It's time for episode 608 of the Clockwise podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, June 4th, 2025. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast that's gearing up to install beta software so you don't have to. I am one of your hosts, Micah Sargent, and I am joined across the internet by my good pal, my dear friend, it is the one and only Dan the Man Morin.
How you doing, Dan? I'm doing okay, Micah. Should I have not installed beta software on everything that I own right now? If you did right now, I'm impressed. And I say go for it. Woohoo! Here I go. Oh, God, no. We lost him. What could possibly go wrong? While you all contemplate whether you should install beta software, I will introduce one of our guests to my left, shortcut supreme leader and Apple intelligence aficionado.
Welcome back to the show, Matthew Casanelli. Hello, hello. It's great to be here. And I am definitely going to be installing those betas the moment I get access. Danger. Living on the edge. Also living on the edge with us to my left this week, it is writer, photographer, and late-nighter Jeff Carlson. Welcome back, Jeff. Thank you very much. And I will also, well...
We say, no, you should not install beta software as we are actively installing beta software on all our devices. Do as we say, not as we do. Exactly. Ah, not as we do at all times, as soon as we can. All right, let us get this show underway. You know how it works. Four topics, 30 minutes, and mine for you is this. Does a device's repairability...
ever factor into your purchase decisions? Why or why not? Matthew, we'll start with you. I was thinking about this and I honestly don't think I... do care very much most of the time i think maybe because products have gotten to a certain degree of quality or like i only buy those and not the cheaper ones that will break so i've sort of
assume that they don't need to be repaired because they'll last longer. But I also just haven't had much where I can tinker with being an Apple person and things like that. So I just haven't had much chance to repair anything. Yeah, I kind of feel like I'm on the same level there.
I like the idea of repairability. It is something that feels good to have as an option because I do feel like I'm literally looking, as I say this, at a box that's been on my floor for months that's like the box of electronics that I need to get rid of. rid of. Because recycling electronics, while better than tossing them in the trash, still feels very wasteful to me. And it is a shame that stuff isn't more repairable. But I also know that the levels to which you have to...
tinker with these things to get to that point is sometimes beyond even me. And I am someone who spent a lot of their youth tinkering with computers and the like. So I imagine it's not too different from people who maybe worked on cars when they were younger and cars were more repairable.
now open a hood of a car and be like, I don't know what's going on here. So it doesn't really influence my buying decisions, but it is something that I think about in terms of if I do need to get something repaired rather than just having it... replaced wholesale, that is something that certainly feels better. But yeah, I don't know if it changed my buying habits. What about you, Jeff? Yeah, I'm going to echo a lot of that also.
And I think some of this is because, again, being in the Apple ecosystem where there just has not been very many options to do that. But also if something were to go wrong with. like my watch or my laptop or something, it goes back to Apple and Apple does the repairing. So there's some of that behavior that's just been ingrained. But I also have to say.
As much as I would like to think so, I am not a handy person. And so do you really want me to be repairing my own gear? Probably not. Like I've done it. I did RAM. changed hard drives, all sorts of things, you know, back in the day when you could. But again, like... Do you want me doing that? And also, I mean, there's electricity involved. I mean, come on. But also, do I want to spend my time doing that, risking that I'm going to make it worse?
I feel like I'm out of the spectrum here because I don't really want to be repairing my own stuff, even though I fully understand all the benefits of it. And I'm glad that there are people who can do it. Yeah, this is. I used to do it a lot more, I think. And that is kind of where this question came from. I don't have like...
Repairability doesn't factor into anything anymore. I saw that iFixit had retroactively changed the score for the Switch 2, and that's what kind of had me curious, where people stood on repairability as a factor. I think when it comes to little things, perhaps it is nice to be able to make a change like the PS5 controller. My fiance has a PS5 and... regularly like drift and other things will become an issue and oftentimes that can be solved by just
popping it open and cleaning out the inside with some 99% isopropyl alcohol. And that's kind of nice to be able to do. And it's not all glued down, but... Yeah, I don't know. I'm somewhere in between. There are some things I like to be able to do myself and some things that I would just rather send off and have fixed that way. So repairability, I guess, factors in a very tiny bit, but usually it's sort of after the fact.
from going, oh, I'm so glad that I can open this up versus me wondering before I buy it. Oh, does this open up? So thank you all for your answers on that. Let's go to our next topic, which comes from Matthew.
All right, so the rumored HomePod with the screen is really hot right now. There's lots of MacRumors just calling it the HomePad, so who knows what the title will actually, but I'm convinced that it's going to run off of... the controls from control center which were recently updated last year it's kind of like reading the tea leaves situation and that to me at least means running on app intents which then means you can add almost any action to your home pad
So if you had one of these, what would you realistically want beyond just the basic HomeKit stuff? Yeah, HomePod with a screen. So hot right now. Boy, I really love this device. I've wanted something like this. I mean, I've used an Echo Show in the past. I had a Nest Home Hub or whatever, Google Home Hub, whatever they called it. It changed names like three times.
I think there are a bunch of things in there that I'd love to have just quick access to, you know, and not just like home stuff, because I find that I often use voice control for a lot of those things. Like a lot of times, this would go in my kitchen, and my kitchen is a place I'm often working, you know, cooking or cleaning.
cleaning dishes or something. So I want to control a lot of stuff by voice. But the ability to be able to walk up and tap like, oh, I want to play my local radio station that I listen to, that would be great. My ability to... I don't know, like just shortcuts that I can fire off, like play the latest episode of this podcast or whatever, like having to like fiddle around with trying to figure out how to do that via Siri, which never works for me. Like all that's very, very, very.
Very cool. So I think that the ability to assign... Control Center, obviously, hugely powerful on iOS. So being able to fire off a shortcut. to do whatever I needed to do would be great. Obviously, home control and stuff, that's good too. But media controls, all of that. I am very bullish on this device. I imagine...
As always, the truth will be when it actually comes out, if it ever does. But yeah, I would be in line for this device day one. Jeff, what about you? I'm going to start off by being a crank and just say, I just want it to work. That would be really nice because there are so many like little home things and everything that just doesn't seem to work. However, that's not really the question.
What I would love to see is a lot of glanceable information. I've not had any of these screen Alexa type things. You know, back in the day, I remember there were ideas about taking an iPad and making it like a little information screen. Didn't really work out. And so I would love to be able to just have a bunch of things and maybe like a lot of different widgets so that I could always just see.
Find my like, where is my family right now? And what are the latest news headlines and things like that that are glanceable? Because, yeah, this would probably end up in the kitchen and I wouldn't have to. swipe or tap or do five different steps when my hands are all wet or covered in food just to get some information that I'm looking for. Hopefully, it'll be a good addition, a good complement to voice commands because, like you said, Dan, voice commands are really hit or miss right now.
Yeah, I'm with you, Jeff, on wanting sort of glanceable stuff. I kind of wanted to act a little bit in the way that CarPlay does with the sort of smart suggestions that will appear. based on the time and based on what's going on. A nice calendar that is visible to everyone would be great. I think if it's going to have actions, I'd want ad reminders to do, D-U-E. The app that I use for all of my reminders and basically hear what I'm saying and turn it into a calendar event would be great as well.
which is technically something that's already possible on other devices, but having a button to press makes it better for me. And outside of that... I there's nothing specific that I would want, because most of the stuff that I would want is the part that Matthew said we can't talk about, which are basic HomeKit options. So, yeah, I think those.
a couple of options, but glanceable information that sort of smartly updates throughout the day would be pretty cool. Matthew, why don't you round us out here? I love that I asked this question and now I'm more excited because of your ideas. I definitely think just any sort of step by step instructions would be great, like recipes or when I wrote down instructions, I thought of, well, that's pretty much what I'm.
getting from ChatGPT all the time and having just that interface without having to hold your phone or something like that and walk around is actually pretty interesting.
i do just want it to know who i am too like when i come up to it versus my girlfriend and it shows me like my screen on i think the basic thing too that i always got the google home for and still use it for is just photos like that alone is brings joy into your home and then very concrete way so oh yeah last thing just because i want time timers in general are great for that too but i want to do time tracking for work stuff with like timery and things like that
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Well, as Matt alluded to, next week is WWDC and Apple will be taking the wraps off a bunch of announcements across its platforms. I'm curious to know what are you interested in? You know, this could be products or features. It could even be... what Apple's talking about or not talking about or how they handle things, how the response will be. I just want to know your impressions and what you're looking for going into WWDC. Jeff, let's start with you.
Well, the design side of me is really interested about all the rumors and the possibilities that everything's going to get a new look. And I know that can be sort of superficial, but I'm also interested in the discussion about whatever that new look happens to be. It sounds like it's probably going to be more like Vision OS, maybe very glassy, lots of transparency. And I think there's a lot of interesting things that could be done there. So just from a pure, I'm very.
Super curious about things of like anything that they could have mentioned. I think the design and the layout is probably top of my list. I would say some Apple intelligence, but. I don't know. Apple intelligence kind of makes me tired lately. Partially because the big question is like, can Apple actually pull this out?
I know last year we were talking about, oh, Apple is way behind and then they announced some things and people were like, oh, they're just playing the slow game and they're playing a very, very, very slow game and it seems really apparent that they need to step up things. But what does that look like? I'm not as excited about using that, I guess, but I'm super curious about it. Maybe that's just it. I'm very, very curious about things like that.
Yeah, I am. When you ask sort of what am I interested in? I am interested in all of the documents that are going to come out afterward and reading through all of that and seeing. you know, the new features, but more importantly, if there is a design language shift. how those documents and that documentation in particular changes and what developers and designers will be told in terms of how things are changing and what the new rules are.
I love a design system. And so, yeah, that's what I'm most looking forward to. I can't wait to get the latest version of what is it? Swift symbols or symbols. I can't remember, but the. sort of icon pack that Apple has and how that's going to change, if at all, and how things will be. I mean, it's just there's. potentially so much to chew on, assuming that the redesign is true and is happening. So yeah, I guess all of it that's visual is what I'm interested in. Matthew, what about you?
Thank you. SF symbols, SF symbols, by the way. Thank you, Kate. Go ahead. Sorry, Matthew.
i have to keep mine quick because i'm gonna otherwise rant about this entirely i'm like the only person who's bullish on apple intelligence i think and i totally understand why like if they hadn't done app intense i'd be much more concerned right now But I've been deeply investing in understanding this API for the last few years, and I can really see how it expands across the whole operating system and will enable them to run with AI once they actually...
get the ai part not just the app intense part done um but i definitely think even with the redesign i think there's going to be a whole wave of app intent driven development and design where Your designs just run your intents internally inside the app, basically making all of your code reusable so that you can have multiple different designs using the same kind of functions. And so that is like a really...
Cool thing because it also enables all these intelligence capabilities. I did notice the sticker. There's one that's pigs flying. And my joke to somebody was that. That's when we got shortcuts as the feature of automation on the Mac because they announced that five years ago and they haven't done anything with it since then. And I think, I mean, they've done little bits, but not making it the feature of automation on the Mac. And there's rumors of...
a whole redesign there's rumors that you'll be able to prompt to build your own shortcuts or have it like just if you ask series you can build a shortcut for you too so i think there's a lot of cool capabilities there I think it might be a precursor to what we actually want with Apple Intelligence maybe next year. But I think in the meantime, there's a ton of really cool tools.
and it'll enable developers to really dig into this ecosystem and i think most importantly users like that's the whole story with this is that the users are smart enough to use something like shortcuts as long as they can have a little assistance on the front end of just how you script it and everything so i'm like my the whole world that i've been waiting for is is might be announced next week so i'm extremely excited it's it's for an audience of one exactly i'm gonna be like
An audience of two. Now I'm super excited. Thank you, Matthew. Now I want that. It's interesting. This is, I think, you know, as people point out, last year we got the Apple Intelligence introduction. The year before that, we got Vision Pro.
And people seem to assume this year will be a little quieter. I think the redesign is intriguing because it is something that will affect everyone. And if for no other reason, then in a few months when everybody updates their phones, and we will all get inundated with questions. about why your phone looks different now. That's always fun. Sarcastically, I say.
So, but I'm intrigued to see why, you know, there's certainly reasons to do it just from an aesthetic perspective, nothing else, you know, making things look fresh and new. But I'm intrigued to see what is the approach they're taking? Where do they think design is going? And how are they going to...
you know, use the tools at their disposal in order to do that without making it feel like, oh, we just changed a bunch of things and now it's harder to use. So that's always a tricky line to walk with redesigns is making it look distinct enough and new enough that you can certainly see like, okay.
that's cool. Or like, I understand why they did that. And not being alienating basically at the same time, like, oh God, I hate the way everything looks. And chances are, it'll go a little bit too far and I'll have to get dialed back in subsequent updates. That's fine. That's part of the process. And that's why we...
betas. So I'm excited for that just to see what is going to happen. I'm also interested to see how they deal with some of the missteps they've made over the last year. This could range anywhere for them just basically not saying a word about it. which is where my money is, to them actually saying, we intended to ship some features, they didn't make it. And we are redoubling our efforts and plan to ship them this year or whatever. I think...
How they handle that is indicative of where Apple is in 2025. And that, to me, is of interest in following the company. But thank you all for your thoughts on that. Let's go to our final topic, which comes from Jeff. Okay, so today is the official launch of the Nintendo Switch 2. Now, normally the question would be, should Apple make their own? But it's pretty clear that Apple's answer is it's the iPhone. The iPhone is the gaming thing.
But I'm curious, like, did you order one? Is this type of standalone gaming handheld appealing? So it's certainly appealing. I have a... I have the first generation of Switch. And the fact is, I got the first generation of Switch not too terribly long ago. I also have valves. stream what is steam deck not stream deck but steam deck um and had played with that for a long time uh at this point which is what resulted in me getting the the switch um was
Sort of that paired with having friends locally who, you know, would come over and we could play Mario Kart and stuff like that. So I think that the... The gaming handheld is certainly appealing. I did not order one because I just got the Switch and it has been enough for the purposes. that I have for it. Matthew, what about you? I have not pre-ordered this one. I think I'll do a little bit of wait and see, even because the games aren't.
like super intriguing right at launch it's mario kart which is I bought that on the Wii U and then the same game on the Switch. So, I mean, I guess it is a new game, but I think it has been like I've been playing that same Mario Kart game for like 10 years. I do think the new one is super interesting, but...
In the same realm, I'm kind of more, I think, a Steam Deck user. Like, I want to play Apex Legends mobile, not Mario necessarily. And I don't have anything against that. I just really like those games, and I want to bring that with me wherever I go. But I have the, the backbone controller, is it for iPhone? So I do like that idea, but it's kind of, it is always the second thing that you have to bring.
i'm not really sure i don't have any good solution i just play games on my xbox yeah um for me uh I have an original Switch. I like it a lot. I don't use it that much. But my wife and I do really enjoy playing Mario Kart a few times a year. That's been one of our go-to pastimes.
It's long been our New Year's Day hangout thing is we'll just chill out and play some Mario Kart. And from what I've seen of the new Mario Kart game, I'm really excited by it because I've enjoyed playing Mario Kart since I was a wee lad. Well, a teenager. really when it got popular. So I'm intrigued from that.
But I also play a lot on my PS5 these days. And that is where I'm playing a lot of those titles that aren't necessarily on the Switch. I'm playing that Indiana Jones title right now. I was playing Star Wars Outlaws before. Those are the types of games I really enjoy playing when I'm going to... sit down and play a game for a while. Less so...
Switch games. But I do really admire the platform and everything that Nintendo has done with it. So I didn't go out and pre-order one. I am a little envious of my friends who did just because I do really want to play that Mario Kart game. But I probably...
Probably we'll get one at some point to replace our existing Switch, but it may be, you know, given the pre-order furor, it's going to have to wait for all that to die down until they're available again. So I don't know, maybe the end of the year or something like that. Let's see how it goes. Jeff, back to you to wrap it up. Yeah. So I actually asked this from the point of view of not only it being timely, but because I did not order one. I actually have not had.
hardly any experience with these types of things. And so I'm like genuinely curious, like why, you know, how popular are these? It seems like a thing that is massively popular that I just sort of missed. And so now when I look at the field. It's like, OK, do I want to get the Steam Deck? Do I want to get a Switch, an original Switch, a Switch 2? Do I just need to buckle down and get an Xbox?
I have no good answer except that I really wanted to hear what you guys had to say about this because, like, I like gaming. I fear that it will take up too much of my time. Not just like in a, you know, oh, geez, I'm not productive, but in a, oh, my gosh, I haven't slept for 18 hours. I didn't realize it kind of way.
I don't know what you're talking about. That never happens to me on the X. Oh, okay. Okay, good. Well, I'm glad that that's a known entity then. Cool. But yeah, just mostly curious because it seems really compelling. But is it sleep deprivation compelling? Maybe. I see. Yeah, fair. He looks up from The Sims many, many hours later, having built dozens of houses and also sent several people to sleep while he has not.
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P, elevate your hydration habits. Our thanks to P for its support of this show and all of Relay. All right, we are back from the break and I thought we could play. a little word association game for the bonus topic. So I'll say a word. Then, Matthew, it's your responsibility. to come up with a word in response. Dan will come up with a word in response to Matthew and so on and so forth. And it'll come back to me. All right, here we go. Boy, the word is. Chrysanthemum.
Dang it, Micah. Flower. Great. Origami. Anime. not so easy is it like a square uh final fantasy that's two words i know it is two words you're out uh will we ever do that as a bonus topic again I doubt it. But thank you all for your answers on that. If you would like to get ad free episodes with an extra unwound episode every week, you can become a member of Clockwise. Just go to relay.fm slash Clockwise and sign up.
to help support the show. It is time to say goodbye to our wonderful guests, Matthew Cassinelli. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks. It's my pleasure. And Jeff Carlson, thank you so much for joining us this week. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. And Micah, we'll be back next week post-WWC keynote at a special time. With special guests, as always. But until then, we remind all of you out there listening, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. Bye, everybody.