621: Somewhat Thicker than a Knife

It's time for episode 621 of the Clockwise podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast where many hands make a confusing clock. My name is Dan Morin, and I am joined as always. Well, I guess not as always. I wasn't here last week. Hopefully, as always, across the internet by my good friend, my pal, the one, the only Micah Sargent. How are you doing today, Micah?

I'm doing well, Dan. Happy to have you back in the saddle, on the seat, on the throne. All the places where you rest one, where one rests one's rump. It's good to have you back. Saddle up the old clock. they're doing anyways this is of course the show where we invite two fantastic guests to talk about four tech topics to my left this week it is producer reporter at the texas standard host of the lions towers and shield podcast and author of ios access for all the multi

Shelly Brisbane. Welcome back, Shelly. Thanks, Dan. Good to be here. And to my left, 9to5Mac editor at large and Bigfoot's biggest fan, it's Zach Hall. Hello, Zach. Hello there. Hello there. Happy to be here. Always from time to time. Sometimes twice. All right. Let me kick things off.

A recent milestone in the Google antitrust case has determined that not only does Google get to keep Chrome, but it also can keep paying Apple the $20 billion a year or so it's paying. How do you feel about this resolution? Is this end up feeling, you know, effective to you? Is it feel toothless? Like what is your, does you think Google's going to have to do anything or is this just going to be business as usual? Shelley, what are your thoughts? Well, I'm struck.

By how long court processes take, this is not something is unexpected. But this case started in 2020 and it's made its way through the Justice Department and now through one court. And clearly somebody is going to appeal probably even.

Probably Google, because what's happened is they don't have to give up Chrome and they don't have to stop making those payments. But the underlying case is still out there that Google is a monopolist. And so they're clearly going to appeal. And it could be several years. And most of the people who've observed this case. I'll point out the...

Changes that have happened in the marketplace since 2020, since this case was filed, mostly including the change. We've all moved from search to AI. And so the landscape is changing. I'm not saying anything we don't know already. But I guess what I'm struck by is how difficult it is to find a court remedy that sort of matters in a really hyper focused way by the time we actually get the case resolved. And it does feel sort of disappointing if you think that Google is a monopolist or needs to be.

cut back in some way. But I'm not sure that the remedies that were proposed at the time of filing of the case, the getting rid of Chrome and not making those payments, are actually going to accomplish what those who are for Google's wings being. clipped want to accomplish, especially as the marketplace has changed so much.

Very well put. And that is why I direct you all to Shelley's answer instead of mine, which is that from the perspective of just wanting interesting things to happen, I was really hoping that Google was going to have to give up Chrome because. That's fascinating. And I get to see where's it going to go next? Who's going to own it? How's that going to happen? And so when I discovered that this was not happening, I thought...

Well, it's a bummer. Now it just gets to keep the stuff that it's doing. That's that's not interesting. But yes, we know that there will be, you know, an appeal and appeal and appeal and appeal. And it's going to continue to go on forever. Whether the final decisions or whether the remedies that have been suggested as of now will make any difference, yeah, I highly doubt it.

As is always the case with this kind of stuff, it's a wait and see situation. Zach, what are your thoughts? There was a line in the ruling that was... It reminded me of the 2008 bank crisis where there were banks that were too big to fail. So they needed to be propped up so that people that use those banks wouldn't have negative effects that were like dominoes falling.

And I think what the line was about was that if Google had to stop these payments to Apple, for example, there'd be too many down market negative effects so that enforcing that just wouldn't be viable. So that reminded me of sort of that of like Google and Apple's arrangement is too big to fail now because it would just have too many negative effects to other parties. The biggest impact so far for me has been that just learning, you know, and just really.

Knowing that now that Apple receives $20 billion per year and pure profit from Google, really. Eddie Q has said that he's lost sleep over losing that revenue per year. He can now sleep again. He really needs to. We all agree. Get some rest in. Apple can relax on considering buying perplexity because that was sort of their way out with search. Which is good because buying AI-powered search isn't the same as buying an AI startup, which some say Apple should do.

And ultimately, perplexity doesn't have to pretend that they're buying Chrome anymore with money that they don't have. So those are the kind of immediate impacts for me that I see. Yeah, these are all great points. It's such a weird thing. And I think what kind of is illustrative to me here about this case, and Shelley pointed out very rightly, you know, it started five years ago. It will take...

probably another couple of years to wend its way to its final resting place, whatever that may be. But When we get to the point where government regulators and the courts get involved in these kinds of things, I think it's interesting because it's almost always kind of a lagging indicator.

By the time they've gotten so big and so powerful that the government thinks about taking action, it's almost like fighting the last war. I think about the Microsoft antitrust case in the 90s. And from our vantage point now... we could see that Microsoft's dominance...

you know, it was on the wane even then, right? And not necessarily as a result of the antitrust thing, but it had kind of hit a natural peak where they had such control over a market. But the problem was that was the wrong market. It was the old market. It was the... market that was going to be challenged by things like the shift to mobile. Similarly, I look at this Google case and think to myself,

Yeah, this is great in terms of the search dominance and how that pans out. And maybe, yeah, it's something still worth looking into, but it's also kind of the last war because... Right now, as this increasing amount of AI has come in as competition, right? People asking AI chatbots for information rather than asking Google.

I think even Google itself has, by its fact that it's built in all these AI tools now, has realized that it may be at risk. It's once dominant, sort of unthinkably unshakable position. may just be winnowed out by the market forces. Yeah, I don't find myself thinking this is going to be any more effective than the antitrust ruling against Microsoft was back in the day. I think Google will continue to be a going concern, but that their dominance may end more as a result of the wave.

that the market has shifted than of any regulation imposed on it. But thank you all for your thoughts on that. Let's go to our second topic, which comes from Shelley.

So as the Apple summer beta cycle wraps up, I'm wondering if you have encountered any apps that you, if you're running the betas, first of all, pick a beta. That's appropriate to the question. But if you're running any apps that have not worked during the beta cycle that have either inconvenienced you or made your life difficult in any significant way, and how did you cope?

Love this question. I will say that this time around, I have not had this problem. And so it hasn't been an issue, but there have been a couple of times in the past where apps I regularly used would. simply not start, or if they started, they just did not work appropriately. And in almost every case, I simply adapted to the situation. There were never apps that were kind of like, if this isn't working, I can't do.

what I normally need to do and there's no other way around it. So I've never had a situation where I had to go. and reinstall the sort of running version of the operating system in place of the beta because of an app not working. Zach, what about you? um i have to run all the betas everywhere all the time for work and um just for like coverage and everything um this past cycle has been pretty smooth

The experience for me has been more about adjusting to the way things look and things like having dark mode icons that have a bright shimmer effect around them when your phone rotates or moves doesn't really make sense to me. So I just don't use dark icons as much anymore.

i guess more recently things like like like mac software would not react well to betas sometimes for the sake of the developers you know just just cutting it off up front and saying like you know we know things are going to break And we just can't support that support load over the summer while we're updating. But I really haven't had anything like that either this past cycle. So it's been pretty smooth for me.

Yeah, I think my biggest challenges have been like Apple's own stuff not working. Like I had some problems with shortcuts early on and some workflows that I had set up didn't. didn't work correctly on the mac on tahoe and that was very frustrating at times um but other than that

I'm trying to think. I felt like there was one other, but I couldn't remember what it was. There was something in the early beta period where I feel like there was an app that just, you know, crashed essentially when it was loading. And it was not something critical, but it was one of those things where it's like, all right, I got to go use it on a device that's not on a beta. or I got to go use a web alternative or something like that. I feel like the betas are generally pretty stable.

In recent years, I haven't experienced as much of a catastrophic problem. To Zach's point, even the cases with Mac apps that previously would say like, oh, we can't support this on the beta, even those have loosened. up a bit like they still throw up sort of warning screens but they'll let you run them like at your own risk essentially and i think that's vastly preferable to having builds that just like nope you don't get to use this it's like well

I should be able to decide whether or not I can run this. I won't bother you, okay? Just let me use my recording software. So in general, I feel like things are pretty stable in the cases where there are bugs or real showstoppers. get ironed out in subsequent beta releases. So it's never more than a week or two that I'm really dealing with anything. That's kind of a big issue. Shelly, you want to wrap us up?

Well, as you can imagine, I have a story. So I have a workflow where I use an app called Voice Dream Reader. And what I do is if I want to read an article later, I save it to Instapaper. I used to save it to Pocket, but Pocket's going away. Save it to Instapaper.

And then I sync that to VoiceStream Reader. And what that lets me do is essentially create a playlist of articles that I want to read in audio format. VoiceStream Reader is a great speech-based app. And so with two swipes, I can swipe from my RSS. Reader into Instapaper, which automatically syncs to VoiceStream Reader and then it just pops up. Well, VoiceStream Reader is not dealing with the Instapaper sync in the betas, in the iPhone beta right now. And so what I've had to do is...

go in from the RSS reader to a share sheet and tap VoiceStream Reader and send it directly, which just means a couple more taps. And I don't like those couple more taps, but it's not going to break my life. I'm fine with it. The one that is more problematic, however, is I have a heart monitor in my body and there is an app that monitors the monitor and sends that information to my doctors. And when I installed the beta on my phone, which I just did a couple of weeks ago.

I had completely forgotten about that app and that I need to check compatibility. And sure enough, I got an email that says, hey, would you please turn your app back on because we're not able to talk to your heart monitor right now. And so, oopsie.

I have a choice right now because it's a week away from announcement and probably a couple more weeks before. Maybe the software will be available to us immediately on announcement day. It often is. I have a choice. Do I try to revert or do I just wait?

Decided to wait. Some people might think that's a bad decision. But I think from now on, it's going to be more important for me to have a non-daily driver device as my iPhone beta. And so I'm probably going to be in the market for one of those iPhones that everybody's selling in order to buy. new ones this fall so that that would be my beta machine next year and I won't have to make my heart monitor stop working.

We got two topics down, which of course means it's halftime here at Clockwise. And this week's episode is brought to you by our friends at Steam Clocks. Steam Clocks software is a design and development studio that ships great mobile apps. They work with growing tech companies to level up their customers.

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It's the clock synergy for you right there. 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. All right. Halftime is over. Micah, what is your topic? I just got back from a camping trip.

And I was curious, when or if you go camping, what tech do you bring with you on a camping trip? Zach, we'll start with you. I think you've got to bring Apple Vision Pro and then use one of the immersive environments. You just have the 6D experience. No, for me, I'm probably not going to bring my Mac or my iPad in that environment, partially so I don't...

damage them or lose them to the wilderness and also just detach a bit. If I'm being realistic, I'm bringing my Apple Watch and my iPhone pair of AirPods. I feel like those can be useful outside of the office environment, you know.

your camera and, you know, your, maybe your contact to, if, you know, if you get lost or something and, you know, if it's a. unpleasant sound at night you can you know listen to something else with your airpods so um that's kind of essential for me maybe if i'm bringing something else like an action camera that i might not take other places would would be cool for you know if there's like an activity i'm doing while camping

And then like a really big maybe is maybe a projector, like watch a movie with others, you know, I've got a really compact one now. So that could, that could kind of be a cool community event. What about you guys? I have been camping and I do occasionally go camping. I think the last time I went, one of the things I consider a critical piece of technology to bring with me was a small Bluetooth speaker. And that was because at the time I had like a...

18 month old and needed some white noise uh guess what that kid didn't sleep anyways and we ended up packing up everything at 8 30 at night and going home fortunately it was only like 20 minutes away um But yeah, that was kind of crucial. I've used that on other travels as well, just to provide like, you know, connected to my iPhone, play some stuff from dark noise or even the built in background sounds on iOS. And that's a very, very helpful piece of technology.

And plus, if you don't need it for that, it's great to have a little bit of music or something like that while you're hanging out with some people. I think that's a lot of fun. The other thing, of course, I recommend is just battery packs, right? Like, I mean, you want to keep your phone charged. even if you're not on your phone, whatever, like you want to have your phone available to you. And yeah, so I'll cede my time since I don't do a lot of campaign. Shelly, what about you? I don't...

do much camping either. But were I to do it, and I have been on a few vacations where we sit by the lake, it's not really camping, but it is out in the quote unquote wilderness. And certainly I'd bring my phone. for reasons of having a camera and also just communicating, assuming that there's a signal. But if there's not, I'm not too chuffed about it.

I would bring a Bluetooth speaker because we will grill out and it's nice to have a little music as background when you're making those hamburgers or those steaks or whatever you're doing. And also because I make my living doing audio, it's just natural for me to pack a field recorder and a microphone. Might use it to capture nature noises. I might never take it out of the bag. Most of the time I don't take it out of the bag, but I don't feel right unless I have a microphone nearby.

I don't go camping either. This is the first time I've gone camping since, I don't know, like high school or before. So this was the first camping trip. Went with the dogs as well. I brought a... Anker has this nice battery pack thing that is a sort of three in one. It's got ports where you can plug things in, but then also the lanyard that you can use to like.

connected to a backpack is itself a wire. And then it has a retractable wire as the third one. So all USB-C, fantastic. And I thought, I will be bringing my phone. my watch and my AirPods because I need to at night listen to my audio books to fall asleep. And while I was there, I did keep my phone charged, but I did not end up.

keep my Apple watch charged and was fine. It ended up dying. I kept it on my wrist because it does feel weird to not have it on my wrist, but it died. And then the AirPods, they just lasted because, again, I only use them at night. So there was enough juice in them where I didn't even need to charge them. So really, the battery pack that I thought, oh, yeah, when I plug everything into this, it's going to be great. Didn't use it for much else other than charging the phone. I was.

Very surprised and delighted that the dogs had a fantastic time. And they're both older dogs. And one of my dogs is a little guy named Henry. He. is sort of a couch potato, but it like brought him back to his earlier days. He had so much fun going out and he was hiking and running through things and going near the water and have a great time. So anyway.

Thank you all for your answers on that. Let's go to our next topic, which comes from Zach. My question is about thinnovation. How thin is too thin for technology? There's some thin Apple products coming up and there's been. sort of a history of thin Apple products and even more recently, some thin technology. So I'm wondering, has anyone ever used something that's too thin? Sort of where do you define, you know, too thin versus just right? Dan?

Well, it depends what the technology is, right? On a knife, thin. Great. Love it. Love a thin knife. Really hard to cut things otherwise. On a phone, somewhat thicker than a knife, preferably. I think there is obviously an ergonomics issue, right? Like there are things that get so thin they are not very comfortable to hold because they dig into your hands the way. that you hold them. But that said...

You know, we've all gotten accustomed to having thinner and thinner phones or thinner and thinner iPads or what have you, and that there is still a lot of value in having that. It's not the dimension I find myself most often concerned with, but I also understand that it comes with a commensurate reduction.

in weight which is uh you know something that i like to see in my in my gadgets i like to have my gadgets be a little less bulky a little less heavy because that way i don't feel like i'm carrying around a giant phone in my pocket or if i want to you know put something else in my pocket like a wallet or whatever that that helps it not feel like it's this giant unsightly thing um so

Yeah, I think what's going to be a challenge is always with these kinds of things is like how many sacrifices do you have to make in order to make things thinner, right? We saw this with the MacBook line over the last decade where they tried to get things thinner and thinner and it meant like using keyboard. that weren't as good um and sooner or later you run into limitations like how big are your ports on there how big are your buttons to make them usable so

I think there's such a thing as too thin when it comes to technology, but I'm willing to see what people have up their sleeve. Shelley? When I saw this question, my brain immediately went to phones and I realized that what I always do, I always have a case on my phone and it's partially to protect the phone, but it's also because by picking the case that fits my hand, I don't really have to worry too much about the phone.

thinness or thickness. And I have a nice wallet case that separates into a bumper case as well. And it's kind of great because it's just the right amount of thinner thick, and I don't care if they make my next iPhone a millimeter thinner, there's probably going to be a case around it. Does that add a little weight? Sure, but I can pick lightweight cases. I have an iPad 10th generation that is sort of a consumption iPad.

We also use it to monitor the temperature probes that are connected to our grill. And lately, the case fell apart. I had a Logitech keyboard case on it, and it's an old case, and it just disintegrated. And so I decided to take it off. and carry the iPad around or leave it in the living room without a case. And it's been driving me nuts because that's a rounded...

edge iPad, and it should be comfortable to hold on, but it keeps slipping out of my fingers. And so I find myself putting it in a stand in the kitchen, and I'm much happier that way. I'm probably not going to buy a new case for an iPad that's that old. But for me...

It's just too thin and it's really pretty outside the case. The iPad is in good shape because it's been in the case all this time and it's a nice looking thing. And I like the feel of it picking up, but I don't like the feel of it holding it for any length of time because it's just... too thin for my, and I have small hands, so it's too thin for my little tiny fingers.

I am with Shelly. I think that the iPad is is too thin. There's like a psychological aspect of it as well, where I'm going so thin, so delicate. I have to. treat it so delicately and it makes me kind of hesitant to even want to interact at times with it and so I, most of the time with the iPad that I have, keep it in this, you know, magneted to the case. And yeah, anytime I take it off, I'm going, um, I don't know how I feel about this sort of cut into my hands a little bit.

I have quite large hands and I feel the same kind of applies. I've got room. And so it's nice to have a little bit of something that I can grip onto. And so I tend to have some sort of case situation going on. many of Apple's devices because of the thinness of them. So I suppose, yeah, there is a thinness that is too thin for technology. And the iPad is where.

At the very least, I would hate for it to be any thinner than that. Zach, what are your thoughts on thinness in the tech space? Yeah, the iPad focus is interesting to me because I have the M4 iPad Pro 11-inch.

And I have some like thin envy, like thin V, because the 13-inch model is just slightly... less thick like it's even thinner which it seems impossible because you know these iPads are all thin but just looking at it like next you know in a store next to the one that I have it's like oh this is a little thin it just looks a little more sleek

I also enjoy the MacBook Air. I think this kind of goes back to what Dan said, because of the weight of the MacBook Air, and that's because it's thinner and doesn't have as much inside. The 2016 era MacBook Pro was definitely too thin because it didn't do what pros wanted it to do. It was thin over functional. And I think that the MacBook Air existing gives the MacBook Pro room to be thicker.

And draws a line where, you know, it can be too thin because the MacBook Air can serve that market. There's no need for a super thin MacBook Pro. That's kind of it. You know, I think.

The 17 Air, you know, thinking about that as the rumored iPhone 17 Air, I think it's probably too thin for my needs. I think it's going to be cool, even though I have like thin envy over the larger iPad. I know myself that I'll want not even like... the longest battery life but i just have battery life expectations that are probably beyond my needs but i have them i've got a camera preference that i don't think that phone will meet my biggest kind of iphone complaint is outdoor brightness

as it relates to heat. And if a little thickness made a difference in that, you know, if it just had better cooling because there's, I don't know, more space or something, then I would take that. And that's especially the case when I'm just shooting photos outside and it's super hot. And it's like, oh, I can.

I can barely see what I'm shooting. I hope this works out well. And then there was one case when I think Den really went too far for me. I was getting a haircut recently, and the barber said that the... The top of my hair was getting a little too thin at the top. I turned red and I thought, I usually enjoy haircuts. This is miserable. Yeah, that's a horrible thing to say. Yeah, I'm here for less hair. Get the warning. Look, look, let me tell you from the other end of that.

Because there's a whole lot you can do about it. No. No. It was a sales pitch. You can start getting acclimated early. All right. That's four topics down. We got just enough time for a bonus topic. But before we get to the bonus topic, I want to remind you that September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and Relay. We're going to talk about that a bit. It's an opportunity for us.

us to come together in the fight against childhood cancer. For the seventh year, the Relay community is rallying to support St. Jude because together we can make a big impact. Before St. Jude opened in 1962, childhood cancer was largely considered incurable. Today, thanks in part to better therapies, St. Jude has helped

to develop more than 80% of U.S. childhood cancer patients survive. St. Jude cares for some of the world's sickest children regardless of their race, ethnicity, beliefs, or ability to pay. Its patients receive the customized care they need to treat childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

no matter what barriers they face. And it's because of its supporters that St. Jude can provide children with cutting-edge treatments not covered by insurance at no cost to families. We're inviting the Relay community to continue the incredible generosity shown over the last seven years and once again make a donation.

support the life-saving mission of St. Jude. Donors making an individual gift of just $60 or more will be eligible to redeem a digital bundle of campaign-themed wallpapers and screensaver, and donors making a gift of $100 or more can redeem the 2025 sticker pack featuring six all-new hosts.

stickers. Please go to stjude.org slash relay where you can make a donation today. Help give them more tomorrows. Go to stjude.org slash relay to donate or start your own fundraiser today. Thanks so much, community. We really appreciate you.

All right, bonus topic. Summer, it's over. What are you most looking forward to in fall, Shelly? I'm looking forward to fall one-pot meals like chili and gumbo that I make regularly once it gets cool enough to enjoy them. I'll be right down for the gumbo. Can I just say fall is what I'm looking forward to? I just love the temperature. I love the clothes I get to wear in the fall. I love the way that people kind of...

change a little bit as they sort of get more cozy. And yeah, it's just all of it. I think fall is fantastic. Almost as good as winter. Zach, what about you? Yeah, fall is the best. I live in the South. And so the promise of cooler weather is really appealing. My birthday in October. I love Halloween. I love even Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Just all of those things. And I know we're getting more into winter, and that's really when the weather improves. But it really is just the promise of cooler days ahead and a little bit more breathable air outside. Yeah, like crisp fall air. This is nice. I like a good apple cider, even a hot or cold. They're both great. And apple cider donuts are the best. And up here in the Northeast, we get our fair share of all of those things. We have easy access, which is great.

All right. With that, I need to remind you about one more thing. Have you heard the good news about Clockwise Unwound? It's 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, just go to relay.fm slash clockwise and sign up for just $7 per month or $70 per year.

and you'll help support the show. And with that, we reach the end of the show, and all that remains is for us to thank our fantastic guests. Shelley Brisbane, thank you so much for being here this week. Thanks, Dan. It was a great time, as always. And Zach Hall, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. And Micah, we will be back next week. But until then, we remind everyone out there, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. Bye, everybody.