It's time for episode 607 of the Clockwise Podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, May 28th, 2025. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast where time is on your side. My name is Dan Moore and I'm joined across the internet by my good friend, my pal, the one, the only, Micah Sarkin. How are you doing today, Micah? It's weird because I'm not on your side because I'm on the other side. What?
We're enemies? Is that what we're saying? No, we're just on opposite sides of the US. Oh, that's true. That's true. The US is our table. We are divided by the enormous table that is the Midwest. This is, of course, the show where we invite on two fantastic guests to talk about four tech topics. To my left this week, it is senior culture writer at TechCrunch, Amanda Selberling. Welcome back, Amanda. Hello. Happy Wednesday. And to my left.
9to5Mac editor-at-large, it's Zach. Oh, hello, Zach. Hello. Is it the Midwest from California? Think about it. Whoa, whoa, whoa. So, we have four tech topics, just 30 minutes. Let me kick this off by saying the latest tech supergroup was unveiled last week when Johnny Ive and Sam Altman announced that they are teaming up to make
something. Are you excited? Are you interested? Are you totally cynical and jaded about this? Where do you fall on that spectrum of anticipation over what these two are cooking up? Amanda, we'll start with you. My general take on this is I feel like every company is trying to make something that they market as being like the next iPhone, whether that's like... the humane ai pin that flopped or like the rabbit device that
I don't know what's going on with that, but it doesn't seem like people are using it. And I feel like This is the issue of everyone is investing in these products with, well, what if it becomes the next iPhone that I want to get a big payout? But, like, I think that on the builder side, what if people tried making, like, the next Garmin wash? Like a product that is good for some people, but is not like a thing that everybody needs.
And I'm just very exhausted by like every year like three companies are like, we have billions of dollars to make the new iPhone and then they make like a device that you don't need. There was a period of time where I would get enthusiastic and excited about a new possible thing, and then lately it's seemed like so many companies are spaghetti projecting. or If it's not a spaghetti project, it's just beta testing with the people who are giving them money.
And Amazon, well known for that at this point, although they've sort of backed away from it a little bit. But frankly, now Apple does it with, I would say, with Apple Intelligence. And I just have now had a point where you've wronged me so many times that I'm just done getting excited about it. Nothing is real until it's real. And even when it's real, sometimes it's not real. And that is something I'm getting tattooed across my lower back. Zach, what are your thoughts?
Anything new is always fun, even if it's kind of terrible. I think it'll be fun to see if this is something that actually kind of steps out of the bounds of what the iPhone can do, not because of what... the hardware isn't capable of doing, but what Apple doesn't allow to do. So for example, this would be the first time, compared to what Humane did with the AI Pen or Rabbit did with the R1, it's like the AI...
platform owner itself is doing hardware. I think that's the most compelling thing about it. Because it's OpenAI, though, and because it's Johnny and I, there's some weight to it that you don't have if it's any other company. The way I kind of see the OpenAI project is, what if Apple did...
with supreme expertise with AI? What if Apple owned OpenAI or they owned the technology and they just went crazy with... doing everything they could with their own hardware, but making it chat to BT everywhere or that level of like even chat to BT advanced voice mode, like that level of AI voice assistant or voice chat bot. but put it in Apple hardware.
Apple's not close to doing that at all, it seems. So maybe it's easier to make the hardware than it is to make the AI stack. And so I kind of think that there's upside for OpenAI to take advantage of here just because Apple's not close to it yet. But as always, we'll see.
So I think, you know, Amanda, honestly, I love your point about why aren't people building more like niche devices? Why does everything have to be the next world beating device? I think that's a great point. I think people... having seen the template set by the iPhone feel like that's repeatable when in fact I think it's not. I think its outlier status is very much the point, is that not most devices, the vast majority of things, do not reinvent the entire world.
And if you say you're going to reinvent the entire world, it's like trying to go viral. You just can't do it. There's something missing. I'm not excited, super excited about this. I am intrigued to see because these are certainly two big names.
Johnny Ive is a man with a complicated legacy. He has done a lot of great design work, but he has also presided over some things that went very bad towards the end in Apple there. And I think a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief when he left Apple. So I'm not convinced that he is the secret sauce And I think that the stuff that he has done since then has been very rarefied and very niche. I'm not sure that's what you want for a broad consumer electronics device.
but we'll see. And then on the AI side, I think fundamentally my problem is I remain unconvinced that AI is the thing I want to take with me everywhere. I'm not sure that having both an AI thing and a phone to juggle all my tasks is actually going to be useful because I'm not sure the AI is going to do the things
that I need done or actually be the resource that I want available to me at all times. And if it is, then why can't I just interact with it through my phone instead of having to carry an entire separate device? I am very skeptical about this. I will be interested to see what comes out if it ever indeed materializes.
but I am not feeling like, oh, yes, this is a thing I really, really need. But thank you all for your thoughts on that. I think it's an interesting story, and I'm sure we'll be coming back to it. Let's go to our second topic, which comes from a man. So I've seen a lot of news about mobile gaming lately, including from 9to5Mac. Thank you, Zach. where there was a report that Apple is building a specific new gaming app for iOS 19, and then...
There was also a report from Digital Trends that Apple acquired a gaming studio and... My question is, so if mobile gaming is heating up, as a young child would ask a random adult, do you play games on your phone? Um... No and yes. I put no first instead of yes first because for the most part, I do not. I do play word games and a little puzzle game that is called Puffies, which is you just put...
puffy stickers back onto their little sticker page, then that's it. But I don't do gamey games on my mobile device, and I don't really do gamey games in general. It's very rare that I come across a game that I will play. that is anything more than just one of those word games. But I will say, and that's been several years, or I should say a few years, I played Divinity something Sin. Original Sin. Yeah, Original Sin 2 on the iPad, and it was actually a delightful experience.
And I was surprised by that, but I really liked that game a lot. And yeah, I was like, wow, you can bring this to the iPad and it can actually work. So no and yes is my answer. What about you, Zach?
For me, I'm not like a phone gamer, but I've increasingly turned my iPad usage into like... sort of my portable console and that i connect it to a ps5 controller and connect it to a projector and then all of a sudden you know my ipad gets super hot but i'm playing games that my kids play and sometimes Put a fan and I aim it at the iPod.
out of like device sympathy um but i mean the game that all the kids play my kids are big into both roblox and fortnite um roblox I don't connect with as much but I've managed to sort of connect with Fortnite in a way that I can play with them and this is where it kind of gets interesting for me because It's been an Xbox first experience for me until recently, of course, when Fortnite came to.
the iPhone and the iPad, and then suddenly it's like, oh, I can do this thing on the iPad with them that they're doing. and showed them how to do Fortnite on their iPads and their phones that they've got. And at one point, we were playing together over the weekend. And the Xbox was available as a screen to use connected to the projector. So it's like this giant screen on the wall.
Neither of my kids wanted to play on the Xbox when we were playing together. They just had their phones out and they were like, no, I'm fine. Because I'm like, why don't you use the bigger screen with the controller? And they're like, no, no, we're good. And to me, like playing on the phone would be painful and kind of a non-starter. And the only reason the iPad kind of works for me is because it's like basically the console experience. using a controller and a larger screen.
So, no to the phone stuff. I mean... I feel like I'm already sucked into changing my wallpaper and rearranging my app icons and checking my email and just fiddling with enough settings that that's the game on the phone for me. But I have found it interesting how...
Games can be cross-platform without The player noticing how there's like... the internet connects the different consoles or devices in a way, and that gets to just, you know, the smallest touchscreen is the preference to a controller and a giant screen if it's what's in their hand at the time, I suppose.
I've been talking about Apple and gaming for what feels like 20 years, because it has been almost 20 years. And the answer is still, no, I don't think the company really understands what to do here. I think it stumbled upon a hit when it did iOS. and that really took off, and it struggled to make it happen anywhere else, including the TV and the Mac. The Mac's gotten better. I mean, certainly, Apple Silicon, huge improvement.
The game porting toolkit stuff they've done is really impressive, but you have not seen a cavalcade of titles coming to the Mac. For better or for worse, that's just where it is. Apple Arcade similarly, I think does fine, but I don't think it's necessarily the biggest service among Apple's attempts to draw in services revenue.
I think, you know, buying the developers behind Sneaky Sasquatch, a game which has been very popular, is, you know, a little bit of security there, right? It helps them have something that's exclusive to the platform. It helps them own whatever those people decide to do next or integrate them into building some stuff in-house. All that's great. I honestly think they should have done more of that years ago in supporting studios.
It always feels like it was a little bit paltry in terms of their support for developers. Obviously, they've had a lot of contention with developers in other areas as well. As for me, I don't play a ton of games like Micah. I do some word games. I'll play New York Times games. Sometimes I play Lex's games, which you should all check out from my pal Lex Friedman.
Lately, I've been playing puzzle games, which are also my other favorite genre to play on my devices, on my tablet and phone. So I was playing the Curse of the Golden Idol, Case of the Golden Idol. There's a couple of those there. I think Netflix has now. I don't like to do... Twitch stuff. I used to play first-person shooters a lot on my Xbox. I have kind of gotten out of that, though I still enjoy first-person adventure games.
But I don't want to do that on my iPhone or my iPad. It's just not as good experience, even with a controller paired. It's just not quite as nice as playing on my PS5 or my Xbox. So for me, I don't play a ton of games. I've tried a lot over the years, but it's just not the place I want to do it.
uh amanda why don't you wrap us up here yeah i've been thinking about this a lot too because i reviewed the backbone pro controller recently which is a controller that plugs into your iPhone or your Android phone and makes it a controller. And I had never used a product like that before, and I was very impressed with it because I would have answered similarly that I'm like, I play Wordle on my phone, but then I'm like, why does Netflix have gaming and why is like Hades on Netflix?
But then with the controller, I was like, no, I get it. Like, you can play Hades on your phone. That rules. So do I think I'm going to become an iPhone first gamer anytime soon or at all? No. But I do think with like cloud gaming and stuff and like
The, like, these controllers getting good, like, there might be something there, but I don't know. Alright, that's two topics down, two topics left to go, which of course means it's halftime here at Clockwise, and this week's episode is brought to you by Gris.
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Alright, I just would love to know, when is the last time that you used a stylus for... Well for anything. You know, this could be for any digital input. If you use your Apple Pencil with an iPad, if you use, insert name of Silas here with a tablet, if you use the Wacom tablet with the pen thingy, I don't know what they call it.
Or even if you just have one of those, I can't think of what they're called, those furry magnetic etch-a-sketch thingies that you swipe over and then it erases it. I think that's what they're called. Yeah, the furry magnetic etch-a-sketch thingy. Yeah, when's the last time you used a stylus? Zach, we'll start with you. Today, I've used the Apple Pencil with my iPad, and the way that I use it is literally as just a journal in the Notes app.
long-running note that is just I write the date and I start writing out you know by hand with the pencil sort of Tool. So it looks like, you know, lead pencil. And I just like write out thoughts. And so I'm a daily Apple pencil right on the iPad screen and in the Apple notes app user. My one complaint about it is that the way that Apple notes treat.
The notes app and pencil writing is there's... text areas that you type into or put images into or whatever and then there's areas where you write into and you don't mix the two it can be in the same note but not in the same area so you can't like scribble over something that you've typed out or, you know, type onto something that you've drawn or written out. I've played with the different apps and there's a lot of, you know...
I think GoodNotes is one. Liquitex is interesting. I used Craft as well. There's a lot of different apps that you can kind of play around with, but nothing's quite like the way that, just say, the Kindle Scribe treats it, which is... Well, I guess with the Kindle Scribe, it's all written. There's no typing involved. So I haven't quite found something to work the way I want it to, but I've just sort of said, okay, I've got my notes that I type out in Apple Notes and I've got my handwritten notes.
And... The ones that are handwritten, they're viewed on the Mac or the iPad on the phone. I can reference them, but I can't write onto the phone in the same way. It's not as legible, but it really is just sort of a journal for me and a way of processing thoughts that way. I recently was at my kid's daycare and they had like these little LCD tablets that you can draw on. They're not quite the magnetic ones.
I was kind of like staring at it, trying to figure out how exactly it worked, because they're like black screens, and then you can draw on them, and then there's a button you press, and it just erases everything. And I was like, what?
And I found that you can have them, they can be had for quite cheap on Amazon is the answer. So that was probably the last stylus I really used. The only stylus I can say to have used recently beyond that is just going to sound like a humble brag, which was writing my name on the Jeopardy podium with the Wacom tablet.
Nice. Wait, when were you on Jeopardy? Like two weeks ago. Wait, okay, did it air? Yes. This was months ago. I recorded it months ago, but I was on the episode there a few weeks ago. Okay. This is huge. I do have an Apple Pencil. I use it from time to time, but honestly, most of the time it's in the cup on my desk with all the other pens because I forget to charge it.
I like it, but I don't have enough of a use case to use it regularly. I'm just too much of a keyboard and trackpad user to really get it useful to me. Amanda, what about you? Oh, yeah, well, this is what I get for being, like, very behind on Jeopardy. I normally watch every night, but I'm, like, a few weeks behind, so that, this, this makes a lot of sense, but...
In reverse chronological order, I'm going to say the last three styluses I can remember using are one, signing the thing at the cash register at CBS to get my prescription. Two, I got my cousin's four-year-old child a little game that has a stylus that you like draw on, and that was... You know when you buy a toy for a child and you're like, wait, actually, I'm having a great time with this. Every toy, I buy my child. Yes. And then Nintendo DS. Wow. Recently.
Well, not recently, but I just can't think of what styluses I've used. I feel like if I had an Apple Pencil, I would use it, but I just didn't get one because I was like... I don't really have a thing that is clearly like I will use it regularly, but my friend uses an Apple Pencil to play little coloring book games, which sounds fun. I love that, Zach, it's a regular thing for you. That's awesome.
that's sort of my aspiration and it's been my aspiration for years and it's never come true um i also my last use of a stylus was signing my name for medication Outside of that, I think the last time was probably with... Kindle Scribe that I have. for some reason, because I couldn't resist owning one, even though I knew that I wasn't going to use it regularly because I am a fool who... makes aspirational purchases at times. So yeah, I just want to see if anybody else was in that same boat.
And I think it's super cool, Zach, that you are a regular stylus user. And perhaps I will once again tell myself that I too could be that. Let's move on to our next topic, which comes from Zach. First, I do want to say I think that the OpenAI product will be called the AI Pen, but it'll be PEN, and it'll be an AI stylus, so there's that. I cannot use it twice.
My question is, what are the tech pet peeve or healthy habit, depending on how you want to take this, that you wish you could prevent or encourage as you're on a venture? Oh, my God. So many tech pet peeves.
Alright, so I think if I had to pick one tech pet peeve, I think it would be... oh man all right well let's do healthy habit a healthy habit which i can encourage is putting my phone down more um and i've tried screen time i have uh the problem i noticed is i i'm constantly doing like when i run out i would constantly do the thing where it's like just one more minute Okay, just 15 more minutes. I'm good. I'm good. I can put it down anytime I want.
I don't really know what the solution is to that. I wish I could encourage it. I think I've gotten better about making sure that I don't pull my phone out at every opportune moment, but I still feel like it's probably way too often. That is one of the challenges. I think it's one of the reasons that we constantly hear all these device designers being like, well, people are...
We want to do something to get people away from their phones. It's like, I get it. My phone is also super useful, so I don't want to get rid of it. I just want to rely on certain things less, like social media and lack. So, yeah, I think that comes down to sort of my biggest tech pet peeve. It's just like, not everything needs to be done on my phone. I can put my phone down, I think. Probably. Yeah, I can do it. Amanda, what about you?
So I was trying to like be really healthy and like turn over a new leaf and like... do a thing where I don't have my phone in my room with me and then in the morning for like half an hour before I look at my phone I go outside and I read a book. Um, I did that for like two days and I was like, this is great. I feel so like mentally good.
And then it's been raining for, like, the last, like, few weeks and I just, like, fell off because I was like, I don't want to go outside. Like, God forbid I just rained in my apartment. Like, the whole... going outside was part of it so i wish i could do that more but it's so hard because i'm like what if i wake up in the middle of the night am i just supposed to sit with my thoughts like a normal person like what do you mean i do that that's not normal trust me
When I thought about this, I thought it was sort of a pet peeve you have about other people. And so for me, it is... But it could also just be... A healthy habit. I just think what it really is, is me wanting people to behave the way that I do. So that kind of makes it a healthy habit instead of a healthy habit.
But I wish that everybody lived and died by their calendar as much as I do, because then when I create events that other people are attending or saying they're going to attend, and I send out a calendar invite so that I know that it's on their calendar, that they will accept that invite and say, yes, I indeed am going to be there. and I can count on them not scheduling things over the top of it.
because they've said that they're going to be there, and they look at their calendar and know that they're supposed to be there. Yeah, so that's my big thing. I wish that everybody used their mobile calendar. and use the alerts on their mobile calendar and all that stuff. And I also want to note that before the show, Amanda and I were talking about calendars, and I don't want Amanda to think that I am at all talking about the calendar messing up for you. because it has nothing to do with that.
Yeah, there have just been some recent instances in my life where a few events were going on and a person did not know. allegedly, that the event was going on, and that was just kind of frustrating. And I was like, well, we all just need to check out what it is. Anyway, so yeah, that's mine. Zach, take this away from me.
All right, Mike, I think you've got a fair interpretation of the question because the way I got to this was I wanted to air a complaint about things that people do, but I threw in healthy habit because I didn't want people to have to complain if I didn't want to. What it is for me is this generational pet peeve, tech pet peeve, which is recently I noticed that my son, he's seven, force quits apps.
as a habit, as a routine, as a thing he does on his iPad. And it's like a part of stopping using his iPad. And it triggers me hard, and it has for years, because it's like, well, you don't have to do that. Do that if your app is giving you a problem, but you can live your whole life on that device without ever doing that, and you'll be okay. And so I asked, why do you do it? And he's like, well, they're open. So I'm closing them. You're seven and your dad is me.
And it's hers. So that was one thing. But when I say generational, recently his great-grandfather, so his mom's dad's dad, so like generations apart. was visiting and had asked me to help him with some things on his iPad. And at the end of the process, he went through and closed all the apps out. And I was like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm closing everything. They're open.
You don't have to do that. I don't do that and everything is okay. The way I see it is if there was something that I didn't like to do or just you know, found This thing that I could improve my life by not taking this repetitive step over and over again, that would be helpful.
And so I'm seeing the great-grandfather and then my son both do this thing that I think is not necessary and can actually hurt the experience if there's something that you kind of rely on and now it's closed and can't run in the background. And for what reason? Because I guess it's just like part of the culture is that we force quit apps because they're open. And it just gets to my core because...
They don't need to do it. And I didn't teach them to do it. I can't talk them into not doing it. And so that just, it eats at me because of my profession, I think. I'll do it every time. All right. We have four topics down. We've got just enough time for a bonus topic. But really quick, I want to remind you to go to clockwise.social for all your clockwise swag needs. Hats, t-shirts, tote bags, phone cases. mugs, whatever you need. It's there. Clockwise.social.
All right. It is summer cookout season. What is your preferred barbecue slash cookout food, Amanda? Okay, this isn't like a thing that you cook, but just as a side to all of the other delicious things, I feel like you gotta have like really good sliced watermelon. I feel like eating watermelon in the summer is just one of the joys of life. Yummy, yummy. Any kind of slaw. Love slaw. Love a slaw. What about you, Zach?
You know, there's burgers, there's hot dogs, but anytime someone brings out sausage and it's not, you know, like long sausage, I don't know, there's Koneka sausage around where I live in the South. And I guess it's kind of like sweeter. That always just takes it up a notch for me. I will throw on grilled corn. Grilled corn is fab. It's a great way to make corn.
All right, we've planned ourselves a really nice cookout here. All right, if you would like to support the show, we've got a brand new feature for our members, Clockwise Unwound. It's a short weekly segment after the main show wraps up where Mike and I chat about Tech Topic. So if you'd like to get that plus ad-free episodes, just go to relay.fm slash clockwise and sign up for just $7 per month or $7 a year, and you'll help support the show. And we really appreciate it.
And with that, we have reached the end of this week's episode, and all that remains is for us to thank our fantastic guests. Amanda Silberling, thank you so much for being back on Clockwise. Thank you. Now I want watermelon and corn and You're welcome. And Zach Hall, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. And Michael will be back next week. But until then, we remind everyone listening out there, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. Bye, everybody.