It's time for episode 600 of the clockwise podcast from relay recorded Wednesday, April 9th, 2025 clockwise for people for tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast that's aging ever so gracefully. I am one of your hosts, Micah Sargent, and I am joined across the internet by my good pal. The man who has aged 600 years, right? That's how that works. It's Dan Morin. How you doing, Dan?
Hi, Micah. You know, episode 600, good time for a surprise announcement from me that I will be continuing to host the show for the indefinite future because what else am I going to do? I'm so happy. It was that or a Yoda impression. We're 600 years old. You each look as good. You were not. And now he's done both. Look at that. Oh, boy. While we recover from that, I will.
happily introduce the person to my left, senior culture writer at TechCrunch, host of Wow If True, and co-host on Tech News Weekly. It's Amanda Silberling. Welcome back to the show, Amanda. Hello, it is great to be back for the 600th episode spectacular. Congratulations, Dan, on this monumental announcement. Everyone is shocked.
Let's do this. Hold on. Let me just check the fireworks right here. Those will go off at the end of the episode. And to my left this week, it is a producer reporter at the Texas Standard, host of the Lions Towers and Shields podcast and author of iOS access for all. It's Shelley Brisbane. Welcome back, Shelley. Hello. I try to only be on podcast episodes where all the digits are round or round adjacent.
Good, good policy. It is a good policy. All righty, folks, you should by now surely know how this works. We have four topics, 30 minutes, and mine for you is this. My favorite docking company, CalDigit, has made or has launched its new Thunderbolt 5 dock. And it made me kind of wonder, do you use a docking device with your main PC or Mac? Or do you just kind of plug in all the ports or all the cords as is needed? Amanda, we'll start with you.
So I recently redid my whole desk setup. I got one large monitor. But I feel like my setup is not very fancy. I just have it plugged into my MacBook, which is permanently closed. Not permanently, but I just want the one screen. So it's closed. And then I have one of those little anchor dongles and then my microphone and speakers and stuff plug into the dongle. Which, it's been working for me, but I don't know. I'm like, do-
Do I need a docking system is maybe a question I have. I'm going to answer that question for you. No, you don't. I'm morally opposed to docks. I'm a weird... No, I'm sorry. I came out of the gate hot there. I'll dial it back a little bit. I think maybe I just have a holdover from those like, you know, yesteryear when a lot of times, you know, USB hubs and docks could get a little wonky.
in terms of connecting peripherals. And I like to have everything as directly connected as possible with as few wires or ancillary boxes. So I've got a Mac mini on my desk. We have a studio display, and I have my USB interface plugged in and my backup hard drive plugged in directly to the Mac Mini. honestly about it. I'm in a vibe where I just want less stuff on my desk. And I want to connect as few things as possible to my computer.
And I just, I've always been so like, I just, the idea of putting an intermediate device between, you know, my computer and the peripherals, it's just, I don't know. It skeeves me a little bit. It makes me a little worried. So it's just, maybe that's me. Maybe that's me. Shelley, what about you?
So I also changed my setup considerably last November. Up until then, I'd been using a MacBook Pro as my... main computer, and I had a dongle similar to what Amanda described, where peripherals that I use all the time hang off, and there was a slot or two in case I needed to change or add something. But in November, I decided I wanted to get a Mac Mini for my personal use. The MacBook is a work computer. So in addition, I got a KVM switch so that I can switch between the Mac Mini.
and the MacBook Pro, which is my work machine. And it's a beautiful thing, and I love it so much. I switch with just one button on the back of my monitor between the two computers. I also live in clamshell mode. But the upshot of all of this is in addition to a way to connect those two computers together, I got some extra ports that I can use for peripheral.
Now, that doesn't handle everything. It doesn't handle the Thunderbolt storage I added to the Mac Mini. But the beauty is that with the KVM that functions as sort of a dock, I can connect the peripherals that I want to use with the computers together, like my microphone and like my camera, but things that are only for one, like my storage, are connected to the computer itself. It's a beautiful thing, and I've never been happier.
See, that's probably the way that you should do it, to have a way to go on your work computer and then switch it to your personal computer. But unfortunately, I am who I am, and that is someone who is going to play Hades 2 on my work computer. So for me, I... As I mentioned, love CalDigit. I'm I understand, Dan, because I have had in the past. Someone does. I have had a doc in the past that promised to be that solution. Right. And.
it always let me down. I'd plug things in and then it wouldn't work and I'd unplug and then what I ended up doing was having to plug stuff in directly to the machine and it was annoying and it just made me go, okay, I don't want to use one of these if it's not going to do what it's supposed to do. And then Caldigit came along into my life and became that one cord solution for me. It truly is that promise of I just plug this Thunderbolt cable into the side of my Mac.
and everything else can be plugged into the CalDigit, and it all just works as it's expected. So CalDigit kind of broke me out of that dislike and distaste of using a dock. The only change that has happened, though, is that... It used to be I went into an office and so I had a doc at home and a doc at work and I used my laptop. to plug in and keep it in clamshell mode. Now that I just have my home office, I've got my Mac Studio as the place where I do my work.
So I don't really need the docking solution as much anymore. but they're still right in front of me. I'm staring at it right now, a CalDigit sitting on my desk, and it is doing a bunch of the work to give me access to all of my devices. Thank you all for your answers on that. Let us go to our next topic, which comes from Amanda.
So I'm overwhelmed. Everything is an algorithm. We are constantly being served content that is recommended to us based on our user behavior. And I am tired. Should I leave Spotify? I want to bring the same energy for that that I did for my doc question. Yes, leave. Yeah. There are moments where I don't mind. having something algorithmically or in some fashion intelligently, you know, deciding what I should consider.
assume. But it's fairly limited. Like right now, these days, it's limited to when I'm not sure what music to listen to from my library, my Apple Music library, I will just tell Apple Music to play my station. And it's like a pretty good mix of stuff that's in my library and stuff that... adjacent to where it thinks I might be interested in, but it's much more heavily weighted to like stuff from my library, which I prefer.
I don't like... you know, algorithmically generated content in general for like movies or TV shows, I end up... It's like a magnifier of the old problem. I'm going to date myself now. But when I was in high school, my friends and I would go to rent a movie. And it would be like two hours in a blockbuster trying to agree on a movie with four people.
And you would just browse around and hold up things and make fun of stuff. And don't get me wrong, it was entertaining. But if you just wanted to watch a movie, it was not helpful.
I feel like the streaming services have made that times a million, where the tyranny of choice, when there's so many things that you could have suggested to you, it's hard to pick one. And again, I get the idea of an algorithm that's like, let me just serve something up for you. And that's what you're watching. But I don't... I don't like that any better. And I certainly am not a huge fan of algorithmically generated.
content on social media where I just want to see the things I want to see. I want to see stuff from people I follow. I don't need to have you decide that this is a thing that you want to see. And I get it. Sometimes you can serve up unexpected delights there, and that's fine. But if I don't want that, I should be able to opt out of it.
Yeah, my feeling is if Spotify isn't doing for you, just leave. You're not going to hurt Spotify's feelings. It doesn't feel. It doesn't care. It just runs program. Shelley, what about you? I got to agree with Dan. I don't like the tyranny of the algorithm. Part of it is just my personality. I don't think the algorithm knows better than me. And it usually is not helpful, especially when it comes to television and movies and social media.
For some weird reason, and this may be the most direct answer to the question, I am an Apple Music user who is very happy with the way the algorithm has treated me, and that surprises me a lot. I've been doing this. Apple Music thing for maybe two and a half years. I'm somebody who has a giant music library and has pretty broad but also kind of persnickety taste.
So I'm not a picky eater when it comes to music, but at the same time, there are things that I'm like, oh, no, that's out. That's out. Oh, that's in. I love it. So I have like definite strong opinions. And I've always believed that the algorithm was never going to be my friend. I was really late to stream music. But Apple Music, I think I'm the one that Apple Music said, here, here, I can help. And they actually have. But again, movie and TV and social media algorithms have never.
treated me that way and the tyranny of an algorithm that has its own interests at heart instead of yours. is always going to just irritate me on a gut level. So yeah, try some Apple Music. It's enjoyable, but don't apply that advice to any other algorithms that might randomly come into your life. So it's odd because Spotify is the one app that sort of gets a pass for me. I use Apple Music for all of my album music listening, sort of.
the stuff that I know I want to listen to. And it's where my music library is. But I was in the car the other day and I hit the button to play my Micah Sargent station because Apple Music has a sort of radio station that is just music that it thinks you'll like.
And I'm hitting next, next, next, next. No, this is garbage. No, this is garbage. Everything that was popping up was stuff that I did not want to listen to or was stuff that I had listened to so much that I'm like, why are you still? So I said, no. I'm going to head over to Spotify and tap on one of the playlists there. And one of the algorithmic playlists there. And I feel that that's the thing that Spotify is good at. And it's why I still have a subscription to Spotify, despite.
financial advice from any and every person who says, why do you need multiple music subscriptions? So, yeah, I don't know. I for sure feel free to leave it. But for me. I'm still there. But yeah, Amanda, why don't you round us out here? Yeah, I guess I've been thinking about this because... One of my friends is like, hello, everybody. I am trying to get the whole friend group to move to Apple Music because they pay artists better and the audio quality is better. And then we're all like...
Well, yeah, that seems like a pretty easy switch, but then it's like... hard, but right now I have a three-month Apple Music trial. I'm enjoying it. I feel like I am slightly less controlled by an algorithm by changing this one app that I use. And then meanwhile, I report on like TikTok and that kind of thing. We're all stuck, and, uh... Maybe this podcast was served to you algorithmically. Down with the algorithm. I mean, unless it's for us. All righty, folks.
We have reached halftime here on Clockwise, our 600th episode, and I'm very excited for the group who is bringing you. this episode of clockwise who stepped in and said we will be here for your 600th episode dan tell us all about it I am also very excited, Micah, because this episode of Clockwise is brought to you by one of my favorite apps of all time, BBEdit. Bye. Bye.
even for those just who use it in free mode on occasion. I have been a BBEdit user for longer than I can remember, probably a couple decades at this point. And it goes back to the 80s, I want to say. I want to say 80s, early 90s. It is a long-running Mac app, and it's amazing. Anytime I need to do anything with text, I turn to bbedit. Just this morning, I had a list of things that I was trying to convert into a pretty...
format for posting in on a blog. And I had it in Markdown, but my Markdown converter, it added all this extraneous stuff. and I need to pull out a bunch of stuff. The fact that Bibietta has incredibly powerful find and replace tools, it has some of my favorite tools, including the ability to prefix and suffix lines or remove prefixes and suffix from lines. So it's like...
oh man, I've got this list with a lot of garbage on every single line at the beginning. You can just easily remove all of that. And they've added all sorts of fantastic new features over the years. Most recently, I started learning how to use the language server, which is a thing that you can hook up when you're working on programming a particular language.
You can install a piece of software called the language server, which then like checks the code that you're writing as you're writing it. And BBEdit will pop up little notifications or warnings or help you code completion for whatever you're writing. And it's amazing. BBF 15 features a cornucopia of new features, changes, and improvements to its unique capabilities, all of which are designed to improve productivity for everyone who works with text, including things like AI chat worksheet.
which extend BBEdit's unique worksheet feature to conversational AI, providing an interface right within BBE itself for interacting with things like ChatGPT. They have a mini-map palette that provides a high-level overview of the active document, including the range of text displayed in the window and the range of selected text. And updates include enhancements of BBEdit's project features, bringing an improved interface for project setup, improving behavior and efficiency for developers.
Plus there's all that good stuff carried over from all those previous versions going back again decades. It's amazing. I cannot recommend it highly enough. You can get 30 days of full function to try out the app and a fresh evaluation period for all customers with older versions who are running in free mode. And if you're an existing customer, you'll get discounted upgrade pricing. So go check it out right now.
That's barebones.com slash door barebones.com slash door. Our huge thanks to BB edit for their support of the 600th episode of clockwise and all of relay. Thank you so much. BB Edit, I love you. I love you. All right, back from the break. And that means it's time for Dan's topic. Guess I could have just tossed it to myself. Anyways, as I was just extolling the virtues of software that's fun to nerd out about.
I'm going to mention I'm also a fan of Numbers, Apple's spreadsheet program, and I got a big update this past week with a lot of new functions. I want to know, is there a piece of software? that you nerd out about, something like you're super excited when an update comes along, even though you know most people don't care. Shelly, I know you like good software programs. What do you got?
I have been writing a book about iOS accessibility for 10 years, meaning every year I come out with a new version. And instead of using the many graphical ways one could put together an EPUB... I started putting mine together as individual XHTML files in BBEdit. And every year I think about... Should I switch? Should I find something easier? Should I go to InDesign, which I have on my computer and which I have literally fired up to make a template? And I always go back to BBEdit.
Because while I am not a coder, and a lot of times in BBEdit, I sort of wish I were because there's so many great coding features. But for me, as somebody who's trying to make sure that my syntax and my XHTML works and that my style sheets actually, the previews actually look the way I think they're going to look based on the code.
BBEdit has always been my friend. It's rock solid. It's stable. And recently, one of the only things I could have said negatively about BBEdit has been remedied. It is now accessible to voiceover on the Mac, which brings me great personal joy. For me, it's going to be Text Expander. I love Text Expander. I have used it for ages and ages. I notice if it's not there, if something's wrong, because I'm quite literally always using my little snippets.
will add new things all the time. I come up with creative new ways to use it. I have all sorts of like simple snippets of just expanding text, but also some that involve, you know, multiple selections and little fill ins and everything in between. One of my favorite moments. If you can imagine the word text expander, it's technically T-E-X. T-E-X, right? Because it's TextExpander. And I was wearing a TextExpander shirt while I was moving. And my grandma was helping me move.
And she looked at my shirt and she says, Micah, what's TextExpander? To this day in my head, I sometimes still just call it TextExpander. Anyway, it's amazing. That's the software I nerd out about. along with the great software that is BBEdit that taught me how to use regular expressions because it has a great built-in knowledge base for regular expressions.
Amanda, what about you? I'm going to say maybe not necessarily a software that I nerd out about, but one that I have been nerding out about this week specifically is Cockatrice. I might be saying it wrong. It is an open source. card game online playing thing. Basically, I downloaded it because I was trying to play Magic the Gathering with a friend online. I am very new to Magic, and there's a lot of games, there's a lot of ways that people try to play online.
All of the ones that are operated by Wizards of the Coast, the company that makes Magic the Gathering, are weird pay-to-play things where I'm like, I already bought these cards. Why am I buying them again? I don't want to do that. And Cockatrice, it's all there. You can just make your deck. You can try out new decks. It's very old school retro tech in a way that I'm like, wow, I feel like I am when I had a job doing HTML, which strangely was in like 2014.
Feels like we're getting back to that, even though, even in 2014, my weird HTML job was already obsolete. Those are all great answers. The Cockatrice one especially makes me think of when I, back when I used to play D&D online, before a lot of the web-based tools there are now, I used a tool, an open source tool called MapTool that was this.
Same idea, like a client server style thing. And it was... terrible but also the only option and we got really good at using it in our group and then it ended up being uh you know supplanted by a lot of the web solutions that are out there anyways those are all fantastic i was very excited to see the numbers update this week i know a lot of people who love excel including my dear wife who knows everything about excel but i just like making great charts
I have these complicated spreadsheets that I keep track of all this data about various things from like I don't know, podcast numbers to book sales to my income and expenses since I'm a freelancer. And I found that I can make numbers do all sorts of bananas things, including I just added the ability to... click on a link for a receipt for my expenses, and it will just open the PDF file, which I was very proud of. And I couldn't really easily do until this latest update.
I love finding little nerdy pieces of software because that is the part of computing I like the most, not what it's become. but what it was. Anyways, thank you all for that. Let's go to our final topic, which comes from Shelby. Not sure if you've heard, but the Trump administration has imposed some mighty big tariffs on imported goods to the United States. It's widely expected.
that Apple will need to increase prices on the iPhone since so much of the phone's components come from other countries. And given that some estimates say that it could be 1,500, 2,000 more for an iPhone, and we are widely expecting a significantly changed iPhone this year. What is the cost threshold that would cause you to think very seriously about not buying a new iPhone or any phone this year? I mean the phones are already so expensive.
And we justify the price because of the fact that it's for many people, they're the main device that they use every single day all the time. And I just can't imagine too much more of an increase. making it as easy to say, go for the pro model, right? That you go all out and get the best phone possible. Suddenly that starts to feel a little bit more difficult. to justify. So yeah, I don't have a specific price, but...
Honestly, it's already right there on the cusp of being hard to justify. Amanda, what about you? So already, I'm not really someone that buys a new phone every year, which, you know, I'm not writing an iOS book, so I guess it's not really something I need to be doing. But I guess in terms of like other consumer electronics, like if you're thinking of like the Nintendo Switch 2 is supposed to be potentially impacted by tariff.
It's already like $450, which people are already a little bit like, that's kind of expensive for a Nintendo console. And then, so if I think to myself, like, what price would make me not buy the Nintendo Switch 2? Probably, like, $500, which isn't that much more than $450, but I just feel like... I already kind of feel like 450 is a stretch on that. Yeah, this is a tough one. I mean, Shelley, to your point.
I struggle because as somebody who writes about this stuff for a living, I don't want to spend that much money. And yet, I risk not being able to write relevantly or understand the state of the industry for what is the company that I cover the most, Apple, and their most important product, which is the iPhone.
And so the idea that I might have to jack up the price I pay significantly... I mean, there is probably an upper limit at some point, but it is more likely for me that other things would fall by the wayside so I could budget to make sure I could afford. I guess it's also possible I would opt for a cheaper model.
that is something I could do. I've been on the iPhone upgrade program for basically since its inception. And so I roughly have ended up paying pretty much the same monthly fee for years, which means I'm a very good customer for them. And I don't know. It depends how it would be impacted by that, right? It depends how the cost that I've sort of factored in by having it sort of be a monthly budget item for me would be affected if it goes up.
20%? 10, 20%? Am I going to have to reconsider that? I don't know. I think I'd be more likely to see, is there someplace I could cut somewhere else just so I would still have the ability to have a relevant discussion about it.
If were I not in this business, I think I would be also the person who does not upgrade my phone every year. I would be a person who holds on to my phone for a few years. And it's just not the case for me. So I don't know if I have a good answer to your question, unfortunately. Why don't you wrap us up? So despite my question, I am not an upgrader every year either. I tend to upgrade when something significant happens in the hardware that I'm going to need to write about.
in the book, and that is not every year. I did upgrade last year. I got a pro phone for the first time in a long time. I have a 16 Pro. Obviously, I get Apple Intelligence, which is important to write about. What's concerning to me is that if there is a significant change in the hardware for the next phone, that might...
forced me to feel like I have to upgrade. And I think the first thing I would do is back off the pro because I am not somebody who uses a phone for a lot of fancy photography. Do I enjoy the cameras, the lenses? I do. Would I be devastated if I didn't have them anymore? I would not. And I will give Apple credit for not anticipating tariffs, but for doing something that I think does help.
are more consistent in terms of features and processors than they used to be. So in other words, an iPhone 16 versus an iPhone 16 Pro, there aren't that many differences. You have the hardware buttons, you have most... but not all of the camera features. You have Apple Intelligent. So I feel pretty confident that if I had to back off a rung or two on the models and get a 16 or a 17 rather versus a 17 Pro.
that I could write my book effectively and that I would also not be unhappy with the phone I got. All righty. We are just about to the end of this episode of Clockwise, if you can believe it. But I do want to remind you that we do have clockwise swag. And now at our 600th episode is the perfect time. to join the fun. At clockwise.social, you will find links to our swag. We've got a wonderful hat and shirt, a tote bag.
a phone case, a coffee mug. Well, I should just say a mug. You can put whatever you want in it, like tea, like Dan. Thank you. But it's all great stuff. I can say that because I own everything except for the phone case, and it's all available at clockwise.social, and your purchases there help to support the work we do here on Clockwise. All right, my bonus topic.
I have for you. What is a silly skill or trick that you are capable of? The example I gave is one that people talk about sometimes tying a cherry stem in your mouth. Do you have a silly skill or trick that you can do? Amanda, we'll start with you. What comes to mind is, you know, when you're like in middle school and you like go to a summer camp and everyone's making those weird bracelets with all the string or the lanyard or whatever. Yeah. I'm really good at those. Nice, nice.
I am really good at spinning things on my hand, weirdly enough, like bottles or TV remotes or stuff like that. I don't know. It's just a thing I do unconsciously sometimes. And I'm always worried I'm going to drop stuff, but I don't. So, yeah. When I am waiting for my lunch to be ready, it's in the microwave or it's in the toaster oven.
There is an elaborate drum solo that I have taught myself to do, and I judge the quality of the lunch I'm about to have by whether I can complete this elaborate multi-note tone drum solo without any mistakes. I love that. That's fantastic. For me, I'm going to go with I can twist up some balloon animals. If you happen to. That's a good skill. If you happen to have any balloons nearby. Yeah.
So that's mine. Thank you all for your answers on that. Hey, those of you listening, if you'd like to get ad free episodes with an extra unwound episode between Dan and myself every week. you can become a member of Clockwise. You just go to relay.fm slash Clockwise to sign up. It's just $7 a month or $70 a year, and you will help support.
the show. And with that, we have reached the end of this, the 600th episode of Clockwise. All that's left is to thank our awesome guests. Amanda Soberling, thank you so much for being here. You're welcome. And Shelley Brisbane, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for continuing to have me on the show and congratulations on 600.
Oh, thank you. Well, Micah, we'll be back next week for 601 because the clock just keeps ticking. But until then, we remind everyone out there listening, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. Bye, everybody.