624: Lots of Chunky Efforts

It's time for episode 624 of the Clockwise Podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, September 24th, 2025. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast that's captured at 30 frames per minute. I'm one of your hosts, Micah Sargent, and I'm joined across the internet by my good pal, my dear friend. It is Dan, the man, Morin. How you doing, Dan?

That is really slow. You can't see it, but I'm doing like jerky movements to mimic. I think you can define frames however you want to. Oh, okay. All right. Like we... Each frame is 30 people of crimes for the next 3,000 milliseconds or something. I don't know. I got nothing. Well, while we ponder how we define frames here on the show, let me introduce the first of our two guests. To my left, senior writer at CNET, it's Jeff Carlson. Welcome back to the show, Jeff.

Thanks for having me. I have a whole stack of picture frames back here. Did I misread the assignment? No, you did well. Perfect. Thank you. And to my left this week, it is video creator and podcast host, Stephen Robles. Welcome back, Stephen. The theater of the mind. Hey, it's great to be here. I love it. Let's get underway. We've got four topics, 30 minutes. Mine for you is this. Meta.

announced new AR glasses last week that actually seem to be getting pretty positive reviews. The Ray-Ban display glasses. I would just love to know. Do they interest you? Is there a way in which they could interest you? And we'll start with you, Jeff. So this is one of those things that has always seemed just out of reach because the technology was never going to be.

small enough or good enough. And yet it seems like they've hit a sweet spot. So yeah, actually, it is kind of interesting. I go through the day thinking like, I would love to take a picture of that, but I'm driving or, you know. Like I would like to be able to grab little snippets of things like that. And it looks like what they've done to have an AR screen on one of the lenses.

It actually seems to be usable. It's not some chunky – there have been lots of chunky efforts. So, yeah, it seems – I don't know that I'm going to rush out and put down several hundred dollars to buy one, but it's now more in my vision as it were. I find the idea really interesting. Obviously, we've been talking about these kinds of technology for a long time. Apple has come at this from a very different direction with the Vision Pro. I kind of feel like...

There is a convergence happening in the sense that, you know, Apple started at one end of the spectrum, Meta started at the other end of the spectrum, and they're kind of building towards the same idea. And so implementing the display, I'm impressed, if nothing else, with how fast Meta has iterated on this product, right? They had the Ray-Bans with the cameras and earbuds a year or two ago, and they've really kind of quickly moved along.

to add this display in as well now. I think the biggest challenge for Meta is their platform is just not as compelling as if Google or Apple were doing this. That's just the nature of the game right now. And obviously, Meta's own...

image and problems with privacy, security, all of those things play a big part here. I'm not a huge fan of the company. I don't have a lot of buy-in on Meta, so that doesn't really appeal to me. But the fact that this hardware has proved viable and therefore provides sort of a template.

for other competitors, possibly Apple as well, to make their way into this space is really encouraging. I will say I did have that moment where I was like, oh, I want to look and see if I could schedule a demo. They're letting you do this thing where you go into the store and use it. Um, and I put in my, my location and I live outside Boston, which is a pretty big city. And the nearest option for me was in New Hampshire, uh, like, like 30 miles away.

at a Best Buy? And I'm like, really? We have Best Buys here. I'm kind of puzzled by that. I mean, granted, the demos don't start for another week or so, so perhaps they will expand that listing. But I was kind of scratching my head looking at that. I'm not driving to Nashua for this. Sorry. It's too far. Anyway, Stephen, what are your thoughts?

I'm super interested. I never got a pair of the Meta Ray-Bans at first. And so being able to record videos on the glasses, but also preview it like right there as you're wearing them seems pretty interesting. You know, pedestrian directions, I imagine if you're a city is cool.

translation and even live captions just for people even speaking your language it would be cool i am just hoping that one day meta adds the feature where when i look at a person that i have met before and they say hey steven and i have a total

brain fart for lack of a better word just like don't know their name just pop up their name in the glasses because facebook knows every person on the earth right and hopefully with facial recognition maybe we could just do that so that's the killer to get it right that's the really

You know, I can always fall back on my current tool, which is like, hey, man, or hey, bro. You know, that usually works. But I don't know. I mean, 800 bucks is a lot to test it out just for kicks. I haven't seen where my live demo is. But I don't know. I think I'm going to try it. Yeah, I, at the very least, plan on trying. I'm not big on the company. And I wonder, too, about sort of the integration of the...

The stuff that I use, the services that I use with them, I want them to be useful to me. And I feel like because it's coming from a third-party company from my main platforms, it's not going to be as useful. I've used meta Ray-Bans in the past and found that experience to be a little bit... It's hard to sort of... Add it to your day to day workflow or your day to day happenings because of the third party nature of the product. But.

Like Jeff was saying, I do find myself in places where I'm going, I wish I could just record some video of this right now or take a photo of this right now. And for many reasons, I'm not able to. So yes, they interest me. But I want to see this technology from a more prominent to me company like Apple. Thank you all for your answers to that. Let's go to our next topic, which comes from Jeff.

All right. So speaking of Apple, every iPhone launch seems to have a gate, it seems. This year, it's scratch gate. Some new phone models are reportedly prone to scratches, even on the first day they were in Apple stores. So my question is, do scratches and scuffs concern you? Or are they like the badges of a well-used device? Or do you just rise above it all and use a case? I have been going without an iPhone case for the last couple of years. My rationale for that was really...

I disliked, I think as I mentioned before, I disliked having, because I'm on the iPhone upgrade program and I get a new phone every year, I disliked buying a new case every year because I felt it was wasteful. So I, and I thought, you know, I get, I try to get the iPhone with the most interesting color.

in the model that I want. And I hate putting in a case and not being able to see that. And I used a clear case, et cetera, but that was just a piece of plastic I'm throwing out. So, you know, I've kind of... gotten to the point where it's like, yeah, I'm just going to live with it. And the virtue of being on the upgrade programming and getting a new phone every year is generally that I only really...

think about it and get annoyed by it for like six months before I replaced the phone, as just happened with my 16 Pro, which was pretty fun. It was not too scuffed up or anything on most of the exterior, but the... top part of the screen had gotten very scratched. And so I got increasingly annoyed with that just because I could actually see it as I'm looking at the phone. But again, replacing that phone meant I only had to live with it for a limited amount of time.

Obviously, I have a 17 Pro, and I've seen the stories about the phones getting scratched up so far. So good with mine. I don't tend to keep it in a pocket with anything else. But I think it's the nature of doing business. I'm not going to let it harsh my mellow too much there. Steven, what about you?

I'm of two minds on this because, you know, I like the idea of, you know, use your stuff. You buy stuff to use the stuff. So use the stuff. And I'll see photos sometimes of like original iPhones or like older iPhones that are just. beat up and totally scratched up and honestly like wow that looks cool like that looks like it was really used it has like life

on it, just on those marks. But when it comes to my own devices, I can never get past that hurdle of like, yeah, I'm cool with the first and second scratch and I'll just keep living with the scratches. And so I use a case a lot.

I have both the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 Pro Max in hand right now, which I think we'll get to in a little bit. And I think I want to use these without a case. The hand ability or hold ability, I think, is better. But I am... i don't know i'm still a little particular about the scratches especially on the screen

You know, if I get a nick on the side or a thing on the back, that's fine. You can try without a case, but if you get that, put it on and then it covers up, you don't see it. But the scratches on the screen really get me in the 16 Pro Max I've had for the last year. Seemed really prone to scratches and I'm very careful putting it in a pocket with nothing else. You know, it's...

Keys, wallet, bowling ball, everything in the left pocket, and then only iPhone in the right. I think I found your problem. No, but only iPhone in the right. But there was a lot of hairline scratches on my 16 Pro Max screen, and that I would not stand for. So hopefully... the 17 series is better. My biggest problem, yeah, it was the last model of iPhone. My 16 Pro Max has all these hairline scratches on the screen. And I remember within the first week of getting it, I looked down.

And near the bottom of my screen was this scratch that you didn't even necessarily have to hold it in like super bright light and turn it just the right way. No. And that was frustrating. Now, when the phone is on and it's lit up, you don't really see them. But if I run my finger across it. I can catch on that little scratch and that's not great. So I'm hoping that the 17 Pro Max screen is a little bit better. But ultimately, unless it's actually impacting my ability to see what's on screen.

I'm not too pressed by it. I don't see it most of the time. So it's more just a psychological bit of torture than anything else. Yeah, that's how I feel. Jeff, what are your thoughts? For me, I think partially I also don't use a case, but if it gets a little scratched or dinged, then... That's fine, partially because I'm not really seeing it because I'm focused on the screen side. But I do –

I get it. You just spent $1,100 on a brand new phone, and in the first week, it's got a little scratch on it. I don't think it's realistic to think that Apple can... prevent all kinds of scratches. And it's been interesting to see where people are finding these and theorizing on the way the anodization was made and all that kind of stuff. But ultimately...

Look, you bought a thing you're going to use. If you're worried about it getting scratched, put a case on it or don't use it, I guess. I don't know.

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spot on the back being open for the sake of just being able to especially charge anything that can reduce the amount of space between the charging coils and the charging pad means a reduction in heat. And that's very important, especially because you don't want your battery getting super hot. Open case is thinner. It's lighter, it prevents accessories from shearing off, and it optimizes mag-safe charging.

so much more. It's the case for MagSafe and the new iPhone 17. Go now to theopencase.com and use promo code clockwise for 10% off. That's theopencase.com. with a promo code clockwise for 10% off. Our thanks to OpenCase for its support of the show and all of Relay. All right, we are back from the break, and that means it's time for Dan's Topic.

So we all have a ton of different devices that we probably use. And my question for you is, if your device breaks in some way... When do you look at repairing it and when do you look at just replacing it? What helps you make that determination? Have you chosen to repair things rather than replace them or vice versa? I just want to know how you sort of think about that in our world of so many devices.

Back in the day, I used to replace a lot of things. I mean, I have iFixit toolkits all over and even up to the iMac. I mean, I learned how to... peel off the 21 and a half inch you know retina screen and replace that hard drive with an ssd and so i was definitely more into the repair back then but recently i've not really ventured into that and i don't I've not once tried the self-service repair that even Apple offers. I actually have an M1 iPad Pro.

that no longer turns on i brought it to the apple store it was dropped on the sleep button and so i brought it to the apple store and i said can this be fixed i thought maybe they could just replace the sleep button The only offer they had was replace it for $700. And I was like, well...

No, that's OK. I could buy a new one, M2 or M4. And the thought of trying to repair it myself, I just did not want to pursue it. So I'm on a full on just to replace them now if I get Apple care on pretty much all my devices. And so hopefully that takes care. of it, but no repairs anymore. When it comes to Apple's stuff, for the most part, I'm going to be a let them repair it or replace it situation.

Most other gadgets I'm going to try to repair myself. One example of this is despite the loveliness and the wonderfulness of the Ember mug, the charging base of it is. And continues to be a problem because they use these little pogo pins. And if those pogo pins get even the slightest bit of moisture, then they rust and then they do not make a proper connection anymore. And so I bought like a whole bunch of pogo.

pins on some site. I don't remember which site. And every once in a while, got to pop out the soldering iron and solder on new pogo pins. And that keeps that $60 charging base going. I like being able to take stuff apart and fix it. But yeah, Apple stuff, the between AppleCare plus 2.0, the reckoning and whatever else I might have, it's just easier to have them repair it or replace it.

Jeff, curious to hear your thoughts. I'm of two minds. Like I will try to get something to live as long as it can. But I'm also agreeing with you, Micah, in that. If Apple can do the repair, obviously they're going to do it. And so in terms of like my wife's phone.

She has an iPhone 13 Pro. It's still perfectly fine, but the battery was shot. So we went in and paid the money to have Apple replace the battery. Is that something I probably could have done? Yes. Would we have ended up having to buy a new phone at that point? Probably. So let the experts do it. But she didn't have to pay for a whole brand new phone. She's perfectly happy with what she has. And now she's got the battery for it. So I would say.

Like I try to repair if possible or have repaired. But in terms of doing it myself, no, I'll replace things if possible. I mean, I think you've all alluded to the problems I have as well, which is stuff has become... harder to repair than it used to be. I too used to take apart lots of PCs, swap stuff out, even upgraded the processor on my Power Mac G3 back in the day, along with RAM and hard drives, etc. However, it is nice to find an opportunity to repair something.

say this specifically because I recently found a guy who has made a little cottage industry out of repairing HomePods. And I had a HomePod that had died that started making these awful noises. And it's just been sitting there on my... My chest drawer is like a paperweight, and I didn't know what to do with it. And then I saw our pal Jason Snell got his repaired by this guy. And I was like, oh, well, mine's just sitting there dead. I mean, it's not doing anything.

I spent the 85 bucks and I sent it into this guy and he live streams all his repairs, which was just... It's fascinating to watch how practiced he's become at taking these things apart and finding exactly what's wrong and putting them back together again. And it made me feel good because it's like, either I was just going to take this and recycle it, or it was just going to sit there. More likely, it was going to sit there.

Until I eventually remember to take it someplace and recycle it. And now I'll be able to put it back in the service, hopefully, as part of my stereo pair. And that's great. I mean, it's the best possible outcome. So I do wish that we had a little more opportunities like that. I'm always very impressed.

with the companies like iFixit that do so much work to figure out how to repair these things. And I'm glad that Apple has made that at least more accessible, if not perhaps as accessible as it could be. So I think we should be repairing more than we are replacing.

That's just good for society. Thank you all for your thoughts on that. Let's go to our final topic, which comes from Stephen. All right. Having an existential crisis. I have the iPhone Air here, the 17 Pro Max. I'm going to make videos about them, but I'm trying to decide what is going to be my main phone.

And I think I did something to finally inform the decision. But I just want to know from you guys, if you've tried them, go to the store and held them. Or if you went Air or Pro Max 17, what'd you do? What happened? I definitely went to Pro Max 17. I am very happy with that. The air, while it's cool, I just can't see. reducing the number of cameras that I have because I do use all of the cameras and I like, I like all of the cameras.

I haven't had a chance to hold it yet, and I do want to go to the store and and just see it in person. But I don't see myself being convinced that it's the choice for me. I do find it interesting that you are. having trouble deciding that makes me feel like if I do go to the store and hold it, that my mind might be changed. But I'm really happy with the 17 Pro Max even now, having just had it. So yeah, I think I'm going to stay there.

Hopefully. Jeff, what are your thoughts? I am all in on the 17 Pro, not the Pro Max. I still like the regular size. But that said, it was just delivered to me. By my trusty UPS guy. So I've not actually had an iPhone Air in hand. And I'm very, very curious. I just haven't made my way to an Apple store yet.

a lot of the same reasons i take a lot of photos with mine i write about the photography features so it's worth it for me to have the best photo package possible I think having more battery life, I'm really intrigued to see, especially as we go on, how the battery life fares and how people who know that they're making a commitment to using a device with less battery power.

Like how is that going to work day to day? Like are you always charging it in the middle of the day? But it seems at least so far that it's pretty good. Like it's not as bad as people thought. really comes down to the fact that one is bright orange and the other one's not. And so that was an easy choice. Yeah, that is part of it. I mean...

I went into the store last week to pick up my iPhone 17 Pro. While I was there, I got a chance to handle the iPhone Air. The fellow is helping me out. Let me check it out. I, you know, to Steven and thus Micah's point about being worried about seeing what it's like in person.

I was impressed, I have to say. I kind of poo-pooed it when they introduced it, thinking like, ah, it's thinner, how much of a difference does that make? But handling it in person did really impress me with the amount of engineering that's gone into that phone. It is kind of unbelievably thin. And for me...

I don't know that those are the trade-offs that I necessarily want to make, but it does make me think about the future of the iPhone and whether or not that is the direction we're heading. And certainly with the promise of a folding iPhone next year. year, hopefully, you know, the Air is a necessary step along that line. So I stuck with the 17 Pro. I will say I do think it is also the most compelling year ever for the iPhone 17 for the base model iPhone, which has picked up a ton of features.

And if I were somebody who was a little more price conscious or was not writing about this for a living, I could easily see myself getting by with the iPhone 17. So Apple's made, by all accounts, three fantastic phone models. Sorry, I guess I can include the Pro Max. I just don't want the Pro Max. Four fantastic phone models that really satisfy every need. And that's what they're going for. They want to have a lot of models to cover all that ground. And I think they've...

made them all compelling in their own way this year. Stephen, why don't you wrap this up? Listen, I've been using the iPhone Air, I guess, for the past four days, and it is remarkable. I've been a Pro Max person for the last three or four years. There was at one point I was walking around and I couldn't tell which pocket the iPhone Air was in.

and like that alone was just it blew my mind because if you're a pro max user and you wear anything but like super tight pants it's like pulling your athletic shorts down not you know in an inappropriate way but you know that you feel the weight you feel the thickness and holding the eye phone air typing on it it is such a cool experience but the three big caveats the battery the speaker which it's only one speaker and the cameras battery life

Right now, I've been using it a light usage day, five hours in, and I'm at 74%. If you're a light user, battery will be okay. You'll make it through. The mono speaker, whatever. If you use AirPods, maybe it's not a big deal most of the time. The camera, though, is the biggest question, I think, for most people. And a little trick, and I posted on social media yesterday. If you go to the Photos app on your Mac...

You can create a new smart album and you can add focal lengths as a filter across your entire library. And so add focal length is 2.2 millimeters. And then add another one, focal length is 15.66 millimeters. Match any of those conditions and that will show you all the photos you've taken on the 15 Pro Max and or the 16 Pro Max.

with the telephoto and the ultra wide cameras. So you can see in one smart album, how many pictures did I take with those two lenses that I would be giving up with the iPhone air? And what were those pictures? So I applied it and I've taken over a thousand photos. with the ultrawide and telephoto lenses just over the last two years. It's different focal lengths if you go to the 14 Pro and earlier.

But a lot of those photos were really important photos. When I was at WWDC, where I was sitting, I used the telephoto lens every time I took a picture of the big screen and posted it on social media. A lot of family trips and vacations, I found a lot of telephoto. pictures there there's a lot of ultra wides especially like house showing rooms things like that and so that little trick showed me to give up those two lenses would be the bigger deal for myself

And I think that's helped me decide I'm going Pro Max as my daily driver. But man, holding the iPhone Air, it's really hard to give up because you really feel how light and thin it is.

We have just enough time for a bonus topic. But before we get there, let me tell you about our second sponsor. It's One Pass for bringing you this episode of Clockwise. If you are a security or IT professional. Hi, you've got a mountain of assets to protect devices, identities, applications. It's a lot.

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And our thanks to 1Password for its support of the show and of Relay. My bonus topic for you quickly. What is the last adventure you went on? Jeff, we'll start with you. I would say in terms of adventure, a friend and I, we spent a couple of weeks traveling around the Sierra Nevada area of California on a photo expedition, basically just two weeks of doing nothing but photography.

That's pretty good. I have a three-year-old, so I go on adventures every week. That is the adventure. Yeah, that is the adventure. I think most recently we went to the Children's Museum in Boston. That was a pretty recent adventure. that he and I went on. So I'm going to count that.

We just last week went on a college visit for my oldest son. He's 16. And that was an adventure. It was the first time ever doing that. And so kind of mind blowing how quickly time is passing, but it was super fun. And so looking forward to doing some more. For me, I recently went camping and took the dogs with us. They are little dogs that mostly spend their time indoors. And so a little worried about it, but they had a great time, did a lot of hiking themselves.

and it was a delight. Thank you all for your answers on that. Hey, to you listening, if you would like to get ad-free episodes with an extra Unwound episode every week where Dan and I... chat about, well, whatever. Well, you can become a member of Clockwise. Go to relay.fm slash Clockwise to sign up. It's just $7 a month, $70 a year, and you will help support the show.

All right, with that, it is time to thank our awesome guests. Jeff Carlson, thank you so much for being here. Thank you again for having me. And Stephen Robles, thank you so much for joining us. Always a pleasure. Thank you. And Michael will be back next week. But until then, we remind everyone out there listening, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. Bye, everybody.