620: Onions‽

It's time for episode 620 of the Clockwise podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, August 27th, 2025. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast where we put the brief in tech briefing. I am one of your hosts. I am Micah Sargent, and I am joined this week. not by the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, but instead host Emeritus himself. It's Jason Snell. Hello, Jason. Hi, Mike. I'm the Chief Chief of Six Colors, though, so that's good.

It's great to be back. I'm, you know, I'm the third host in this relationship. I'm like a ghost that haunts you and Dan from week to week, sometimes in person, sometimes more kind of at remove. But anyway, it's always great to be back on Clockwise. I feel like I could. do this show asleep. And I have done it that way, but not today. I'm awake today. Yeah, he's awake. Someone else who I am surprised is awake, but so grateful that they are podcast creative director who is available for hire.

It's Christopher Finn. Hello, Christopher. I do want a better job title, though. Can I be podcast czar? Could I be... We've got Bureau Chief, we've got Chief Chief. I just want a more exalted title. Let's figure that out at the end of the show. Whatever goes in that title section is what we read aloud. So how about Supremo? We can do it. And to my left, it is now again, titles here. Business Unicorn at Relay.

fm switch on really dot fm slash switch on uh and community manager here i host conduit on this own podcast network that you're listening to right now. If this was a radio station, but it's not, it's a podcast. Anyway, it's Kathy Campbell. You know where you love her. Here she is. Hi, Kathy. Hi, Jason. Your title is complicated. You have so many things. Switch on. All right.

Oh, boy. Well, while we all try to recall everything that Kathy is, let me kick things off. You know how this works. Four topics, 30 minutes. Mine for you is this. Tell us about the tech you have in your vehicle.

if you have one and if you don't then i guess tell me about the tech you use on any sort of thing you use to travel uh christopher we'll start with you i've got two because i have two vehicles i'm very fancy one of them is a bike though so i have an e-bike i actually have a channel about e-bike called e-bike nugs which because i think they're great and on one of my bikes i replaced the head unit with a little adapter that allows me to use my phone as my controller for the bike there's little

springy mount thing that I put my iPhone into but then it connects over Bluetooth to the bike system and that's what I use to control my bike and it's great and I can listen to podcasts and I can control them with my physical controls that are on the bike handlebars. And then my car, I love my car as well. It's a Honda E, which is something not available in the North American market. Tiny little dodgem of a thing. Beautiful, like...

weird Atari 2600 retro styled interior. And it's got CarPlay, which I really love. I think CarPlay comes in for some hate, but I still think CarPlay is amazing. Just vanilla CarPlay. I think it's everything I want and nothing more. But to be honest, the bit of tech that brings me the greatest joy, well, the bit of tech that brings my wife the greatest joy is auto parking.

the tech that brings me the greatest joy it's just adaptive cruise control and it sounds so dull but like when i'm doing long drives as i occasionally do just like press a button and have the car maintain its speed and then slow down as cars in front of it slow down also just frees my brain up to listen to podcasts, but also to concentrate on steering. So just simple, simple things, but I really love it.

We just got a Chevy Bolt. So it is tech. It is an EV. And I love it. And it has a big touchscreen. with CarPlay. And our previous car was a Nissan Leaf that did not have CarPlay. We put CarPlay in my daughter's car, but then she drove it away to Oregon and I haven't had CarPlay. So it's super boring because it's just CarPlay. But I'll tell you, it's really fun to have actual CarPlay. And this is an iOS.

review cycle. Let me just tell you, most people are not iOS reviewers, but let me tell you, it is awfully nice to be able to say, oh, I need to write about what CarPlay is doing and walk. out to my driveway because that used to not be. I had like I bought a head unit that like had an adapter. I could pretend I was in a car, but it was just sitting on a table. That was not really great. And now I have an actual. So I think CarPlay is my answer. It's really nice.

to have carplay and an ev so we've got a solar uh A whole solar setup here and the overage in the summertime just goes straight into the EV. So it's basically right from the sun into our car for free. Love all of that. So that's basically the techiest thing about the vehicle is that it is an EV. and that it has CarPlay. And beyond that, I don't think there's anything about it that is add-on tech. So I'm sorry about that, but that's my answer. What about you, Kathy?

I don't have Bluetooth. I mean, I have Bluetooth phone, but not Bluetooth music. And so I got a like secondary because it was going to be like $2,000 to install CarPlay. was like nope and i got one of just like the little head units that that sit in the car it's got lots of cables but it works it's just a generic one from amazon that apparently is not available anymore

So sorry about that. But I'll have the link, I guess, maybe in the show notes anyways. And it works great. It does take a little bit of time to connect when you start the car. But other than that. And the random time I was driving into Portland and someone else's music came through, that was very weird. But other than that, it's been great. But for me, I have an aftermarket head unit in my vehicle.

That gives me wireless CarPlay, which I love. The reason why this question came up is because I'm seeing more and more people are putting... cameras in their vehicles to record what they're seeing in front of them and what they're seeing behind them, primarily for insurance claims and also... for seeing if someone's, I guess, trying to break into your, I'm not sure, but it made me kind of curious if anybody else was, was in.

that was checking that out that kind of dash cam yeah the dash cam system um i yeah i i keep it pretty simple with just the the car play uh in in my car but i used to have different MagSafe charging mounts that I would use back before I had CarPlay because it was nice to be able to charge my phone and also sort of put the phone on its side and be able to view a map or whatever I needed to. But yeah, I suppose I've gotten less techie over time in the car because.

Once you've got that CarPlay going, and especially now that it's wireless, my phone doesn't even come out of my pocket or my bag. I just get in the car and go. It is time to go to our second topic in our but 30 minute tech podcast. Christopher.

What is your topic? Well, it's kind of about old stuff, really. What is the bit of kit that you've got in your setup that just like, you never think about it. It just sits there and it does its job. it doesn't actually it's the opposite of the squeaky wheel gets the oil what's something that just sits there

and quietly gets on with its business. How about you, Jason, first? All right. Well, we know that what you definitely aren't going to talk about in this category is smart home tech because it's the most fiddly, ridiculous stuff in the world. Hey, Michael loves matter. He's all about matter. But...

That being said, oh, I'm going to actually mention a smart home product. So I have several Lutron Caseta light switches, which are smart switches. So you don't have to do smart bulbs. You just do smart switches and then. regular old dumb bulbs. And I recently added, I guess it was a couple of years ago now, some Lutron blinds that are smart blinds.

They open and close at the time of day when the sun would be shining in my eyes in my office. They're great. I'm so glad that I've got them because I used to have to leave the office because I had no blinds at all. It was very bad. And there's a because they use their own radio network.

you have a little white box that has to be plugged into your network somewhere in your house. And I having had I've got another one of those for the Philips Hue. Right. And like every so often the bulbs disappear from the Hue system and I have to go. open the little hutch where this thing is and press the button and then run somewhere else and press another button and get them to all talk and the Lutron stuff.

I've never had to touch it. Never. That little white box just sits there, talks to all the light switches. My light switches work. Remotely, they work with physical controls. They work with a remote control that's a plastic remote control that we keep on the living room coffee table. I can't say enough positive things about the Lutron smart home stuff. It not only works really well with Apple HomeKit. And I haven't had a problem there. But it just...

It works. I cannot believe that that little white box, that little dongle, has not had to have the button reset on it 15 times like the Philips Hue button has. But it hasn't. So Lutron Caseta. It's a winner. What about you, Kathy? I'm going to say my Amazon device because I use it for our shopping list because I'm either like in the fridge and I'm like, oh my gosh, we're almost out of milk. And so I just say, hey, dingus. add it to my list. And it does. And it...

consistently does. I know that it's going to be there. If my kid is out at the grocery store shopping and I add something to the list, I know that it's going to be there right away. If I had a HomePod, which apparently I would then have to send off to a YouTuber to... fix and and have them send it back you know that would be other things that i would have to do but i don't it just works it's really old i think i don't even know how old it is anymore but uh it works great

I'm actually going to flip this a little bit because I'm going to say something that it was that for me, the tech that could just sit there and work. And that is... The brother printer that everyone and their mother, uncle, daughter, sister has. And for... As long as I have had it until just last week, it has just worked. It has been wonderful. I can air print to it anytime I want to. Every once in a while, my significant other will say, can you print this for me? And I say, no.

but you can. And then I remind him to hit the share button, hit the print button and boom. Wow. There's the printer. Boom. Done. Good. However, last week for some reason. The thing just completely disconnected from my network. And it was a nightmare because I had to not only... I thought, oh, plug it, unplug it, plug it back in. I'll do this, I'll do that. Turn off the network settings, turn them back on. None of it would work.

And so the only thing for me to do was to completely erase the network settings, which was then a reminder that the way that you do it with that brother printer is. letter by letter by character scrolling through a list of characters to be able to type in the password and we were in a hurry and it was annoying so Brother, you let me down once. Brother, please don't let me down again. That's how I feel. Christopher, why don't you round us out here?

I do also love my brother printer for similar reasons. It just sits there and just does its thing. And the thing that prompted me for this was I was sitting here thinking, what should I talk about in Clockwise today? And my office, which I adore, is completely silent. I have an M4 Mac Mini that I... deeply adored because it is silent and coming from my intel

16 inch 2019 macbook pro which was incredibly not quiet uh i really love this thing but there is one quiet little sound that burbles away in the background it's like a very very muted geiger counter and it is on the shelves behind me there is an ios

Safe214, a fire and waterproof NAS that sits there. And it runs on Synology DSM, which a lot of people love. I know that Synology is mildly cancelled just now because they've started insisting on using particular drives inside their NASs. But this thing... it just sits there and all computers in our house just tie machine onto this thing and it's fire and waterproof so if anything goes catastrophically wrong there is some degree of chance that everything will work and

The Synology NAS software is phenomenal, incredibly rich and fully featured if you want it to be. But if you don't want it to be, and I basically just use this thing as a time machine. Apple still made time capsules. I'd probably just have a time capsule, but this thing sits quietly burbling away and I've got green drives in it, so they're quite quiet.

And I actually quite like this little tiny little reminder of analogness in my otherwise perfect pristine sterile home office. Yeah, that analog is quite nice. All right, folks, we have reached halftime here on Clockwise, which means it's time for me to tell you about our first...

sponsor, our friends at Steam Clock. Steam Clock Software is a design and development studio that ships great mobile apps. They work with growing tech companies to level up their customer facing experiences on iOS and Android. Often Steam Clock's clients know they need a great mobile app to grow their business, but they don't have the capacity to build one themselves. Or if they take a first crack at the problem, they often wind up with an app that's...

Kind of janky. What all of Steam Clock's clients have in common, though, is that they care about great customer experiences. While Steam Clock can build apps using React Native and other cross-platform tools, they also have deep expertise with building excellent native apps in Swift and Kotlin.

They're also great at helping companies weigh the trade-offs of these different approaches. So if that sounds like you, if your business is growing and you want your customers to have a great app experience, visit steamclock.com slash clockwise and get in touch with Steam Clock.

That's steamclock.com slash clockwise. Get in touch with them to see how they can help. Our thanks to Steam Clock for their support of this show and all of Relay. Back from the break, and that means it's time for Jason's Topic.

All right. This one is about timing. We talk about new tech a lot on this network, and I thought I would ask everybody here for a little check-in about how often do you really buy yourself a new phone or computer and why? Kathy? I buy it when I need it, which does not happen very often. Although last year I ended up buying two phones and a computer. One phone because...

It dropped into the LA River. Notice the passive tense there. It just dropped. Yep. And I definitely didn't almost kill my friend. And then... When the September came around, I ended up getting the new phone and passing down my old phone. So I ended up buying. two phones and then a Mac mini as well. And so it doesn't happen very often, but except for when it happens multiple times in a year.

So for me, I buy a new phone every year, or I should say the company I work for buys a new phone for me every year. As far as my my computer goes. I don't need a new machine very often. And when I've got one that just works, as is the case with Apple Silicon, that thing can stay around for a while. I'm rocking the Apple M1 Max Max Studio right now that I'm using to talk to you all. And I've got an.

MacBook Air. And between those two devices, knock on wood, I don't see myself needing to do any, get anything newer for a while because it's, it's great. the Mac studio that I have from 2022. And it's, it, I've not had any issues all the way back in 2022. I've not had any issues with slowdowns or anything like that. So yeah. I don't buy a new computer very often. I buy a new phone every year because work. Christopher, what about you?

Yeah, I think this will probably come up quite a lot. So my Mac upgrade cycle tends to be sort of like five, six, seven years. It's quite sluggish. I'm sure Apple would like me to spend money more often than that. Phones, I seem to have kind of... I would never have...

said i am on a two-year upgrade cycle but i'm kind of on a two-year upgrade cycle which i know is like classically kind of what most consumers tend to default to and that's where i find myself as well um i'm holding on i've got a iphone 15 pro max just now i am holding on

for the new devices in September. But I suspect that actually for the first time this year, I might just go, do you know what, unless there's something particularly tasty in the 17, I'm tempted minded to go for a 16 to be a little bit cheaper this year. the only reason I'm considering upgrading the 15 that I've got just now

is because I've dropped it a couple of times and it is cracked and bits of the screen are falling off. And I didn't have it in a case on that occasion. And it just needs a little bit of TLC. And so I think, do you know what? I'm just going to buy a new phone. But I'm thinking that rather than going for the 16...

pro max i'm going to go slightly smaller this time go for the 16 pro we shall see two year upgrade cycle roughly jason are you going to buck the trend and tell us you buy a new mac every six months well no but and my you know my business is weird so i have new stuff all the time time but i don't necessarily buy it i try it and then return it and then other times i buy things because i need to because i can't get them and then i have them and it's a whole thing but

In terms of the stuff that is actually like the Mii purchases, first off, I'm fascinated by the concept that there is no cycle. It's just entropy. Eventually, I will break it and replace it. I actually think that the iPhone buying... a lot of it is exactly that, is when enough bits of glass have fallen off of it or it's fallen in the river, it's time to get a new phone. Maybe that's how most people actually do it. For me, I'm still on the two-year, like Chris, I'm still on the two-year.

I buy myself an iPhone every two years. And then there's usually a kind of a hand-me-down cycle in my... and my family, which is fine, although that's sort of broken up because my rest of my family is wise to my ways and is now demanding their own devices that aren't handed down from me. So be it. And for computer, yeah, it's definitely more, even though I'm a computer guy, I would say it's probably... three-ish years, I think, and I get a new computer, something like that, because...

I had the Mac Studio M1, and now I have an M4 MacBook Pro. And before that, I had the iMac Pro. And if you do the math, I think that you're really close to three or four years. I have enough. kind of media stuff, especially audio stuff that I do that I appreciate it when there's a big leap in performance.

You know, Apple would like us to buy a new one of everything every year. But the truth is, even though what we cover is everything new all the time, we all know that most people are out there. Like Apple still knows. People complain about Apple. advertising the MacBook Pro and talking about the speed difference or the MacBook Air and the speed difference between it and Intel.

And people are like, Intel, that was so long ago. And it's like, well, if anybody knows how many Intel MacBook Airs are still out in the world, how many Intel MacBook Pros and iMacs are out in the world, it's Apple.

People don't buy computers all the time. There are a lot of things from the 2010s that are still up and running out there. So thank you all for your answers. I appreciate it. I'm going to think a lot more about chaos and entropy when it comes to the upgrade cycle from here on out. Kathy, take us home. What's your...

What's your question? All right. Which social media platforms do you use? And most importantly, which informed you about Taylor Swift's engagement? I think Instagram is probably the one that I use. regularly enough to say I use it. I'm on a lot of different social media platforms, but that's the only one that I open once a day. As far as learning about the engagement. That actually came to me by way of a Apple news notification from time. And so I wouldn't call.

Apple news, a social media platform, but that's how I learned about it. I don't think I ever learned about it on Instagram. I still haven't seen it on Instagram. Yeah, that's it's. far out of my algorithm, I guess. And therefore it has not popped up yet on my Instagram. I'm sure now though, it will pop up today. Christopher, what about you? Instagram is one I use quite a lot. I use it under objection. I'm trying to de-meta myself in part because of their moderation policies for queer people.

Instagram, I can't give it up because so many of my friends and community is there. So I do, I still, I'm really active on Insta. My digital home really for social media is Mastodon, which I know is kind of the weird geeky nerdy one and people don't understand it. assume clockwise readers will be listeners will be much more familiar than the typical audience but Mastodon is where I've set up shop and I've spent my time building up my

little weird community of amazing people there. So that tends to be where I am. And actually it was on Mastodon that I first saw Taylor Swift's engagement, but it was in a, you know, ironic, slightly taking the mickey out of the story kind of way. It wasn't orange! Neither engaged. Jason, where can we find you? Give us your handles.

I am all over the place. I am on Mastodon. What I found is that the audiences are just very different. Yeah, for sure. And the content is very different, even if it's some of the same audience. The stuff on Mastodon is very, very tech nerdy for me.

The stuff on Blue Sky, where I also am, is a little more, I get a lot more kind of like... comedy and some old twitter vibe and stuff like that and sports i'm trying to curate my sports list on blue sky and that's because Most of the people who are sports writers are still posting most of their stuff that I want to see on.

twitter slash x and i blue sky is my my um my twitter methadone right like it's just trying to take me i'm trying to avoid that as much as i can i still look at that list but a lot less because i try to use blue sky As a result, you may have jumped ahead here. My blue sky sports list is where I heard about this because, of course, there is there is the other angle, which is the football player. who is engaged to the pop star. And so all of my NFL writers on that sports list are on it.

people they're on it they're so excited about it so i heard it from uh i heard it from people putting it in a kelsey context but i did hear it on blue sky and then of course i also want to say my wife is proudly not on social media and i can say that because she heard about it from me. That's how that's pronounced? I thought it was Kels. Thank you. It's Kelsey.

Interesting. It's Kelsey. It's like saying a word out loud. You know, how do you say disciple? Yeah, you know, you've got to say it out loud. It's discpole. Yeah, it's not. You've got to say it out loud. Kelsey. Travis Kelsey or man's laughter. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You got you got prosecuted for man's laughter, didn't you? But nobody was laughing now.

Wow. Moving on. I use pretty much everything in a variety of contexts through different businesses that I run or whatever. And I actually learned about it in Discord. from Dr. Matt Van Ormer posted in media. and tagged me while I was recording Conduit. So the episode that will come out tomorrow will most likely have my legitimate in-person reaction live in the show.

That's why I was like, this is a great question. So thank you for answering it. All righty. We are just about to the end of this episode of Clockwise. We've got enough time for a bonus topic. Before we get there, though, let me tell you about. Love them. One password bringing you this episode of Clockwise. If you're a security or IT professional, you've got a mountain of assets to protect. Devices, identities, applications. It's a lot.

and it can create a mountain of security risks. Fortunately, you can conquer that mountain of security risks with 1Password Extended Access Management. More than half of IT pros say securing SaaS apps is their biggest challenge. With the growing problems of SaaS sprawl and shadow IT, it's not hard to see why.

Thankfully, Trellica by 1Password can discover and secure access to all your apps, managed or not. Trellica by 1Password inventories every app and use at your company. Then pre-populated app profiles assess... SaaS risks, letting you manage access, optimize spend, and enforce security best practices across every app your employees use. Manage shadow IT, securely onboard and off-board employees, and meet compliance goals. Trellica by OnePassword provides a complete...

solution for SaaS access governance. And it's just one of the ways that extended access management helps teams strengthen compliance and security. While I've not had a reason to use Trelica, I have had a reason to use 1Password for literal years at this point. I love it. It is my password manager across all of my platforms, and I would have it no other way.

because I couldn't get into anything or be anywhere. It wasn't for 1Password. 1Password's award-winning password manager is trusted by millions of users, including yours truly, and more than 150,000 businesses from IBM. And now they're securing more than just passwords with one password extended access management. Plus, it's ISO 27001 certified with regular third-party audits and...

the industry's largest bug bounty. It exceeds the standards set by various authorities and is a leader in security. Take the first step to better security for your team by securing credentials and protecting every application, even unmanaged shadow IT. Learn more at 1password.com slash clockwise. That's 1password.com slash clockwise, all lowercase.

Thanks to 1Password for their support of this show and Relay. All right, we are back from the break and that means bonus topic. What is your least favorite and most favorite vegetable? Christopher? So honourable mention for courgettes or zucchini, zucchini fruity especially. And my number one spot has to go to aubergine or eggplant. Just so good. Especially when like charred and grilled and loads.

Far too much olive oil. My God, it's so good. I don't think I really have a particular vegetable that I would despise. The closest I can get is miniature sweet corn, I think. My favorite vegetable is probably roast Brussels sprouts. It's true. And my least favorite is green beans. Get them away. Kathy? Probably cucumbers. Least favorite onions can go to hell. Thank you. Onions?

The flavor is fine, but their texture, it doesn't matter how well you cook them or don't cook them or whatever. I loathe onions. For me, my least favorite would be beets. Oh, it's like eating dirt, isn't it? Yes, it's so bad. And my most favorite, like Jason.

Roast Brussels sprouts. Love, love, love. If you out there would like to get ad-free episodes with an extra unwound episode every week, become a member of Clockwise. Just go to relay.fm slash Clockwise. Sign up. It's just $7 a month, $70 a year, and you will help. support the work we do here on the show. With that, we've reached the end of this episode of Clockwise. All that's left is to thank our awesome guests for joining us. Christopher Finn, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. It's literally dinner time here in the UK. I'm going to go and have some vegetables. Alrighty, and Kathy. Kathy Campbell, RelayFMSwitchOn.FMSwitchOn. Thank you for being here as always. Yes, thank you for having me. And hopefully even with my apparently rude... opinions I'll be asked back Kathy Campbell with grilled onions right there there it is and that is it we're done we did it somehow we survived and despite all the opinions anyway thanks Micah for having me here

I always appreciate it. And thanks to everybody out there for listening. And until next time, we remind everyone, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. Bye, everybody.