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Connected

615: Upgrade*

 

00:00:07   Hello and welcome to Connected Episode 615.

00:00:12   It's made possible by our sponsors, Squarespace, Backblaze, and Revenue Cat.

00:00:17   I am your annual chairman, Steven Hackett, and I am joined by Man of

00:00:22   the People, Mike Hurley.

00:00:24   Oh, hello.

00:00:25   Uh I have the pleasure of introducing not the constant as he was known,

00:00:29   because the constant's not here.

00:00:31   It is in fact the draft champion, Jason Snell.

00:00:34   The upgrade draft champion, Jason Snell.

00:00:36   Hi, Jason.

00:00:36   Hi, thank you for uh introducing me with my title, and it's a pleasure

00:00:39   to be back on uh the connector program.

00:00:41   It's great.

00:00:41   I hadn't talked to Mike this week, Steven, because he was uh he was

00:00:44   flying when we did upgrade on Monday.

00:00:46   So it's nice to thank for thanks for sharing Mike with me.

00:00:50   Let me tell you the the the temptation I had to get over to

00:00:54   not put earnings talk in this episode.

00:00:58   Like the we'll do a we'll just talk later offline.

00:01:03   Uh we can have just have a nice talk and you can show me

00:01:05   some charts and we'll do we'll be fine.

00:01:07   I said to Jason, I was needing to upgrade, and it's I had that

00:01:10   rare feeling of like need feeling like I needed to talk to him and

00:01:14   Dan about what they were talking about.

00:01:16   Yes.

00:01:16   Um so it it it took a lot from me not to put that

00:01:20   that conversation into the show, but we're not here to talk about that.

00:01:23   We are not.

00:01:23   Uh we got lots of other things to talk about, but we're gonna start

00:01:27   with some Snell talk.

00:01:29   Okay.

00:01:30   I stole this from your feedback form in the CMS.

00:01:33   Wow.

00:01:34   Wow, he's just okay.

00:01:37   Outrageous.

00:01:38   Jack asks, does Jason miss 3D touch?

00:01:42   Um, Jack, I I don't.

00:01:44   I don't even a little.

00:01:45   I I I never used it after I like tested it for when it

00:01:51   when it came out.

00:01:52   And I like the idea of kind of a right-click for touch, but it

00:01:55   turns out tap and hold is that.

00:01:57   Like, and it was completely undiscoverable, and even though I knew it was there

00:02:01   and I never used it because I just didn't even think about it.

00:01:59   So it's a nice idea.

00:02:05   I do wonder a little bit if this we if we should throw this

00:02:08   into the list along with the touch bar as things where like the hardware

00:02:12   people are like, oh man, we can do this thing, we press harder and

00:02:15   we can sense it.

00:02:16   And then the software people were like, nah, eh, we're not that excited about

00:02:21   it.

00:02:21   Sounds like the touching bar a little bit.

00:02:23   Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

00:02:24   Is I if I I wonder if this is like that, where there was

00:02:29   a real disconnect between like the enthusiasm of hardware people to build uh cool

00:02:33   hardware and the software people just kind of were not believers.

00:02:36   Um, but regardless, it just kind of tap and hold like when they when

00:02:41   they took it out and it was just tap and hold.

00:02:44   I I literally forgot that they took it out.

00:02:47   Somebody had to remind me, like, you know, it used to be 3D touch

00:02:50   and I'm like, oh yeah, I guess, because just tap and hold seems much

00:02:53   more natural.

00:02:54   Peak and pop, baby.

00:02:55   Do you remember peek and pop?

00:02:56   Yeah.

00:02:57   I'm just sure.

00:02:58   I mean, a lot of apps still use it, and the main use of

00:03:01   it I it remains, which is being able to preview an iMessage without opening

00:03:07   it so you don't mark it as red.

00:03:08   And I do that to everyone, including both of you all the time.

00:03:11   How dare you?

00:03:12   Um but it's just the thing that sometimes I just want to know what

00:03:14   you say, but like I haven't got the time to deal with it, and

00:03:17   so then I don't leave you on red, you know.

00:03:19   No one wants to prevent that.

00:03:21   Yeah, because I am a red receipts person.

00:03:23   I think I think that is the fair thing to do with your friends.

00:03:27   So if you would like to send in a snow talk of your own.

00:03:30   Just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can see that.

00:03:33   And then Steven will read it, I guess.

00:03:35   Stephen Steven will steal it.

00:03:36   So look forward to that in the future.

00:03:38   He's peeping, he's peeping in there.

00:03:39   He's peeping in our uh our comment form, Mike.

00:03:42   Peeping.

00:03:42   No, it's terrible.

00:03:43   He's always doing that.

00:03:44   Like Steven does this, like, and I get it.

00:03:44   It's like he gets admin privilege, but like you upload something to that CMS.

00:03:51   If he wants it, he'll just download it.

00:03:52   Oh, yeah.

00:03:53   Oh, yeah.

00:03:54   He doesn't care.

00:03:55   Oh, more than that, uh, I have access to the design of California Slack

00:04:01   channel.

00:04:01   And at some point, Jim put like a rough edit, and I was like,

00:04:03   should I listen to that?

00:04:05   But I I restrained, I restrained myself.

00:04:08   You don't have the Dropbox, so not yet.

00:04:12   Steven, did you know that I um have I have some admin privileges to

00:04:17   the relay site, and I can I think I could I can post blog

00:04:20   posts.

00:04:21   Oh god.

00:04:25   Excuse me, one second.

00:04:26   Nope, nope.

00:04:29   Let just let the man blog.

00:04:31   User you need you need me, you need me in there because if I

00:04:34   see a typo, I can just fix it.

00:04:36   I hate that you do that, both of you, by the way.

00:04:38   Oh, I do it all the time.

00:04:39   I don't I don't want people going in and changing my stuff.

00:04:43   Leave it alone.

00:04:44   It's not yours.

00:04:44   Oh yeah, yeah, Jason.

00:04:46   You're a full admin in the CMS.

00:04:48   That's fine.

00:04:48   Yeah, I was trying to figure out how to create.

00:04:49   We we created the design in California show in the CMS yesterday.

00:04:53   And I had a moment where I was clicking around, like, I should be

00:04:56   able to just create this, can't I?

00:04:57   And yeah, new show.

00:04:58   I guess I could have done it.

00:04:59   Yeah.

00:05:00   It's right there.

00:05:00   But I but I did it.

00:05:02   Thanks.

00:05:02   Although so much needs to be done for this page, even though it does

00:05:05   exist.

00:05:05   But it's how come in gang.

00:05:07   It's it's on the way.

00:05:08   Yeah some sometime soon.

00:05:09   We're working on it.

00:05:10   Follow up.

00:05:11   Very hard.

00:05:11   Follow up.

00:05:12   Follow up.

00:05:13   Follow up.

00:05:13   Follow up.

00:05:15   Google Health, the application you need for the Fitbit Air, now syncs data to

00:05:23   Apple Health and Health Kit.

00:05:25   So it went the other way, right?

00:05:27   Where the Google Health app would slurp up your Apple Health data.

00:05:29   Now it's bi-directional.

00:05:32   Zach call it nine to five, uh reported on this, and it seems to

00:05:36   include sleep data, steps, workouts, and vitals.

00:05:42   Um, and it I mean, in my brief time with it, it seems to

00:05:47   basically do what it what it's supposed to do.

00:05:49   And this is what I want out of really any third-party tracker, especially Google

00:05:55   Health, because that app is is pretty bad, and I don't want to interact

00:06:00   with it.

00:06:00   And so uh they've uh they finally got this going.

00:06:03   Um a friend of mine who is let's just say um well acquainted with

00:06:11   Apple's health initiatives, um sent me a blog post in like 2018 or something,

00:06:17   someone had written a Google uh fit Fitbit at the time was like, yeah,

00:06:20   we're not gonna deal with Health Kit.

00:06:23   Like, well, times change, baby.

00:06:26   So just to like check what's happening here.

00:06:29   So now your Fitbit Air, that's what it's called, right?

00:06:32   Yes, Fitbit Air.

00:06:33   Yeah.

00:06:34   Well, if you're wearing it, it's gonna sync its information to the Google Health

00:06:40   app, which then will sync that to Apple Health.

00:06:44   Correct.

00:06:45   Okay.

00:06:46   Hmm.

00:06:47   Yeah.

00:06:47   Have you seen this happening?

00:06:49   Uh yeah.

00:06:50   I mean, it seems to seem to do it.

00:06:52   Again, I I didn't have a ton of time with this.

00:06:54   Um, but seems to be.

00:06:55   Are you wearing an Apple Watch at the same time?

00:06:58   Uh currently, no.

00:07:00   Okay.

00:07:01   Because I wonder what happens, you know.

00:07:03   No, I've been um I've been wearing a G Shock for like a month.

00:07:08   Amazing.

00:07:09   Because when I was whooping, when I had the whoop band, I had to

00:07:12   turn a bunch of stuff off because I was wearing the whoop and the

00:07:15   Apple Watch.

00:07:16   Oh, my step count like quintuppled almost.

00:07:19   Right.

00:07:14   It was ridiculous.

00:07:20   It was just like suddenly I was running back.

00:07:25   Yes.

00:07:26   I guess.

00:07:27   It's a lot of steps.

00:07:28   It was a nightmare.

00:07:30   I had to turn a bunch of stuff off.

00:07:32   Because I don't actually think it was double, which was the funny thing.

00:07:36   And and that was like with the very weird way that these things count

00:07:39   information.

00:07:39   It was not good.

00:07:40   And so you you have to be careful with that if you do use

00:07:42   multiple, but probably you shouldn't use multiple.

00:07:45   And I do have the Garmin one on order.

00:07:48   Um, but it is not shipped.

00:07:50   Ah, yes.

00:07:50   So what is that?

00:07:51   I uh it is one of these, but with no subscription, is that correct?

00:07:55   No subscription.

00:07:56   People were mad because there was some heart rate tracking stuff that they were

00:07:59   gonna put in the subscription, and then they've said no, that will be free

00:08:03   for everybody.

00:08:03   Oh, wait, so there is a subscription.

00:08:06   Yes, but it's very specific things that most optional.

00:08:10   Yeah, I don't think most people will need.

00:08:13   And the Fibonacci, you to be clear, you can use it without a subscription.

00:08:17   The the big thing the subscription gets you is like the Google Health AI

00:08:21   coach, which just vomits paragraphs of LLM text all over the user interface.

00:08:27   It's not super useful.

00:08:29   Hey, people like that.

00:08:30   Do they?

00:08:31   Do people want to read paragraphs of text?

00:08:34   I've heard people are really into it.

00:08:37   I don't know.

00:08:38   That's good.

00:08:40   Uh we have some long-term follow-up here from listener Steve, who sent in follow-up

00:08:46   like a year and a half ago about AirPods translation, and then just a

00:08:52   note this past week saying I tried AirPods live translation on a trip to

00:08:56   Spain last year.

00:08:58   Timely, Steve.

00:09:00   My partner and I joined a brewery tour that was entirely in Spanish, so

00:08:59   I put my AirPods in as an experiment.

00:09:06   I followed the guide's story reasonably well, uh, though series tone couldn't capture his

00:09:13   genuine excitement.

00:09:14   The real problem was latency.

00:09:17   I was 15 to 20 seconds behind.

00:09:20   By the time he asked if anyone wanted more beer, I was still laughing

00:09:23   at an earlier joke.

00:09:25   So he thought I wanted a refill.

00:09:27   I accepted anyway.

00:09:29   Must have looked really weird if you're continuing to laugh.

00:09:32   Like everyone else has stopped and you're like, ha ha ha!

00:09:36   Maybe don't offer him any more beer at that point.

00:09:39   What is this guy doing?

00:09:40   Uh yeah, okay.

00:09:41   I mean, like, I don't know how you solved that, right?

00:09:44   Like, I guess there's just like maybe maybe more advanced on device models can

00:09:51   speed that up.

00:09:53   But I don't know how c how much latency you I mean, I guess

00:09:57   you could get pretty close to it, but yeah, interesting.

00:09:59   All right.

00:10:01   Have you guys used the live translation stuff?

00:10:04   Not me.

00:10:05   Not me.

00:10:06   No.

00:10:07   The only time really that I would have to use this if is if

00:10:10   is if they had Romanian, which they don't, and I understand why they don't.

00:10:14   Um, but I do wonder if large language models should make this kind of

00:10:19   like expansion faster, like two more obscure languages.

00:10:24   Like you give me something rather than nothing, I feel like, but I I

00:10:29   don't think they're ever gonna support Romanian.

00:10:32   Yeah, that's a bummer.

00:10:34   This feels awkward to me.

00:10:35   I think I would only use it if I felt like really kind of

00:10:37   at sea.

00:10:37   Like if I was if I was in a country where everybody spoke that

00:10:43   language and I didn't, and I needed to understand what was going on, I

00:10:44   would try it, but I haven't been in one of those in a while.

00:10:52   So and I'm not gonna do it like the guy who was trying to

00:10:58   fix my sprinklers the other week was is it doesn't speak English very well

00:11:03   at all.

00:11:04   Uh if at all, he's very quiet.

00:11:06   Um and I'm not gonna do that, right?

00:11:09   I'm just not I'm not gonna say, hey, let's try this out.

00:11:13   The Google Translate deal, you know, like you're just writing stuff and showing it

00:11:17   to each other.

00:11:17   Like I feel like that bit of people do that more and more.

00:11:20   Like I've done that.

00:11:21   Yeah, sure.

00:11:21   The translation app on iOS.

00:11:23   I I've I've used that in that way.

00:11:26   Or in iMessage, even you can use it, which is pretty cool.

00:11:31   Good news for CarPlay enthusiasts.

00:11:34   It's coming to boats.

00:11:37   Boat play, baby!

00:11:39   Boat play.

00:11:40   It's not car play when it's on a boat.

00:11:43   Why it's not a car, it's a boat.

00:11:45   Yeah, so it shouldn't have it.

00:11:47   That's what I think.

00:11:48   I don't want to keep your car play out on my boats.

00:11:51   That's what I said.

00:11:51   Yeah, car play out of boats.

00:11:53   Hashtag carplay out of boats.

00:11:54   This is my this is my stance.

00:11:56   Well, I was gonna buy this yacht, but it just has Android Auto.

00:11:59   So Yeah, exactly.

00:12:00   I don't want no, but again, don't put Android Auto on a boat either.

00:12:03   Android Boto.

00:12:05   All right, and I need someone to explain to me why this is useful.

00:12:08   I got you.

00:12:09   So Mastercraft is a company, they make lots of boats and own boat brands

00:12:14   and stuff.

00:12:15   Um I didn're adding car play to some pontoon boats.

00:12:17   Pontoon boats are generally like they're not you can use them for fishing, but

00:12:22   they are primarily used for like family outings or parties or that sort of

00:12:26   thing.

00:12:27   Like big, wide, flat boats.

00:12:29   Party boats.

00:12:29   Party boats.

00:12:31   And more and more over the years, boats have had increasingly good audio video

00:12:41   systems.

00:12:42   Like to a point where if you have like a ski boat, you have

00:12:45   like giant arrays of speakers pointing backwards so the person skiing can ski along

00:12:49   to ACDC or whatever.

00:12:52   But the interfaces for those have been pretty bad.

00:12:55   Like it's like a little Bluetooth box, or it's aux in or it's some

00:12:59   proprietary nonsense.

00:13:01   And now it's just car play, which lots of people know and love.

00:13:06   And they are putting um or they're working with a company called, and I

00:13:12   promise you this is their name, Savvy Navy.

00:13:15   Savvy Navy.

00:13:17   To bring on water navigation to cover.

00:13:20   Okay.

00:13:21   Because my question was gonna be like in this screenshot here on 9 to

00:13:24   5.

00:13:25   Well, that can't be Apple maps, because they don't have boat mode, boat and

00:13:30   savvy navy.

00:13:31   If you go to their website at savvy navy.com, those top headline is could

00:13:36   they not get it without the dash?

00:13:38   Do you think?

00:13:39   Uh I don't know.

00:13:39   It's like Google Maps for boats.

00:13:41   That's their slogan.

00:13:42   It's like Google Maps for boats, you know, for boats.

00:13:46   Savvy Navy No Space is parked, but it's easier to parse with a dash

00:13:52   in it.

00:13:52   So I agree.

00:13:54   Today I tried to register a domain name and was annoyed that it was

00:13:57   taken and couldn't believe it, and it was taken by me.

00:14:00   Oh my god.

00:14:01   So there we go.

00:14:02   That's where I am.

00:14:03   That's so I was like, how did somebody get that domain?

00:14:07   And the person who got that domain was me.

00:14:09   That's hilarious.

00:14:10   Uh like I've tried to register it through Hover and it asked to make

00:14:13   an offer.

00:14:14   Can you imagine if I would have made an offer to myself by the

00:14:18   domain name?

00:14:19   That would have been incredible stuff.

00:14:21   I wish I would have pressed that button now and not really thought about

00:14:24   checking the next step.

00:14:25   Then you get an email and you're like, oh, that's a pretty good price.

00:14:28   Hang on.

00:14:29   I can sell that.

00:14:30   Let's make a profit.

00:14:33   So is it which one of you's gonna trust test the boat out?

00:14:36   I have I have a friend with a pontoon boat, but you know, obviously

00:14:41   it's not this this has been added to like this.

00:14:43   You gotta buy a new pontoon boat with a with a an infotainment system

00:14:48   that then supports boat play.

00:14:50   So I don't know.

00:14:53   Don't think you can get some kind of retrofit system like you've done with

00:14:56   cars, Steven.

00:14:57   You can't sure.

00:14:58   I mean, sure, I think people have been doing that, I would imagine.

00:15:00   Yeah.

00:15:01   This is what I would recommend is you know, get a kayak and get

00:15:04   like a get one of those in dash uh third-party, you know, OE non-OEM

00:15:09   uh car play units that you have to attach to like a uh battery

00:15:13   via some like little wires.

00:15:14   It'll be a pr you put some tape on it, it won the water

00:15:17   won't be a problem.

00:15:18   And then try.

00:15:21   I know.

00:15:22   This this could be the thing for you.

00:15:24   You could do this.

00:15:24   Yeah, but I have a canoe.

00:15:27   Exactly.

00:15:27   That's what that's what I'm saying.

00:15:29   You could do this, but you you know, you wouldn't.

00:15:31   Or I can play.

00:15:32   I could turn my pickup truck into a boat.

00:15:34   It's like a TV show you did that a long time ago, but can't

00:15:38   remember.

00:15:39   As we have spoken about on the pro show for eight weeks straight, Federico

00:15:44   has been doing some Ethernet stuff.

00:15:46   Uh and it it reminded me that at one point Jason had Ethernet cables

00:15:51   running across the roof of his house.

00:15:53   Which is true.

00:15:54   Horribly upsetting.

00:15:55   And I wanted to get uh an update on your wired networking situation.

00:15:59   Well, I've got great news.

00:15:59   I had an electrician come out.

00:16:03   We talked about this on upgrade a little bit because big right?

00:16:06   Because my electrician's name is David.

00:16:10   And when I asked him if he could also do Ethernet, he said, Are

00:16:14   you kidding?

00:16:15   They call me Data Dave.

00:16:17   Oh yeah.

00:16:18   I remember Data Dave.

00:16:20   It's like, oh, you didn't know that about me?

00:16:23   I know that I'm legendary as Data Dave.

00:16:26   And so he did it.

00:16:27   So what so my house does not have an attic to speak of, a

00:16:30   crawl space, a basement.

00:16:33   It's a concrete slab, and the and there is an there is an attic

00:16:37   to call it a crawl space would not even do it justice.

00:16:41   It's at its highest point, it might be like you could wedge a small

00:16:46   person in there, but like you might not get them back.

00:16:51   It's a one-way trip.

00:16:52   It's not it's not, so you can't do stuff like that.

00:16:57   Not it would be an enormous undertaking to try to wire stuff in there.

00:17:02   You could also we discovered actually when we were trying to do some um

00:17:06   lighting and and stuff in our living room that there's a beam that comes

00:17:11   across the living room that completely blocks one side of the crawl space from

00:17:15   the other, a support beam.

00:17:18   Um, because we thought we had blown insulation into this one crawl space, and

00:17:22   then we opened up the other half from the garage and discovered it was

00:17:25   like a time capsule from 1954 or whenever they built the house.

00:17:29   It was pristine.

00:17:30   There's nothing in it, it.

00:17:31   It was completely untouched because it was completely isolated from the rest of the

00:17:35   house, which makes putting wires through it that much more complicated.

00:17:39   Yeah.

00:17:39   So um the truth is, what did Data Dave do?

00:17:43   You know, drilled a hole in my garage, ran three Ethernet cables out.

00:17:47   They're tacked under the eaves.

00:17:50   Um one goes into, or is it three or maybe just yeah, one goes

00:17:55   into the living room, which is not very far.

00:17:58   One goes into the back bedroom, and one goes into uh Jamie's old bedroom,

00:18:03   which we use as Studio B.

00:18:05   And so I've got wired Ethernet going into all three bedrooms because there was

00:18:09   already a wire going in, already Ethernet going into the other bedroom, and the

00:18:14   living room and the garage, which is where my fiber router is.

00:18:17   So um, so I have access to wired Ethernet.

00:18:20   My house is not very big.

00:18:22   Uh uh the these cable runs are not particularly long.

00:18:25   Um, but that means that I've got I've got wired going in.

00:18:28   And that that proved that replaces Steven, your favorite feature, which is I used

00:18:34   to just have a uh a hundred foot or whatever Ethernet cable that came

00:18:39   out of the uh the living room and and went up onto the roof,

00:18:44   across the roof, all the way to the back bedroom down in the end.

00:18:47   Yeah.

00:18:48   And that is uh that has been removed and and and trashed uh because

00:18:53   there's solar panels and stuff up there now too.

00:18:55   There's no place for that kind of thing up there.

00:18:57   So uh so yeah, that's the that's the story is data dave took care

00:19:01   of it.

00:19:02   Um, and so now I've got access to that.

00:19:04   And I do I take advantage of that?

00:19:06   I don't know.

00:19:06   I mean, my Apple TV has that uh has access to that.

00:19:11   The the the computer in the back can be on when I'm working back

00:19:14   in the back bedroom or in Studio B, it's wired.

00:19:18   It's a wired connection to out here where I've got the fiber, so it's

00:19:21   fast and I can connect everything, you know, without having to resort to the

00:19:24   Wi-Fi.

00:19:25   And then there's an Eero back there as well as out here.

00:19:28   So I've got I've got wired Eero.

00:19:31   They don't have to talk to each other via radio.

00:19:33   They can they can just be on the same wired network.

00:19:36   I have had a weird thing happen lately, which is I have I have

00:19:39   the the Eero what seven, the fancy big one.

00:19:44   And what I discovered is that I have certain devices that um that struggle

00:19:50   to see it in my like in my driveway.

00:19:54   I feel like there's something going on with it where it's not I I

00:19:59   don't know.

00:19:59   Some some of my devices like struggle to see it.

00:20:02   But the thing is I have a second network that is in my fiber

00:20:06   router that um I have for a very stupid reason, which is that my

00:20:12   washing machine couldn't connect to the Eero.

00:20:15   It's a known problem.

00:20:17   Uh you don't need you don't need your washing machine on the network, Jason.

00:20:23   What is the problem?

00:20:25   Uh it's something with like the frequency of Wi-Fi or the standard of Wi-Fi

00:20:29   that the Eero uses is too advanced for the washing machine.

00:20:32   But fortunately.

00:20:33   I'm sure you did.

00:20:34   But like I've had this problem with some Eero stuff.

00:20:36   You can turn on like a temporary 2.4 gigahertz mode and connect it and

00:20:41   it will latch on.

00:20:42   I've had that before.

00:20:44   I don't know whether that would have worked, or maybe even I tried that.

00:20:46   I don't know.

00:20:47   I I basically said there's a whole wireless router in the fiber router that

00:20:53   I'm not using.

00:20:54   So I turned it on and created a new network for it.

00:20:57   And now I have several kind of smart home things that are in the

00:21:01   front of the house or right outside that are all on that network instead

00:21:06   because I think it's dumber and older and slower, but they that like a

00:21:10   lot of smart home stuff is really happy to just be on the dumb

00:21:13   slow network and not on whatever the hacky hero is doing.

00:21:17   So I'm not yet I've not yet crossed over into the ubiquity realm like

00:21:21   uh like Steven R.I.P.

00:21:23   He's a ubiquity guy now, but um Casey got him.

00:21:26   It just seems like a lot of work, honestly.

00:21:29   It does.

00:21:29   It does.

00:21:30   Well, and it's the classic.

00:21:31   This is like an upgrade we were talking about.

00:21:33   How um we heard from everybody who uses FileMaker, we heard from literally the

00:21:38   entire FileMaker install base.

00:21:40   Right.

00:21:40   Yeah.

00:21:40   Uh and we're like, how how is FileMaker still around?

00:21:43   And the answer is because once you build something and you invest years into

00:21:47   it, the cost of keeping it up is a lot less than the cost

00:21:50   of tearing it down and replacing it with something new.

00:21:52   And I feel that way about like Eero and Ubiquity.

00:21:54   It's like if I started from scratch now, I've seen Steven's dashboard.

00:21:57   He showed it to us in Memphis.

00:21:59   I saw all the little dots animating showing where every single packet in his

00:22:03   house was going.

00:22:04   And I thought it was super cool too.

00:22:06   I would absolutely do that today if I was starting from scratch, but I'm

00:22:10   not.

00:22:10   I've got a thing, it mostly works, and my washing machine connects to the

00:22:14   other router, and it's fine.

00:22:16   It's fine.

00:22:18   Okay.

00:22:19   That's uh so that's it.

00:22:21   I I'm I'm glad I could fulfill your um talk about networking uh fix

00:22:26   since Federico wasn't.

00:22:27   We'll be back next week talking about more Ethernet stuff.

00:22:31   Yeah, it's great.

00:22:31   Get data Dave.

00:22:32   He needs a trip to Italy.

00:22:38   This episode of Connected is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform

00:22:44   designed to help you stand out and succeed online.

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00:22:54   grow your brand with things like newsletters, and you can get paid with invoicing.

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00:23:17   It's all really easy to work together and make something that looks like you,

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00:23:34   So you can start with something really simple and basic and let it grow

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00:23:39   The same thing goes for features on your website.

00:23:42   I mentioned invoices.

00:23:43   Maybe you don't need those right now, but you might in the future.

00:23:46   And instead of going out and finding them somewhere else, you can use them

00:23:49   with Squarespace.

00:23:50   So they inherit all your branding, all the analytics are there in Squarespace.

00:23:54   It is really awesome how you can start something small and let it grow

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00:24:14   That's Squarespace.com slash connected and the offer code connected for 10% off.

00:24:22   My thanks to Squarespace for their support of the show clipboard manager.

00:24:32   It's not really a thing that I felt like I needed.

00:24:35   I've been pretty happy with Raycast as a clipboard manager.

00:24:38   I was using it before uh as my launcher before Spotlight got its upgrade.

00:24:43   And I switched over to Spotlight, but I didn't.

00:24:46   There was a couple of things about the way that Apple implemented the clipboard

00:24:50   manager that didn't really work for me.

00:24:51   So I continued using Raycast and I got very used to it.

00:24:55   But then PaySpot 3 came out and people seemed very excited about it.

00:24:59   And uh I used to use Paysbot back in the day.

00:25:01   Do you remember when PaceBot on the iPhone used to pretend it was a

00:25:03   VoIP app and it would stay constantly connected with the little blue bar at

00:25:08   the top of your screen so you could send information backwards and forwards?

00:25:11   That was a weird time to be alive.

00:25:13   But this doesn't have this is just PaysBot 3 for Mac.

00:25:16   I wanted to try it out and it solved two things for me immediately.

00:25:20   And so now I've moved to Pay Spot away from Raycast.

00:25:23   So one of the one of the main reasons that I use any clipboard

00:25:29   manager and uh what I was using Raycast for is for copy and pasting

00:25:34   text from websites into Google Docs.

00:25:38   Because for some reason, Google Docs loves formatting.

00:25:44   It loves it.

00:25:45   If you copy something from Bloomberg, oh boy, does it want to put that

00:25:49   in a in a uh a serif font for you?

00:25:51   Like it just wants to, you know, like it oh boy, can I keep

00:25:55   the formatting from Bloomberg?

00:25:56   Let me try my best.

00:25:57   And I don't want that.

00:25:58   I just want to paste it in like regular plain text.

00:26:02   And the easiest way that I found to do this before was just to

00:26:06   uh I would copy the text and then I would open Raycast and just

00:26:11   like you know, like you just use the keyboard shortcut, which I think I

00:26:14   used as command shift C, and then just press enter, and it would just

00:26:18   paste what I wanted because it would be the first entry.

00:26:20   And so like I like that a lot.

00:26:21   It was just an easy way to be able to strip the formatting out

00:26:24   of something, put it into Google Docs.

00:26:25   This is mostly for the upgrade show notes, right?

00:26:27   Because I'm copying things from Bloomberg and pasting them in to our uh notes

00:26:32   to read them, and it was just a nightmare.

00:26:34   PaySpot has, I would say, more features than you would expect for a clipboard

00:26:40   manager in general.

00:26:42   This app does a lot of stuff.

00:26:44   Uh one of the things that I really like is you can take any

00:26:48   text, you can manipulate it in some way, and it well, in many ways,

00:26:54   but you can also add specific key bindings to specific manipulations of text.

00:27:01   So I now have a global shortcut to just straight up paste any text

00:27:08   into any document, and in the middle, it's going to turn that text to

00:27:13   plain text.

00:27:14   So now I can just copy something and hit command shift V and it

00:27:18   will just paste that text into plain text anywhere.

00:27:21   This is very good.

00:27:22   I like this a lot.

00:27:23   So this is just like one of the text kind of manipulation things that

00:27:26   it does, and then you can set a command to it.

00:27:28   You can also bring up the pastebot menu and go through any of these

00:27:32   um manipulations say that it might do to text that you might want.

00:27:37   And it will show you in UI like what the text will look like

00:27:39   when it's done.

00:27:40   It's like something like you can take text smileys and turn them into emoji,

00:27:46   right?

00:27:46   So if you I don't know who this person is that that wants emoji

00:27:50   but doesn't use emoji and wants to do like colon close parentheses and then

00:27:55   turn that into a smiley emoji, but it will do that for you if

00:27:58   you want that.

00:27:59   Um so that one's great, and then there's also a second thing, which you

00:28:03   can you can save your snippets into collections, so like a paste bin.

00:28:07   Uh and I have a bunch of things.

00:28:09   So in widget smith, we have a thing called the Inspo tab, which is

00:28:13   like a things you can do in widgetsmith.

00:28:13   It's like a social media feed inside of the app.

00:28:18   It's a blog.

00:28:13   You can say it's a blog.

00:28:20   No, you think it's a blog, and I think it's a social media feed.

00:28:24   This is this causes a lot of conversation between the two of us.

00:28:27   It's not a blog, it is a social media feed inside of the app.

00:28:32   And we it's written in Markdown, but we also use some HTML.

00:28:36   And so I just have a bunch of HTML snippets that I now save

00:28:39   in a paste bin so I can easily access them without needing to search

00:28:43   too much for them.

00:28:43   It's very good.

00:28:44   So I need to dig into Pay Spot more because there's like a bunch

00:28:48   of rules and commands that you can do.

00:28:50   There's like a lot of stuff in this app, but I'm very intrigued by

00:28:54   it.

00:28:54   It's like a it's a thing that I didn't think I would necessarily want

00:28:57   to change in my life, but I like the way that they've implemented it.

00:29:01   I don't know if either of you have played of it at all.

00:29:04   I have.

00:29:05   I've been trying Spotlight again.

00:29:07   I tried it when Tahoe first came out and sort of bounced off of

00:29:11   it.

00:29:11   But I'm trying it again because in Golden Gate, you know, it's tied in

00:29:14   with Siri.

00:29:15   I was like, I should I should understand this better.

00:29:18   But the clipboard manager in Siri I found kind of frustrating that you have

00:29:24   to like invoke it and then you have to change modes within Spotlight.

00:29:29   It's a bit a bit clunky.

00:29:31   Um and so like you, I saw Pay Spot 3, people were excited, and

00:29:35   so I'm trying it now, and I really like it.

00:29:39   I like that it's sort of separate from the launcher in a way that

00:29:43   I I was using Alfred before for for both things.

00:29:46   There are some things in here that I wish were better.

00:29:49   Uh when you pull up the palette, which I have is Command Shift V.

00:29:54   It's relatively useful, but like I mentioned to Paul on Mastodon today, is like

00:30:00   I one thing I really like about Alpha and some of the others is

00:30:03   if you have like code for a color, it gives you a little swatch

00:30:07   showing you the color.

00:30:10   Um some of the others don't do though, is it shows you not only

00:30:16   the format of what it is, or like is it text?

00:30:19   Is it a PDF, but the application where it came from?

00:30:25   Yeah.

00:30:26   Which is surprisingly useful if you're trying to find something, you know, that was

00:30:30   a while a while back.

00:30:31   It's like, I know I was doing this in, you know, Mime Stream, but

00:30:35   where is it?

00:30:36   Uh and the search is pretty good on the uh on the little uh

00:30:42   palette that comes up.

00:30:43   So uh I'm liking it.

00:30:45   Uh I think it's gonna probably stick around for me if I stick in

00:30:48   spotlight, but I think there are some things that some some niceties that some

00:30:52   other clipboard managers have that they should look at.

00:30:55   I should say that um the clipboard manager in spotlight also shows the app

00:31:00   that it comes from.

00:31:01   Okay, which is nice.

00:31:03   Launchboard doesn't do it.

00:31:05   Um, but it does.

00:31:06   It shows like a little icon next to it.

00:31:08   And it's like if it's from Safari, there's a Safari icon.

00:31:10   And yeah, I had like a Dropbox link and it's got a Dropbox icon

00:31:14   next to it, which is kind of nice.

00:31:16   Um Yeah, even the text thing, and it's got like a BB edit text

00:31:21   icon with a slack badge on it.

00:31:23   So there's a lot of information there.

00:31:24   I'm not quite sure how you interpret all of that, but it is there.

00:31:27   I for me, I've never used Payspot, and I wonder if I should.

00:31:31   The challenge that I've got is that a lot of what it does, I've

00:31:34   replicated elsewhere.

00:31:36   Like I have a keyboard maestro macro that I use when I'm doing especially

00:31:42   design in California research.

00:31:44   It's very much like Mike's uh uh Bloomberg paste where it's like it it

00:31:50   takes it to it wraps it because a lot of stuff, especially from like

00:31:54   PDFs of books that I want to quote, they come in with line breaks.

00:31:58   And so I have a pace bot or not pay spot, uh, a keyboard

00:32:02   maestro where I type like semicolon wrap and it wraps the text on the

00:32:07   clipboard and pastes it in.

00:32:09   They specifically have one for doing trim white space, like a so remove leading

00:32:15   and trailing spaces and tabs from each line, leaving the text between them untouched.

00:32:20   Like this is like one of the little writing manipulations they have.

00:32:23   Yeah, I think I so I think part part of it is going back

00:32:26   to what we were talking about with uh the networking, which is like one

00:32:30   of the challenges is do I rip up the thing that I've got set

00:32:33   up that works fine to do something that does the same thing, but might

00:32:37   be a better tool for it that I'm gonna have to set up and

00:32:40   learn and all of that.

00:32:41   And I think that's what's kept me out of it.

00:32:42   Is I have so you know, I have so many automation tools now that

00:32:47   like you see another one and you're like, yeah, but I already automated that

00:32:50   with a to completely different pathway.

00:32:52   Yes, even though this might be a you know, because keyboard maestro is a

00:32:56   general purpose automation tool where Pacebot is really targeted on this.

00:33:01   So I'll think about it because like I I I know so many people

00:33:05   who rave about it, and I think it probably would be a more appropriate

00:33:10   set of tools, even though I could replicate everything it does in keyboard maestro

00:33:14   or somewhere else somehow.

00:33:15   Keyboard maestro is really good for this.

00:33:17   This is the you know, uh uh thing with a little key binding, and

00:33:21   I mean I've got it ended ending up being uh uh an expansion.

00:33:24   So instead of it being command shift control, whatever, it's literally, you know, semicolon

00:33:29   wrap and it just backspaces and then puts it in there, which is really

00:33:29   nice.

00:33:34   I also wonder if I'm having the a little bit of the clean shot

00:33:39   response here, which is um everybody loves clean shot.

00:33:43   Mike talks about it all the time.

00:33:44   All the time.

00:33:45   And I my response is always like, yeah, but I'm happy with the system

00:33:50   screenshot utility, which does almost everything, does everything I need.

00:33:53   And every time I say that, I get like five messages that say, But

00:33:57   did you know that it does this?

00:33:58   And did you know that it does this?

00:33:59   It's like, well, okay, but I don't I I'm fine.

00:34:04   And so I think I wonder if that's part of it too, is like

00:34:07   it's a I'm sure it's a nice utility, but if my needs are being

00:34:10   served, I'm not sure I need to go through the process of you know,

00:34:16   repla replacing it's hard to replace something with something else that does the same

00:34:20   thing.

00:34:21   Yes.

00:34:21   Even if your workflow has evolved where you're avoiding the here's the catch.

00:34:26   If you're avoiding something, or you just don't do something because your tool doesn't

00:34:30   do it, you're actually cutting yourself off from having some improvement.

00:34:34   But you don't, in the moment you don't think about that, right?

00:34:37   You're just thinking about a one-to-one replacement and saying, why should I bother?

00:34:40   So you really do need to have that moment where you think, actually, this

00:34:44   could open up new pathways for me.

00:34:46   And I pay spot, honestly, Mike, hearing you talk about it, it makes me

00:34:50   feel a little more like I actually should explore that because there's probably more

00:34:54   possibilities that I could do in terms of how I process stuff on my

00:34:58   clipboard than I'm currently doing.

00:35:00   They're they have like the the pre-built kind of like things that you can

00:35:05   do uh really good, but then you also can kind of build your own

00:35:09   filters that do a bunch of things, and like they have like you can

00:35:15   they kind of give you a a manager to build them, but it's like

00:35:18   you know, you can chain you can do uh custom find and replace HTML

00:35:22   stuff, base 64 encode, like there's like a lot of things you can do

00:35:25   which you would probably enjoy.

00:35:27   But the even just like the standard things that are built in, like another

00:35:30   one, uh convert to title case.

00:35:32   So now I can select some text, copy it, and then just hit a

00:35:37   keyboard command and it will convert that text to title case for me.

00:35:40   But like I I was feeling in the same kind of thing if you

00:35:44   was like, why would I why would what is this gonna do for me?

00:35:48   But it was this sense of like it's not just me bringing up the

00:35:54   clipboard manager and doing things with the text that just if there's something on

00:35:59   my clipboard, I can now just hit a specific keyboard command and it will

00:36:03   just do the thing that I want it to do, rather than me either

00:36:07   ever having to bring up the UI in the middle of it all.

00:36:09   That was the thing that was like, oh, that's really good, because now I

00:36:13   can just save a couple of unnecessary keyboard commands that I was doing to

00:36:17   be able to just like do this pasting the way that I wanted.

00:36:20   It just it will just do it for me.

00:36:22   So I like that.

00:36:23   The business model that they've got I find really interesting.

00:36:27   So you can either subscribe in the app store, it's an annual subscription.

00:36:32   Uh it's 2499 a year or two ninety-nine a month, or you can buy

00:36:38   it from them directly for $39, and that is one year of updates, and

00:36:43   then you pay $20 at or $19, I should say, for any for every

00:36:48   other set of updates you want over a year.

00:36:50   So it's like they're like, Well, what if we do both of the systems?

00:36:55   And like I remember a time when you weren't allowed to do this kind

00:36:58   of thing, but I just think that time is gone now.

00:36:59   Um but it's I find it really interesting that they're kind of like pick

00:37:06   your poison.

00:37:06   Do you want the old way or the new way?

00:37:08   We're just gonna offer you both of both of them.

00:37:11   Have fun.

00:37:12   And so I thought that was I thought that was really interesting.

00:37:16   It's time for some helpful consumer advice from the connected program.

00:37:20   We got a uh a couple things we're gonna talk through.

00:37:23   The first one is weather stations.

00:37:26   Um we've been talking about this on the show a little bit.

00:37:28   I've always wanted one, but have never really gotten gotten there.

00:37:32   But Jason, what should I get?

00:37:36   Well, so I have had a weather station in my backyard for twenty almost

00:37:44   twenty-two years.

00:37:45   Yes.

00:37:46   I'm on my second, which is pretty amazing that this is a piece of

00:37:50   tech hardware and I've only had two in twenty-two years.

00:37:53   I mean, I'm gonna give you the spoiler alert is I'm gonna give you

00:37:56   the boring answer, which is actually I think the wire cutter pick, which I'll

00:37:59   get to in a minute, is the probably the right one for you.

00:38:02   Um the so you gave me some specifics, like you've got Wi-Fi that's available,

00:38:08   so wherever you put this, it's gonna be able to see your Wi-Fi network,

00:38:10   which is good because you do need a wireless network.

00:38:12   There are sort of two ways that these devices tend to handle it, which

00:38:16   is either they're on Wi-Fi or they do a radio transmitter, and then you've

00:38:20   got a receiver in the house that's you know, which is what I have

00:38:24   for mine, is there's a receiver in the house that's on the uh on

00:38:27   my Ethernet network.

00:38:29   Okay.

00:38:29   And so they talk over a radio frequency, not on Wi-Fi.

00:38:33   And then that device is the one that logs the data and talks to

00:38:36   the cloud and all of those things.

00:38:38   And has an API so I can query it and it talks to my

00:38:41   weather app that on my Mac and all of that.

00:38:43   But um a lot of them just have Wi-Fi now.

00:38:48   Um power, you said might be tricky.

00:38:51   The beauty of the weather station is generally, and and the one I'm gonna

00:38:55   recommend has a battery option as a it's an option, but you should put

00:39:00   a battery in it.

00:39:01   Um they have solar panels and a capacitor and a backup battery.

00:39:05   And this is how I have run my weather station for 21 plus years,

00:39:11   is it's never been connected to power.

00:39:14   Perfect.

00:39:14   Um so you you you know, you make sure that it's got solar, it's

00:39:18   got a solar panel on it, um, put in a battery backup, and then

00:39:22   um it's got a capacitor.

00:39:24   So the idea there is the solar drinks in enough and it's low enough

00:39:26   power that it'll get through the night and then come back.

00:39:28   But the battery is nice to have for a cloudy day and in the

00:39:31   winter and all of that.

00:39:33   And um that worked uh like a charm for me and continues to now.

00:39:38   So you don't have to deal with power, which as you might expect for

00:39:41   a weather station is good because these are often in weird places that are

00:39:44   remote.

00:39:45   That's one of the reasons why they a lot of them have RF with

00:39:48   a receiver, is that you can get more distance out of RF than you

00:39:51   can just standard Wi-Fi.

00:39:52   I also feel like if your weather station can't be powered by solar, then

00:39:56   nothing you own could ever be powered by solar.

00:40:00   I I suppose.

00:40:01   I feel like just at a simple level, if the thing that you put

00:40:03   outside to track the weather doesn't get the sun, you're out of luck.

00:40:08   If ever there was a a product that should be solar powered, it's this.

00:40:11   But yeah, they're often on like a remote hillside or or somewhere.

00:40:14   Mine is I've got a I've got a metal pole attached to the side

00:40:17   of my house that it that it's on, but you could put this in

00:40:20   your backyard, you know, you know, wherever.

00:40:24   And the wire cutter pit is the ambient weather WS2000.

00:40:29   The good news, I looked up the tech specs of it.

00:40:29   Like you you want to have the sensors that you want.

00:40:36   I think the ambient weather comes with, you know, it's going to tell you

00:40:39   how much precipitation you got.

00:40:40   It's going to tell you the temperature and the humidity.

00:40:43   Um, I think it's expandable.

00:40:45   So if you had other sensors you wanted to add that if there's something

00:40:47   that it doesn't measure, you could do that.

00:40:50   Um they all do cloud connecting now, so it'll go to Weather Underground and

00:40:55   and some other sites like that.

00:40:57   They have their own ambient weather thing that you can log into and see

00:41:00   the data.

00:41:01   And I believe all of these things now have like API support either directly

00:41:07   to the device or to their cloud service or to another cloud service that

00:41:12   you're uploading data to.

00:41:14   So if you wanted to have a custom front end somewhere in home assistant

00:41:19   or on a web page or whatever, you could do that too.

00:41:23   Like mine, um, and it's not actually the weather station, it's the little receiver

00:41:27   that's in the house.

00:41:28   Like there's a URL that gives me like a a JSON response with all

00:41:33   the current weather data.

00:41:34   And I can just parse that.

00:41:36   And that's very easy to do.

00:41:37   And there are plugins for home bridge and home assistant that will also do

00:41:43   that.

00:41:43   And so generally these days, back when I got my first weather station, it

00:41:49   the the receiver was um a it was a PC serial connection.

00:41:57   So you had to get a PC serial to USB adapter.

00:42:00   Yes.

00:42:01   Um, and I had to use this incredibly weird piece of software.

00:42:05   Um things are a lot friendlier now, which is really nice.

00:42:08   That and I also that was a Davis Vantage, which was a much more

00:42:11   like a pro weather station.

00:42:13   Um, but now they discovered, hey, regular people like Weather Station stuff too.

00:42:18   And they they all have like apps now too, where you can like put

00:42:21   you can put their app.

00:42:22   I'm sure Ambient has a an app that you could put on your phone

00:42:25   that would just be like your own personal weather station, but you can integrate

00:42:28   it elsewhere.

00:42:28   It's all that stuff is so much better.

00:42:30   And then it's just a matter of what you want to do with it.

00:42:33   Um and and you know, I have a whole system that I had set

00:42:38   up, but it's because my system was much more complex in the old days,

00:42:42   like so much we've been talking about.

00:42:43   If I were to set it up today, I'd probably keep it a lot

00:42:46   simpler.

00:42:46   But instead, it's this thing that's evolved over, you know, 20 years.

00:42:50   So yeah, I think I think you could read the wire cutter article.

00:42:54   That there's uh a different weather station that's like easier to set up, but

00:42:58   I'm not worried about you being technically flummoxed by a weird weather station.

00:43:02   I think you got it, I think you're gonna defeat it.

00:43:04   Um and uh the the keys are just make sure that it's solar powered

00:43:09   because you don't want to deal with power issues, yeah.

00:43:12   Um, and make sure that it is measuring all the stuff you want to

00:43:16   have measured and that it will do proper like connections so that you can

00:43:20   get at that data from somewhere.

00:43:22   That's it.

00:43:22   Cool.

00:43:23   All right, I'm gonna make some bookmarks because I want to do this.

00:43:27   And um honestly the the ambient weather one looks great.

00:43:30   So yeah, it looks a lot like mine.

00:43:32   I have a vantage view, which they also reviewed and they didn't like because

00:43:34   they didn't think it was as accurate, which I mean, whatever.

00:43:37   The Davis vantages are are are like they were the ones that were the

00:43:41   standard forever until these other companies have gotten into the mix now.

00:43:46   But um, you know, there's no it's very industrial and unfriendly in a lot

00:43:51   of ways because it's a company that's come from the professional side, right?

00:43:54   Whereas some other companies that have come from the consumer side have sort of

00:43:58   stepped up their game.

00:43:59   Right.

00:43:59   And and that makes me reluctant to ever recommend something from the other side

00:43:59   because it's really kind of unfriendly and probably overpriced.

00:44:07   Um, but I bought another when my when my Davis Vantage Pro died, I

00:44:13   bought another Davis Vantage largely because I felt like they had built a piece

00:44:18   of hardware, computer hardware, that I kept outside for about 18 years and it's

00:44:24   it it didn't die for 18 years.

00:44:26   And I thought, okay, you you you're gonna get my money as a thank

00:44:31   you for making something that lasted so long.

00:44:35   Um, but for other people, uh I would I I think the ambience sounds

00:44:39   like a pretty solid.

00:44:40   I haven't used it, but it looks solid.

00:44:42   So yeah.

00:44:43   Yeah.

00:44:43   Okay.

00:44:43   Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna check this out.

00:44:45   And I totally get like the loyalty thing.

00:44:47   I mean, uh that makes a lot of sense to me.

00:44:49   I'm I'm very much the same way.

00:44:51   I mean, if that one, don't get me wrong, if this one broke in

00:44:53   like two years, I'd I'd be furious, but um, but I I feel like

00:44:57   I owed them.

00:44:58   But you know, you gotta make this stuff's pretty rugged because it like Mike

00:45:01   was saying about uh if there's anything that's gonna be solar power, yeah.

00:45:04   If there's anything that's gonna be rugged, it's gonna be a thing that you're

00:45:07   just gonna leave outside forever.

00:45:10   Right.

00:45:10   And they are generally pretty rugged.

00:45:12   The only warning I'll give you is every so often you gotta check the

00:45:15   little rain gauge to make sure that there isn't like a spider web on

00:45:19   it or some stuff from a tree hasn't fallen on it.

00:45:21   Spiders love these things, so taking a little rag and wiping out the spider

00:45:26   uh webs and stuff is a thing that's gonna be.

00:45:28   That's a reasonable.

00:45:30   Didn't you write the wire cut or optical for weather stations once?

00:45:35   No.

00:45:35   What did you do?

00:45:36   No, I wrote a I wrote a roundup in Macworld uh um in, well,

00:45:40   let's say 2004.

00:45:42   What did you do for Wi-A Clunter then?

00:45:44   I know you did something.

00:45:45   Was it routers?

00:45:46   Uh no, I did uh Smart Thermostats.

00:45:48   Smart Thermostats.

00:45:44   In the early days when there were only like three of them.

00:45:52   Inside weather, if you think about it.

00:45:54   Inside weather.

00:45:54   Yeah.

00:45:55   Yeah.

00:45:55   That was my specialty.

00:46:00   This episode of Connected is brought to you by Backblaze.

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00:47:30   While we're talking about stuff to buy, I want to sanity check something with

00:47:35   you both.

00:47:37   So I've been travailing my backup strategies over the course of the last few

00:47:44   months on the show.

00:47:45   And something else that I want to do now is to have proper network

00:47:49   attached storage because designing California creates many gigabytes.

00:47:54   Many, many, many, many gigabytes.

00:47:56   It's true.

00:47:57   And I also want to keep all of these files in a way that

00:48:00   I don't always like most podcast editing files, I just get rid of them

00:48:05   after a certain period of time.

00:48:09   I keep the Cortex episodes, they're in Dropbox, taking up a lot of space.

00:48:13   But this show's gonna take up a huge amount very quickly.

00:48:18   And I don't want to have to deal with basically I was getting pretty

00:48:23   close to my Dropbox uh limit recently, and I was like, well, let me

00:48:27   just increase it.

00:48:28   And I actually can't.

00:48:30   They won't let me increase it.

00:48:32   They I would have to go on to essentially an enterprise plan, and I'm

00:48:35   just not willing to do that.

00:48:36   Um so I did end up finding some files in my Dropbox that realistically

00:48:40   I didn't need anymore, so I I got I took them out.

00:48:43   But I want to have a network attached storage system for this project.

00:48:50   Yeah.

00:48:50   And I've been looking around and I've been thinking, I mean, going back to

00:48:54   some of the stuff I was thinking about before, because I have this Mac

00:48:58   that's always on, and I've got files saved on it, and then when I

00:49:01   started thinking about that, I'm like, ah, well, the problem is I'm going to

00:49:05   need to share things with Jason or Jim at certain points.

00:49:09   And do I want to be like doing the management then of like, all

00:49:15   right, so now let me upload this to Dropbox and then share the link

00:49:19   with this thing.

00:49:19   It's like, no.

00:49:20   So what I have what I think I what I think I've landed on

00:49:24   is that Synology is right for me in this scenario.

00:49:28   Um let me talk about why I think it might be and then why

00:49:31   I think it isn't, and then maybe you two can tell me if you

00:49:34   think I'm on the money or not with this thinking.

00:49:36   So something like a Synology is something that I can connect to.

00:49:43   I can mount to it when I'm in the studio, but it's a standalone

00:49:48   box, like it's just do living its own life, right?

00:49:51   Like it's it's not dependent on any particular computer.

00:49:54   I like the idea of a product that can I can do other things

00:49:59   with.

00:49:59   Like if I also wanted to have a Plex server in the future, I

00:50:03   could do that.

00:50:04   It can also, you know, perform its own backups and stuff like that, which

00:50:08   I think is an interesting thing, right?

00:50:09   Is it is essentially a computer, so it can do things on its own.

00:50:14   Um having something that's always connected to the internet, so I can share files

00:50:18   with other people and get to them from other devices too, right?

00:50:22   So I can I can I know it I can't remember the name all

00:50:25   this, like Synology Drive or whatever, um, so I could log into that and

00:50:29   grab files over the the internet from somewhere else if I wanted to, as

00:50:33   well as sharing with other people.

00:50:35   I also like the idea of the system being able to have its own

00:50:39   redundancy, right?

00:50:40   That like I can fill it with drives and and have it do in

00:50:44   some kind of RAID configuration.

00:50:46   The downsides.

00:50:48   So my very shallow research, I will say, uh suggests that these days, to

00:50:55   get the best out of a Synology, you should be using their drives, which

00:50:59   I know created a lot of controversy.

00:51:02   That's just marketing BS from it.

00:50:59   I know.

00:51:05   Okay, so to get the best based on what they're saying, right?

00:51:09   Like they say, I'll say.

00:51:11   They say to get all of the features that you might want from a

00:51:15   Synology, you should use Synology drives.

00:51:17   Now, I understand that the thinking for the people are upset about that is

00:51:21   partly price.

00:51:22   However, in the world we're currently in, there is Synology drives are essentially priced

00:51:29   the same as everybody else's because everybody's drives are so expensive.

00:51:33   So that's one thing.

00:51:35   But you know, anyway.

00:51:36   And the other thing is, the other I guess the other downside, which I

00:51:40   think I know that two of you will would probably say this to me

00:51:43   anyway, is this is absolutely going to be harder than if to configure and

00:51:48   manage, and if I just had a big drive connected to my Mac.

00:51:52   Right?

00:51:52   Yeah.

00:51:53   Like, yeah.

00:51:54   But the problem is I don't think it solves the main thing that I

00:51:58   think I'm going to need, which is a lot of storage of which I

00:52:03   can share specific files with other people very easily.

00:52:07   So this is the situation that I'm in.

00:52:09   Um I've I've got a link in the show notes.

00:52:12   Uh this is mostly for you two to look at, but I will put

00:52:16   it in the notes.

00:52:17   The product that I think I'm settling on is the Disc Station DS925 Plus.

00:52:25   I did this research like a month ago.

00:52:27   I don't remember why this is the one that I settled on, but it

00:52:30   is the one that I settled on.

00:52:32   And I found a company in the UK that will sell it to me

00:52:36   with a bunch of Synology's drives, like 16 terabytes.

00:52:39   It's expensive, but it's kind of like what I expect to pay.

00:52:42   If I if I price this up myself on Amazon or whatever, with just

00:52:46   like Seagate drives or whatever, it's very much in the realm.

00:52:49   And I'll say that that realm is like 1300 pounds, which is very expensive.

00:52:54   But this is the problem.

00:52:55   If you want 16 terabytes of storage in the year 2026, you're gonna pay

00:52:59   for it.

00:53:00   And yeah, um that this is it.

00:53:01   So what do you what do you guys think about this thinking?

00:53:05   And do you think I am anywhere in the ballpark?

00:53:08   I think I think you are it it it is nice just to have

00:53:13   a big drive attached to a Mac.

00:53:16   It's how I did it for a long time before I moved to a

00:53:18   NAS.

00:53:19   But the upside is also the downside.

00:53:23   Mac OS is the intermediate layer.

00:53:27   And I think for your need, and that's fine for a lot of people.

00:53:30   It's fine for me for a long, long time, but it comes, it does

00:53:34   come to a point where you need something that is more tailor-made for things

00:53:41   you mentioned sharing, RAID, doing its own backups.

00:53:46   Um when I looked at this, I know I'm gonna sound like a fanboy

00:53:50   because we talked about networking earlier, but like I chose uh a uh Ubiquity

00:53:55   NAS because there it is.

00:53:57   I I didn't need or want my NAS to be a computer.

00:54:01   Like my NAS is just a bucket of storage on my network.

00:54:05   Now it can, it does back up to Backblaze on its own.

00:54:08   It does have some of those simple things.

00:54:10   I can also share files from it, but it's not like syncing with my

00:54:15   Dropbox and hosting Plex and doing those other things.

00:54:20   That's what I wanted.

00:54:21   Those are the trade-offs that I wanted.

00:54:23   I think for you and what you have outlined as your needs, uh, both

00:54:28   here and elsewhere.

00:54:29   I do think Synology is probably the way to go, even though it's expensive,

00:54:34   even though they sort of stepped in it PR wise with the hard drive

00:54:38   thing.

00:54:39   I think it being a computer is beneficial in your circumstance as opposed to

00:54:47   using Mac OS to do this.

00:54:49   I mean, like the thing, like I need to share this folder with with

00:54:52   some people.

00:54:53   Like, I mean, good luck doing that with with Mac OS.

00:54:57   Uh and I'm sorry.

00:54:58   It's just not, it's just not a server operating system in the way that

00:55:02   something like a disk station has.

00:55:05   Yeah, I I get it.

00:55:07   I I still use a Mac with a rate attached as my storage.

00:55:11   And I don't have the ability to arbitrarily say, let's just share this.

00:55:17   I mean, I I I haven't felt the need.

00:55:18   I could probably look into it, but like I I tend to put things

00:55:21   in Dropbox if I'm sharing them, and then they just kind of get archived

00:55:24   back on the server um later.

00:55:27   And I actually have my server syncs to my Dropbox and it keeps everything

00:55:31   local, so there's a local copy, and then it can land sync to the

00:55:33   other devices.

00:55:34   Here's my concern for Mike.

00:55:35   And I I'm not saying no to this.

00:55:37   I'm saying here's my worry is I think you get frustrated at things that

00:55:43   are I'm trying to be nice here because No, no, no, say it because

00:55:48   I agree with you.

00:55:48   Just so just say it.

00:55:50   Well, anytime I ever try to explain something to you that involves the terminal

00:55:53   or a Perl script or a Python script or a Unix command, you're like,

00:55:58   ah, no, get it away.

00:56:00   It's true.

00:56:01   And the problem is you are with Synology, you are welcoming a Linux server,

00:56:08   basically, into your life where a lot of it is web UI, which is

00:56:14   great.

00:56:16   But it's not already the web, the UI is the great part because the

00:56:21   other part is, oh, why is this working?

00:56:22   It's like, well, maybe you have to open, I don't know, a terminal window.

00:56:28   Um whereas if you have a Mac attached to a RAID, and that you

00:56:35   know, you can do that.

00:56:36   I use SoftRaid, and I have a I have a four-drive array, and it's

00:56:42   great.

00:56:43   Um and redundant, so like if one of the drives dies, all the data's

00:56:47   still there.

00:56:48   Just put in another drive and it syncs it all up.

00:56:52   Um it's a Mac, which means that the downside is to Steven's point, it's

00:56:57   not a server OS.

00:56:58   There is usually software that can do the things you want, but you have

00:57:01   to do them.

00:57:02   The upside is everything you do to interact with that thing is in the

00:57:08   context of the Mac and Mac OS and Mac OS software, which is more

00:57:14   comfortable.

00:57:16   Honestly, that's it.

00:57:17   And when when I advise anybody about this, that's what I say is something

00:57:21   like Synology, they've tried to make it very easy to use, but you are

00:57:24   welcoming a Unix system essentially into your life that is tried to be friendly,

00:57:29   like with web pages and things like that.

00:57:32   You could probably do it.

00:57:34   But my fear is you're gonna hit something and you're gonna be like, oh

00:57:38   no, and have lots of sadness and regrets.

00:57:41   The Mac is gonna be less capable, but more recognizable and understandable to you.

00:57:48   So that's your decision.

00:57:49   I think the Synology's come uh a pretty long way.

00:57:52   I mean, uh there may be things you need to do that are nerdy,

00:57:56   but it it has been designed, I think, um, for more and more people

00:58:00   to use, and it has a really good community around it.

00:58:03   So if you do run into something weird, um, there's lots of people using

00:58:07   them, you can just call Casey because he has six of them.

00:58:11   Sure.

00:58:12   One thing Jason said sprung an idea uh in my head is depending on

00:58:17   how you have your network set up and how you have this set up,

00:58:20   and you can do this with a Mac, but because the Synology basically has

00:58:25   like this like web front end thing, you can access it from anywhere.

00:58:30   So if you're at home and someone needs something, you don't have to deal

00:58:34   with, I mean, you can I mean with tail scale and stuff, it's easier

00:58:37   than ever to Mac screen share across the internet.

00:58:40   But yeah, I just use use screens, but yeah.

00:58:43   Yeah, so so that that is it is maybe it's not a benefit, but

00:58:46   it's also there on the Synology, that that sort of remote access stuff.

00:58:50   Don't get me wrong, I think Synology, a Synology workstation to solve the problem

00:58:55   that Mike has probably the right solution or ubiquity or whatever, you know, yeah,

00:59:00   but but I think this is is the right solution here, except that you

00:59:07   have to take on the idea that it is less familiar and could be

00:59:13   frustrating.

00:59:14   But I haven't also haven't used a server like this in a while.

00:59:17   I'm sure that it's pretty good.

00:59:19   I'm sure they've done a lot of work to make the web interface very

00:59:22   full featured and friendly and not requiring people to do scary stuff, even though

00:59:27   you can do scary stuff.

00:59:28   And the danger in both of these platforms, by the way, and it's not

00:59:31   one or the other, is there's some stuff that you're gonna want to do,

00:59:34   and they're gonna be like, Yeah, you could totally do that.

00:59:36   Now open up a terminal window and install this thing.

00:59:39   And like both because I have that on the Mac too.

00:59:41   I I'm running some stuff on the Mac that is like not friendly and

00:59:46   not Mac software to do stuff, and that's the danger is you end up

00:59:49   in this scenario where you're like, um, oh, I'm tempted to do this thing,

00:59:54   and then you fall down a Unix hole and it's very bad.

00:59:57   But I'm sure that at the top level, the functionality of the NAS is

01:00:02   going to be better for you.

01:00:03   It's gonna have built in most of or all of what you want to

01:00:06   do.

01:00:07   I'm just a little worried about Mike reacting badly to some of the stuff

01:00:14   that it does because it will feel so foreign.

01:00:17   Yeah.

01:00:17   Um, so you gotta be you gotta be strong and you gotta be committed

01:00:21   if you do this.

01:00:22   You just gotta go in with your eyes open.

01:00:24   Your instinct is absolutely correct.

01:00:26   I mean, this instinct is something that is born from exactly what you mentioned

01:00:31   that you say to me, do this, and I say, I don't want to

01:00:34   do this.

01:00:34   Can you do it?

01:00:35   And then you do it for me.

01:00:36   Um like even down to like uh like isotope, right?

01:00:40   Like the yeah, you're like, Oh, I gotta isotope that file, and like, oh

01:00:43   yeah, you should do it.

01:00:44   So and then you do it for me.

01:00:47   Uh to be fair, this week we had an exchange where I said, I

01:00:50   said we need to make the wallpapers for design in California, and Mike's response

01:00:53   was, yeah, you know, one of us could do it.

01:00:55   And I said, Well, it's not gonna be me, which is fine.

01:00:58   Uh well, we each have uh uh desires and strengths and weaknesses, you know,

01:01:02   someone's gonna do and someone's not.

01:01:04   Here's the thing my ideal scenario is that it's just a big drive connected

01:01:10   to a Mac because I understand how to use that.

01:01:12   But the the problem is it doesn't, I don't I don't then have like

01:01:16   a good way to easily I want to be able to just share the

01:01:20   file without moving it.

01:01:21   I don't want to move it.

01:01:24   But then the question is how often am I actually gonna need to do

01:01:27   that?

01:01:28   This is the thing that I don't know.

01:01:30   Yeah.

01:01:29   Maybe I don't need to do it that much, and so it's actually not

01:01:34   that much of a problem.

01:01:29   Right.

01:01:35   If if you work like Jason does, like Dropbox is sort of the the

01:01:39   current stuff, and then when it's what it's going to be anyway.

01:01:43   Right.

01:01:43   And when it's done, it just gets archived off to your local storage.

01:01:49   And I mean, what's the worst case scenario, right?

01:01:51   So so say that you are and um you've archived something and suddenly somebody

01:01:58   needs it.

01:01:58   Well, you can remote it into that Mac and you have Dropbox running on

01:02:02   it, and you have the storage attached, and you just drag it back into

01:02:05   Dropbox, right?

01:02:06   Like that's not the end of the world.

01:02:08   No, it's not.

01:02:09   And I already do it, I spent a lot of time getting a Mac

01:02:13   just like that.

01:02:13   It sits over there.

01:02:15   Right.

01:02:15   Like, and so maybe maybe the best thing to do is that then.

01:02:19   That I just get an enclosure, buy a bunch of drives, invest in some

01:02:25   software to like do raid on it and stuff, and then just run it

01:02:28   that way.

01:02:28   Yeah.

01:02:29   Because you're right, like it is going to be an easier thing for me

01:02:32   to understand.

01:02:33   And I and I am I will have less frustration, I think, if it's

01:02:37   su if it is just something that is connected to a Mac, which has

01:02:40   the Dropbox account on it that I would be pulling the stuff from anyway.

01:02:45   And I have Tail Scales set up now, which is so I would never

01:02:49   I would not have done this before Tailscale, because I could not remote into

01:02:53   the studio before Tail Scale.

01:02:55   I don't I don't know enough about what it does differently, but it was

01:02:59   just a thing that would not work with any system that I tried.

01:03:02   But Tailscale has made that work for me.

01:03:05   And so like I feel confident that because I've done it a bunch of

01:03:08   times already.

01:03:09   Like and just go in and like do something on the Mac that sits

01:03:12   here on this network now all the time.

01:03:14   Yeah.

01:03:14   So maybe I well then okay.

01:03:18   What company should I be looking at for just a good drive enclosure to

01:03:22   put a bunch of drives in?

01:03:24   Mine's from OWC.

01:03:26   Okay.

01:03:26   Which is like max sales.com, I think.

01:03:29   Um and they sell them with drives or without.

01:03:32   You can provide your own drives or not.

01:03:34   And they also own soft raid.

01:03:36   So you you get it comes with a version of soft raid that works

01:03:40   with that enclosure.

01:03:42   Um they're all like Thunderbolt enclosures, and you know, they make them at this

01:03:47   point.

01:03:47   I dream on having a uh uh an SSD raid at some point, but

01:03:53   uh that that's even more expensive.

01:03:56   You can buy a car, so yeah, you basically you you put in so

01:03:59   I've got like four four spinning disks in there.

01:04:02   Yeah, and the I will say the other the other issue with anything in

01:04:06   your life that is a bunch of spinning disks is kind of noisy, yeah.

01:04:12   So big enough.

01:04:13   Your studio is enormous, so I I just put it far away from you.

01:04:17   Yeah.

01:04:17   I will honestly we'll put it on the desk that you sat at.

01:04:21   So that's far enough away from me.

01:04:23   Maybe.

01:04:24   Yeah.

01:04:24   Jason, how has SoftRaid been for you?

01:04:27   I've used hardware raid for so long for this stuff.

01:04:30   Back in the day, software raid was like really frowned upon and kind of

01:04:35   sketchy, but you've been running it for a long time.

01:04:38   How has your experience been?

01:04:39   Yeah, rock solid, honestly.

01:04:43   Um it since I've been so I had a Drobo for a long time

01:04:47   and then it died, and I I basically said never again and bought this

01:04:52   RAID instead.

01:04:52   Yeah.

01:04:53   And Drobo's gone.

01:04:54   And they're gone, they're gone, long gone.

01:04:57   Um, but you know, you can have the same thing.

01:04:58   I have I have RAID five, which means that there's data on every bit

01:04:59   of data you have is redundant.

01:05:07   It's it's on two disks.

01:05:09   So that's the thing where if one disk just completely dies, you've lost no

01:05:13   data.

01:05:15   Um you pull that disk out, you put a new disk in, it rebuilds

01:05:20   the, you know, recopies everything, and it's but it's always the data is secure,

01:05:24   which is awesome.

01:05:25   And you can set that up fairly easily in soft raid.

01:05:28   And then it just kind of runs.

01:05:30   There's software updates you run every now and then.

01:05:32   I think the soft rate driver is actually in Mac OS because it has

01:05:36   to be it's like a low-level kind of kernel thing.

01:05:40   And I think Apple just includes it, rides along with the OS.

01:05:44   So sometimes there'll be a software update, and the OS update will update the

01:05:48   soft raid driver, which is kind of wild.

01:05:50   But um, it's solid, you know, and then and it will throw an error.

01:05:54   That's another nice thing about it.

01:05:55   Is like I got at one point, I've only had this one time since

01:05:58   I've been using soft raid.

01:05:59   I had a drive where it said this drive is putting it's like the

01:06:04   yellow warning light.

01:06:05   It's like this drive is going to fail, but it has not yet failed.

01:06:08   And I got a notification and stepped through the steps of pulling that drive,

01:06:14   putting in the new drive.

01:06:16   It got back up to speed and and I was back up and running.

01:06:19   So mine are right now.

01:06:21   I have two 12 terabyte disks and two eight terabyte disks in my RAID,

01:06:27   which nets out to I've got a time machine partition that's four terabytes, and

01:06:32   a storage partition that's 24 terabytes.

01:06:35   That's where I am right now.

01:06:37   Yeah.

01:06:37   I I would definitely do four drives.

01:06:40   I would not do two.

01:06:42   Two two your option is just mirroring.

01:06:44   I mean you could stripe them, but you don't have any backup.

01:06:46   Or you don't have any I'm a big proponent of RAID five.

01:06:44   I mean it's basically that's okay.

01:06:51   You want a system where if a drive if there's literally a hardware, these

01:06:54   are spinning disks, hardware failure, you're fine.

01:06:58   Yep.

01:06:58   Uh yeah absolutely and so you know that that does you know again increase

01:07:04   the price.

01:07:04   But you were looking at a four drive Synology anyways.

01:07:08   Synology yeah.

01:07:09   Yeah I think I think if I mean I think a Synology would be

01:07:15   fine, but I do think I've changed my mind a little bit in talking

01:07:18   through this that yeah if if you're pretty confident like the Dropbox is the

01:07:26   this you know the the active stuff and you move this stuff off then

01:07:31   um yeah you do sort of have two sources and if you move something

01:07:37   back to Dropbox you kind of have just like a make a mental note

01:07:40   of you know what's where but again how often is that going to be

01:07:45   the case.

01:07:46   I mean most likely if I'm gonna move something I'm just gonna send someone

01:07:49   a zip file.

01:07:50   Like I'm gonna put zip file and Dropbox a little bit like it's it's

01:07:52   not you know I think I think tail scale has a file transfer something

01:07:57   to that you may be able to use where you basically tell tail scale

01:08:01   draw that I'm gonna gonna use this and and then somebody can get it

01:08:05   from you.

01:08:06   I don't know.

01:08:07   I'm sure that that this is the thing is I'm sure there's a Mac

01:08:11   solution to the thing you're worried about which is can I just share an

01:08:15   arbitrary file off of my server with somebody at any point.

01:08:19   I'm sure there is a Mac solution for that.

01:08:22   Um it's just that you know, again, this is the trade-off is you will

01:08:26   have to find that max solution and install it, but it'll be in a

01:08:28   Mac interface, which you're familiar with.

01:08:30   I'm sure Synology just does it out of the box.

01:08:32   It will just be in an unfamiliar it honestly.

01:08:35   This is a vibe vibes question a little bit.

01:08:38   It's like, do you want to say, I'm gonna do it?

01:08:41   I'm gonna go all in on Synology and I'm gonna learn this stuff, and

01:08:44   I'm gonna get over my anxiety and I'm gonna do it.

01:08:47   Or you're are you like, I got bigger fish to fry, I'm gonna go

01:08:50   with what's comfortable to me.

01:08:51   Because I think in the end it's about what what's gonna be the choice

01:08:54   that make that you're more most comfortable with slash willing to invest emotional resources

01:09:00   in.

01:09:01   Yeah, no, I think I'm I think now I just need to find some

01:09:04   uh now.

01:09:05   I just need to find uh what enclosure to buy and then just start

01:09:09   from there again.

01:09:10   Yeah.

01:09:11   Back to the beginning.

01:09:11   Yeah.

01:09:12   OWC has they call it the Thunder Bay 4, four drives.

01:09:17   It's Thunderbolt.

01:09:18   You definitely want Thunderbolt for this.

01:09:20   I mean, these drives are not gonna be fast, don't limit it.

01:09:23   It's Thunderbolt 3.

01:09:25   What do we think about that?

01:09:26   That's fine.

01:09:26   But I have that's what I have.

01:09:28   That's fine.

01:09:28   Okay.

01:09:28   I have a I have an OWC Thunder Bay 4 and it's uh it's

01:09:34   a Canada reference.

01:09:36   Thunder Bay is a city in Canada.

01:09:38   Um, and that's what I have with with, like I said, the the four

01:09:42   discs, 12, 12, 8, 8 for me, because I I think I stocked mine

01:09:45   originally when there were only eights available, and then a couple of them died,

01:09:49   and I replaced them with 12s because why not?

01:09:53   Yeah, but yeah, and you know, you're starting out like it looking at their

01:09:57   thing.

01:09:57   You can you can bring your own drives, um, or you can get them

01:10:01   with what they call enterprise hard drive models.

01:10:04   I don't know what that is.

01:10:06   If you do buy your own drives, you want something that is designed for

01:10:11   use in a NAS, uh some drives, um, they're designed slightly differently with the

01:10:19   um the reality that they're running side by side, right?

01:10:24   And there's gonna be noise and vibration and and heat around them.

01:10:27   And so I use WD reds.

01:10:30   That's what's in mine, and I've had very good luck with them over the

01:10:33   years.

01:10:34   I have seven eight terabyte in uh WD reds in my RAID, and it

01:10:40   it's been great.

01:10:41   Um I bought I bought those several years ago when it was far less

01:10:46   expensive.

01:10:46   Yes.

01:10:47   Same I would not do, I would not fill all seven drive bays in

01:10:51   my RAID now.

01:10:52   Um if I was starting to be.

01:10:53   According to Soft RAID, I have three of my drives have been used for

01:10:59   about 55,000 hours, and then one for 8,000 hours.

01:11:04   That's the one that got replaced.

01:11:06   Yeah, but you know, they're there's they're still going.

01:11:11   What did you US and digital reds?

01:11:13   You said?

01:11:14   Yeah, that's what I'm using.

01:11:14   Yeah.

01:11:15   A four terabyte.

01:11:16   Four terabyte western digital red is 200 pounds right now.

01:11:20   Yeah, that's rough.

01:11:22   And that's too small.

01:11:23   Yeah, because with because with RAID five, so you have four drives, say they're

01:11:28   each what do you say, two terabytes?

01:11:31   I said four terabytes.

01:11:33   So you're gonna lose the capacity of two of them to the internal mirror,

01:11:38   and you're gonna lose a little bit of the capacity of the other two

01:11:41   due to overhead.

01:11:43   And so with four four terabyte drives, you may come out with something like

01:11:49   I don't know, like uh seven terabytes of storage.

01:11:55   No, I've messed that up.

01:11:56   Something like that.

01:11:57   So I probably want to start with six terabyte drives then, right?

01:12:01   Yeah, I'm trying to see if there's a calculator online.

01:12:04   Four, four terabyts.

01:12:05   Oh, RAID capacity calculator.

01:12:07   Look at this.

01:12:08   RAID five, four terabyte, four terabyte, four terabyte, four terabyte.

01:12:14   Uh you would end up with 12 terabytes of capacity for with RAID 5

01:12:19   with 4 terabyte drives.

01:12:21   Oh, I think that's fine.

01:12:23   Right?

01:12:24   Yeah, that's fine.

01:12:25   If you went to six, I mean you're gonna, it'll be a big jump

01:12:28   up.

01:12:28   Yeah, but they're like 300 pounds each.

01:12:32   Yeah, six is 18 terabytes.

01:12:34   And again, you can I'm looking on the Amazon store right now, and the

01:12:36   six the six terabyte western digital reds are right now, they're on sale, believe

01:12:43   it or not.

01:12:43   So they're only like 319 each, and the four is two ninety-five.

01:12:47   Uh in which case I would totally get the sixes.

01:12:49   Yeah, me too.

01:12:51   Because they're not that much more expensive, but depends on where you're buying and

01:12:53   if the if there's value there.

01:12:55   Oh, yeah, no, I can see it actually similar.

01:12:58   I'm looking at a different side.

01:12:59   I don't know what's wrong with these six terabyte reds.

01:13:02   They're like it's 260 for four or two hundred and eighty for six.

01:13:06   Yeah.

01:13:07   And I I did mis misspeak.

01:13:09   RAID five, you only lose one of the drives to redundancy.

01:13:11   That's why my math was wrong.

01:13:13   Yeah.

01:13:13   Um, also, I know drives are expensive.

01:13:17   My recommendation is if you're gonna do a four-disc array, yeah, buy five discs.

01:13:22   Yes, you want a cold spare.

01:13:24   You want one that you can stick in if you have a problem.

01:13:29   Okay.

01:13:30   I knew this was gonna be an expensive project.

01:13:32   It is.

01:13:32   Yeah.

01:13:33   Well, the cheap version is I was looking around and I was like, how

01:13:36   many USB SSDs that are like one terabyte do I have laying around?

01:13:41   And could they all get together?

01:13:46   This brand, like the company that I'm looking at right now, they will only

01:13:50   let me buy four.

01:13:52   It's a limit of four per capita.

01:13:54   Shortages.

01:13:55   You could you could also look the Seagate drive, I believe, is the Ironwolf.

01:14:00   So there are other options.

01:14:01   I just had good luck with WD Reds.

01:14:04   I just sort of picked one.

01:14:05   Because they're all gonna fail eventually, right?

01:14:07   That's that's the truth of this.

01:14:10   And so I believe I my my drives are even distributed.

01:14:15   I think I have Ironwolves and WD Reds.

01:14:18   Nice in mind.

01:14:19   Oh, it's the Seagate Iron Wolfs are cheaper than uh Yeah, then there you

01:14:24   go.

01:14:24   Quite a bit cheaper, actually.

01:14:26   The warranty may be shorter, that may be part of it, but yeah, you

01:14:30   know.

01:14:31   Warranty Schmorranty.

01:14:32   That's right.

01:14:33   Live on the edge with a raid protecting your data.

01:14:36   Wow, okay.

01:14:36   I just looked the the last drive I bought was an Ironwolf 12 when

01:14:40   I had that failure.

01:14:41   Uh currently it's 429 for for that.

01:14:48   Blaze it.

01:14:49   I paid 224.

01:14:52   Jeez.

01:14:53   In 2020, in in less than i actually, oh my god.

01:14:58   A year ago today, in fact, I bought that drive.

01:15:02   Happy anniversary.

01:15:03   Yeah.

01:15:04   Well, so that's easy to calculate how much price has changed in a year

01:15:09   there.

01:15:09   The Seagate Iron Wolf drive that I just mentioned is one per customer.

01:15:13   Where are you looking?

01:15:14   Uh there's a company called Scan in the UK.

01:15:16   They're really double price on.

01:15:19   Thanks, AI.

01:15:21   I'm trying to support you know.

01:15:24   Bezos needs your money.

01:15:25   That's true.

01:15:26   That's true.

01:15:28   Casey, I don't know.

01:15:29   Maybe he's got another wedding he's got to do sometime.

01:15:31   I don't know.

01:15:31   Wow.

01:15:29   You never know.

01:15:36   This episode of Connected is brought to you by Shippaton, the global hackathon for

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01:17:03   Relay.

01:17:06   It is now time, gentlemen, for some mask upgrade questions.

01:17:12   I went into your form and took a question.

01:17:17   Steven, I need those.

01:17:20   Okay.

01:17:20   I just took three.

01:17:21   I just took three of them.

01:17:22   I just took three.

01:17:24   Okay.

01:17:26   Edward asks, do you think that the Apple upgrade program will level out Apple's

01:17:31   profits throughout the year?

01:17:33   No.

01:17:36   No.

01:17:37   Um the boring answer is that I imagine the way that they will book

01:17:41   the revenue.

01:17:42   Yes.

01:17:43   Because it's a lease and there's Klarna, is that they'll book the complete value

01:17:48   of the phone when they start.

01:17:52   And then that's my guess is that is that it will.

01:17:56   And I doubt it's US only, and only a certain percentage of people are

01:17:59   going to do it for any product.

01:18:03   And I I just can't see that it'll make that much of a difference.

01:18:06   If yes, if the grand uh vision that Mark German laid out in his

01:18:09   report about this, where he's like, Apple could become the biggest subscription company in

01:18:13   the world.

01:18:13   It's like, yeah, maybe eventually everything just becomes services revenue, but I I think

01:18:17   it's a long way before we like take take all of Apple's revenue for

01:18:21   a year, divide it by four and pop it into each quarter.

01:18:23   I think that's I think that's not very likely.

01:18:26   I don't think they want that.

01:18:27   Um I don't I don't think it benefits them to have like let's imagine

01:18:33   they could get into a world where they completely leveled out the revenue.

01:18:37   Like I just don't think they would want that.

01:18:39   I think they like the spikes, right?

01:18:41   Like that that's it's fun to have these big blowouts.

01:18:45   But also, yeah, I just agree with Jason.

01:18:47   I I also don't if this thing became really popular and they didn't book

01:18:51   the revenue like that, then their revenue will fall off a cliff.

01:18:55   Right.

01:18:56   Like, which would they also wouldn't want to set up that way.

01:18:59   Like if everybody in America buys their iPhone on the upgrade program, they would

01:19:04   have terrible results.

01:19:06   And I don't think that they would want to uh position it like that.

01:19:09   But I also think whilst this is an interesting uh thing that they can

01:19:13   offer, I don't think it's gonna be massively popular because people buy their phones

01:19:16   with their carriers.

01:19:17   Like that's how they do it, and they're just gonna keep doing that.

01:19:20   Um but the people that use the upgrade program, I actually think this is

01:19:25   a product that is better for Mac and iPad sales than it is for

01:19:29   iPhone sales.

01:19:31   For just they are much more expensive things that people buy less frequently, and

01:19:36   so the idea of just spreading that cost out over a long, long, long

01:19:40   period of time um is maybe a bit more um it makes it feel

01:19:46   nicer.

01:19:47   Um but yeah.

01:19:49   I tell you, I was so happy to be away and not have to

01:19:53   talk about this in any detail over the last week.

01:19:55   Yeah, yeah.

01:19:55   Yeah, lucky to make one could not be more boring of a of a

01:20:00   topic, really.

01:20:01   And Steven, thanks for making us feel so at home here with yeah, these

01:20:05   all these elements from upgrade.

01:20:07   The Discord is like Steven doesn't know how to be Steven knew how to

01:20:10   do a show.

01:20:11   Steven wanted to be on upgrade.

01:20:12   It's okay, you can do whatever you want.

01:20:14   You know why?

01:20:14   Because it's summer of fun!

01:20:16   Summer of fun!

01:20:19   See, there's another one for you.

01:20:20   Yeah, all the all the hits.

01:20:21   So playing all the hits.

01:20:24   Money, money, money.

01:20:26   Close.

01:20:28   Close.

01:20:29   He nearly got there.

01:20:31   Hey, what are the words to that song, Steven says?

01:20:34   Money, money, money, something, uh whatever.

01:20:37   Everyone has some of it.

01:20:39   Something like that.

01:20:40   Bezos, Bezos, Bezos.

01:20:43   Another Jason asks.

01:20:45   Last year I put off buying a new phone in part because of the

01:20:44   rumors of the folding phone.

01:20:50   While I'm still interested in that, I've become more intrigued by the iPhone Air,

01:20:54   even with the battery and camera compromises.

01:20:57   I haven't heard any rumors about a new air.

01:21:00   Is that just because all the full the fold takes all the air out

01:21:03   of the room?

01:21:03   Ah, or is the iPhone Air unlikely to get a refresh?

01:21:08   It's time for rumor roundup, Mike.

01:21:10   There'll be one.

01:21:11   There is going to be one, but it's going to be next year, right?

01:21:14   So there's like there have been rumors about a new iPhone Air, potentially with

01:21:18   a second camera.

01:21:20   And, you know, uh new system of chip would make it more efficient.

01:21:24   Personally, this is like just as as someone who's using an iPhone Air, I

01:21:29   really like it.

01:21:30   I would be okay with a little bit better battery life and less heat

01:21:35   if it didn't have the pro chip in it next year.

01:21:37   If the pro chip next year can do all the Apple intelligence stuff, maybe

01:21:40   that's also a way to.

01:21:43   Yeah, I don't know.

01:21:43   Maybe people may be that as a downgrade, but the air, I think, is

01:21:48   gonna be in the spring.

01:21:51   And and so for me, that leaves me in an interesting place because I

01:21:55   really like the iPhone Air.

01:21:56   I will have the foldable phone because I'm gonna need it for my work.

01:22:00   But if I don't like You can just say you want it.

01:22:03   Like it's okay to say you want it.

01:22:05   I mean, look.

01:22:07   Gotta talk about it, gotta run apps on it.

01:22:10   Yeah.

01:22:10   It's a business expense if I keep talking about it this way.

01:22:13   But if I don't want to use it as my carry phone, uh I'm

01:22:17   gonna stay on the iPhone Air, I think, and then just like upgrade it

01:22:21   in the spring.

01:22:22   Like it is an interesting dilemma.

01:22:25   And there's always gonna be.

01:22:27   I mean, for the so for the regular phone, I don't think it matters

01:22:29   as much because people are on longer buying cycles, and I I think there'll

01:22:34   be some people be like, oh, why is there not an iPhone 18?

01:22:37   It's like, well, just wait to the spring, like people will, I think eventually

01:22:41   get word of that.

01:22:42   Um, but yeah, the air is gonna be also in the spring.

01:22:46   It'll get updated.

01:22:47   Uh I don't think they're gonna get rid of it after one year.

01:22:50   Um, is there an iPhone Air 3?

01:22:53   I don't know, but I think there will be a two.

01:22:56   The Air 2 rumors currently suggest more battery life um and a second camera.

01:23:03   So there you go.

01:23:05   They're gonna they're gonna if they do if they do do that, then they're

01:23:08   going to quote unquote fix the two biggest problems that are perceived by this

01:23:13   product, right?

01:23:14   It was battery and a single camera.

01:23:16   So if they find if they if they find a way to make that

01:23:21   work by the spring, it's gonna be another solid try.

01:23:24   But I think I think it is at this point clear to see that

01:23:28   that price point for Apple is a desert.

01:23:31   It is.

01:23:32   They have never put a product in there that seemed to make sense because

01:23:36   they keep changing it and nothing works.

01:23:40   I don't know why they they they feel they have to keep trying um

01:23:45   when it probably makes more sense to do what they're about to do, which

01:23:49   is just make a more expensive one.

01:23:52   Which we've been saying for a long time, right?

01:23:55   Like the name iPhone Ultra has been a we've been kicking that one around

01:23:58   for a long time.

01:24:01   Well, no.

01:24:03   We've been talking about it as just a more extreme, more expensive, more like

01:24:09   quirks and features iPhone, right?

01:24:11   Like we've been talking about it since the Apple Watch Ultra came out.

01:24:13   Like, oh, why don't they make a an iPhone that's more expensive?

01:24:16   Samsung does it right, like they have their ultra line of of their phones,

01:24:21   and it's just here's just the most expensive one and it with the most

01:24:24   amount of cameras, and it's gonna get all the big features first.

01:24:27   So it seems like they're they're not gonna go about that in the way

01:24:31   that we had initially thought they might, but now they're gonna give us the

01:24:36   most phone asterisk ever by being a foldable phone.

01:24:40   All right, final one.

01:24:44   MR asks with the Mac Mini getting more expensive.

01:24:47   Do you think it now makes sense for Apple to offer a Neo variant

01:24:51   of it?

01:24:51   Something that costs $399 with the internals of a MacBook and EA would be

01:24:55   fantastic as a home server machine.

01:24:57   And they go on to mention like the Apple Watch SE, the iPhone S

01:25:01   E now, that just the 17E.

01:25:03   Um, why not a cheaper Mac Mini?

01:25:06   I mean, the Mac Mini is the Mac Neo.

01:25:08   Yeah.

01:25:09   They just can't make it for cheap enough.

01:25:11   Remember, it was really cheap before.

01:25:13   Like it it was it was a very good price for a computer, but

01:25:18   they just can't make it at that level.

01:25:20   I I don't think it makes sense to make a desktop Mac less powerful

01:25:26   than that one.

01:25:26   I think I don't that I don't I don't see why you would do

01:25:29   that.

01:25:29   Just wait and then bring the Mac Mini back down to 499.

01:25:34   Yeah, I agree that look, everybody buys laptops three quarters of the Mac sold,

01:25:41   probably at least, or laptops.

01:25:44   Desktops are a niche.

01:25:46   The Mac Mini is the low price desktop.

01:25:49   That's like m like Mike said.

01:25:50   Uh and I don't think that Apple would see a lot of value.

01:25:53   Apple sees a lot of value in making a cheaper laptop because it goes

01:25:59   in schools, it goes to people, you know, people who might be reluctant to

01:25:59   spend money on a MacBook Air.

01:26:05   It gets them up against a lot of really interesting products like Chromebooks and

01:26:09   cheap PC laptops.

01:26:11   A cheaper Mac Mini, I just don't like I think the Mac Mini is

01:26:18   what they want to do there.

01:26:19   I think that's it.

01:26:20   Yeah.

01:26:20   And especially now that they have the Mac Studio.

01:26:22   I agree.

01:26:23   And I think actually the take of it would be a great home server

01:26:27   machine is actually not true.

01:26:28   If you look at the MacBook Neo, it is limited in I.O.

01:26:32   It's got USB C, like that, and then you have like the weird 2.0

01:26:37   thing going on.

01:26:38   One of the nice things about the Mac Mini is that there's quite a

01:26:42   bit of I.O.

01:26:43   for a machine so small.

01:26:44   You can get it with 10 gigabit Ethernet.

01:26:46   You've got a bunch of Thunderbolt ports out the back.

01:26:49   Like even though, even when they shrank it down, they kept a lot of

01:26:54   the I.O.

01:26:55   that that you know otherwise could could have gone, right?

01:26:58   They even got the little USB C ports on the front, right?

01:27:01   The iPhone chipset, at least as it stands today, isn't capable of that.

01:27:07   And maybe future ones will be, but not today.

01:27:12   And I think that that would I think there's a lot of people.

01:27:16   I think Jason, you said this in a Mac Wor PC years and years

01:27:19   ago.

01:27:19   I think about it all the time.

01:27:21   The Mac Mini is like the escape valve for the Mac lineup.

01:27:26   And it people do weird things with it and stick it in places.

01:27:29   And one reason people can do that is it's cheap and it's small, but

01:27:33   also because you can hook a bunch of stuff up to it.

01:27:36   Yeah.

01:27:36   I I think it's more likely that Apple would if if these prices are

01:27:42   going to continue for a while, I can see a scenario where Apple would

01:27:44   like decontent the Mac Mini a little bit to get it down to a

01:27:51   lower price, at least as a base model, and say things like, do we

01:27:56   need three Thunderbolt ports on the back kind of stuff?

01:28:01   Where, like, is the are there places that they could save some money?

01:28:04   So not creating a Mac Neo, but saying, are there things we could cheap

01:28:09   out on a little bit more on the Mac Mini to differentiate it, not

01:28:13   not just differentiate it from the Mac Studio, but also to get that base

01:28:16   price to come back down because it is really powerful.

01:28:23   Like even I know that it it starts at what six six ninety nine

01:28:28   now, seven ninety-nine now.

01:28:30   But like it's a whole thing, right?

01:28:32   It's got like a load of ports, like you said, Steven, and and thunderbolts,

01:28:37   it's fast.

01:28:39   Um and yeah, I uh if you use an iPhone chip, it would have

01:28:43   none of that.

01:28:44   But I do wonder if they might look at it, the existing Mac Mini

01:28:47   and say, is there a way for us to do a variant that's cheaper?

01:28:50   But even then, like I I even then I question because like they want

01:28:56   it to be what it is is what they want it to be, which

01:28:59   is fully featured, tiny, and a low price for what it is.

01:29:06   I think uh I think that does it for this week.

01:29:09   If you would like to send in your own ask upgrade questions to be

01:29:12   answered on a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and you

01:29:17   can send them in.

01:29:17   And Steven will read them.

01:29:19   And Steven will read them.

01:29:21   Yeah.

01:29:21   Even just to himself.

01:29:22   Uh-huh.

01:29:23   I just answered them to myself quietly.

01:29:25   I should go in there and steal them for blog post ideas.

01:29:28   That's what I should do.

01:29:29   There's loads of great stuff.

01:29:31   There's a lot of great stuff.

01:29:32   You guys get a lot of feedback.

01:29:33   People should leave more connected feedback, you know?

01:29:35   We get a little well, we get a lot of feedback because we have

01:29:38   specific places.

01:29:39   Right.

01:29:40   Like Snelltalk and Ask Upgrade just create a lot of feedback.

01:29:43   Yeah.

01:29:44   Yeah.

01:29:45   Plus plus regular follow-up stuff.

01:29:47   Yeah.

01:29:48   Anyways.

01:29:49   If you want the notes for the stuff we spoke about, they're in your

01:29:51   podcast player.

01:29:52   They're also on the web at relay.fm slash connected slash 615.

01:29:57   There you can leave us feedback and follow up.

01:29:59   Not that other show that came along after Connected.

01:30:03   Us, the originals.

01:30:04   You can leave us feedback.

01:30:06   You can also join and get Connected Pro, which is the longer and ad-free

01:30:10   version of the show that we do each and every week.

01:30:14   Members also get access to the relay Discord newsletter, some members only podcasts.

01:30:19   It's a great deal.

01:30:20   Go check it out at getconnectedpro.co.

01:30:23   If you want more of Mike, you can listen to a bunch of other

01:30:27   shows here on Relay and check out his work at Cortex Brand and his

01:30:30   blog at the enthusiast.net.

01:30:33   If you want to find Jason, you can find him on the upgrade program

01:30:37   here on Relay.

01:30:38   And of course, sixcolors.com, everyone's favorite multicolored Apple website.

01:30:43   You can find my writing at 512pixels.net.

01:30:47   I'll even think our sponsors, Squarespace, Backblaze, and Revenue Cat.

01:30:51   And until next week, guys, say goodbye.

01:30:55   Bye.

01:30:57   Cheerio.

01:30:58   Bye, y'all.