615: I Have a Case, and I Pray

It's time for episode 615 of the Clockwise podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast that's number one on the Forbes 30 podcasts under 30 minutes list. My name is Dan Morin, and I am joined as always across the internet by my good friend, my pal, my co-host, the one, the only Micah Sargent. How are you doing today, Micah? Well, I just checked in with the fact...

Checkers, Dan, and they said that's 100% fact. So I am pleased that we made that list. Excellent. I was about to tell you to fire them, but they can stay. This is, of course, the tech podcast that is on that list, but it's also the show where we invite on two fantastic guests to talk about four tech topics. To my left this week, it is supervising video producer at Polygon, Simone de Rochefort. Welcome back, Simone.

Hey, congratulations on having a good podcast. Thank you. I knew it all along. That's so kind. It's only made by guests like you. And to my left, Slovenian tech reporter, podcaster, person. And the person who is always trying to get us to go to Slovenia and talk about basketball. It's Andrzej Tomic. Hello, Andrzej. Are you guys going to jail? Isn't that a thing with the Forbes list?

like everybody that's on that list goes to jail goes to jail yeah exactly i think you're confusing it with monopoly again um which is also a crime for which you will go to jail no uh all right we're moving on uh we're doing great today let me kick things off we have four

topics 30 minutes mine for you is this do you buy apple care for your apple devices or or any extended warranties uh apple this morning announced a new apple care one bundle where you can cover multiple devices for a low, low fee. And I'm curious to know, does that change things for you? Will you sign up for AppleCare? Does it not make a difference for you? Do you have a million devices? And this is great. Let me know. what your warranty situation is. Simone, let's start with you.

I am the person who did get a new iPhone a couple years ago and bought AppleCare while on the subway on my way to an event because I realized that I was flying case-free. And ever since then, I have been, I've continued to fly case free. And my phone screen and back are covered in cracks from me dropping it repeatedly on every surface imaginable. And the same goes for my AirPods. I am dropping them all the time. They are flying out.

on the subway platform on restaurant floors in my home often on a hard surface so I should purchase this I think That it would probably be smart for me in the long run. It would probably be more financially reasonable in the long run. It just comes at a time when I don't want to do it because I'm so sick of paying monthly subscriptions and watching just that like Apple drain my bank account little by little every month. So yes and no. We'll see.

So for me, yes, most of the devices that I have are actually owned by the company that I work for. And part of that means that they like to have AppleCare on these. devices that said i have not had to use apple care in quite a while It depends on the product. There are times when I buy extended warranties in particular for like appliances.

And those have, small appliances, and those have come in handy a number of times. So I continue to do so. But my Apple devices, yeah, they have AppleCare. And I don't know the last time I've had to use it. What about you, Andrzej? Yeah, I don't think we have AppleCare over here, honestly. Because when I saw that question in the spread, because we don't have an official Apple store in Slovenia. We have like two large stores that are Apple.

partner premium something but they have their own version of apple care which i never buy honestly because i have a case and i pray i think that that's my that's the way it works for me basically I do have one AppleCare subscription, and it's because I have the iPhone upgrade program. I get a new phone every year, and it comes with AppleCare. So by virtue of that, I am paying off. But beyond that, I don't think I have paid for any other AppleCare for more than a decade.

And I tend to be fairly lucky with them. And you know what? I take my knocks when they happen, right? Like a few years ago, I dropped my Apple Watch on a tile floor face down as I was picking up off my nightstand, shattered the screen. And it was like three years old. I'm like, you know what?

It's just time for a new Apple Watch. I'm just going to eat it because that was totally my fault. Similarly, last year when I dropped my phone on my laptop screen in a very public incident, I broke the screen on my laptop. laptop didn't. The phone was totally fine. I tell you, titanium, it's a heck of a metal. But I ponied up for that out of my pocket again because it was my M1 Air, which was several years old. It probably would not have even been in AppleCare coverage anyway. So...

You know, I kind of just tend to take my risks. And like Simone, I do have... I'm flying caseless on my phone. I don't tend to drop it, but I will say that I put it down a lot on like desks and tables and stuff and the screen is scratched to hell. But you know, that is what it is. And I'll get a new phone every year. So I'm really living that.

Disposable technology lifestyle, I guess. It doesn't need to be pretty. It just needs to work. Exactly. Just like me. And so I'm not probably likely to change anything given this setup. I think the thing that's nicest about it is the flexibility because they are allowing you to bring in devices that are older as well. I think if your device is up to four years old, you can add it to your plan and you can take devices in and out.

as you see fit. So if you get a new device and you're like, I don't need to cover this other device now, but I'm going to add this in instead, you can just do that. And it's all for a flat fee, which certainly appeals. But let's not forget that this is also good for Apple because it's recurring services revenue.

So, yeah, I don't know why those people on Wall Street deserve to be happy. I personally don't think they do, but I guess they will be. Anyway, thank you all for your thoughts on that. Let's go to our second topic, which comes from Simone.

I am suffering more than anyone ever has because I'm about to switch to Proton for my main email service. And I am staring down the barrel of... cleaning out several Gmail inboxes and transferring everything over. So my question for you guys is... How? What are your secret inbox consolidation strategies? How do you keep track of all the emails that you're getting, the subscriptions and newsletters, the emails from mom and dad? How do you get this all under control? And what advice?

do have for me as I move into this beautiful new phase of life. I wish I had good advice for you, Simone. And I really just don't. I guess the one bit of advice I would give, although I don't know if it applies to you since you're switching to Proton, is... I am not afraid to sit down, take some time to go into Gmail and create some pretty powerful filters. I have done that a number of times where I, you know.

you mark them as red, you label them, you stick them in a folder. And really what that means is you just never see them again. But my anxiety about losing those emails means that they're still there. if I ever need them, but I just don't have to see them. And so I am a pretty quick, you know, mark a label to them, get them out, filter them sort of situation. And then the other thing is.

just never be afraid to hit that unsubscribe button. Just take the time, just do it, follow through with the unsubscribe, make it happen. But for the most part, I just sort of treat email the same way I treat the... mail that makes its way to my house. It's there. And I look at it when I have the time. Andrzej, what about you? The one advice I would have.

is i found i'm like way better at triage on the phone like in the iphone app like i'm i'm i don't know why but i'm like way faster at going through stuff because i'll do that before i go on like the longer summer vacations, I'll take a day and I'll just like, not the whole day, but like a couple of days before I'll take my phone and I'll actually just like.

clean stuff out, but I'll do it on the phone, never on the desktop. I don't know why, but I'm like way faster. I'll go through all of the categories and I'll just unsubscribe and delete stuff and, you know, go through it also. I'm actually at, you know, like Inbox Zero. like trademark metal man, before I go on vacation. So when I come back, it's all new stuff that's come in.

So I liked, Simone, when you wrote, how do you clear your inbox? Because my first thought was assumes facts, not in evidence. Let me share some stats with you. I scrolled back to the top of my inbox. or bottom, I guess. I use iCloud Mail and have for basically ever since it was .Mac. No, iTools. iTools. I'll go back to iTools. My first email in my inbox is from 2002. I have 133,000 messages in my inbox. Stop. Nope.

I just leave everything in my inbox. I delete stuff as I go, and sometimes I forget. The answer is I don't want to spend any time dealing with email. I don't want to organize my email. I don't want to go back and look at old emails unless I want to search them and find slang specific. But I don't want to go back and weed out old emails. That sounds like a waste of my time. So I...

I end up with stuff. And like Micah said, I've been better recently about making sure I unsubscribe from things. I've been better about using... I started using SpamSieve a while ago. And I've been better about trying to mark stuff more spam. And so I get fewer things every day now. For a while, I was trying Apple's categorization stuff they added in the recent version of Mail, but I just found, again, it seemed like...

too much work that I was being expected to do to click on all these different buttons and check on things and see this stuff was in the right categories. So I go by my same system, which I've always used, which is I delete stuff when I'm thinking about it.

And I flag stuff that's important. And then I use the handy little filter button at the top to just show me my flagged or unread emails. And I'm very good about staying on top of my inbox as far as unread messages. I'm not one of those people with like, I have 10,000 unread messages. I usually have zero unread messages because I read stuff when it comes in. I reply to it or I delete it or I spam filter it or whatever.

I just always haven't, I haven't always been that good in the past. And it's like, when am I ever going to spend the time? I would literally rather do anything else. Right now, my office is full of crap that I just had to move out of the attic of our house. And I'd rather spend time going through old comic books.

than I would like to go through old emails. So my answer is embrace the mess. Just live with it. It's going to be great. It's going to be fine. You'll be okay. That's not helpful, but that's what I got for you. Simone, wrap us up.

Yeah, okay. I'm getting a couple interesting threads to follow here. One is that I do like the idea of going into my new inbox with some aggressive filters. I'm not sure what Proton's offerings are there yet because I'm just... beginning my journey however maybe set maybe the answer is to set in place some rules so that this doesn't happen to me again but keep the sort of wilderness of the gmails the way it is, a sort of untouched

Beautiful, natural vista that is maybe more like the Gowanus Canal than it is like Yellowstone. No, I really like that. I will say my tactic for deletion. when i do um find it in me to go in and try to delete stuff um which i don't do nearly consistently enough is kind of just look at the first like look at my promotion folder or whatever pick out one sender

search that sender, unsubscribe from them, and then delete everything from them that I don't need and just kind of go through and do chunks like that. And that way, like if someone is like super duper spamming me, I can delete hundreds of emails from that specific. um sender at once and that kind of makes the number go down but

then of course you do get into like, oh no, now this chunk of mail is hundreds of emails from my mom that I want to archive. So it doesn't fully help with the problem, but that's my current solution for dealing with it. which clearly could use some evolution. And I'm excited to enact some of these learnings. What a journey you have in front of you.

All right. Well, we have a journey too. And that journey is to halftime because we've got two topics down, two topics to go. This week's episode is brought to you by wonderful clockwise swag. That's right. You can buy all sorts of great clockwise merch. Shirts, t-shirts, hats, cups, basically everything you want over at clockwise.social. Stickers. We have something new. We have stickers now. That's right. You can buy a clockwise sticker and slap it on.

I don't know, your laptop, your iPad, whatever you put stickers on your forehead. I don't know. My kid puts them everywhere. So go to clockwise.social and help grab some swag, which will help support the show. And we really appreciate it. And that's all you got for halftime today. So Micah, we're around to you.

Do you have a smartwatch? If you do have a smartwatch, do you own more than one band for that smartwatch? And lastly, when was the last time you changed the band on said smartwatch? Assuming you own. one oh you're a smart watch fan name five bands yeah we'll start with you so the beetles and then i don't know okay no i do not have a smart watch uh i used to have a smart watch

But then a couple of years ago, I bought myself a mechanical watch and I just like wearing it. It's also kind of my thing. Like I like something that doesn't have a battery because I just, you know, do tech all the time. So it's kind of a reminder that other stuff exists. I know that sounds sad, but I really do enjoy my mechanical watch. I like very much enjoy my mechanical watch. I will say, though, I'm kind of interested to hear what you guys are using.

I started working out last year again and I want to do some more cardio and I've been looking at more fitness bands because... I think the full sort of smartwatch experience, which I have had before because I owned a Moto 360. Remember those? Like an Android smartwatch from way back. the circular ones i owned one of those and it was nice but i just don't want notifications on my wrist like i have no interest in that so i'm sort of more interested in the in the fitness aspect of it all and

I found a couple of bands that I'm kind of I have in my Amazon sort of the cart and I'm kind of deciding between them. So I'm kind of interested what you guys are using. So no mechanical watch, no batteries. I do have a smartwatch. I have an Apple Watch Series 7.

And it's interesting that you asked this, Micah, at this particular time. And it dovetails nicely with Andrzej's answer because I started running again a couple months ago now. And so previous to that, I think I had had the same watch band on for...

I don't know, a year, maybe more. Um, because I just had the one that went nicely with my watch. It was like blue and orange and my watch is blue, which I like. So I've been wearing that one and you could tell cause it's wearing out a bit, but I started running more. And so I found, you know, obviously when I got back from my one, the

the watch band would be kind of grody. So I started swapping in and out and having basically two watch bands so I could have one drying while the other I swapped into a different one. I do have more. I've bought a few over the years, but I don't like the hassle of having to think about changing them all the time. Occasionally, I've got a nice metal band that I would wear if I was like...

get dressed up to go to a wedding or something like that, or an event of some kind. But mostly, I just like the simplicity of sticking with the same one. But yeah, since I started working out again, I have felt like, oh, this is one of the great benefits of the Apple Watch. It's really easy. to take off this band and swap on another one. If I were being a little more proactive, I would probably switch back to my old floor elastomer rubber band for workouts.

Yeah, I'm just lazy, I think, is what it comes down to. You can tell that from the email answer before. Anyway, Simone, what about you? It's me, the non-smartwatch haver. Me and Andrzej.

Yes, I have spent probably my entire... uh side career in tech being like should i get an apple watch i kind of want one should i get one and then i came around to my luddite era and now i hate the idea of being tracked i i do like the idea of like having it for fitness i think they're like very real uh uses for smart watches they are great

I will say I do see a fashion appeal for multiple bands. If I had one, I could see myself possibly having... a band like you do for exercise um which i also never do um and then a band for like going out to a nice restaurant or something like that. I think I imagine it would not surprise me to learn that there are many women who have multiple bands for fashion that they swap in and out depending on outfit or occasion.

or what have you. However, it ain't going to be me. You would probably not be surprised to learn that... More than just women do the multiple band fashion thing. I thought that I would be one of those individuals. I have. at least 20 different Apple Watch bands. And then the Apple Watch Ultra came out and it came out with a beautiful green alpine loop band. It has become, for me, the perfect Apple Watch band. And I have...

just completely turned my back on all of these other bands that I used to swap between because Apple does make it very easy to switch between them. And yeah, I used to like going, oh yeah, this looks good with my outfit today. This looks, this is... This is a good going out band. It's leather. The reason why I wanted to ask this is because I was curious if I was alone in sort of not paying as much attention to bands as I once did. Not music, Dan.

That has been an interesting thing where I'm going, oh, yeah, I've got all these others and I just don't ever use any of them. The other day. I was wearing all black for some sort of like emo gathering thing. And for the first time in forever, I swapped to a black leather band. And I thought, wow, I really wish I had the Alpine loop back on my wrist. So, yeah, I just look at all the other bands and go, couldn't be me. Yeah.

Thank you all for your answers on that. Let's go to our final topic, which comes from Andrzej. All right. So usually it's you Americans asking, ah, what are great travel apps when I travel abroad? And I'm going to. Turn the tables. That's the expression, right? Because I'm going to the U.S., to New York very, very soon, and then I'm going to go to Boston and see Dan.

For the second time in my life. It's happening again, I guess. Yeah. So my question is, could you recommend some apps that are helpful for travel in the U.S.? And when I say helpful, help me save money. And I want to read what I wrote on food, hotels, buses, and then trains, planes and automobiles. I just wanted to, you know, say that the last three days together because of the great movie. So, yeah.

You know, apps that I think are more popular here than probably in other places because I've traveled overseas and found them lacking sometimes. Yelp is pretty good in the US for like food. I find it a handy barometer. You can use Google Maps. There's decent stuff in there. Apple Maps is fine, but I would say probably Yelp is your best luck if you're just looking to see what stuff is rated. Plane trains and automobile, that's a little trickier. I mean, I think in general...

My advice is most of the places, I know some of the places you're going, but they have pretty good public transit systems. And a lot of the public transit systems now allow you to just do the Apple Pay, like tap on and off, or whatever, Google Wallet, what have you. you. So the contactless payment stuff is really nice. So having that set up, especially the express transit option, is really handy for getting around. Obviously, if you need a car, Lyft and Uber are both pretty good here.

in terms of being able to get a car to take you from place to place. You know, I do like Apple Maps just for like options for transit. I find it's handy to give me like, okay, how long does it take to walk versus how long does it take to, you know, ride the subway or walk to the subway or whatever. And I think that's pretty useful as far as that goes.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't feel like I... It's weird. I think about apps when I travel abroad, but I think less about apps when I'm already in the place. What do I actually use? The answer is I don't go anywhere or do anything. So that's kind of... issue. But maybe one of our colleagues here has a better suggestion. So Simone, I'll turn it over to you.

I have some suggestions. As a person who is living in New York, who has often traveled to Boston, my go-to app for figuring out how I'm getting to Boston...

or vice versa, is called Wanderu. It's spelled W-A-N-D-E-R-U. And it lets you compare... various bus services and trains so say you're going to boston you put in you're going to boston and the station you want and then you can look at just buses or just trains or a mix of buses and trains at various times and i find that super duper helpful because sometimes...

Even going up to places like Vermont, there will be a more reasonable bus route that it is possible to find and save a lot of money compared to the train, which is more convenient and wonderful. local Amtrak or regional Amtrak service here is incredibly expensive. And a train to Boston. can run you hundreds of dollars whereas a bus for some reason takes the same amount of time and it's just so much cheaper um and then for getting around new york i use it i do i love the subway subway's great

The bus is also great and you can use the same, assuming you can access tap to pay or you have a card, a credit card or a debit card with a chip in it. You can pay by tapping that. I use Google Maps for finding bus routes and stuff, but then also the MTA just launched a new app, I think in the last year, that has the offline subway maps and will show you like stations around you.

It also has a trip planner, which I generally don't use because I prefer the Google Maps. But I definitely use it for offline maps and for just like finding out, OK, what are the trains and buses that are near me? Then for flights, I...

i've been using a combo of kayak for like planning flights uh plus whatever like credit card i'm trying to put money on plus the beautiful false dream of skyscanner for many years i am always going on a skyscanner and being like where can i what are the hot deals right now um with skyscanner you can like choose oh show me flights for to

any location for this month like in the usa and then you'll look at all the beautiful options and be like oh my god i could go to florida for 85 i would never want to go to florida but i could do it but then you go and you try to find the flights and they i you don't exist or there's slightly false advertising because now you're paying $500,000 for your luggage. However, it is fun to look at flights on Skyscanner and imagine what you could be doing and then actually go to kayak.

and use their flexible date-time tools to search for the actual cheapest flight that exists in the real world where we live. These are my recommendations to you. That's really good advice. I wish that I had that like wonder bug that it seems like you have. That's cool. I. have two suggestions. One is not about saving money. One is about saving your life. I think sometimes people...

when they travel, forget that, you know, you want to be a little bit prepared. So I would suggest downloading it's from the American Red Cross and it's just called the emergency severe weather app, but it's not just about severe weather. It will give you alerts for disasters or anything like that going on in your area. And more importantly, give you a bunch of information about things that you can do when...

stuff like that happens. So it's got, you know, little guides and more information about what you might need if you're ever in an earthquake, hurricane. whatever it happens to be. And there's also... I don't know that this one is as important, but the American Red Cross has a first aid app, which is great as well. The other thing that I was going to mention, though, was City Mapper. I know a lot of people really like to use City Mapper.

It is kind of the all purpose transportation app. So you say like, hey, I want to go from here to here in the app and it will provide. a whole heck of a lot of information about all the different ways that you might go there, including those scooter thingies that are all over the place. So it's... I think by being a jack of all trades situation, it is not a, you know, master of any particular, but it does have a lot of different information for transportation as you're going around.

So those are my suggestions. Andrzej, I guess we'll round us out here. Thank you all. That was actually useful. Yeah, okay. Even Yelp, which I have never used in my entire life. I genuinely, I don't think we have like Yelp support Slovenia. I don't know. I just Googled it and nothing shows up. So I think TripAdvisor is the thing Americans use when they come here. Yeah. I don't think Yelp. Things we take for granted. Yep.

It's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yelp is just not another thing. So, yeah, I'm going to. OK. And OK. All the three of you. Thank you very much. That's all I have to say. You are welcome. We are welcome. You are welcome. Everyone's welcome. All right. That is four topics down. We get just enough time for.

a bonus topic make it short and sweet who's your favorite muppet simone i love animal i myself feel very animal coded um but kermit is just like perfect in every way Yeah, mine is definitely between Kermit and Sam the Eagle. The Swedish chef.

and i like the the mannerisms and stuff so yeah then good answers well i've been watching a lot more sesame street with my kid these days so uh me always enjoy cookie and so because i like cookies but i have to say i have a special fondness now for uh cookie monster partner in his food truck who is a muppet named gonger who is maybe my favorite now of all time he's just a little pink cook like he has a chef hat and everything he's great oh that sounds cute gonger is amazing uh all right

Thank you all for your answers to that. And that brings us to the end of the show. But before we go, I want to remind you that we've got a brand new feature for our members, Clockwise Unwound, a short weekly segment after the main show wraps up where Mike and I chat about a tech topic.

If you'd like to get that plus ad-free episodes, I mean, technically they're all ad-free right now, but you know, a little bit extra. You can go to relay.fm slash clockwise and sign up for just $7 a month or $70 a year. And most important of all, you will help support the show, which as we noted.

is ad free. And with that, we will say goodbye to our fantastic guest this week. Simone de Rochefort, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me back. And Andrzej Tomic, thank you so much for joining us. I was going to do a Swedish chef impression, but I don't know how. So thank you. Thank you. Bye. And Micah will be back next week. That's what I meant to say.

Until then, we remind everyone listening out there, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. That's pretty good. Bye, everybody.