► in some like post-production steps of like transcribing these episodes, saving the transcripts,
00:54:29 ◼ ► putting the transcripts in notion. So they're like searchable, like stuff like that of like,
00:54:34 ◼ ► I feel like there is, there are some parts of the process that I think I would want to add in
00:54:40 ◼ ► to designed in California that over time I think will start to bear fruit. But then this is also a
00:54:46 ◼ ► thing of like, this project has so many moving parts and so many episodes that get generated at once,
00:54:51 ◼ ► a lot of files just in general being created, which is making me think I need to do more about my file
00:54:56 ◼ ► management. And I've mentioned this on previous episodes and I think I know what I'm going to do now,
00:55:01 ◼ ► but getting like a network attached storage that I can have here in my studio where I can just move
00:55:08 ◼ ► things to because we're just going to be generating a lot of stuff that I want to keep, but we don't need
00:55:14 ◼ ► Yeah. This is, this is the, I think an important thing for that podcast is that unlike upgrade,
00:55:20 ◼ ► more like what I do with incomparable, I want to have those files forever because you never know
00:55:26 ◼ ► when you might want to go back to that in some way. I just feel like, cause it's more evergreen,
00:55:30 ◼ ► it's a little less locked. I want to have those files. Um, and that means you got to put them
00:55:37 ◼ ► Exactly. And it really does add up. Um, and so this is also making me think that with all this
00:55:45 ◼ ► kind of stuff, setting up some automations to help me achieve some of these things, you know,
00:55:50 ◼ ► like transcribing files and putting those where I need them to go, moving files around a certain
00:55:55 ◼ ► periods of time. And I feel like I've, I've always been quite, and we're going to talk about
00:55:59 ◼ ► automation in a minute, but for you, I've been hesitant about automations in the past because
00:56:04 ◼ ► I sometimes feel like they can get you into a situation that you don't anticipate things don't
00:56:12 ◼ ► work the way you want them to. Or for me, I'm very much like, I like to just do things manually and
00:56:18 ◼ ► know they're done, but I feel like there's probably a balance that I can find between the two. Like I use
00:56:23 ◼ ► Hazel to do some stuff that has been very good for me and like rock solid for years. So like,
00:56:29 ◼ ► I have, you know, I have a Hazel rule that runs every two months to clear out my audio hijack
00:56:36 ◼ ► recording folder. Like if anything's more than two months old, you could just get trash it. Yeah.
00:56:41 ◼ ► So, and that kind of stuff has been very good to me in the, in the past. So I think I need to get,
00:56:45 ◼ ► to get better about that. That's great. Um, you want to talk about cross forward a little bit?
00:56:51 ◼ ► Sure. Yeah. Because you, you know, the very different role. It is very different. Yeah. Um, doing some
00:56:58 ◼ ► very different stuff with, with, um, David Smith and Stephen Hackett. Yeah. How, what have you learned?
00:57:03 ◼ ► What, you know, how has that challenged you? Uh, it's, it is a challenge. I mean, I would say
00:57:07 ◼ ► it's a challenge because it's a lot of new stuff really. Well, okay. The basics of the role are things
00:57:15 ◼ ► that I've done before. So, you know, marketing and looking at product and thinking about how to
00:57:22 ◼ ► communicate. Like those are skills that I've built through my various endeavors, but also from before,
00:57:30 ◼ ► right? Cause I, I worked in marketing before. And so like working with agencies and stuff like that
00:57:35 ◼ ► is something I kind of know how to do. Um, what I've enjoyed about this role is that it is,
00:57:42 ◼ ► it is challenging. It's challenging because of scale. It's very interesting. Like the scale of the apps
00:57:49 ◼ ► that we manage across forward is way beyond anything I've considered before. And so there are good
00:57:58 ◼ ► opportunities in that. And also complications, you know, like, you know, you never want to make a mistake
00:58:03 ◼ ► in something. Right. And so there's like a lot of checks and balances that I put in place for myself
00:58:07 ◼ ► for the things that we communicate to customers in the app and like really trying to think things through
00:58:13 ◼ ► because the knock-on effects of getting something wrong can be a problem. You know, like if 0.01%
00:58:20 ◼ ► of Widgetsmith users hit a problem, it's a lot of people, right? Like in a way that wouldn't be with my other
00:58:25 ◼ ► stuff because the, just the scale is very different. So that has been an interesting thing to kind of
00:58:31 ◼ ► consider. And in general, I found it fascinating to learn a lot more about the daily life of an app
00:58:38 ◼ ► developer. You know, like I understand how, you know, I understand apps once they're a product that
00:58:44 ◼ ► exists in the world. I have, and I had a vague idea of what it was like to make software, but being
00:58:51 ◼ ► involved in the business and seeing the behind the scenes has been very interesting, but I also love it.
00:58:59 ◼ ► Like, and I'm very thankful that David and Stephen and everyone at CrossFord, because we are a
00:59:06 ◼ ► continually growing team right now, encourages and wants product feedback from everyone. Like they
00:59:12 ◼ ► don't have to want me to say, I think this about this feature. I think that about that feature.
00:59:18 ◼ ► It would be very easy to say, Mike, you just talk about them when they're done, right? Like you help
00:59:23 ◼ ► the communication of this, but I, so I, I like being able to contribute and seeing how these things
00:59:30 ◼ ► become a thing, you know, like how these ideas become features. Um, so that's been really exciting.
00:59:36 ◼ ► And then for the stuff that I don't know how to do, because there is a lot, especially in marketing
00:59:40 ◼ ► today, especially to reach Widgetsmith users, it is understanding of platforms that I don't really
00:59:48 ◼ ► understand. Like I don't use TikTok, right? I don't use it. Um, but someone's got to. So I, we work with an
00:59:54 ◼ ► advertising agency now to help us understand that. Um, and so that I like that process of working with
01:00:02 ◼ ► a team of professionals who I can then kind of interface with them together. We can create strategy
01:00:08 ◼ ► and I've done that kind of stuff before. So it's been, it's been fun for me to get back into that life
01:00:14 ◼ ► a little bit as well. Great. Well, thank you for answering my questions. Thank you for having all
01:00:20 ◼ ► these questions. Very nice. Uh, I wanted to ask you about automations though, before we move on,
01:00:26 ◼ ► because you are, you're a big automation boy and I kind of want to talk about that a little bit
01:00:32 ◼ ► because you're, you've always got some form of automation going. I feel like at all times.
01:00:36 ◼ ► Well, not at all times, but this is what I said. This is what I said before, which is I just hate it.
01:00:42 ◼ ► Like computers are meant to eliminate drudgery, not create drudgery. And I feel like that's one of the
01:00:48 ◼ ► great tragedies when you use a computer is that they're creating drudgery when the, when they
01:00:54 ◼ ► should be eliminating it. And so, like I said earlier about feeling like I might need to do some
01:00:59 ◼ ► other optimization or automation. I hate having to do eight steps to do a thing every time I do it.
01:01:08 ◼ ► And I do it multiple times a day. I should say what I don't want to get over into is sort of like
01:01:19 ◼ ► tips and things like that is you, you, you get across eventually into the, you're spending more
01:01:26 ◼ ► time trying to focus on productivity advantages and, and you're not doing your work, right? You don't
01:01:33 ◼ ► want to do that. And so with every automation I think of really, I'm trying to calculate out.
01:01:43 ◼ ► And then how much time does it save? And if it's going to take me hours to make it and then save
01:01:52 ◼ ► seconds, unless I'm going to use it for years and years and years, it's not worth doing it now in an
01:01:58 ◼ ► era where you can use a, you know, an AI to build a, a, a Unix, you know, a Python script or a shell
01:02:05 ◼ ► script or something like that balance changes, which is exciting. Yeah. But that's, that's what a lot of
01:02:12 ◼ ► it is, is like, like I have a, I have an automation using stream deck, which is a fun little, little
01:02:20 ◼ ► button thingy that, that I, I have, I was skeptical of, but I've actually come to really like, I have
01:02:26 ◼ ► a bunch of automations on there and they can range from fairly simple. Like I have a button I press to
01:02:31 ◼ ► record upgrade and I have a button and it does more than one thing. The button to record upgrade actually
01:02:38 ◼ ► records the upgrade session in audio hijack. And it also sends the, the social media messages that say
01:02:44 ◼ ► upgrade is live and they, they both happen at the same time, which is great because I used to have to
01:02:49 ◼ ► press the record button and then go to social media and type upgrade is live. And now I don't, I just
01:02:55 ◼ ► press a button and everything just happens. And with incomparable, we do a live stream. I stream music
01:03:01 ◼ ► before we get started and then I have to flip over and we get started and start the recording. And I have
01:03:06 ◼ ► a, I have a very complicated automation there that uses audio hijack. Audio hijack has its own
01:03:12 ◼ ► scripting interface using JavaScript. Um, and I have this button on my stream deck that when I press it
01:03:17 ◼ ► the first time we go live, but it's playing music from the music app and then I press it again. And
01:03:22 ◼ ► now our voices come over the stream and the recordings start. And then when I press it a third time,
01:03:29 ◼ ► it stops the recording, takes us off the live stream and actually like looks up what the episode is
01:03:41 ◼ ► Steven Schepansky's Dropbox. Cause he edits the show with that name and moves all my files into that folder.
01:03:48 ◼ ► Like cool. It's pretty cool. And it works and, uh, you know, and, and, and it saves me some time and saves me some
01:03:55 ◼ ► overhead. And it's not always about like, Oh, and that only saves you a little bit. It only saves time. But like part of the cost of
01:04:01 ◼ ► using a computer to me is just the details of like, I got to click here and I got to open that up and I got to
01:04:08 ◼ ► open this up and then I got to click here and then I got to drag that thing over and then I got to click
01:04:12 ◼ ► here and drag that thing over. And then I have to wait and then I have to right click on this and press copy.
01:04:16 ◼ ► And then I have to switch over here and I have to press paste. And like, that's what, that's when I am
01:04:20 ◼ ► driven to do an automation is not that I don't know how to do the 10 step process, but at some point my
01:04:26 ◼ ► brain says, why am I doing a 10 step process when I could be doing a one step process? Wouldn't that be
01:04:33 ◼ ► better? And that's where, that's where this stuff tends to lead for me. And keeping in mind always that
01:04:40 ◼ ► I'm just not going to automate something for the thrill of it. It needs to, it needs to be something
01:04:44 ◼ ► that's going to make my life better by saving time or saving annoyance. Because again, it's not all about
01:04:49 ◼ ► the time. It is about, I don't like, again, it's just the, the, the boredom, the ennui of having like
01:04:54 ◼ ► a 10 step thing that I don't want to like, do I have to click over there and then click over here? And
01:05:01 ◼ ► I was like, I just don't want to do it. It's boring. Yeah. Fix computer. Do that for me. So that's a lot of what
01:05:08 ◼ ► I do. Sometimes I just, I do feel like some automation stuff that I see though, it's like, it's, it's held
01:05:13 ◼ ► together. So like with such rickety tools. Oh, that's the danger. Right. We're in the betas
01:05:21 ◼ ► right now. And like shortcut stuff just breaks. Right. And then it's like, well, now like I, I,
01:05:27 ◼ ► I get nervous about relying on something that is then going to cause me outsized frustration or
01:05:35 ◼ ► somebody else outsized frustration later on. I know. Like I move all of my podcast recordings manually.
01:05:42 ◼ ► Right. So I, I will move, you know, what happens is when I press stop, I do have an automation in audio
01:05:49 ◼ ► Oh, that's very funny. But then when I press stop for upgrade, it copies my file into the place where it
01:05:54 ◼ ► goes. So my file's always in there when we stop. But I don't have a different session for every show
01:05:59 ◼ ► because I have so many shows. Right. So it's like, I will just move these things manually because I don't
01:06:05 ◼ ► want to create a scenario for Jim where I haven't got the files that he needs. And that can happen if
01:06:11 ◼ ► I'm, you know, relying on some weird automation. Like let's imagine I've, I've pressed the, the
01:06:17 ◼ ► connected recording rather than the upgrade recording. And now here we go. And now all the
01:06:21 ◼ ► files are in the wrong place. Although Jim can always access all of them because he has all the
01:06:25 ◼ ► shows, but nevertheless, nevertheless, but this stuff is, uh, well, you could set up an automation that
01:06:30 ◼ ► knows when you record upgrade, but it wouldn't work today because we're recording on a different day.
01:06:34 ◼ ► So I mean, I do have some stuff with shortcuts for like time tracking where, um, I press a shortcut
01:06:40 ◼ ► when I'm recording a podcast and it looks at my calendar, gets the name from a specific calendar,
01:06:47 ◼ ► sets that as the tag for the time tracking, and then sets a focus mode for a couple of hours. So just
01:06:53 ◼ ► stuff like that. I'll give you an example of a automation I did recently that I really like. So I
01:06:59 ◼ ► changed how we post the six colors podcast. Okay. And there are two versions of it because there's
01:07:05 ◼ ► the, the higher level members get a longer like post-show. Um, and so I bounce, I bounce those out
01:07:11 ◼ ► of logic. I've got two different versions of it and make the MP3s. I haven't automated that yet,
01:07:15 ◼ ► although I totally could, but I haven't yet because I use forecast and Marco didn't build in any
01:07:20 ◼ ► automation tools for forecast. He probably would tell me I should just vibe code something.
01:07:29 ◼ ► I don't want to though. I don't want to. Um, so I made an automation. So I got, what I have to
01:07:35 ◼ ► do is I have to upload these two files to my FTP server and get the URLs of them and then put them
01:07:41 ◼ ► in a CMS page. And what my automation does is I right click on the folder that they're the MP3s are in
01:07:50 ◼ ► and say, upload the six colors podcast. And it looks in the folder. It sees the two MP3s and then it uploads
01:07:57 ◼ ► them to the right place. And more than that, it, cause I used to do this one at a time,
01:08:05 ◼ ► but now it does them both together. More than that, one of my security through obscurity for the, uh,
01:08:18 ◼ ► So I've noticed this recently when I've been, had to upload episodes of upgrade and I see
01:08:30 ◼ ► Because otherwise if you, if you get the, if you get the path, you could guess what the podcast is
01:08:35 ◼ ► and continue to get the podcast later. And so I just put in words and then you can't guess it.
01:08:39 ◼ ► Well, I have the script do that now. So instead of me having to do that, like in the finder or
01:08:43 ◼ ► something, the script uploads that file with, uh, with a dictionary word tagged on the end and
01:08:48 ◼ ► remembers that. And then the best part is, uh, Oh, and it, and, and then it brings up a little
01:08:53 ◼ ► dialogue that says, what's the title of this episode. And it, and it puts, it auto fills with
01:08:57 ◼ ► what's on the clipboard because the title is probably something I copied out of, uh, or into forecast when I,
01:09:05 ◼ ► when I made the MP3s, uh, and then it opens the CMS page and paste in the title, pay go tabs down
01:09:16 ◼ ► to the, uh, the first URL field and paste in the first URL tabs again and paste in the next URL.
01:09:23 ◼ ► And then it sits there. And I, I put in the description and I press save and it goes live.
01:09:28 ◼ ► And like on one hand, it seems like a lot, but on the other hand, it's just saved me a lot of right.
01:09:34 ◼ ► Click on this file, upload it, wait for it to do, go to the CMS, paste that in, go back to the
01:09:38 ◼ ► finder, right. Click on that other file, you know, rename it, then upload it, then paste it in. And
01:09:43 ◼ ► then go into the clipboard history and find the title and paste that in. And like, and I just realized
01:09:48 ◼ ► at some point, it's like, I could probably make this one step. Couldn't I? And I'm using keyboard
01:09:53 ◼ ► maestro for part of that keyboard maestro, which we'll talk about maybe a little bit later. Um, which is
01:09:58 ◼ ► such a great tool. And I had this real realization. I was like, is there an API that lets me connect to the
01:10:02 ◼ ► CMS to do? And I was like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to keyboard maestro, literally just open the
01:10:07 ◼ ► webpage and tell it like paste and then tab and then tab and then paste this other thing and then tab and then
01:10:15 ◼ ► paste this other thing. Cause it's just, just do it. Like, I don't, I don't need to be fancy about it.
01:10:20 ◼ ► Just, just brute force it by, by moving around in Safari and it totally worked. So it's stuff like
01:10:27 ◼ ► that. That, that is my answer is like, yes, I think it's, I have fun messing around with my weather
01:10:32 ◼ ► station or stuff like that. But what I'm really ultimately getting at in most of these is I just
01:10:38 ◼ ► don't want to make, I want to take a 15 step process and make it one step because it's, it's just, I hate
01:10:44 ◼ ► going through those steps and it's rote and it's drudgery and I want to eliminate the drudgery. That's what I'm
01:10:53 ◼ ► Thank you, computer. And then occasionally it's something that's, that's actually useful. Like we have a setup where,
01:10:59 ◼ ► where, um, uh, electric car charging in the summertime, I can, uh, do it all entirely on solar
01:11:07 ◼ ► overage, which is entirely free. Like literally once our batteries are full, all extra solar power,
01:11:12 ◼ ► instead of going into the grid, it just goes into the cars. It's very, it's great. It's free. It's,
01:11:16 ◼ ► it's literally free. And we've got it set up so that, you know, if you leave your car plugged in
01:11:21 ◼ ► overnight, it'll charge overnight. And then it's using the grid to do that, but it'll charge overnight.
01:11:26 ◼ ► Cause sometimes you gotta have a full car in the morning. Um, but sometimes I forget to unplug it
01:11:32 ◼ ► and it's summertime. I don't want to charge from the grid. There's going to be more sun tomorrow,
01:11:38 ◼ ► probably. Um, and I was able to, with a little help from Claude, um, build a script that can talk to my
01:11:48 ◼ ► solar provider and basically say, is there a car plugged in right now? And it runs at 9:00 PM.
01:11:57 ◼ ► And if a car is plugged in, it uses pushover, which is a very nice app to send a push notification to my
01:12:05 ◼ ► iPad and my phone saying, Hey, there's a car plugged in. And that's great because if I want there to car,
01:12:12 ◼ ► a car to be plugged in, I'll just nod and be like, yeah, there is a car. But if I don't, it's a great
01:12:18 ◼ ► prod for me to go out and unplug it because I don't want to charge off the grid overnight.
01:12:22 ◼ ► I got tired of forgetting, um, little thing again, but like, it's that moment of like computers should
01:12:29 ◼ ► be able to tell me this, right? Like they should be able to tell me if a car is plugged in or not.
01:12:42 ◼ ► Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually
01:12:48 ◼ ► understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, whether you're debugging code at midnight or
01:12:53 ◼ ► strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems
01:12:58 ◼ ► that matter. So as Jason just mentioned, Claude is fantastic at helping you write scripts for
01:13:03 ◼ ► automations. Like it's just a thing that it's very good at and it can just handle these things for you.
01:13:08 ◼ ► Um, I think we've both played around with this kind of stuff in the past. Uh, I also wanted to
01:13:12 ◼ ► mention something in a completely different vein, um, where I was trying, I was, I wanted to update my
01:13:19 ◼ ► bio on LinkedIn. If you've ever used LinkedIn, LinkedIn has a specific way of talking like people
01:13:30 ◼ ► on LinkedIn talk in a, like they use it a lot. They talk about themselves and their work in like a very
01:13:36 ◼ ► specific way. And I felt like my, the way I would write a bio for myself would not fit LinkedIn speak.
01:13:45 ◼ ► And also I don't like writing bios. Like I don't, I don't like that. So I was able to work with Claude,
01:13:51 ◼ ► make some suggestions and I was like, help me craft this in a way that would appeal to people
01:13:58 ◼ ► on LinkedIn. And we did a very good job together. So it's great with tasks like that, all the way up to
01:14:03 ◼ ► helping you write, uh, uh, scripts. So you can understand if your electric car is plugged in or not.
01:14:08 ◼ ► If you're a developer spending half your day on tasks, you wish you could just hand off Claude code
01:14:13 ◼ ► will run in your terminal, read your code base, and can take action on things like writing tech,
01:14:23 ◼ ► You can forget about basic web searches of Claude. Claude is excellent at deep research.
01:14:28 ◼ ► This means you can dig deeper with extensive sources, proper citations, and do it all in a fraction of the
01:14:35 ◼ ► time. You know, maybe this isn't the most, uh, uh, sophisticated, but for a trip that I'm taking,
01:14:41 ◼ ► the one that I'm taking, which is why we're recording, I wanted some help with trying to
01:14:45 ◼ ► understand what things I could do in the area, uh, places that we could go to eat that was around
01:14:50 ◼ ► where we were staying. And I was able to work with Claude to help me put together like a really good
01:14:55 ◼ ► list. We'll format it exactly the way that I want and do a bunch of research for me. You've got Claude
01:15:01 ◼ ► code. That's at the frontier of agentic coding. It's not just another coding assistant. It will handle
01:15:06 ◼ ► project-wide refactors for you while preserving your coding style and showing its work and you stay in full
01:15:11 ◼ ► control. You've heard us on the show in the past, both Jason and I have been working on tools for the
01:15:17 ◼ ► designing California project using Claude, uh, because it's allowing us to build software, which is just for
01:15:22 ◼ ► us that nobody else is going to build. We know exactly what we want and we can work with Claude code to be able to
01:15:28 ◼ ► get things to work exactly the way that we want them to. Um, and they, it's, it's a fantastic way of
01:15:34 ◼ ► being able to build projects. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude today at
01:15:40 ◼ ► claude.ai/upgrade. That is C-L-A-U-D-E.ai/upgrade and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to
01:15:48 ◼ ► all of the features that I just mentioned. That is at claude.ai/upgrade. Our thanks to Claude for
01:15:54 ◼ ► their support of this show and Relay. So let's talk about some essential Mac. I say utilities.
01:16:04 ◼ ► Um, and, and that is like, for me, I've, a lot of the stuff is stuff that lives in the menu bar. It's
01:16:10 ◼ ► the things that I want to talk about, not just the like, you know, like, Hey, I use Safari, like, like
01:16:15 ◼ ► specific things that I feel like are also many of them very Mac. Like these aren't going to exist a
01:16:22 ◼ ► a lot of this stuff in the way that I use them on iOS and iPadOS. These are things that I use to
01:16:27 ◼ ► be able to get my work done. And maybe we should take turns in this. Um, I'm going to put links to
01:16:33 ◼ ► all of these in the show notes so you can go and check them out. I want to start off with one of my
01:16:38 ◼ ► favorite apps that I found recently. I heard it recommended a bunch on the waveform podcast.
01:16:43 ◼ ► It's called blip. Um, and blip, here's what I'll say just to begin with. It's essentially airdrop,
01:16:52 ◼ ► but way faster and more reliable. Like that's the starting point for blip. Um, and, and for me,
01:16:58 ◼ ► that was one of the things I wanted to use it is I'm, I'm sharing a lot of files for my work, uh,
01:17:04 ◼ ► with cross forward, like for building some of the posts that we, we put in the, uh, inspo tab in the app.
01:17:09 ◼ ► And it's like sending a lot of imagery and widget files from my test iPhone to my Macs on a different
01:17:16 ◼ ► iCloud account. So airdrop can get difficult blip super easy. Like we, I have the app on my iPhone,
01:17:23 ◼ ► then my devices show up in the, uh, not just in the share sheet, but you know, you've got like the
01:17:29 ◼ ► contacts, the quick contacts that was over the share sheet. So I can just open the image, press blip.
01:17:34 ◼ ► It goes straight to the device blip also works when you're not in the same location as a device.
01:17:41 ◼ ► Ah, it's awesome. It's super fast. I find it to be even more reliable than airdrop is. Um,
01:17:47 ◼ ► and I I'm a big fan of it. It's a, it's a really nice app if you've ever, and also it deals with,
01:17:59 ◼ ► So I recommend it. All right. Not a draft. We're just going back and forth. Uh, I love Swift bar.
01:18:07 ◼ ► You talk about things in your menu bar. Um, Swift bar is this little utility that lets you basically
01:18:12 ◼ ► run a script or even a shortcut of anything and put the output in the menu bar. And so this is where I
01:18:18 ◼ ► have my weather station is in there. So I have the current temperature and like, is it hotter or
01:18:23 ◼ ► colder than yesterday? And if I click, I can see like a forecast and I built that myself.
01:18:29 ◼ ► I've got one for my solar where it basically has a couple of little icons that say like,
01:18:33 ◼ ► right now there's a little sun says like, yes, I'm generating power and a little battery with a
01:18:40 ◼ ► lightning bolt in it says I'm charging your battery right now. And if I click, I get some details that
01:18:44 ◼ ► I'm generating, uh, 41% of my max capacity right now. And the batteries at 54%. And then I also have
01:18:51 ◼ ► another one that shows us literally as we live stream this on relays, live stream server,
01:18:56 ◼ ► how many people are listening. That just pops up when we're live and I could put anything up there.
01:19:05 ◼ ► Oh, this is interesting because I've not used tools like this before because I don't know how
01:19:11 ◼ ► to write the scripts, but now I don't need to know. There is the tools that were right.
01:19:16 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. Cause basically you, if you have any Python shell script, whatever at the end,
01:19:22 ◼ ► it prints to the, it has an output that it prints and that goes to your menu bar basically is how it
01:19:28 ◼ ► works. And there's some rules of like, you, you put a little, you put one line and that goes to the
01:19:33 ◼ ► menu bar and, and then you put like a couple of minuses in the next line. And that means, uh,
01:19:37 ◼ ► everything below here is in the dropdown. There's like a syntax for it. Uh, and that's great. Cause I,
01:19:43 ◼ ► I, I, you know, I don't need to find an app that will put my weather station information that I want
01:19:49 ◼ ► in my menu bar. I just have a script that does it. Yeah. And so I love it. It's just a great little
01:19:54 ◼ ► Mac. One of the best things about the Mac is the, is icons in the menu bar. Yeah. Bottom line.
01:19:59 ◼ ► Love it. Swift bars. Do you get it from GitHub? Yeah, it's free. There's, there's a few of them.
01:20:06 ◼ ► There's X bar, which is a rebuilt version as well. There are a bunch of different versions of the
01:20:10 ◼ ► same concept. Um, but yeah, Swift, Swift bar is, uh, so far dot app. Okay. Very nice. Um,
01:20:21 ◼ ► before I found, uh, but blip, I was using an app called drop zone to help me share things by airdrop.
01:20:31 ◼ ► And I, but I do really like drop zones. So if I ever do use airdrop for something, I will use this,
01:20:36 ◼ ► but it also has a bunch of other things. It lives up in your menu bar and you can drag or
01:20:40 ◼ ► file up there and have a bunch of actions that you can perform on that file. Um, like I have,
01:20:46 ◼ ► um, you know, you can drag a file up there and drag it over an email and it will create an email
01:20:51 ◼ ► where it attaches that file. Um, I can drag a receipt up there and it will file it off in the app that I
01:20:56 ◼ ► use for receipts with my accountant. I can drag files up there and it will zip them. So it's just like
01:21:02 ◼ ► you, you drag it over the app icon in the menu bar and it will allow you to take actions on it and you
01:21:08 ◼ ► can customize what those actions are. Um, just if you are, if you don't want to use blip,
01:21:13 ◼ ► but you do want to continue using airdrop, this to me is the way that airdrop should work. I find the
01:21:18 ◼ ► way to airdrop a file from macOS has always been really weird and clunky. Like it, it takes way more
01:21:24 ◼ ► effort and memory to do every time. This is great. You just drag the file up to the, to the drop zone
01:21:29 ◼ ► icon and you just drop it over the big airdrop logo and then off it goes. So I recommend that.
01:21:35 ◼ ► Nice. Uh, keyboard maestro mentioned already is the ultimate Apple, you know, or Mac automation tool.
01:21:45 ◼ ► Actually it, it is, it's got a kind of a drag and drop interface. It's fairly straightforward. Um,
01:21:53 ◼ ► and the power it has is amazing. So the idea, I mean, it's keyboard maestro. The idea is you can
01:21:57 ◼ ► bind it to key keyboard shortcuts because it's making these macros. You can also bind it to all
01:22:02 ◼ ► sorts of other actions and activities and it, anything you can think of basically it can do.
01:22:09 ◼ ► I, um, especially like it because it has the ability to do things like look at your screen or identify, uh,
01:22:18 ◼ ► an item appears on your screen and then it knows you can click on it. Like you can literally script,
01:22:30 ◼ ► I bought a book for design in California and it's, and it's a Kindle book and Amazon has cracked down
01:22:37 ◼ ► all their DRM stuff. So you can't really easily convert a Kindle book to something else.
01:22:42 ◼ ► And I want a searchable reference of that book, um, in my little Dev and think library so that I can
01:22:49 ◼ ► more easily search about the book, but I want to be able to search it. And I don't want to,
01:22:53 ◼ ► I want to search it alongside everything else, not have to also go into the Kindle app and search.
01:23:03 ◼ ► So you know what I did? Keyboard maestro, because keyboard maestro has among its things,
01:23:09 ◼ ► capture part of your screen and also OCR, an image that it's captured. And I literally wrote
01:23:16 ◼ ► in about two minutes, a keyboard maestro macro that took the Kindle book in the Kindle app on the Mac
01:23:21 ◼ ► and OCR at every page and output it a text file. So you just had it like leafing through for you,
01:23:29 ◼ ► get the window of the Kindle app, OCR it, append it to this text file, press the right arrow key,
01:23:34 ◼ ► repeat 600 times. And I came back 20 minutes later and I had a text file of the entire text of that
01:23:41 ◼ ► book that I put in Dev and think because I bought the book. I want to be able to search it. Amazon
01:23:47 ◼ ► thinks I shouldn't be able to, I don't care what Amazon thinks. And so, but keyboard maestro, let me
01:23:53 ◼ ► do that. And I had a bunch of things. There was a, we had to do a mass deletion of a, of a Slack instance.
01:23:59 ◼ ► At one point we had to delete a bunch of people from it and Slack makes you have to click through
01:24:04 ◼ ► one at a time. You have to like, you have to a list of people and then you have to click and then it
01:24:08 ◼ ► loads another page and then you have to click delete. And then it says, are you sure you want to delete
01:24:12 ◼ ► and you have to click? And I did a keyboard maestro macro that did all, it literally would click that,
01:24:17 ◼ ► wait for this next button to appear. Once it appears, click it, wait for the next thing to happen.
01:24:22 ◼ ► And then just repeat 600 times. And it's amazing, amazing tool. So worth it for all of those reasons.
01:24:30 ◼ ► Plus it's the single best way to interface on a Mac with stream deck because it'll let you run macros on
01:24:36 ◼ ► the stream stream deck and update the buttons and stuff. So you can have these dynamic buttons that
01:24:40 ◼ ► change based on the current state, which I really love. So my recording button lights up when I'm recording.
01:24:45 ◼ ► And then when I press it again and it stops recording, it dims again. And that's all keyboard
01:24:49 ◼ ► maestro doing that. For window management, I use Moom, M-O-O-M. Many tricks. My friend Rob Griffiths.
01:24:57 ◼ ► Yeah. Moom has a lot of options that I don't really need. I just have a simple set of keyboard shortcuts
01:25:06 ◼ ► that will either, you know, take a window and put it this side of the screen, that side of the screen.
01:25:17 ◼ ► for different sides of the screen also to center a screen or I have like just one shortcut that just
01:25:23 ◼ ► puts like my preferred size for what I would think of as a full screen app that I don't have full screen,
01:25:34 ◼ ► Um, I really love Moom. One of the things I really like about Moom is that it understands like the
01:25:42 ◼ ► way you're just talking about a fundamental level. It understands that I don't want things to be the
01:25:48 ◼ ► exact same size. If I'm using my studio display or my laptop screen, that it's always going to do
01:25:55 ◼ ► things proportionally. I just think that's very nice. I like it a lot. I've used it for years.
01:26:00 ◼ ► It has so many more features than what I use, but I just need a basic set and it does it really well.
01:26:05 ◼ ► Uh, text sniper. Text sniper is again, it's a thing that while I was working on design in
01:26:14 ◼ ► California scripts, I discovered. Um, and there, there are a bunch of places where you can't select
01:26:21 ◼ ► text. Yeah. Um, there are a lot of places where you can now select text, but there are a lot of
01:26:26 ◼ ► places on the Mac where you can't. And I actually had this too, where I was, I was trying to extract
01:26:33 ◼ ► some text from a PDF to quote and the PDF had OCR, but it was bad OCR. And I thought, oh no,
01:26:40 ◼ ► this is an old PDF with bad OCR. I'm going to have to re OCR it. And I have started to do that
01:26:45 ◼ ► with my design in California references is I started re OCRing them because there are all these PDFs that
01:26:51 ◼ ► were made from book scans like 15 years ago. And the OCR technology was very bad then. And it's much
01:26:56 ◼ ► better now, but text sniper, it goes in your menu bar, but basically it's command shift two.
01:27:02 ◼ ► So it's like taking a screenshot and you, and you select text on your screen and it puts the actual
01:27:09 ◼ ► text on the clipboard. If you're referencing, like, there are lots of weird places where you can't
01:27:14 ◼ ► select and copy text. Like the app store is an example of this where like there's stuff in the app
01:27:20 ◼ ► store and you try to select the text. I was like, nope, you can't select that text. You can text
01:27:25 ◼ ► sniper it, command shift two, select it, puts it on the clipboard, paste it where you want. It's great.
01:27:30 ◼ ► Really useful utility for stuff like that. And I've definitely used it for, I want to quote something
01:27:34 ◼ ► out of a book and I command shift two, just grab that paragraph, paste it in and done. Uh, yes,
01:27:40 ◼ ► you should be able to just select the text, but sometimes you can't sometimes you can text sniper
01:27:44 ◼ ► does it. It's beautiful. Just very simple, targeted and smart. So I am a big fan of clean shot X for
01:27:51 ◼ ► screenshots. Clean shot X also has this functionality. Nice. So I wanted to mention it easier. So I use that,
01:27:59 ◼ ► right? So if I ever need to OCR something, I use clean shot. Um, I love clean shot. And there are so
01:28:04 ◼ ► many people that are like, why would you use this when it's built into the operating system?
01:28:10 ◼ ► The reason is I think clean shot does a much better job of what do you do with a screenshot
01:28:15 ◼ ► after you've taken it than what Mac OS does. So when you take a screenshot in clean shot,
01:28:20 ◼ ► you can take them in a bunch of different ways, right? You can do capture an area. You can capture
01:28:25 ◼ ► the whole screen. You can do a scrolling captures, time captures. You can record video. You can do text.
01:28:32 ◼ ► You can make gifts, all that kind of stuff from what's on your screen. But once you've taken a
01:28:39 ◼ ► And you can keep taking more and they just start stacking up. You can then copy them. You can save
01:28:44 ◼ ► them. You can open them up and draw on them and you can drag and drop them into different places.
01:28:50 ◼ ► They don't save as a file unless you need them to, um, I've, I've, I've used this app for a long time.
01:28:55 ◼ ► To me, it is like the absolute best way to take screenshots. And they have so many different
01:29:01 ◼ ► functions and features that you can try out and like make to make your screenshot experience even
01:29:08 ◼ ► better. Um, I will say clean shot. There are a bunch of apps that, that I use that are on set up.
01:29:13 ◼ ► I, I use set up. Um, I'm a subscriber to it for this. Like there's like a bunch of these apps that
01:29:19 ◼ ► I've mentioned there, there. So I pay my set up subscription and I, and I get all these apps and
01:29:23 ◼ ► that's how I have clean shot. And I really love it. If you, I really recommend just giving it a go,
01:29:28 ◼ ► even if you think that the built-in screen capture tools are good enough for you. I've convinced lots
01:29:33 ◼ ► of my friends to do this over time. And they basically all come back to me and say, yeah,
01:29:36 ◼ ► yeah, you know what? You were right. Clean shot is better than, than the built-in system.
01:29:45 ◼ ► I have looked at it and I don't understand why I would need it because you can do almost
01:29:52 ◼ ► I'm telling you, man, it's a better experience. Trust me. Just trust me. Like I, I, I felt the
01:29:58 ◼ ► exact same when I first used it. I'm like, why would I need this? It's all so easy to do with macOS.
01:30:03 ◼ ► They have built a better system. Okay. This is that, it's that classic where it's like,
01:30:13 ◼ ► I'll, I'll just say there's a lot you can do with the built-in tools. People don't know,
01:30:19 ◼ ► like you can grab a window, you can grab a window without a, uh, uh, uh, yep. A shadow. You can put
01:30:30 ◼ ► I believe it. Well, I said, I think clean shot does a better job of what happens after the
01:30:35 ◼ ► screenshot is taken. Like they, their tool suite for that is really, really nice. The UI is really
01:30:40 ◼ ► nice. Uh, I'm going to go next with, um, mic drop. Okay. Mic drop is a, uh, utility that I had to get
01:30:52 ◼ ► because I am, when I'm out here in the garage, I have a little mute switch that I use that's connected
01:30:59 ◼ ► via the switch. Uh, that was me muting myself and unmuting myself. It's connected by an XLR cable.
01:31:07 ◼ ► So it's like in line with my microphone and it kills the audio from the microphone. It's very useful when
01:31:12 ◼ ► I'm like coughing or clearing my throat or things like that. In the back of the house, when I'm in
01:31:17 ◼ ► the alternate recording area, or if I'm traveling and I've got a different microphone, uh, that doesn't
01:31:23 ◼ ► have this physical mute switch on it. Some of them have a little mute button that you can tap that's on
01:31:27 ◼ ► there and you're tapping around on the microphone to find it and stuff like that. Mic drop lives in your
01:31:34 ◼ ► menu bar. You can, you can bind it to a keyboard shortcut. It, you can automate it actually in,
01:31:41 ◼ ► in the back of the house and that set up, I have it on a stream deck button and it is a mic mute.
01:31:47 ◼ ► That's what it does. It's a, it will mute your specific microphone and show the status of it.
01:31:52 ◼ ► And I find that very valuable. It's really nice, uh, built incredibly well with support for Apple
01:31:59 ◼ ► script and shortcuts and you know, you name it, they, they support it. And, uh, for a USB microphone
01:32:05 ◼ ► without, um, a physical mute switch that I prefer, that is, uh, it gives me a physical mute switch,
01:32:13 ◼ ► basically, if I bind it to the stream deck, which is really great. Six colors logos right there on the,
01:32:20 ◼ ► That's all the problem for me really easily. Very nice. Uh, I want to recommend this is a two in
01:32:27 ◼ ► one screens and tail scale. Okay. Very good. Like two, two in one kind of thing for being able to
01:32:36 ◼ ► access, uh, max connected to a network, you know, when you're not in the physical place,
01:32:41 ◼ ► you know, so I can that the, the MacBook pro that I mentioned earlier, my M1 MacBook pro, um,
01:32:46 ◼ ► I can get into that Mac from wherever I am using the combination of screens and tail scale.
01:32:51 ◼ ► I know that there are many ways of doing this. Uh, this has just been the most reliable,
01:32:56 ◼ ► most understandable, easiest to use and most documented like way of doing this that I have
01:33:03 ◼ ► found. And I really liked that combo. So, uh, I recommend checking them out. If you want to try
01:33:08 ◼ ► and access a device, you know, like a Mac or any device from any other device that you might have,
01:33:13 ◼ ► uh, you can use screens and tail scale for that. Nice. How about retro batch from flying meat
01:33:19 ◼ ► software? This is a batch processing of images. I use this for a few things like, uh, for incomparable
01:33:27 ◼ ► on the site, we have three different sizes of the show art. And so I have a droplet basically where I
01:33:33 ◼ ► drag and drop new show art on a droplet for a retro batch. And it just outputs the three different sizes
01:33:39 ◼ ► in the right formats at the right time and the right naming. Um, for the take control books,
01:33:45 ◼ ► they have a droplet that, that does like make sure that it's within the image specs that they have,
01:33:51 ◼ ► where it's like, it has to be a certain format and not above a certain size. And so it'll resize it if
01:33:56 ◼ ► it needs to. And then it puts a border around it. It's just like really convenient. If you're,
01:34:00 ◼ ► if you're working with images a lot, um, you could build a whole workflow in retro batch and then
01:34:07 ◼ ► either run it or create a little droplet, you could drag and drop images on, and then it'll do all of
01:34:11 ◼ ► these things, including kind of like the logic of, does this need to be smaller and things like that.
01:34:16 ◼ ► And it, and it takes care of all of that. And then as a, uh, I'll do a little adjunct too. There's a,
01:34:21 ◼ ► uh, utility called image opt him that's free. Um, and it does what you might expect, which is
01:34:31 ◼ ► drag like a ping or you can do a JPEG or Jeff or whatever, but like drag a ping on there and watch
01:34:37 ◼ ► as 40% of the file size disappears. Huh? It is, it, it, it cranks on that image and it will make it
01:34:45 ◼ ► smaller. And if you are, I do this a lot for my six colors images where I'm trying to be,
01:34:51 ◼ ► aware of the fact that every single person who comes to the website is going to load that image.
01:34:55 ◼ ► And that if that image is a 400 K instead of 900 K that's good, right? That's less traffic on the
01:35:02 ◼ ► internet and all that. And you can, uh, you can script it. So I actually, my image uploader for six
01:35:08 ◼ ► colors, which is an automation, Mike, it's an automation. I wouldn't expect anything. Um, it
01:35:13 ◼ ► processes the image through image opt him. So it, it, it uploads the smaller image. This is linked here to
01:35:21 ◼ ► Mac world. Lex Friedman says, Oh, well, they've got, they've got, they've got a little classic.
01:35:30 ◼ ► simple to use. And it does just what it promises. Review from 2012. It still does it all. It still
01:35:37 ◼ ► does it all. And also Federico from the 2012, my must have max Mac apps, basically image opt him
01:35:46 ◼ ► Thanks Federico from 2012. Uh, I'm going to mention amphetamine here. So this is good. This is really
01:35:55 ◼ ► good. The, the Mac that I spoke about earlier, the laptop that I keep awake all the time, the
01:36:00 ◼ ► amphetamine make sure that it stays awake all the time. I turn off the display. I got the display turn
01:36:04 ◼ ► off cause I do not want the display on all the time. Uh, but amphetamine keeps that Mac awake. Um,
01:36:11 ◼ ► and you can have it on all the time or you can have it, you know, for a certain amount of time
01:36:15 ◼ ► or into a process is complete. But if you want to make sure that a Mac will not go to sleep,
01:36:20 ◼ ► that is how you do it. That's good. I had that happen sometimes where I'm like working on a project and,
01:36:26 ◼ ► and I know it's going to take a while and I do not want my Mac to go to sleep or lock or something
01:36:31 ◼ ► like, like, uh, like if I'm capturing pages out of a Kindle document, it's like, do not just keep
01:36:36 ◼ ► working. I know I'm not here. Just keep working. Keep going. Um, okay. Carbon copy cloner. I
01:36:43 ◼ ► mentioned it earlier. Uh, you can use this or super duper. I think I have them both running on different
01:36:48 ◼ ► systems in my house, but it's a, uh, it's a, it's going to make a disc clone every day. So you,
01:36:53 ◼ ► if your computer dies or you need to fish out a file, you can get to it. And these now have more
01:36:58 ◼ ► advanced snapshot features, APFS snapshot features, which means for example, I now have a four terabyte
01:37:06 ◼ ► drive as my backup drive on my two terabyte SSD for my laptop. And what that means is carbon copy
01:37:13 ◼ ► cloner. Isn't just cloning my existing drive. It is keeping around snapshots of previous versions,
01:37:19 ◼ ► which means it is more like a backup, not just like they were originally designed as kind of bootable
01:37:25 ◼ ► clones, but it is copying all of the important files on my computer, but it's using the extra
01:37:32 ◼ ► space to actually save extra previous days worth of snapshots, which means that I can roll back.
01:37:38 ◼ ► And I have used that drive to pull files off that I'm like, oh no, this file went to a bad place.
01:37:45 ◼ ► And I need to go back to what it was like a few days ago. I can do that. I also use time machine,
01:37:49 ◼ ► but I, I leave this disc plugged into my thunderbolt hub and it mounts it at two 30 in the afternoon and
01:37:57 ◼ ► it runs a clone and then it ejects it again. And it does it invisibly. I don't even look at the drive.
01:38:03 ◼ ► I don't, it's under the desk, but it gives me that peace of mind. And carbon copy cloner has been doing
01:38:10 ◼ ► this forever. It just has super duper has, and they're both really great. I don't think I could pick
01:38:31 ◼ ► I use an, a service called granola to do this. Um, so essentially if I'm on a meeting or on a call,
01:38:39 ◼ ► I can open the granola app on my Mac. It will record my input. Um, and also the other people
01:38:46 ◼ ► or person on the call, transcribe everything that said, and then create notes at the end,
01:38:56 ◼ ► and I are doing design in California conversations that we have these, like we've had production
01:39:00 ◼ ► meetings. We're going to keep having them. The thing for me when I'm on a meeting, it's like
01:39:05 ◼ ► lots of things get said in meetings, right? And they're things like, it would be nice to do this.
01:39:10 ◼ ► What if we did this? What if we did that? No one captures everything, every idea that happens
01:39:16 ◼ ► in a meeting. The computer can capture all of that for you, summarize it, give the action items,
01:39:22 ◼ ► and also say who is responsible for each of them. I think this is a fantastic use of these tools.
01:39:27 ◼ ► And I really like granola. Um, it's the UI is really nice. They do a good job. The app does,
01:39:33 ◼ ► I like it to use. Uh, you can also just take your own notes as well, and it will integrate those notes
01:39:39 ◼ ► into the transcript and into the stuff that comes out at the end. Um, so yeah, very good. I like granola a
01:39:45 ◼ ► lot. I think they do a good job. Um, and that is my current app of choice for this. I've bounced
01:39:51 ◼ ► around for different apps over time. Um, I really liked the way that granola does it. Okay. You want
01:39:56 ◼ ► to do one more and we'll go to a break? Sure. Let's do thaw. Okay. Thaw is a menu bar manager. Um,
01:40:08 ◼ ► golden gate is breaking all the menu bar managers, but they will be fixed. Okay. They will be fixed.
01:40:14 ◼ ► Thaw is a fork of ice, which was a different menu bar manager that seems to have gone, uh,
01:40:22 ◼ ► inactive and it's open source. So they forked it and now there is thaw and they're working on it,
01:40:28 ◼ ► working on the golden gate compatibility and all of that. And it's a menu bar manager. You know,
01:40:37 ◼ ► which is why everything is broken, I think, but Apple doesn't go far enough with it. Apple,
01:40:45 ◼ ► it can manage what is not visible because you're at the notch. Um, but I prefer something that doesn't
01:40:53 ◼ ► like, I have a lot of items in my menu bar and some of them I want to be able to get to if I need to,
01:40:58 ◼ ► but I do not need to see them littering my menu bar all the time. And that's what I like about thaw.
01:41:03 ◼ ► bartender does this. There are lots of other apps that do that. They're all various shades of broken
01:41:07 ◼ ► in the golden gate betas, but they all get better. And I just really like being able to say, I want
01:41:12 ◼ ► these visible all the time. And these to only be visible when I move my mouse up there and click,
01:41:18 ◼ ► um, to get to those items. Cause I don't need the ambient information that carbon copy cloner is
01:41:24 ◼ ► running on my system. I just don't need to know it. I don't need to know that transmit is running.
01:41:30 ◼ ► I don't need to know that stream deck is running. I know it's running. I don't need it in my menu bar.
01:41:37 ◼ ► Yeah. Um, but sometimes you do. That's why, you know, some of them you can take out of the menu
01:41:42 ◼ ► bar, but you do kind of want access to them. You just don't need to see them all the time. And this,
01:41:47 ◼ ► and this is a way to do that in the long run. I think Apple wants everybody to use their new system
01:41:51 ◼ ► of controls from control center. But the truth is most apps don't use that system. So instead,
01:42:06 ◼ ► This episode is brought to you by century. You get a bug report. The user says something was broken,
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01:43:51 ◼ ► of this show and all of relay. All right, so I'm going to mention pop clip here. So what I like about
01:43:58 ◼ ► pop clip is it is essentially bringing the iOS kind of pop-up menu for when you select text but
01:44:06 ◼ ► bringing it to the Mac. So a simple, just at its simplest, you select some text and it brings up
01:44:13 ◼ ► the copy, you know, and paste menu. So that's nice. You've got that there if you want to. If you like a
01:44:18 ◼ ► mouse-based text copier, pop clip is great for that. But you can also add in different functionality
01:44:25 ◼ ► into pop clip. So I have a couple that I use very often. I select text and I can press a button to
01:44:33 ◼ ► turn that text into title case, which is very helpful for podcast titles because everybody
01:44:39 ◼ ► likes to do title case. And I find title case sometimes breaks my brain as to what exactly
01:44:45 ◼ ► I'm supposed to be able to set it as. And so I like that I can select the text, press that button,
01:44:49 ◼ ► it will turn it into title case. Also going to a URL. So if I select some text, I can go just press
01:44:56 ◼ ► a button and it will take me to that URL. Because as we've mentioned earlier, text isn't always exactly
01:45:02 ◼ ► the way you want it to be formatted. And maybe a URL is not clickable for some reason, but I can just
01:45:07 ◼ ► select that text and pop clip, press the button and it will take me there. But there's a bunch of things
01:45:43 ◼ ► And it's all of the documents for Design in California. It's the oral histories and it's
01:45:49 ◼ ► the books and it's the magazines. And it means that I can fairly easily, if I'm writing about
01:45:58 ◼ ► a particular subject. So the example I'll give is that trip to Atlantic City that we talked
01:46:02 ◼ ► about in our sample episodes. I can find every book that talked about that. And exactly where,
01:46:11 ◼ ► and I can very quickly jump and see what all the different stories about that trip to Atlantic City
01:46:17 ◼ ► were, which is important if I'm assembling a story and I want to refer to all those documents and see,
01:46:24 ◼ ► you know, what do they have in common? How do they disagree or whatever? And the idea of like,
01:46:30 ◼ ► I could search a folder or something, but then you're searching a folder and then you're opening
01:46:33 ◼ ► individual items. Like it puts it all in one place where I just get search results. And it's like,
01:46:38 ◼ ► here are all the search results for all of the books and all of the magazines all in one place.
01:46:44 ◼ ► And I have been doing those things where, you know, some of these books, I buy all the books,
01:46:49 ◼ ► but I also, sometimes I find the PDF that somebody scanned on the internet 20 years ago of that book.
01:46:55 ◼ ► And just as I rip the text out of those Kindle books for searching purposes, I will download those
01:47:03 ◼ ► PDFs of that book that I bought a used copy of it, but somebody made a scan of it already.
01:47:08 ◼ ► And I, I have found that a lot of those are really bad or old OCR. So the text in them is
01:47:15 ◼ ► not, you can't copy and paste it because it's nonsense or it's garbled so much that it's a lot
01:47:19 ◼ ► of work to fix it. And modern OCR is much better. So Devin think has built in our OCR engine. So you,
01:47:26 ◼ ► you literally just right click on a book and you say re-OCR this. And so every time I get a book with
01:47:31 ◼ ► bad OCR, I just say, do this again. And I also have some books that are in RTF or text or whatever. And like,
01:47:40 ◼ ► going to read a book in Devin think, right. But I, as a, an indexed repository to quickly get access to
01:47:48 ◼ ► exactly what I'm looking for. It's, uh, it's really great. It's, it's really great. And I needed a tool
01:47:54 ◼ ► like that. This is one of my number one tools, uh, for that I picked up for design in California.
01:48:00 ◼ ► Uh, I'm going to recommend PCALC now. I, I love PCALC in my menu bar. That is where I interact
01:48:08 ◼ ► with it. And I have a keyboard shortcut. I just press command option P and PCALC opens and I can
01:48:15 ◼ ► just start doing calculations. Uh, and I also have it set up with a bunch of currency conversion, uh,
01:48:21 ◼ ► buttons in PCALC as well. So I use it for a currency converter as well. Uh, but I, I love it living up there
01:48:26 ◼ ► in my menu bar. I'm a, I'm a big fan. And so, uh, thank you, James, for having the menu bar app and
01:48:32 ◼ ► for making that good of a time. Uh, cause it, it, it, it's, I use it every day and I, and I love having
01:48:37 ◼ ► it up there in my menu bar. Nice. That's so simple. Yeah. Just, just open it, open the widget in your
01:48:43 ◼ ► menu bar. Yep. That's exactly it. And I, and I love it up there. Hmm. Nice. Okay. How about,
01:48:57 ◼ ► an ugly, ugly, ugly app. It's an ugly app. You're ugly, ugly. It is, it is an open source
01:49:09 ◼ ► cross-platform ebook utility. Tells you everything you need to know. It looks like every open source
01:49:16 ◼ ► project that was brought to Mac OS in the early days of OS 10, but it's where I put all my eBooks
01:49:22 ◼ ► and I, and I can put eBooks in there and I can sync them to my Kobo. Um, it's just really convenient.
01:49:29 ◼ ► Um, this is, this is my repository of, um, and the, yes, this is where I could extract the DRM from my old
01:49:39 ◼ ► Kindle books and then keep them in there and I can put them in my Kobo and you can search them and
01:49:44 ◼ ► stuff too. It's just a, a very convenient utility for me to have for all of my eBooks. So, um, it's a,
01:49:51 ◼ ► it's nothing to look at, but it's very functional and made more functional by various plugins that do
01:49:56 ◼ ► things like, let me extract the DRM from ones with DRM so that I can just have them and put them wherever
01:50:02 ◼ ► I want because like, I've got the weird, I've got my weird XTE Inc, uh, e-readers that are like
01:50:09 ◼ ► non-standard and they, they, they don't do DRM and they only do standard EPUBs. And like, if I've got
01:50:15 ◼ ► the, if I've got it in caliber, I can output it to that device. In fact, those devices will do a wireless
01:50:22 ◼ ► sync with caliber. You run caliber and then you get on the little tiny e-reader and you say caliber sync
01:50:30 ◼ ► Switchglass by friend of the show, John Syracuse. So I had previously mentioned, I have an issue with my,
01:50:40 ◼ ► my display and the dock. I like my dock on the right hand side. I have my display on the right hand side.
01:50:50 ◼ ► I do not understand why Apple will not allow you to put a dock on every display. I don't understand
01:50:59 ◼ ► why they will not let you do this. Like why one display has to be the most important display and why
01:51:05 ◼ ► you cannot put the dock on the middle display. If you have a display on the right, why does it need to go
01:51:11 ◼ ► all the way to the right? I find it very annoying. Uh, I wish they didn't do this, but they do.
01:51:16 ◼ ► Luckily, John Syracuse has saved me because with Switchglass, I have just a kind of pseudo doc,
01:51:22 ◼ ► which these are just the apps that I have actually open and they're there if I need them. I know I
01:51:28 ◼ ► mentioned I don't use the doc very much and that is true, but if I ever want to use it, I don't want
01:51:32 ◼ ► to have to go all the way over to the right hand side to click on something. Yeah. And so I have
01:51:38 ◼ ► Switchglass here. It sits on the right hand side and I can get to my active apps whenever I need them.
01:51:50 ◼ ► universal control, you can have a situation where your dock is to the, you know, that you can move
01:51:59 ◼ ► past the dock onto another screen. Yes. With universal control. Yes. So why not just let people choose to
01:52:05 ◼ ► show the dock on the main display, even if there's another display to the right of it? It's so dumb,
01:52:15 ◼ ► Madness. I just hate it. I hate it so much. So yes. Thank you, John Syracuse. Thank you,
01:52:20 ◼ ► John. Yeah. Big fan. I bet you there is, there is no world in which John thought I was a Switchglass
01:52:26 ◼ ► user, right? He would never imagine that I use Switchglass. Because it is emulating something
01:52:35 ◼ ► from way older versions of macOS, right? Yes. So like, I just can't, I would expect that he would
01:52:41 ◼ ► find it surprising that I use it. I mean, it's also drag thing. That's what I mean, right? Yeah. It's
01:52:46 ◼ ► drag thing. It's emulating that kind of world. So your pick, your picks are James Thompson and
01:52:53 ◼ ► formerly James Thompson. Yeah. It's just, if James will do it, I'll use it, you know? Yeah. Or if he did
01:52:58 ◼ ► it and then abandoned it and then John replicated it. I'll use it even more. And I'll be very happy
01:53:02 ◼ ► about it. My next one is Elsewhen, which is originated with our listeners, basically. RelayFM listeners.
01:53:08 ◼ ► Useful in a couple of ways. So it is a time zone. Time zones are the hardest. They're the worst.
01:53:13 ◼ ► It's two things. If you're in a Discord, which we have many Discords that we're in, you can set a time
01:53:19 ◼ ► and then copy to the clipboard and paste it in. And it will show, I'm so mad that Slack doesn't
01:53:26 ◼ ► support this, by the way. It drives me crazy. I could use this all the time in Slack and Slack
01:53:31 ◼ ► will do it for bots, but it won't do it for people. It pastes in a code. And what happens
01:53:37 ◼ ► is the time is displayed in the local time zone of whoever sees it. So instead of having to say,
01:53:41 ◼ ► it's this time Eastern, this time Pacific, this time Central, this time New Zealand, this time Central
01:53:47 ◼ ► European, you set the time in your time zone and press copy and paste it in. And it's that time
01:53:53 ◼ ► everywhere for everyone. So good. And separately, you can do presets for various time zones or time
01:54:00 ◼ ► zone groups. And it puts them in text with a little emoji and you can copy them. And I use this like
01:54:07 ◼ ► when we do a live event, like a Zoom or something for six color subscribers. I'll put that time in
01:54:15 ◼ ► else when, and then I will grab the codes because I don't want to mess up the time zones for everybody.
01:54:24 ◼ ► Really great app. Big fan. I was using this a lot when I was streaming a lot. Fantastic. Love it.
01:54:34 ◼ ► I'm going to mention an app that has time in the name, but it's completely unrelated. It's Timery.
01:54:39 ◼ ► Timery is one of my favorite apps of all time. It's a time tracking app. You need a toggle account.
01:54:44 ◼ ► But once you've got that, you know, free or a paid account, depending on the features that you need,
01:54:49 ◼ ► you can use Timery to track your time. I love time tracking. I love it for data. I love it for
01:54:55 ◼ ► understanding what the shape of my work looks like. And it helps me make decisions. As someone who likes
01:55:01 ◼ ► to think about how they work, I actually have data that proves the work that I've done and how much
01:55:08 ◼ ► time I spent on it. Because your brain is very bad at keeping track of that over time. And sometimes
01:55:15 ◼ ► the way that you feel about a project can make you either over or underestimate how much time you spent
01:55:20 ◼ ► on it. And I feel like it's very difficult to make decisions about prioritization without data.
01:55:25 ◼ ► And Timery provides me with that data. And it's also made by a great developer, Joe, Timery Joe.
01:55:31 ◼ ► And Timery Joe has done a great job over the years of keeping this app up to date and even dealing
01:55:36 ◼ ► with some of the really ridiculous, ridiculous, I would say, like, who am I thinking of here?
01:55:45 ◼ ► What was the company that had really just terrible API changes that they made where they really restricted
01:55:53 ◼ ► it for everyone? I don't remember. Oh, Reddit. Reddit like API changes that Toggle tried to do to try and
01:56:01 ◼ ► really clamp down on people using their API. And Joe had to do a ton of work to be able to reduce the
01:56:08 ◼ ► amount of calls that the app makes to the API and still make it function very well. And he did a wonderful
01:56:15 ◼ ► job with that. Like, so I can continue using the app kind of unrestricted by what Toggle was trying to do.
01:56:24 ◼ ► So fantastic. And also, you know, got liquid glass design and everything now. I love Timery.
01:56:49 ◼ ► Yeah. I just, I, if I, because I tried it and what I found is that I appreciated that it was a good
01:56:56 ◼ ► iOS app and, but on the Mac, it just frustrated me because it's, and I know why it is the way it is.
01:57:01 ◼ ► It's just, I needed it to be good on the Mac, not on the, not on the iPhone. And it, that's not its priority.
01:57:11 ◼ ► All right. Uh, we always mention it. It's a hall of famer, but I'm going to put Rogue Amoeba in the
01:57:17 ◼ ► spotlight again. Audio Hijack and Loopback are essential for what we do. And they've made some
01:57:23 ◼ ► great improvements with it. The scripting, the JavaScript based scriptability in Audio Hijack
01:57:35 ◼ ► And Loopback is a utility that I, I could argue that, uh, that the crossover between these two
01:57:43 ◼ ► apps, they, they might need to be the same app or share more features with one another eventually.
01:57:47 ◼ ► But, um, I use them both. Loopback is virtual audio inputs and outputs. And that allows me to
01:57:55 ◼ ► route audio in different ways. So for example, I have a, um, I have a, I used to have this whole,
01:58:02 ◼ ► like, what app am I capturing? You, are you talking on zoom? Are you talking on Riverside? Are you
01:58:07 ◼ ► talking in a web browser? What apps are you using to record a podcast? And I set up like that Apple
01:58:14 ◼ ► MIDI thing. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. So, uh, we're still there. Loopback, I set up a, I set up a
01:58:21 ◼ ► virtual input that's, that's a VOIP apps and it's all the apps. Nice. And then my Audio Hijack just
01:58:28 ◼ ► records the VOIP input, which is all those apps. Um, and, and I use it for a bunch of different
01:58:37 ◼ ► things, custom streaming where I need these very particular set of things to go to a different
01:58:42 ◼ ► place. Um, it does all of that. You use it for the jingle episodes too, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's
01:58:47 ◼ ► and Farago, which is another rogue Amiba app, which is the soundboard for that. So yeah, I rogue Amiba
01:59:01 ◼ ► Absolutely. Uh, I'm going to recommend an app now, which is unfindable. And so you, you have
01:59:09 ◼ ► to get the link in the show notes. It is called the clock. Uh, man, it is a menu bar app for
01:59:18 ◼ ► world time. So you can click up there, you can have a bunch of time zones that you want. Um,
01:59:23 ◼ ► you know, so I have like time zones, all the people that I work with, but it also has a feature that I
01:59:28 ◼ ► really like where I can just drag a little slider and it will show me the time at different time
01:59:33 ◼ ► periods. Right. So like I can drag it by like, Oh, so when it's, uh, six o'clock in the morning in
01:59:40 ◼ ► London tomorrow, what time will it be in San Francisco? You know, you can just drag a little slider and it
01:59:45 ◼ ► will just keep moving the clocks forward. So I like it a lot. Um, it also has a, uh, like the
01:59:50 ◼ ► clocks have seconds hands on them. And so if I need to know when an embargo is about to hit,
01:59:56 ◼ ► I can do my counting down by looking at the clock and then I can press the publish button. So I love
02:00:02 ◼ ► this app, but it's, it's very old. Um, and I'm always happy that it works in every version of, uh,
02:00:08 ◼ ► Mac OS, um, because it's been around for a long time, but it absolutely does the job. And I'm a big fan.
02:00:14 ◼ ► All right. Uh, transmit from panic. Yep. Uh, FTP, uh, and various other file transfer systems is how I
02:00:25 ◼ ► get my files to my servers, my podcasts and other things. It does also does syncing. I actually keep
02:00:32 ◼ ► a backup of all the incomparable podcasts on my local server and it syncs those automatically. So I've got
02:00:39 ◼ ► my own kind of personal backup of all that stuff. They are working on a version six that's in beta
02:00:47 ◼ ► now that actually looks awesome and has some really cool features in it. So they're not, um,
02:00:54 ◼ ► it has been around a very long time. It's the one with the truck, the truck, but the, the new beta is
02:01:00 ◼ ► also really encouraging that they're doing some really interesting things there. And, um, and so
02:01:05 ◼ ► like, I just can't even imagine that that's how I get to files on remote servers is with transmit.
02:01:11 ◼ ► That's it. Uh, I stat menus. Um, I started using I stat menus when we were first starting, uh, with video
02:01:20 ◼ ► for upgrade because I would upload a video file to Dropbox and it would take an interminable amount
02:01:28 ◼ ► of time. Like I just never could understand how long it was going to take to upload the audio.
02:01:33 ◼ ► Um, and one of the things that I really needed to know was, is it actually uploading? And I could
02:01:41 ◼ ► find out with I stat menus because you can have like the network, uh, traffic, uh, indicator there.
02:01:47 ◼ ► So I had that one. And then over time, just for fun, I'm like in my menu bar, I put my SSD CPU and memory
02:01:53 ◼ ► usage. And sometimes I like to go and see like what's happening up there, you know, like poke around,
02:01:57 ◼ ► see what's happening, you know, it's a good time. So, uh, I like I stat menus against another one that's
02:02:02 ◼ ► included in setup. So easy one for me, but for network traffic, I really like it, but also just to
02:02:13 ◼ ► I use, um, an app called home control. Okay. It's a menu bar app that gives you access to all of your
02:02:21 ◼ ► home kit stuff, but really I use it because it's got a URL based automation scheme that allows me to
02:02:28 ◼ ► wire my home kit stuff to automations, especially to stream stream deck buttons. So like when I go on
02:02:42 ◼ ► Um, and those are all home kit. So I can, I can just have it automatically, uh, lower the blinds
02:02:51 ◼ ► or turn on the lights or whatever I need. And it's just, it's nice to have a, they, they have a
02:02:56 ◼ ► shortcuts version now that I have not really used as much that will also do this, but having the ability
02:03:02 ◼ ► to automate via a script, uh, home kit item is, uh, something that I find very useful, especially for
02:03:17 ◼ ► My last one is super agent. Super agent will automatically get rid of and fill out the privacy
02:03:27 ◼ ► cookie pop-ups for you when you're on the web. It is a, an app, but really it's a, um, uh, extension
02:03:35 ◼ ► for your browser. You pre-fill it with what do you want to say yes and no to. So you just reject
02:03:42 ◼ ► everything or accept functional cookies or whatever. And then every time you go to a website, super
02:03:46 ◼ ► agent very quickly does it all for you. Sometimes you get to those websites where they're like
02:03:51 ◼ ► just like unbelievably huge and you can quickly see super agent doing all the checking and getting
02:03:58 ◼ ► rid of it. I S I don't have to deal with, um, cookie pop-ups because I use super agent. Uh,
02:04:04 ◼ ► I'm a big fan of super agent. Does a good job. California now has the same kind of anti-cookie.
02:04:11 ◼ ► That's why you asked me. I wonder why you asked you about this. I probably should subscribe to this.
02:04:16 ◼ ► It's really good. It does the job and it also works on the, on the iPhone. So yeah, well that's,
02:04:20 ◼ ► that's exactly what it is. I get those on my iPad all the time too. Yeah. Really annoying.
02:04:24 ◼ ► All right. One more for me. Um, isotope RX, it is industry standard audio software, but I like,
02:04:35 ◼ ► I mean, but I love it and it comes in different versions, which is great. There is the advanced
02:04:42 ◼ ► version that will cost you like a thousand bucks, but there's also the standard version. That's 400
02:04:48 ◼ ► bucks in the elements version. That's 99 bucks. You say that's great. And I agree that it's nice
02:04:57 ◼ ► They have a comparison. Yeah. I find, I find that I, I bought advanced once. I have a copy of 12,
02:05:06 ◼ ► like of 10 advanced or something, but I went back to standard because, um, most of the tools are
02:05:15 ◼ ► professional, like filmmaker tools or musician tools, but they have the standard version and even
02:05:21 ◼ ► elements has some really nice stuff in it. Uh, but the standard version, like the stuff that I really
02:05:26 ◼ ► like is they've got a lot of, I started buying them because they had a great D reverb function,
02:05:36 ◼ ► It is incredible. It is incredible. And now they have a feature that's called, um, dialogue isolate. And in 12, where they've taken a bunch of the functionality from other, I also use it as a denoiser, right? Somebody has a hum, somebody has a buzz. Somebody has some room tone. I can very quickly sort of select a, a quiet space where all you're hearing is the noise, not them talking. And you learn that noise. And then you apply it to the file and the noise just vanished.
02:06:06 ◼ ► But this new, uh, dialogue isolate, it's using a machine learning algorithm that's trained on human voice. So it knows the dialogue and what voice sounds like. And then it suppresses everything else. And it's just got three separate sliders on it. It's such a great interface. And one of them is echo. And one of them is noise. And one of them is voice. And so you can slide the voice up or keep the voice where it is, but slide the echo down a little. And the noise down, or in a very echoey room, maybe slide the echo down.
02:06:36 ◼ ► Do a preview. You hear, you listen to it. It's like, that sounds pretty good. And then, you know, then you select an hour long podcast recording and press process. And it sits there for 20 minutes.
02:06:49 ◼ ► 12. I like the sound of that because I use some of these things. I'm like, I don't, I don't really know what it wants me to do. You know what I mean? Like, like you understand this stuff a bit more than me. And I'm like, ah, do I need this or do I need that? But being able to kind of like, just push it up and down.
02:07:06 ◼ ► And like, work it out. I think that's, that's really clever. I like the sound of that a lot.
02:07:10 ◼ ► Yeah. It's, it's literally just dialogue isolate. One thing it's focused to clean up speech. It's, it's, it's in standard. So you don't need advanced to do it. And it's got a very simple interface that is like voice reverb and noise. And I found that, although I still, you know, I still want to like D reverb or I still want to D noise.
02:07:32 ◼ ► The truth is if I use dialogue isolate and drag those settings and do a little preview and I'm like, this is a little noisy. I'll slide that down. I use this. Um, we did a episode of robot or not, where John Syracuse, I had people working outside his house. They were like jackhammering across the street and stuff.
02:07:50 ◼ ► And I use this and like, you can't tell you can't, you can't hear any of it. Cause it knows the algorithm knows that that's not a human voice. And so it just suppresses it. And I do that with, uh, some of my panelists for some of the podcasts I do on incomparable.
02:08:06 ◼ ► They're in echoey rooms. And I know that I can just slide that reverb down a little bit and it will suppress that room echo. And it's amazing how good a job it does at that. So, um, you know, it's not for everybody and paying, you know, like I said, there's a $99 version that has some nice tools in it. And the, the, and then there's a, you know, three 50 version that does more.
02:08:27 ◼ ► And then there's this enormous version that costs $1,400, but like in the business we're in, it's totally worth it for me to pay them for their $300 version. It's a $400 version. And it's often, it's on sale sometimes. And, you know, anyway, it's great. Isotope.
02:08:54 ◼ ► Yeah. Maybe. I mean, to be honest, when I do need these things, I just ask you, I'm like, Jason, this is for me, but maybe I won't need it so much now if they have this UI, which is more understandable to me.
02:09:06 ◼ ► The links are in the show notes for the apps that we've spoken about. If you would like to send us in your feedback, follow up, or you have any questions for us on a future episode, just go to upgradefeedback.com. Thank you so much to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus.
02:09:21 ◼ ► You can get longer and free versions of the show every week. Yes, they can be longer than this episode. Go to getupgradeplus.com. You can find us on YouTube by searching for the Upgrade Podcast.