Upgrade - 389: I Have Extra Buttons

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

We discuss why it's useful to take time every once in a while to pull back and look at the big picture instead of getting bogged down in the day-to-day grind. Also, Jason built himself a tool to make his life easier, Apple may be gearing up for its next event, and listeners have lots of questions about Apple displays.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 389 today's show is brought to you by electric doordash and memberful my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell hi jason hi mike well you're so energetic it's it's. Good to start the show with so much energy. I've always got energy for this show. I've got a hashtag Snell talk question for you. Yes. Comes from Alexander. And Alexander asks, as your family gets older, how do you handle IT questions and concerns as your family's IT administrator?

Do you use things like screen sharing? What do you do? So first off, I don't actually know whether Alexander means as my family gets older, meaning my kids are, you know, 20 and 17 now, or whether it means like my mom and my in-laws who are in their 80s. I expect older family. The way I read this is like, as older family gets even older, you know what I mean? Yeah, but I had that moment of like, oh, what do they mean by this? My answer is the same, which is, you know, remote support is hard.

I have definitely done a screen sharing session with my daughter in college where I've had to fix something on her computer. I have not yet done that with iOS where you can now do an iOS screen share. But I did get my mom a new a newer ipad that supports the current version of ios so that i could do that if she has a problem in the future i just realized i have not tried that is that a thing that works now with share play the screen

sharing you can you can share your screen to someone else yes so that's a new thing okay and so like if i wanted to see your screen you would have to say show me you'd have to say show the screen to mike kind of thing exactly yeah but it's it's you know it's a better experience than than what we had before it's and it is view only so you still have to talk them through it but you can you know it eliminates that whole like uh what does it say in the bottom right corner? It's like, well, there's just a green thing there. It's like, okay, that doesn't make any sense. It's not what it looks like, so you need to tell me where you are.

Instead, you can see it, and then you have to step them through it. I haven't done that yet. I definitely have done that thing where I've done screen sharing with Jamie. And it's been a funny thing where, because that you can take control, but they also can control. And you have that thing where you have to say, stop typing. I am going to do the typing now. Stop typing. Don't click anything.

I'm doing the clicking now. Right. But also, they tend to call you and say, I am having trouble. And then you say, let's do a screen share. And then of course, you know, what happens is the screen share very helpfully also transmits audio. And now you've got two separate audio channels. So then you have to hang up your phone call and use that screen sharing audio, which doesn't sound as good. And then when you're done with the screen share, if you still need to talk, you have to call them

back. It's a thing anyway. But that's mostly what I am using is just that kind of stuff. Nothing much more than that. I'm not a super hands-on IT administrator. I let the people in my family use their stuff. And if they have a problem, they can come to me and I'll try to figure it out. But my in-laws have all Apple stuff now. There was a period where they had, they had Macs in the early days and then they bought a PC. And I said to, I remember very clearly, I said to them, okay, you're welcome to do, it's your money, it's your life.

You do whatever you want. But just to be clear, I'm not providing you any technical support yeah i cannot help you i can't help you with that and um this was when my brother-in-law was like a early teenager maybe maybe he was 10 he was but that they had that computer long enough for him to become a teenager get super into downloading things on the internet, get the whole computer infested with spyware and malware. And then they bought an iMac and they've been back on the Mac ever since. So, yeah. Good times.

Good times. If you would like to send in a question for us to open an episode of the show just send out a tweet with the hashtag snow talk or use question mark snow talk in the relay fm members discord so a couple of items of follow-up the first is upgrade keyboard club is returning this week yeah friday the 14th at 9 a.m pacific time 12 eastern time that's 5 p.m uh uk time etc etc go to mike.live which is my twitch stream and jason's going to be joining me i'll be there we are going to uh be hopefully completing jason's keyboard build i've been buying lots of things to modify the sound of the keyboard because i am currently unhappy with the sound of the keyboard and it is not good enough for me to deliver to Jason

Snell. So we will be building that together on Friday so you can tune in and check that out. I'll put a link in the show notes to a video of the previous iteration of Upgrade Keyboard Club when we hung out together and built stuff. You and me and Steven and we did it.

I've got keycaps and other stuff here that's waiting for the arrival of it too so maybe I can show those off on Friday too we did it. I've got keycaps and other stuff here that's waiting for the arrival of it too. So maybe I can show those off on Friday too. Very nice. I've been preparing the way for the receipt of the great Mike created keyboard when it gets here. We'll roll out the red carpet.

We've got some trumpeters, the whole thing to receive the keyboard. It's going to be a great day and it's going to be tricky to ship it because these things are always really heavy. But you know, we'll make it work. Jason Sudeikis won a Golden Globe for Best TV Actor in a Comedy.

Again. Oh, I love it when the Jason S's win stuff. It's great. It's got the weird Golden Globes this year because they had their scandal last year and everybody hated them. And so they basically got put in the penalty box and there wasn't a public event and it wasn't on tv or anything like that but they still gave out awards and uh and jason sudeikis doubled up and you know

he obviously won the emmy too so uh just more accolades for for ted lasso there was uh the the movie about a dog or something won a lot of Golden Globes. The movie about a dog. You know, I don't know what you mean. I don't know anything about it. And I kind of love it. I kind of love that this could literally be you made something up. It's like the Simpsons, like dog on fire.

You know, dog on fire had a dog on fire. So I honestly don't know what the movie about the dog is. i don't want to know i don't want to know i don't want to know i don't know i i want to go through life now knowing you know what movie people are liking is that one about the dog just to see what happens see if i can get any more information or if they look at me like i don't know what i'm talking about because you've set me up by saying I thought it was a movie about a dog. But it turns out it's not. It's about a man who kills a cat. It's only going to confuse it more.

Okay. A domineering rancher responds with mocking cruelty when his brother brings home a new wife and her son until the unexpected comes to pass. But is the unexpected that they get a dog? I don't know, man. unexpected comes to pass but is the unexpected that they get a dog oh man i all i know is i've seen a lot of posters for this and didn't understand really anything about the movie but then it won like a ton of awards is this is this the movie where the guy thinks he's a b that's a different movie right that's a different movie this is dog movie and that's that was b movie this is on Netflix.

This is a Netflix movie, by the way. I don't know. It might end up winning an Oscar. For your consideration, a movie about a dog. A movie about a dog. I have a rumor roundup for you, Jason. Lots of rumors. Mark Gunn suggesting that Apple will be looking at holding an event in march or april

uh mark said this was to focus on the iphone se with 5g that doesn't seem right to me maybe they will announce it then but that doesn't feel like what you're like temp pole of an apple event no that's like the and you could ask the question, why not? Why not do an event for the iPhone SE? 5G, 5G, 5G. Let's get Verizon out here to talk about 5G. I think Apple has internalized this rule, which is the rule that an Apple media event truly must be an event. Otherwise, it's just a press release. And making a video press release,

making an infomercial is not something that Apple wants to do. And I am very happy because they used to be bad at that before Steve Jobs came back and right when Steve Jobs came back. And Apple events weren't special. In fact, the story that I always tell is

only the editor-in-chief of Macworld went to the iMac launch. And that was as a courtesy. Because Apple's previous two, let's get the media down here to spring something on them, events that they had done had been nothing. Had been just wastes of our time. But Jobs instituted, I think, in Apple this idea that if we're going to do an event and we're going to go to the trouble, we need to have, we need to put on a show. And so iPhone SE sounds like that is the most tangible thing that Mark Gurman has. Like that is part of the plan, but that is nothing. That's a nothing. So there's got to be more to the story of what would be in that event, because if that's all they do, that would be not an iPhone SE with 5G and, you know, refreshed internals and the A15 and all that isn't perfectly nice.

But like, can you imagine saying, you know, we got a really great event today where we're going to put out a cut rate iPhone by everybody like that's not going to cut it. It's just not going to do it. If they created the successor to the iPhone Mini and released it at a weird time in the year, sure, maybe. You know what I mean? If it was like, here's the iPhone SE and it looks like an iPhone Mini and it's as big as an iPhone Mini and this is the thing.

Maybe, but even then it would still be a bit of a stretch if that was your whole event. So I think this is the you know like it may be but even then it would still be a bit of a stretch if that was your whole event so i think this is the case where that's the one that mark german has confidence in yeah but that there are other products that are going to be loaded in there he's just not quite sure what they are and so he's not going to report it but he feels like they are they're ready to launch that one and that one will definitely be there and maybe maybe even his uh sources are saying you know we're not quite sure how this is going to resolve. Also, it's March or April, right? So it's like, you know, we're working it out.

But that they will, that an event is coalescing and that the SE is definitely going to be one of the things that's there. And then the rest are to be determined. But I would be surprised if there wasn't, you know, this feels like maybe this is the MacBook Air or maybe the iMac, that there may be a Mac announcement in there too. And that that would be the thing, right? Because there's no, I don't know, they could do like an iPad Air refresh and all that. But like, what's up? You know, what's up next that we would think would be in March or April? And my guess is that it may be more like Mac stuff

than anything else. I don't know. Well, one of the things that I thought it could have been, but reports are suggesting that maybe it wouldn't be, is AirPods Pro 2. This is a product that is expected for next year, but according to Minxi Kuo and Digitimes, both got different reports here,

suggesting H2, so the second half of the year. New design, improved audio quality with the ability to play lossless audio, and a new case that can make a sound. So if you want to find the case, right, so you do it in Find My. The way you said that, it was a little bit like it can make a sound. Like, what sound? Is it that dog from that movie? Is that the sound? The dog makes the sound uh this is the barking case yeah it's been you know it feels like it was just yesterday that the the airpods pro came out but it's been quite a while now that was what in 2019 maybe 2019 2019 yeah let me let me let me walk you through my thought process there mike

uh i went to an apple store in palo alto and got a briefing for the airpods pro and they did a demo and uh that pretty much means it happened at 2019 or earlier so but that puts it in perspective that's how you know did it get sent to you or did you go see or did i go see it and so 2019 it's like so it's been a while i love the airpods pro i think they're amazing i remember when the rumors were out there that they were they were going to do a pro version of airpods i was like is this a thing is this really going to be necessary i was really skeptical about like them going in the ear canal because I'm such a dedicated kind of in-ear canal headphone

user. I was skeptical about the noise cancellation. I was skeptical. What I'm saying is I went into it being really skeptical and it turns out I love them so much and they have replaced almost all of my use of other headphones other than when I'm podcasting or editing a podcast. So

yeah, I'm looking forward to whatever they've got. Mike, how could they improve it? How could they? Well, there was this report, right, about Bluetooth being a holdback for them. Did you see this? It was like an interview kind of thing. Oh yeah, right.

Well, I mean, okay. So they rolled out lossless audio without support of it for it on their own devices right not great it's not not apple like it's not what they would prefer so i feel like at that moment we all knew that there would be a future version of airpods that supported lossless or they would just enable it on the current ones but you know like we weren't sure at the time like what was the possibility. What could Apple do? But they weren't going to say, no, no, no.

Wireless just doesn't get this feature. Because they're going to want to talk about it. So they put the spatial audio in the old ones, but not lossless. And everything we hear is that current Bluetooth can't do it. I think it's funny that a lot of people are speculating, like, is Apple going to make its own thing, make its own, like, wireless thing that solves this problem? And then will the headphones even have Bluetooth in it? So, well, they're going to have Bluetooth in it because you want to have it connect to all the devices, including devices that don't have support for a new standard, like, you know,

Macs and everything have Bluetooth. However, I imagine, and I'm not deep down in this world, but I only see two scenarios here. One is that there's a new wireless audio streaming spec that is out there that is being implemented or is about to be implemented that Apple will do. Or two, that Apple is on the committee that's working on that and has done its own implementation and is going to release it and also submit it as the next version of the standard. But either way, I think this is the kind of thing where it's unlikely that Apple is going to invent its own thing. I think it's far more likely that Apple is going to use some existing technology, perhaps one that they pushed along as a standard,

because they're the ones who really want this wireless lossless audio support. But I do think it'll happen, and I do think that it's been a priority of Apple because they made the decision to do lossless, and then it immediately makes you look at their wireless headphones and go, well, wait a second, why don't they support it? Yeah, I wonder what else they could do. Like Unconnected for every, because there's something that I liked that maybe they could increase the range or something, which I thought

might be kind of cool. Yeah, they did that with the, what did they do? Well, they actually increased the range with the phones on the phone side, right? They did a new Bluetooth ship. I remember that from the, it was that the 12 or the 13 where one of the features was that AirPod range was increased. But it was the phone did a better job. And then so the AirPods were just because it takes two to make that connection. So the phone made it better. I mean, there's a lot filtering of audio, the noise canceling and all of that.

There's rumors that they're interested in doing sensors in there for like health data. Unclear if that's going to be a part of this, but that there's rumors that that's an area they want to go in. So then you're running with your AirPods and it's able to, because it's in your ears, it's able to measure things. I don't know. I don't know. But making it sound better and support better quality audio

and maybe have an improved level of noise canceling and maybe improve pass-through. Maybe they have a better algorithm to detect voice and filter that and send it through so that you can hear other people. Right. It's that idea that AirPods aren't hearing aids and yet they kind of are. And so if they can improve some sort of like accessibility aspects with it. But that's all the secret sauce stuff, right?

That's the stuff where they're like, we've tweaked our algorithm. But it's been since secret sauce stuff, right? That's the stuff where they're like, we've tweaked our algorithm. But it's been since 2019, since they released one. So they've had a lot of time to work on a next-gen version that does all the stuff that the regular AirPods Pro do, but better. When they say about design, I wonder if they're going to do some kind of change because they want to fix that problem,

the clicking problem. Oh, yeah. I think they've got to change somehow, right? Because you can still just walk in and get your AirPods Pro just replaced all the time if they're doing their little clicking thing. So they've got to do something at least to fix whatever it was that caused that problem. Right.

Well, my question is, is that a problem that is fixed in more recent batches of AirPods Pro? Or is it continuing to be a production problem um but regardless yeah i mean like if you have a thing that's costing you money because you're having to replace all sorts of these airpods because they don't they they make this weird sound after a while some of them then you would certainly use what you learn there to redesign them to not do that hopefully and then also headset our favorite i feel like we need you know like we've got our segments we've got upstream and

upshift yeah sure one for the headset at some point because we're not going to stop talking about it uh ming chi kuo is saying that is he is expecting that it will be launching in late 2022 in limited quantities. This is apparently later than Kuo and others have predicted. So like Minqi Kuo records it like a delay. So, you know, like and I don't want to get into that whole it's not a delay if they didn't announce

it thing, right? Like there's still like, you know, maybe some of the people that he knows that maybe Apple's partners in manufacturing were expecting it to come out before now and it's not i mean my thinking on that is i mean the obvious is hello chip shortages etc etc etc yep i my theory would be also the potential of a delay in announcement because Apple is unconvinced of when they could have an in-person event for it. Yeah. I mean, that could be. I know that you're a big believer in the in-person event, and I think there's a lot of reason to suggest that that is going to be their preference because they're going to want to have people try it out. Put it on people's

faces. Exactly. Especially if it's not going to be out for a while. But yeah, also, if you've got issues with the supply chain, you're obviously, I think, going to prioritize the products that are actually selling versus a product that is off in the distance. There's no rush. That you're going to have to start grinding with. Right. There's absolutely no rush on it. If you can't, if you have any reason to delay it delay it would seem exactly way to go

for me but mark german also had something about this in uh his newsletter too this is a couple of chunky quotes but i wanted to read them all out because i thought it would just help to add the context so this is from mark german here's one word i would be shocked to hear on stage when apple announces its headset metaverse i've been told pretty directly that the idea of a completely virtual world where users can escape to, like they can in Meta Platform's vision of the future, is off-limits from Apple. Executives today at the highest levels of the company and in the past, like Johnny Ive, have pushed for virtual reality to not be an all-day device, and instead one that can be used for bursts of gaming

communication and content consumption the augmented reality headset is apple's real priority because it can be worn all day and naturally not take anyone out of their real environment yeah i mean i feel like this is just anybody who thinks that you're gonna put put a VR headset on and just leave it on for all day is, I think, delusional. It's not that kind of thing. And so I think there's a reality creeping in here where Apple's like, look, in the short term, we're going to do VR. It's not super comfortable. You're only going to be able to do it for limited bursts. And we want to make that good but the long-term play is something that you can just wear comfortably and not shut out the

outside world and that's the that's the end goal and it clearly is the end goal like that is that is the dream is you wear a pair of glasses they can be any of these things ar and vr but um it allows you to just kind of integrate them into your whole life. But technology is not close to being able to deliver something like that. And as we've talked about here too, biology is a big problem there because of the way our eyes work and it's complicated. So I think this is a good restatement of not only it seems sensible philosophy to me about this, but something that I think is absolutely in not only a a term that has been kind of like co-opted by facebook um but also it has kind of been poisoned already by a lot of people who are doing metaverse stuff so that i think apple's gonna want to speed away from that term and rephrase it in a way that

better fits what apple better fits Apple's vision and also better fits whatever this product is that Apple's working on. I also wonder if this product will actually ship this year. I'm starting to wonder if this is going to be one of those things like the Apple Watch, as you said, that ends up being a fall introduction and it doesn't ship until the spring. We'll see. But when taking a page from Liftoff, the podcast that I occasionally now do with Stephen Hackett about space stuff, we have a phrase which is late this year means next year. When you're promising things in space, I'm like, oh, well, it'll launch in late 2022. Savvy people will be like, that means 2023. Like, it's just just it's never so when when ming chi kuo says late 22 and limited quantities i'm like

maybe or maybe uh that's wishful thinking and that they're ending ending up gonna have to punt it into 23 yeah we'll see um the thing i saw some people saying this online and i liked it uh which is that like the the apple headset couldn't be an all-day device because there's no way the battery would last anyway of course i like that as an idea and i do have this i mean i want to see what their whole strategy ends up being but like i do have pause around like vr no way all day ar yes yes all day like it's always the idea of them getting in right i mean like it's just you know if you're saying like oh if people put on uh vr headsets they're only going to shut themselves out from the world which is actually kind of not the point of the metaverse right like the metaverse part is the vr part of

like having communication and being a part of something around you're putting people and stuff that's not in your physical space in your real world for lack of again i'm very skeptical about the word and the and and a lot of the conversation around it but but it is on one level there is a misunderstanding about what the metaphors is which is it's not you're shutting yourself off from reality the answer is you're opening yourself up to um other things that are now part of your reality. And I guess that sounds really squishy, but what I'm really saying is if you've got a friend or friends that you mostly only ever do a Zoom chat with or a FaceTime call or email or whatever, then those are real

relationships, right? And so you're bringing those people into your frame of reference because they aren't actually physically present with you i think that's i think that's okay to think of it that way but um but the truth is that that um wearing something on your face all day is going to be painful and look at the iphone the iphone was announced 15 years ago and if you think about the progression of the iphone in the early days like or if you think about the progression of the iPhone in the early days, or if you think about how much the Apple Watch has changed and improved and still got a long way to go since it was introduced, that was seven years ago. At some point, you've got to get on the road to the product that you want to build. And I remember when they came out with the edge-to-edge

display option on the Apple Watch, and I was like, oh, that's what they wanted all along. And I remember when they came out with the iPhone 10 10 and it didn't have the home button anymore and i was like i'm sure this is the phone that johnny i've wanted from day one but he knew that it would take forever for them to get there and they finally got there 13 years later or whatever 10 11 years later so um you know i would say caution number one is don't judge Apple strategy based on product number one, because they're going to have to iterate a lot. And I think even Apple knows that VR is just because the AR stuff, something that, that passes through reality at a high enough level, or that overlays on top of reality and is

comfortable to wear on your face and that you can wear it there for a long period of time. Well, we're not, nobody is close to that right now. So instead, they'll take step one, which is you can play games and do interaction with people who aren't nearby. And then when it's done, you take it off because your face hurts and you've got to charge it. So you'll take it off and it's fine.

I don't imagine a world in the even conceivable near future where there is one device that could comfortably do both AR and VR, right? In the optimum ways you want to do them. Yeah. I mean, I guess the question from an engineering standpoint is, you know, do you build something where you can like flip down flip down the the specs or whatever and it blocks out reality and then it's purely i mean yes in theory you could do that but then what's the weight of that are you gonna wear that 24 7 you know what i mean that's what i mean like yes you could have something that does both but not in the ways in which you'll do both like that one's never gonna be as good as a dedicated vr headset right and it's never gonna be as comfortable as an ar

but like and i'm fine with that like i have a phone and a TV. It's like that, right? So I'm intrigued to see where it ends up going. I appreciate what Mark is saying here, but as of right now, this doesn't feel like their outward strategy or even their inward strategy. This is just what they're saying at the moment while they've got what they've got in my opinion well and they know they know what they can't do right like they so i think apple is comfortable knowing what their product is that they're going to have in not overselling it um i think there's some expectation leveling going on here which is like

it's it's one thing for mark or mark Ehrman. See, Oh no, I did it. I promoted Mark Ehrman, Mark Zuckerberg, or did I demote him? It's one, it's one thing for somebody named Mark to go out there and say, Oh, metaverse, everything, everybody lives in the metaverse. And I think that that oversells it and leads to mockery and dissatisfaction and discomfort and for apple to come out and say hey we got a thing but we're going to be real here right you're not going to want to use this all day and it's not for that and also conveniently it can't do that right like that's very apple and it puts them kind of in opposition to some of the hype about the metaverse and i think that's i think that's a good move but of course

it's also based on what they've got and where they're going we'll find out yeah yeah by the way uh we've gotten a bunch of great suggestions for what we could call if we do a recurring segment about the headset uh ryan suggested heads up uh james thompson suggested facetime uh there's some others in there face up eyes up i don't know anyway we know i want it to start with up realistically right yeah that's hard up face is not so good up face up goggles up up up verse it's not working for me so we'll have to think about that one this episode of upgrade is brought to you by our very good friends at memberful the easiest way to sell memberships to your audience used by the biggest creators on the web. You can generate sustainable recurring income while

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Our thanks to Memberful for their support of this show and RelayFM. So Jason, you wrote an article in six colors that uh oh no what have i done very interesting uh uh yeah it turns out sometimes i write about silly things that i make like buttons and nobody says anything and i get the distinct impression that the whole internet is basically going that's nice uh this one though actually got response so that was that was fun because i literally i was not sure whether i even wanted to write it up but being a professional blogger basically in the year 2022 uh you have

that moment where you think if i did work on something vaguely related to what i write about i should write a story about it so i did because uh and this is something we we are going to get into a little bit later i think um about me looking at stuff and we talked about it a little bit um in past times about like you know thinking about what your what your work is and other ways to streamline your work. And I decided to have somebody else edit a couple of my podcasts, even though I can edit them. And this led me down a path where I realized that the problem with giving up control over something like that is that I'm the one who's having the conversations. I'm the one who knows where the problems are. I'm the one who knows

that at 15 minutes in the, you know, the garage door opened and at 24 minutes in somebody said a bad word that they shouldn't have said and all of that kind of stuff. And then there's somebody rambles at 29 minutes and I want to clip that out. And I have that all in my head as, as very me. And I'm sure this appalls you to even hear it, but like I've tried tried I have pens on my desk I have field notes on my desk I have places to write this stuff down but I found that it never sticks to have a pen out and to have me writing down time code it's just never been a thing so I end up in internalizing this whole thing and saying well I was there and I remember when all the problems are

so only I can edit the podcast and that's a problem when you want to not edit that podcast and have a very nice person that you pay do it for you. So two things, just to respond to what you were saying there. One, you keeping it in your mind is not great, but like I'm fine with that.

You're not writing them down like because I write mine down. I actually gave you a photo of an old episode of Upgrade from the notes that you put into the article. It's a messy one, but it was the best I could do at home because all of my recent ones are at the studio.

The studio, yeah. But it doesn't bother me that you don't write them down. What bothers me is what you wrote in your article, which is that you would create a folder on the desktop and name that with the issue. That's the real problem. So you say, when someone swore, I'd switch to

finder make a new folder and give that folder a name like poop 23 minutes they didn't say poop but of course they didn't they didn't actually say yeah uh yeah this is i i look i made it a running thing in the article right because i know how bananas that is and how that's something so so it's a couple of things first off i, I'm just not, I'm just not pen and paper oriented. I don't usually have them out. Something, I'm not thinking about it. Then something happens and I'm in the moment where I'm like, oh no, I need to note this. And there have been episodes where I've had the pen and paper out and I've been sketching, like I need to talk about this next. I mostly, I'm very keyboard oriented, right? So mostly I'll do that in like an Apple note or something,

but there have been cases where I've done that on paper and then I will jot down the time code and say, oh, at this point, swear, right? And put it in there. But when you've got nothing and you're just sitting in Zoom and somebody says something bad and your files are out on the desktop recording,

one way to solve the problem in desperation, which then became a habit, is you literally just click out on the desktop recording, one way to solve the problem in desperation, which then became a habit, is you literally just click out into the finder and do command shift end and type a note. And it makes a folder with that name. And then the folder goes inside the project folder. So when it comes time to edit it, I've got, oh, look, there's a thing in here that says 23 minutes over talk and another thing that says 28 poop. And you're like, okay, I guess I got to take that out. And it's worse than that, too, because what are those time codes? The thing is, when you press record, what you want is to record.

It's the time in your recording file where that happened. But it can be by the time you write it down, it's past that time. So it's inaccurate. There are other issues like sometimes we use Audio Hijack. Sometimes the session goes on, but the recording hasn't started yet. So the big light-up number that Audio Hijack puts out that says, here is the recording time, is not the recording time of the file, which is a smaller number.

And so all your numbers are off. So it's inefficient in a lot of ways. And using the Finder is bad. And I should feel bad. And I do feel bad about it. But the point remains that- There's so many places to put notes on the map. There's so many.

I know. I could literally open the Notes app. Yep. I've got taught. I've got, like, there are so many. BB-Ed has notes now i could send myself a text and messages and that would be less ridiculous than what i mail app and create and like a new email and just write them all down and send it to yourself at the end there's like so

many places uh but you're gonna create a bunch of folders on the desktop it's uh you know john syracusan knows what i'm talking about i don't know it's a very fine oriented person i yeah i mean leaving messages for yourself on the desktop is something that i used to do wow and for that i still do it i mean there's also stickies yeah oh i know there's no end to the number of alternatives to making a note in a name of a folder, a new untitled folder on the desktop. And yet. So anyway, I decided I had to solve this. And really, this is, I like how open you are about the fact that you don't have to, you can keep it in your mind or you could write it down on paper, but just don't put it in the finder. Everybody's different, right? Paper, you are about the fact that you don't have to, you can keep it in your mind or you could write it down on paper, but just don't put it in the finder.

Everybody's different, right? Like paper, you are a very paper and pen kind of person. It's a comfortable, familiar way for you to get things out. And so I wouldn't say, Mike, you need to throw away your pen and paper, shut down the Pen Addict podcast and join me over. Because everybody's brains work different. That's the truth of it, right? And so you have to find something that works for you. And so while I have pens, very nice pens from friends of ours, on my desk, and I have field notes guides on my desk that are full of places for me to write things, what I know about myself is that I do not use them reliably.

And while I could try to force myself to use them reliably, I am skeptical that I'm going to do a good enough job. And part of that is I have terrible handwriting. My relationship with pens and pencils is not very good. And so I'm going to end up in a situation where I'm, keep in mind, this is happening during a podcast conversation, which means I have to listen to what people say and I have to, and it's incomparable usually, right? So it's a large panel.

I have to juggle like who's saying what and who hasn't spoken in a while and all that stuff. And for me, the mental overhead of having a pen, clicking the pen or not, having the piece of paper, looking at the recording time and figuring out what to write and literally putting words down by writing with a pen is a lot of overhead for me because it's not how my brain works. I'm really bad at it. That's why my handwriting is terrible. You should see my notes because those are not for public consumption and they are indecipherable. I barely can do it myself and sometimes I can't do it.

So I need to find a way. So typing is better. Again, why not the Notes app? Good question. Typing is a better solution for me because it is not using that kind of mental overhead. So what I decided to do

because I have a stream deck and I'm not sure if I mentioned this on this podcast before, but it's the Grand Circle of Life, which is Stephen Hackett. I bought a Stream Deck Mini to try it out because I was skeptical and I liked it. And then Stephen Hackett, who had a Stream Deck, bought a Stream Deck XL. And I said, Stephen, can I buy your Stream Deck from you? And he said, yes. And then I sold my Stream Deck Mini. I think I mentioned this last week to a friend. So it's the circle of life. They keep moving. And so I have extra buttons. And I thought, oh, you know what? This is actually a good use of Stream Deck is could I make a little thing? And when I press a button, it says something bad happened here. Could I use the Stream Deck? And you could use a keyboard shortcut, but I thought the Stream Deck would be better because it's like right in my face. These buttons are right there. And so there's a little less, again, mental overhead in remembering what your keyboard shortcut is.

Could I use it to build a script, basically, that would generate a notes file for a podcast with all the time codes of when there were things that I need to note. Because now I'm going to be sending this off to my friend Stephen, not Stephen Hackett, Stephen Schepansky, and I'm going to have Stephen do it. And so I need to send Stephen notes of what to edit. And how am I going to do that? I can't just listen back later. That defeats the whole purpose of it. I need to know it when it happens and say, look for the swear at 35 minutes, right? So I did. And that's what the article is.

I wrote an Apple script. I wasn't going to use Apple script. I'm trying not to use Apple script so much anymore. But what I needed to do, what I realized I needed to do to get back to what is a real time code, that was the problem, right? It's like, I can't just use the clock because the clock knows what time it is when I recorded it, but it doesn't know the recording time. And I don't really want to do the math and say, well, I started recording at 7.05 and this says that this note is at 7.22. So subtract five from 22. I didn't want to do that.

And so I used Apple script because Apple script, I was able to look at the place where audio hijack records my files and find, basically find the recording of the podcast that's going on right now and get the creation date and time and then use that as the offset. At which point it knows exactly, it doesn't need to talk to audio hijack, which is not scriptable, which is a point it knows exactly. It doesn't need to talk to Audio Hijack, which is not scriptable, which is a story for another day. It doesn't need to talk to Audio Hijack at all.

All it has to do is look in the Finder and say, hey, when did your podcast recording start? That's the zero time for the recording. And then everything else is details because once that script exists, I had the script accept input. So if there's no input, it just adds a line to a text file that says this timecode. And if you give it input, it will append that after the timecode. And then I wrote a couple of, I put a couple of buttons in keyboard maestro macros attached to the stream

deck. One of which gives me a box to type in what the problem was and the other one brings up a little um a little floating dialogue that's basically tell me where the podcast tell me where your panelist um ruined it so how did they ruin this thing what went wrong and it's a it's a list so you can actually just use the arrow keys to pick one and hit return and it appends that so you don't have to type anything. And that's what I built. So when you press the button, so like, is there a button on the stream deck? Or is there multiple buttons?

And there's two, right? Right now there are two. Originally, when I made this, there were two. And one of them was just put the code in and not ask me anything. And the other one was a box that you would type in what happened. And I've been toying with the idea, which I initially thought was funny. And then I thought might actually be useful, which is I could just detail all the ways that panelists ruin things. Right. I could be like technical difficulties, swear, over-talking, needed to restate something. And I could load

up like a little list of all those things. So I won't have to type it. I just have to pick it. And right now, and I'll say, I've only done this for like one or two podcasts so far since I built this thing. Right now I have two buttons. The one that is the free form type what happened. And the other one is the picker of, pick from this list what bad thing happened

with the default being nothing. So if I press that button and then just hit return, it just logs it as a blank. I'm open to a couple of things. I'm open to having a button that just logs the time code and doesn't ask me anything. And I'm open to hard coding in a button or two for the most common occurrences.

I had an interesting back and forth on twitter with a ux designer who said i'm curious why you had uh you have a a choice come up on your interface instead of just building you know six or eight or however many you need stream deck buttons it was a really good question because he said, he said, my thought is that this would be less overhead than having to look at your computer. And my, my thought was one,

I don't know. We'll see how it goes. But two, for me having a little floating thing pop up and having me hit return or arrow, arrow, arrow return. For me, that's not a lot of mental overhead.

That is very low level mental overhead. And I think having eight different buttons that I have to know what they mean on the stream deck is way more mental overhead for me. Even if I change the icons or if I have to put text on them, then I'm reading the text button or I have to remember geographically. And I think you could do that with two or three or four,

but I think there comes a time when now all my mental overhead that's breaking my concentration is which button do I push now? And I don't like that when I can, I find it very easy to just use the arrow keys to pick a thing and hit return. Like that's something, I'm so keyboard oriented that that is,

I know where those keys are. I orient to the arrow keys and the return key. I could do that in my sleep, right? So for me, I want to minimize the number of buttons on the stream deck because adding a hitting return or moving the arrows around doesn't seem that important. If I find it's more distracting than I expect, then I might add some more presets in. adding a hitting return or moving the arrows around doesn't seem that important if i find it's more distracting than i expect then i might add some more presets in and so i would make an

argument that really you don't need anything other than the time yeah well the challenge there is how many of those notes am i making because if if I, I may not remember where the swear is. I mean, I could literally, you're right. I could send the times to Steven and say, here are the times. Check, watch it, watch for things here. But I wanted to give myself a little more latitude to say, this is a thing to check. This is a swear. It's really nice.

The one test that I did, there was a weird over talk and i just pressed the button and it was so great because i uh i went directly to exactly where the over talk was and snipped it out it saved a huge amount of time for a podcast i was actually editing myself yeah or what i would do is like so what i have you see i have like a shorthand i've developed a shorthand for myself and i like it my main thing is the letter x and what that means is crosstalk crosstalk the x means and so i would say like for you if i was building something like this for me or if i was you'd have an x button well just like hitting the button just means there was crosstalk crosstalk unless i say something else occurred yeah and that

and that may be that may be very much where i where i end up i mean my the other thing about this it's funny that you mentioned crosstalk because one of the the i've altered my or designed my my podcast method to focus on crosstalk so i don't need to take notes about crosstalk because i do the whole strip silence thing where i'm i'm actually making crosstalk visible um which is like that's a long way to go right but i completely changed my process in order to visualize crosstalk whereas what you do is you just write it down yeah i don't like that sounds i know i know that's fine most people do you're you're in the minority there, but it's okay.

I like things the old-fashioned way. Everybody's brains work different. I think this is part, when you're thinking about user experience, and what I appreciate about that UX designer engaging with me on Twitter is they didn't say, you're wrong. They said, I am trying to understand why you wouldn't do it this other way. And I explained it, and his response was, thank you, that's very interesting, right? Because this is the challenge if you're a designer especially,

it's everybody is different. And so you've got to think about all these different kinds of use cases. But I think the bottom line is, and I've heard from other podcasters like, oh, I need to adapt this for what I do, is in the end, what really matters here is I built a little thing that is able to intuit

from the file itself when my recording started and then press a button to mark the time when something happened. And the rest of it is detail. And I'll work out what the least friction is for all of those things. But that is huge because this enables me to go with my files to Steven and say, here's the edit and give him notes about the things that are bad so that he knows that I want those taken out and that I have more confidence that in giving away my baby to someone else to edit, that they're going to do a good job because he's going to be fully aware of all the problems with it. And I've given him, essentially I'm giving him instructions too. I'm saying you need to trim this bit and it's at this time. So we'll see how it goes. But I think

it's a great example of me using my user automation focus to actually build something that will make my life better, which is sometimes it's very small amounts, but this is a big one for me. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at DoorDash. So look, with DoorDash, if everyone wants something different for dinner tonight, you can help them out. Maybe somebody wants Chinese, someone wants pizza, somebody wants fario for dessert. There's something for everyone on DoorDash. DoorDash connects you with the restaurants that you love right now, and they bring that food right to your door.

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if you're in Australia. That's 25% off, up to $10 of value and zero delivery fees on your first order when you download the DoorDash app in the App Store and enter the code UPGRADE2021 if you're in the US and UPGRADEAUS if you're in Australia. One last time, UPGRADE2021 if you're in the US and upgradeAUS if you're in Australia. One last time, upgrade2021 for the US, upgradeAUS for Australia for 25% off your first order with DoorDash. Subject to change, terms apply. Our thanks to DoorDash for their support of this show and RelayFM. So Jason, we got a little touchy-feely on last week's show. We did, a little bit. We got a little touchy-feely on last week's show.

We did, a little bit. We were talking about our lives and stuff. And then you have since gone away and had a little retreat, right? I did. I retreated. I left my home and went to another place. It's actually a friend who has a VRBO, Vacation Rental. And I figured we've been there a couple of times, and I asked them if they had anybody for the week following New Year's.

And the answer is no, because of course not. And they let us stay there for a few days. And it was good. I used to do off-site things all the time. There were big corporate retreats for IDG, where corporate meetings, you go somewhere, and there are sessions, and you sit in a room, and there's flip charts and easels, and write things in pen and you can break out sessions

and all those things. And some of those are good and some of those are not good. All the way down to actually the ones that I always thought were the most useful, which is when I took my senior managers from Macworld and we would go, I mean, we would often go to somebody's house, basically to somebody's's living room and spend the day kind of talking about big picture things. Because the idea is to get out of your rut and to try to think larger picture about what you want to do and what you want to accomplish. And it's so hard to do that when you're in the space where you're doing the daily grind of stuff, because there's always another little minor challenge to deal with. There's always another little thing that you could push forward and you need to give yourself some space, I think, to, I always called it like

take a walk in the woods, whether that's real or just in your mind, but the idea of like kind of getting out of your head, out of your day toto-day, and thinking about what you want to do, whether it's with your colleagues or by yourself. So I decided to set this up. This was in sort of December. I was thinking about how I wanted to do this. And we looked at people coming for the holidays and all this stuff and ended up with last week. So I went for a couple of days. What's funny is that I got there and I got a text message from David Sparks about something. And I said I was on my personal retreat. And he immediately sent me a PDF that he had generated that was why you should do a personal retreat and how you should do it. Which, I mean, that's very David Sparks, right?

He's like eight moves ahead of you. Always. And he's already turned it into a PDF that is available on his website. And it is. And we can link to it. And he did a blog post about it and a video about it. The video is good and has wonderful illustrations. Those illustrations created by my wife, Idina.

Ah, see. She's in the Max Sparky empire now. Oh, nice. Nice. Are those her drawings on the PDF too? Probably. I haven't seen the pdf but i'm assuming so there's a little character that that's a little sparky character yeah yeah

so that was great and actually even though david told me about that after i had already made these decisions and all that i actually used a little bit of david's frameworks i adapted them for sort of like uh some stuff i wanted to, but I really wanted to do it. So I wanted to do it right. I bought, we got an easel, we borrowed an easel. I bought one of those big flip chart easel poster things. I bought some markers. I wrote up a bunch of stuff on pieces of paper

and posted them on the walls, very much like an offsite would be. But it was a good especially for somebody like me who's not super into like i said pen and paper and all of that it was a good exercise to put things down slowly with a with a giant marker on a giant piece of paper but like i felt like that was a good exercise to do that to think about it in a different way. And I also, in order to make it feel real, I also got some guests in. So I got RelayFM's Mike Hurley as our keynote speaker.

I was opening keynotes, great. That's right. The breakfast was not provided. Tuesday morning, well, it wasn't breakfast for you. Breakfast was provided for me. I had breakfast. And then I had i had dan moran come in on the next day and we talked about stuff trying to get a little bit of that

same sort of thing of let's talk big picture and let's step outside of our and we don't you know not not traveling to see each other right now so i just got him on zoom and we we spent like 90 minutes talking about stuff uh that was hopefully a little bit bigger picture. And, um, and yeah, it was, it was really good. And I recommend it for people who are working independently. And if you're, or even if you're in a, if you're a manager, if you've got responsibility, it, whether it's by yourself or with maybe some of your senior people to get out of the context of your day-to-day and do something different um is huge i mean david spark suggests essentially like one night away i did i did more than that but um it and if you can't do a like a night away i would say even a day away even whether that that is going to, going for a hike,

going on a hike or something, something to get that walk in the woods I was talking about, to get out of the rut a little bit. I used to do those at home when I had a job in an office, but my job is at home now. And so I can't escape it here because this is where it is. Also, you would do this kind of stuff while you is at home now and so I can't I can't escape it here because this is where it is I need to go somewhere else do this kind of stuff while you're at home there would be times when I would take a day I would take a work from home day and this is what I did is I tried

to get out of the day to day of the office and do and think bigger thoughts than that and then sometimes we would go over to you know somebody's house and it would be two or three of us and we would do that there but I really do's house and it would be two or three of us and we would do that there. But I really do recommend it. And it was super helpful. And you kind of grind through like what delights me and what do I dread and what should I keep doing and what should I stop doing and what should I put on hold and what should I start doing that I'm not doing and sort of like following a framework and then walking through. And as somebody, and you and I are both like this, somebody who has many roles, and you can have roles in a big company or you can have roles as an individual.

I wrote down eight roles that I do for my job. Wow. I have kind of eight different jobs. It is. David's. I told that to David and he said, maybe fewer roles. And I said, well, that's what this is all about. Right.

Part of the reason to do this is to identify roles that you don't want to do or that you need to redefine in some way. And it was it was very helpful. I filled, you know, I filled those pieces of paper with colorful marker notes. And then I wrote a summary of that on a computer. And I followed David's advice, which is schedule time for yourself a week out and a month out to follow up. Because when you get back to work, you're going to have all the things that you didn't do while you were offsite that you're not going to be able to address it right away. So instead schedule time so that you can address this stuff going forward. And, you know, it was, there's something about being in another place and not thinking about the day-to-day that,

that does not only get you to see the big picture, but almost give yourself permission to be honest about the stuff that you hate and the stuff that you don't want to do and the stuff that's not working. And once you get on a roll, I found that really liberating where I made some decisions in the process of writing down stuff. I made some decisions of like, I need to not do this anymore, where I'd been kind of like, yeah, I'll just keep doing it. And then once you start down that path and you're thinking about it in that level of detail, you realize, oh no, like, let's just be honest here. This is a thing that you don't want to do. And that was really valuable for me too. So I've been thinking about something that

just too, cause I kind of stumbled into it this past year where I was working on like, for me, like thinking about my theme is a, is a big part of this, but I do think I would want to expand it out a bit more in the future to bring in some of the stuff that David outlined. But to do this at the end of a vacation, I think, would be really good for me. Because I was thinking, so this past year... Even more distance, right? Yeah, I mean, i finalized my yearly theme while i was in hawaii and it was purposeful that i felt like i needed to have a bit of reset to

finalize it i was struggling to come up with the end part of it especially when part of it you know for me was about trying to find ways to take a step back in some areas. I needed to be able to take that step back to really think about why that would be valuable to me. And I really enjoyed the process of taking a couple of days to really think it through after being relaxed and getting out of the mode of feeling like I'm engaged. So it's made me think that I think for me, combining this with a big vacation at the end of the year to give me that distance might be a pretty good way of doing it. Because I know, I feel like for me, if I was to just be like, I'm going to take two days, it's not, I'm still going to be too engaged with the

day-to-day, or I'm going to let some of that sneak in. I just know how I'm still going to be too engaged with the day-to-day or I'm going to let some of that sneak in. I just know how I am. But to be able to do it after a few days of like actually trying to really relax, I think really added to the clarity for me of really thinking things through. So I think this is probably something I'm going to do towards the end of the year, every year to take a week or two off and then combine this as part of that. I think it might be pretty nice. Well, and the theme of everybody is different and works in different ways. I found it kind of effective.

I wasn't engaged day to day in the details when I was there. Occasionally, I would dip in and see something was going on, but like I didn't, I gave myself permission to basically like not do stuff. And I can see how I could tell you, well, Mike, you just need to do that and let it go. Or I could say, well, Mike knows that normally that's just not going to work for him. So he needs to find another way to handle it. And I think that that's fine, but I do, I'm a real believer. And this is, again, for literally for everybody. Like I am a believer in getting out of your day-to-day work mindset so that you can think about bigger issues because there are bigger issues. You are probably responsible,

whether it's your job or whether it's sort of de facto responsible. You're probably responsible for stuff. And you're not thinking of, should I do this better? Is there a better way for us to do this? Should I do something different? You're not thinking about that. You're thinking, I'm going to work on this thing that's my job, and I'm going to do the job. And there's real value in taking a step or several steps back and thinking about the bigger issues of it. And it's just so easy to lose that. And so, yeah, I found it really valuable. And I haven't done anything like this, I think, since I've been on my own.

about this is the whole idea. And I think I talked about some of this last week, but the whole idea that we were so much in the mentality of starting an independent business, and we've now reached the point where we're not in that mentality anymore. And you need to think about how do I maintain my business? And are there burdens that I've taken on because it was one of the things that you had to do to make the business start that don't make sense anymore. In the context, I know that there's a lot, I was talking to Kathy Campbell, our friend about this. There are a lot of people who start up new businesses, independent businesses, and then they get to the point where they realize they need help. They need to hire an employee or they need to farm out some work to some different people as freelance or whatever. And it is a huge step because you build it with

your own two hands. And then there comes a point where you realize that even though you built it with your own two hands and you can continue to do those tasks, they're not necessary, right? Which is why you gave me my official Mike and Gray theme for the year, which is the year of essentials, which is I need to start focusing on what things are essential to my work as opposed to things I can do. Because when you get started, you're like, well, that's a task that needs to be done and I can do it. So I'm going to do it. And then after a few years, you realize, hopefully you eventually realize, I don't need to do this just because I can do it. This is not the best use of my time. There's something else I could be doing. And that is a big leap, especially when you're sort of following the playbook that you put down when you started, and for me in 2014, but it's 2022 now.

So that playbook is out of date. And the only way you're going to rewrite the playbook and rewrite the rules is by getting out of your own day-to-day grind, out of your own head and thinking about the bigger picture. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Electric. When leading your small business, it's not all glamour. In fact, sometimes it's a matter of spending hours trying to find a laptop lost in the mail for a new hire or dealing with some other technical emergency.

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That's electric.ai slash upgradefm to get your free pair of Beats Solo 3 headphones today for scheduling a meeting. Our thanks to Electric for their support of this show and RelayFM. That's my hashtag. Ask Upgrade questions. First comes from...

Oh, because we didn't do any last week. Or the week before. Sure. This one comes from Kieran then. Kieran asks, we've got some display questions. The display is on top of everyone's mind right now, Jason. Everyone's like,

display, display, display. Tell me all about it. I need to know. Kieran asks, assuming that the display quality of an Apple external display is the same as the upcoming iMac, would you pick the iMac over an external display in something, say, like a Mac Mini? It seems like having a more modular

setup would be beneficial, especially in what is still the early days of Apple Silicon. Good question! Good question! I have thought about this. I am intrigued by the idea that I could get an external display and then swap in new things, right? Like it's been a while since I had something like that.

And the problem with the iMac is you've got a beautiful display and then it's at the end of its life, as this one that is in front of me probably is. And what do I do with it? I can't tuck it away somewhere because it's a giant 27-inch iMac. I can't put it to use in another form. It can't be really a server because it's going to be taking up a huge amount of space. And so I'm going to have to sell it off. And of course, even if the screen is great, if the computer is outdated, then it's sort of wasteful. Um, so maybe, maybe my challenge with it, it would be what's the price of the external display versus the price of the iMac that I would buy. What's the price of the external Mac, Mac mini or a Mac pro or whatever it would be. And does that make sense

for me? But I'm open to the idea because if I could get a really great screen that I liked and that I could just swap out the computer after a few years or plug in a laptop or whatever, I like that idea. My guess is that it won't be practical and that the most expedient solution will be to get a new iMac. Also, if they come out with a new iMac and then the screen isn't there yet and it comes out later, am I going to be able to resist a new Apple Silicon iMac with the hope that the mythical display comes later, that's going to be really tough too. So I think this is a great question. I think everybody who is a sort of high-end iMac user should be pondering it. But my guess is that a large iMac is in my future again, but I'm tempted.

I think in the right circumstances, my answer would be yes, that if I could get an external computer of whatever kind that would meet my needs and have a nice 27-inch, let's say, 5K Apple display on my desk that was of iMac quality so that I only have to swap out the computer after that. Yeah, I would be interested in that, but I feel like there's a really narrow window where that would actually happen. I struggle with this a lot too, like on multiple fronts, especially because none of this stuff exists. So it's funny to even be struggling about it, but obviously this is what I think about because why wouldn't I be thinking about this this is what i think about right the idea of an iMac pro sounds really cool right i love my iMac pro

i love my current iMac if i could get an even better one of these awesome the idea of like an Apple Silicon Mac Pro is also really exciting to me. Right. Like, what does it mean? What does it do? How much does it cost? Right. So that's the one part. But the part that I would maybe go in again and say to Kieran is, what about an external display and a MacBook Pro?

Sure. Rather than a Mac Mini. Because that's what I'm very confident that I'm going to do. Because that's what I'm currently doing. And the experience for me, like, you know, I have two setups in my studio I have the

lovingly named podcastle right here where I'm recording in which has got these big sound blankets and so it keeps the sound monitored then I have a larger desk and half of that desk is where I sit at when I'm working in the studio and not recording or editing so I'm there most of the day

and I have an LG display with my laptop plugged into it. And I use a CalDigit dock. And the experience is about 75% good because every day I plug my Thunderbolt cable in, then I have to unplug the monitor and plug the monitor back in. I have to do this every single day. It's the only way the monitor will work.

I've tried everything else. It's annoying, but I now know how I do it. It's fine. The monitor that I have, the LG one, I don't make it anymore. It's called the LG Ergo. So it has a really good adjustable stand and it pivots very easily. So I can just pull the screen out to the side, plug, unplug, done. But what I am very confident about is if I had an Apple display, I would just plug that in and it would work immediately. Like I feel very confident about this as a possibility. So that I know is going to be my future, MacBook Pro with a display. And what I like about that is I had this theory about this for me

when I was originally designing the studio. I was like, that would be my recording computer. But I've actually come to that being my main machine. Works really nicely for me because then if I take that Mac somewhere else, maybe I'm working at home on something or I'm traveling, I have what I consider to be my computer everywhere. And I love that. That is how I lived for a long time where i had um a macbook air actually

for a long time and a big external display uh at my office and i would put the air in my backpack and come home and so when i was home it was still my computer it was a little tiny air and not the big screen but it was the same computer everywhere. All the files were the same. All the settings were the same. All the apps were at the same version, right? It was, and there was something, you talk about reducing mental overhead. There's something about that in terms of not having to maintain two computers and, you know, syncing services make this all better. But the fact is I'm reminded every time that I get my MacBook Air out or I travel with my MacBook Air, that it's not my computer, that it's my vacation home, right? It's my other computer. And it's not, I launched something, I'm like, why is this not working? And it's, oh, this is the wrong version, or that file is here, or I left that, that file wasn't on a a syncing service and so now I have to retrieve it from the other computer or go without like there's a lot of overhead that that happens there that

said it's not for everybody and I'm not sure I would go back to that life um because it really depends like those MacBook Pros are very impressive and so maybe they would be tempting. Um, it, you know, you're paying a lot more money for that flexibility. I think at that point, but it, for a lot of people, I, I think the,

um, the laptop docked to a display life is a good one. And the way that Apple Silicon is shaping up, it seems to be, I, I'm more optimistic that it's not going to be super weird to use. Because it was super weird when I would use mine lid closed. Things would be weird. Sometimes it would stay awake, even though it was lid closed and disconnected in my backpack.

Lots of weird things with an external display, but Apple Silicon Macs are much better at handling external displays. So I'm more optimistic about that that and i will say like i do actually quite enjoy having two machines because this recording machine i can leave behind in updates right which i like to do i like so for example there was a new version of Logic that came out with the most recent version of macOS. I only upgraded to that like two days ago. Right. You've got a production machine that you can keep behind

and there is a lot of value in that. So Ian had another question about these displays. You mentioned that the new rumored external displays could also be used for the iPad. If this is the case, do you think there would be touchscreen? I don't. I think Apple doesn't want to go down that route. And it would be weird to say they're touch, but only for some. And I don't think they're going to be adding touch to the Mac. That's just, they've shown no interest in that, even though that might be fine. They're not interested in it. iPads have support for trackpads and keyboards and mice. So you don't need a touchscreen.

That would be, I think they would definitely not be a touchscreen. It would all be as if you were using a really, really big magic keyboard case. Yeah. I think Apple is against touchscreen for the mac at the moment and i don't think this is the right move i said this before and i stand by i would love to have a touchscreen on my laptop um for the exact same reason that the magic keyboard for ipad exists right like it's just the thing in the opposite right like when i attach the Keyboard to my iPad, my touchscreen on my iPad still works. So like Apple knows it's the thing that people might want to do. But for some, I don't, if I was going to sit on the outside looking in, I don't think that it is an opposition to this.

I just think maybe they don't want to do that work right now to macOS. I think Apple would want to change a lot of mac os to make that work they wouldn't need to i don't think but i think they would want to and i think maybe that's not priority for them right now yeah and i think that they're not going to make a display with touch that only works on ipad right that seems like it's too expensive for such a narrow use case because even if they enable that not that many people are going to do it unless the ipad changes so dramatically but i don't see that happening i'll throw out a wild card which is i do sometimes think about apple pencil support on something but even that requires like a coating on the screen because you're now rubbing the pencil on the screen and you don't

want complicated because then really for that to be comfortable, the movement of the screen has to be significantly changed. There has to be a special stand or it's got to be on an arm or something and it's a very different thing. I agree. And that's why I think the easiest way to do this is to think of it as Magic Keyboard mode. And by the way, Magic Keyboard mode, yes, it has a touchscreen, but the touchscreen is right in front of you where you can reach to touch it a an external display on a desk is not that's much more in these zombie arms category i was talking more about the laptops there but yeah well oh oh well i mean it's true too right i i think i think there are lots of ergonomic issues with the apple pencil anywhere um because you've got the keyboard in the way, whereas you take the iPad

and it's just the iPad and the Apple Pencil. But still, it's like touchscreen but not. And I do wonder if they debate Apple Pencil input. But so far, their answer has been sidecar, right? Which is, well, if you want Apple Pencil input on your Mac, what you do is you sidecar from your iPad and then use the Apple Pencil and it will actually work. So I don't know.

I think the simple answer is no. I think that any external display support that would happen for iPad is going to be predicated on the idea of an external keyboard and pointing device and using the cursor or pointer that already exists on iPadOS. In our holiday Ask Upgrade, one of the things that came up was that you don't own any red clothing because if you wore that accidentally to a cow game people would start chanting at you to tell you to take it off take off that red shirt there you go red shirt in that this is some good ask upgrade follow-up from nathan is s Santa allowed to attend Cal games in his traditional red suit?

Do people chant, take off that red shirt at him, or does he just wear a green Santa suit when he attends games? Well, there's a lot of really interesting philosophy in Nathan's question. I would say it depends on Santa's status. You'd be surprised how many people went to Berkeley. So my guess is that Santa is probably

what we would call an old blue, he's an alum in that case he's probably wearing blue and not his Santa suit at a game, however if Santa didn't go to Cal and is really just there in an official capacity making an appearance as Santa

I think he would wear a green Santa suit the color of Santa suits before Coca-Cola made them red and I think he would wear a green Santa suit, the color of Santa suits before Coca-Cola made them red. And I think he would do that because nobody wants to see Santa torn limb from limb by angry Cal fans who just see his red suit. I thank no one. Poor Santa. Santa's fine, but he just don't wear the red suit to Cal games. Santa knows. Santa knows that he only does that at Stanford. He goes, the red and white is for Stanford, not for Cal. Ryan asks, Jason, as a classic macOS user,

when you select a menu bar item, do you still hold your mouse or trackpad down before releasing it on the drop-down item, so a menu from the top, or do you click the menu bar and then click the drop-down item? Okay, as a classic macOS user makes it sound like I'm in OS 9 right now. Oh, you know, I thought you were.

I've rebooted into OS 10 now. See, I haven't used OS, classic macOS in like 20 years regularly. I think it's been a long time, but it is true. I started on classic macOS. I just want to say that, right? I used classic Mac, like these old laptops and stuff that my uncle would give me.

That's where I grew up. So it used to be that when you used a menu item, you clicked and held down the mouse to keep the menu down, and then you would move the mouse down to the item and let go. And it would select the item. And you can still do that. You can still do that. I generally don't do that because I use a trackpad.

And once you've got my thumb down clicking, it's easier just to click and then move down. But I think I do sometimes do it if I know exactly what my target is. I think I do sometimes go click, swipe, boop, right? Like very quickly I do it. But for the most part, I think habitually at this point, I am all in on the, you click and lift your finger

and now the menu is open and then you move down to what you want and then you click again but i'm sure i do both and blake asks i use launchpad all the time to launch apps am i weird you're blake how can i phrase this gently you're no weirder than the people at apple who decided that launchpad should exist. Yeah, it's like, Blake, you use something that is built into Mac OS. You are using a thing that someone put in there once and then no one ever touched again. So think about that. That's, yep. That's all we'll say on the Mac.

You use something that's in Mac OS, Blake. all we'll say on the mat you use something that's in mac os blake who are we to judge somebody who is using a stock feature of mac os that somebody at apple thinks should be used to launch apps i cannot believe that there just is no i'm using looking at it now why can't i sort this alphabetically why won't it let me do that you know because you can't do that on the ipad and the entire purpose of launchpad is to replicate the iPad home screen on macOS. Well, where's app library? Yeah, put my widgets in here. Where's the dashboard?

Can I get back to the dashboard? No. I just moved an app to the trash. That's hilarious. So I dragged an app to the trash. It then bounced back to its position and a pop-up came up so do you want to delete this app oh now you're you're wrong by the way you're wrong about there not being updates to to launchpad because they added when test flight

for mac was added they added a folder in which your test flight apps go yeah pretty big stuff where is that i don't know it's it's right next to my test flight out because i've got test flight installed do you have test flight installed on i have test flight installed and i do have it do you have a test flight app yeah and it's just out there on its own oh mine is in a little folder i've got test flight and then a little test flight folder with one app in it. Well, that dated yours. One lonely, lonely app. At least. Yeah, well. Oh, look, I made a folder with two Adobe

faceless Adobe utilities in it. That was great. All right. That's my launchpad used for this year. This year. This five years. Blake, you know what, Blake? You do you. If it works for you, great. It's not like you used an old version

and got Launchpad that they took away and you brought it back because you have to have Launchpad. You're literally using a basic function of the operating system. So how weird could you be? If you would like to send in a question of your own, maybe you want to find out how weird you are

for the way that you use your Mac. Ask us. Hashtag askupgrade or use question mark askupgrade in the RealFM members' Discord that you get access to. If you sign up for Upgrade Plus, go to getupgradeplus.com. You can sign up, $5 a month or $50 a year, and you get longer, ad-free versions of Upgrade

every single week. On Upgrade Plus this week, I'm going to ask Jason for some Stream Deck inspiration. Stream Deck inspo, as we call it in the biz. Thanks to Electric, DoorDash, and Memberful for their support of this week's episode.

Thank you for listening. If you want to find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com. And he is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. You can go to at imike, go to sixcolors.com and these at J Snell, J S N E double L. You can go to at iMike for me, I M Y K E. And if you would like to buy a theme system journal,

I think that might be of interest to you. Go to themesystem.com and you can read about that and maybe buy one for yourself. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. All right, new folder, 45 minutes, swearing.