637: Just One of Matter’s Three States

It's time for episode 637 of the Clockwise podcast from Relay, recorded Monday, December 29th, 2025. Clockwise, two hosts, one tech topic, less than 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise. Don't adjust your podcast player if things sound a little different. It's because we're going a bit off script. My name is Dan Moore, and I am joined, as always, by my co-host, the fabulous, the fantastic, the festive, Micah Sargent. How are you doing today, Micah? I'm doing well. I am in a diaper.

Baby New Year. Baby New Year, right? Yeah, I put that together, but I'm also... We're potty training my kids, so I guess conservation. One less diaper, one more diaper. Conservation. Diapers cannot be created or destroyed. Only changed form. All right. We're wackier than usual. This is odd. I know. We don't usually do sort of off format episodes, but let me explain a little bit what we're doing here. It's the last episode of the year.

One thing that we have started doing this year, as we've told you about several times, is we have our... extra unwound segment. If you are a member of Clockwise, which means you go to relay.fmclockwise, you sign up for $7 a month or $7 a year, which of course helps support the show, then not only do you get ad-free episodes of Clockwise, but you get the...

extra unwound segment, which comes at the end of the main show. And that's a segment where Mike and I discuss a tech topic in some more depth. Sometimes it's something spawned by what we talked about on the show with our guests. Sometimes it's just something that's... we're interested in or something that has happened to one of us recently. So it's just a chance for the two of us to talk a little bit more without the time limits of the usual clockwise episode.

And so we wanted to give you a taste of that as we at the end of the year here. This is the kind of thing that you will get if you sign up to support the show and you get that unwound segment. It's going to sound a little bit looser. It's a little bit more fun.

A little bit more fun. Wow. I'm just like, it's a little bit, it's a little bit less structured, I guess I should say, right? Like we, you know, we are very regimented. We have done, as you heard at the top, 630 plus episodes of this show. and we are very diligent about sticking to our format during that main show. There is only one time. Micah, do you know? There is only one episode of Clockwise that is longer than 30 minutes. Is that the game show one?

It is. There is an episode of Clockwise that is not an episode of Clockwise. It's actually an episode of the Pundit Showdown. Which Philip Michaels used to host on Macworld, and we let him do sort of a sneaky episode that Jason and I snuck into an episode of Clockwise. So it's not even really a Clockwise episode, I maintain, but it does throw off all our stats.

Weird. Weird. Anyway, so let's jump in here. One thing I thought would be fun to talk about is as this is our last episode of the year. We look a little bit back. We look a little bit forward. We talk maybe about things that we feel have fallen short or things we'd like to see and maybe what we're excited about. interested in going into 2026. And since I came up with this, I'll mention one thing, which I had the experience of traveling last week. I was driving to upstate New York for...

celebrations of the holidays for my extended family lives up there. My wife and I were in the car. And one thing I discovered that... i found frustrating is and this may be a i don't think it's uniquely east coast but i think it is a largely east coast thing many of our roads in the east coast our highways have rest stops areas that you can pull off the highway

You can fill up with gas. You can grab some food. We'll have either some fast food options or a little convenience store or something like that. These are pretty common in the Northeast. I drive I-90 to the upstate New York. They're all along those through Massachusetts and New York. If you go down through Connecticut and New Jersey and stuff like that, you'll find them all along those routes too.

As far as I can tell, none of the mapping apps do a good job of telling you where these things are, which is really annoying. It's actually really hard to figure it out. I kind of know broadly where they are because I've been driving some of these roads for most of my life.

But when you're trying to plan a trip out like, okay, we need to stop and have lunch, like figuring out like, okay, where's the next rest stop? Or how far away? If we miss this one, how far after that one? Like you'd think this would be in maps. None of that is in maps. That's interesting.

You have to Google it and find these kind of sketchy sites or these sites that are badly laid out trying to explain. But don't get the eastbound and the westbound confused, right? Because they're on different sides, except when sometimes they're at the same place. And it just was one of those things where I... sat there thinking like, why are our mapping apps not better at this in the year 2025? And I think it's one of those places where, and I think this is a larger thing.

It's the good old Northern California bias. It's the people building the apps live in a specific geography for the most part. And if those kinds of things don't exist in that geography... then sometimes they fall by the wayside. And that also goes for other types of things with just like testing for using devices in, say, different kinds of weather than people experience in Northern California. Not a notably varied climate.

Or just like planning for things like, you know, it's the same sort of broadly speaking idea. Like you look at maps and for a long time, I think they've gotten better, right? They've rolled out all these improved maps across the board for Apple Maps. But like for a long time, like the Cupertino stuff was like super detailed.

And other places in the country, not so much. Not so super detailed. So I thought that's sort of an interesting thing that I found myself thinking about is the bias of the people making. the systems that we rely on because they don't run into certain things or don't experience things. And we've all run into this with bugs, right? Where it's like, my Wi-Fi is kind of clunky or...

or spotty, right? And everybody designs these things assuming, oh, your Wi-Fi connection will be rock solid. So when you're playing music or whatever and it starts skipping and you're like, what is the problem? It's like, well... Maybe they were designed for a system where they expected, you'll never have any network problems. And I just think it's always interesting to remember that technology is made by people and people don't have necessarily a...

360 degree view, if you will, of every single problem that somebody might run into. So always worth considering. Anyways, that's sort of my reflection on the year. Remember when the big own used to be saying, Yeah, that company, their developers are not dog fooding. And you can tell. But what's interesting is what you're kind of talking about is some sort of global dog food. Unfortunately, even if for anyone who doesn't know dog fooding, as far as it is, my understanding is.

using the stuff you make uh coming i think the origin is literally a company makes dog food and like they should be tasting their own dog never tasted their dog food you gotta taste your dog food so you know what you're giving to the dogs um And yeah, it's certainly there's testing going on. I mean, we see in the past, we've seen Apple devices out in the wild before they were out and there, you know, I.

You and I both have people we know at Apple who do have to test the stuff that they work on wherever they are. But yes, despite that. You only have so many kinds of tests that you can run and you can even engineer. huge facilities that test the, you know, quality of the noise cancellation or, you know, sound attenuation that is there, but it does not account for.

Like, certainly not all, often not many of the situations that people actually find themselves in. And yeah, I agree. I think for me, one of the biggest. glaring things this year, and I'm curious if other people have ended up experiencing this at all, has to do with, I am, I have to believe the Apple. wireless chip in the new iPhone because I have never had so many problems with Bluetooth as I have. I've not had problems with Bluetooth in years.

And I haven't had so many problems with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi kind of together. as I have had in the latest hardware from Apple. One of those issues where it cropped up and continues to be a problem for me is I have an aftermarket wireless CarPlay.

head unit i cannot use wireless carplay in my car now uh it does not work and i'll explain what i mean when i say that but but i want to say like if i plug it in i do wired wired works fine I have done every possible troubleshooting step I can do, even going so far as to... Remove the battery cables from the terminals in my car to completely reset everything, hoping that like that would be the last thing that needed to happen. But basically.

For some reason, the Bluetooth chip in my phone does not want to sort of broadcast, hey, hello, hi, I'm here, to the Bluetooth chip in the head unit. And so there's not that initial like, I'm there, let's chat, let's connect going on. And I have seen that then play out. in what appears to be that across the board. And by that, I mean, I also have an aura ring. And for the longest time...

Despite the fact that the backup process or the transfer process is supposed to bring over all of your Bluetooth devices, and in fact, Our Ring was listed as one of my Bluetooth devices. It thought it was paired, I guess. And the app acted as if it was paired, but it wasn't getting any information from my ring. And so like months of data or at least a month of data was just not.

there. And on top of that, when I would, when I specifically figured this out and I tried to go through the process of it would not stay connected to the ring. And so. That to me falls in the same boat of like, especially if you're going to make your own thing, you have really, really, really got to try so many different.

You know, ways of doing this and things that people might have and really like put it. Don't just try to make the best thing in terms of speed or what I feel is mostly about saving battery.

but also best like you can't you can't give me something and say this is better uh and you know this is this is going to blow your mind and then half of the things that i use for don't work that's so frustrating to me um yeah and so technological frustrations really just yeah and it's one of those challenges i think we've talked about before we're like you know scale is an issue yes right like the fact that these platforms

are in use by so many people just means even if a small percentage of people run into a problem, it's a lot of people, right? Like a percentage, for example, if 1% of people who used an iPhone ran into a problem, that's... millions of people yeah yeah in fact um so this year too uh dan sturm who was on the show earlier this year uh as well as Oh, goodness. Lex Friedman and I all had another issue with our phones. The side button on our phones went squishy on us. It lost its click. And.

I remember when it happened to me, I thought, am I? I literally gaslighted myself. I said, am I just misremembering how this felt? Maybe that's what it is. Maybe that it was always this squishy. Maybe it didn't have that click like the other ones did. And I had, you know, used some 99% isopropyl alcohol to try to clean it just in case that's what it was. I had all these things. And I thought.

what does one normally do in a situation like this? What have I done in the past? Oh, do I want to go through the process of... either sending it in or talking to someone, like having to go to the store. I was like, ah, it's probably fine. It's probably just me. And then Dan Sturm had posted about his doing that.

And then I thought, oh, I'm not alone. And then in us talking about it. So nice. Yeah, so nice to not be alone and also to undo the gaslighting of oneself. And then Lex Friedman hopped in and said, I'm having the same thing. And I just thought, wow. As you said, you know, I thought, okay, this is me and maybe somebody else somewhere else that I'm not ever going to get an opportunity to talk to.

Uh, but then two people I actually knew having this happen and that was pretty wild. Yeah. All right. Let's, let's.

Let's move aside our complaining because I know it's fun, but let's look at something a little brighter. So, 2026 is just days away. Is there anything in particular that you are excited about, whether it's a specific product or just a technology you feel like in 2026 is going to be something that you spend time with or are interested in or what have you? Yeah. So I actually... I am interested in what 2026 is going to do for the smart home. Because I think that we're seeing...

two things really kick off at once. And that is that matter, the sort of... means by which many, many devices can communicate with one another that used to kind of be stuck in compatibility issues is really solidifying. and we're seeing the addition of that's just one of matters three states by the way that's very good um well it's still kind of still kind of liquidy for me but you know Do what you need to do. Yeah, it's in between. It is really, we're also seeing then.

the introduction of cameras as one of the sort of supported technologies. And so I really think that this is shaping up to be a really good year for that, as well as. We're seeing some implementations of AI being used as part of the smart home. And I don't mean talking to AI because that's... But I do mean in terms of pattern recognition, specifically human behavior recognition, specifically how you use your smart home and being able to provide options for.

controlling your smart home or even as simple as saying to your device, either typing it out or whatever. Amazon, for example, being able to say. I want my lights to turn on at noon and turn off at eight during the week as long as someone is home. And to have it do that, I think that this is the year of that. This is the year. That's exciting. It'll finally happen. I'm so excited. I mean, I want to believe I want to believe I do. I constantly want to believe I've been very impressed with the.

the matter of it all um thus far at first rough uh but over time now we've got like Because Govee is a really inexpensive, but what has been for us solid light. maker, smart light maker of different sorts, especially like, you know, having fun color lights in your home. And the way that that tech is implemented is through matter. And I was. surprised and delighted at how easy it has been to set up these devices as um as as home controlled and by home i mean apple home controlled uh

you know, products. So yeah, I think that those two things happening at once is something that I am looking forward to for sure.

I was thinking that's a good idea. I was thinking about the Apple Home stuff, too, because one of the things that we thought we were getting maybe last year was that Apple tabletop, a smart speaker with a screen, basically, which obviously Google and Amazon have both taken their shot. That's that.

But as someone who's gone pretty much all Apple for their smart home ecosystem insofar as possible, it's one piece I felt like was missing. So I am intrigued to see if Apple can deliver that this year. And obviously, a lot of that is tied up with their... their apple intelligence work which itself got delayed um so whether or not they can actually deliver on that is a big question and i think it will be really interesting to see uh whether that suddenly unleashes a flood of things that had been

pent up because they were waiting for that that technology to be ready um the other thing that i am really interested about this um foldable iphone um there was this story over the last week right that um Someone had a mock-up, essentially, or had put out, like, these are the specs that we've heard, and people were 3D printing mock-ups of them, including our pal and recent guest, John Moltz. I thought about doing it.

Yeah, I don't have the 3D printer, but it was very intriguing for me because one of the things that I find, I'm not a super visual spatial person. And so I'll read these stories talking about like, here's a description of what this looks like. And I'm like, I don't know. Sounds like a square. What do you want? What do you want me to do? So, but like showing people taking pictures of this as they printed it out and compared it to their existing phones.

I thought was really interesting because it does like, wow, okay, that's more different than I would have thought. It's a little smaller in one dimension. John was putting it up against the 13 Mini and saying it's actually smaller. in some dimensions than the 13 mini, which is kind of wild. So I don't know. And maybe this is all wrong, right? Like, you know, it's always hard to tell with these leaks. It could be inaccurate, but it is fascinating. And I think...

It is a device that certainly Android, smart foldable phones have been out there for a while. Google makes one, et cetera. It's not like this is a new thing. However, we've seen this before, right? Where other... device manufacturers put out something and it doesn't really catch on. And so Apple being in that area makes it...

I'm sorry for Android fans. I'm not trying to be short here, but it confers an air of legitimacy on it because they are a big consumer company. And if they're devoting money to this, it's because they think there's something there. And so... And the other thing, which is not inconsequential, is that Android doesn't have a great tablet interface, whereas Apple has an entire platform that they can leverage to do like, OK, when you flip this thing open.

Is it more like a tablet? Is it more like a big phone? I'm fascinated by that. I think it's a really interesting device. And is it going to be outrageously expensive? Yes. No question there. But that won't necessarily be forever. It may come down over the next several years, right, as they get better at making these things. Will it become just like a luxury option? Will it be something that is...

more used by the average person and they don't end up buying a tablet and a phone? Do you think it's a long-term product? That's my big thing. I don't think Apple commits the stuff that it... Yeah, maybe, but I don't feel like Apple commits to stuff. That's why Apple comes late to these markets, right? Like they get the chance to sort of suss it out and feel like whether or not is this going to be a fad? I don't know. Anyways, I'm really interested in that.

And then something which I want to talk about maybe on a future show, maybe our next show, e-readers. I don't know. I found myself thinking a lot about e-readers over the holidays. There's been a lot more people playing around with different e-ink. like form factors there's the books palma which has gotten like a devoted uh usership

There's this new little tiny e-ink thing that magnets the back of your phone. I've always really liked e-ink. It's such a great and cool technology. I agree. It's Star Trek for me.

Right. But some ways it's been let down by the fact that it really... as e-readers are so tied to their platforms right like like that original ipod like i mean yes you could load on all your other music and i think that's a big part of what made the ipod successful but like the idea that like if you want you know if you buy a kindle You're mostly buying stuff from Amazon. If you buy a Kobo, you're mostly buying stuff from Kobo. And there's ways around that and there's other sources, but like...

It's surprising to me. Yeah. It's surprising to me that in this day and age, nobody's really tried to make a great e-reader that works with multiple platforms. So anyways, something I've found myself thinking a lot about, and I'm kind of curious to see if anybody... moves more in that direction this year whether these experiments with e-ink and experimental like smaller devices and stuff sort of catch on but i want to see for it

I want to see e-ink technology used in more places as well. Like that, I think there's such a beauty to the ambient options that it has. Some of my... most used devices in my home are from Eve, Eve Home. Yep. And they are e-ink displays. And I just think that they're great little, yeah, it's easy to read. It, of course, sips battery, which is awesome. Um, and yeah, I think you and I both have a sort of fascination and love for, for e-ink. Uh, the other thing, oh, and I also, I have a, um,

An aura frame. That's a, you are a, uh, they are a sponsor on my other podcasts and that is why I have one as the disclosure there, but, um, super, super cool having what.

really does feel and look like a sort of printed photo on the wall, but it changes every day, which is cool. I think one other area where I'm excited is to see... what the what the specifically the smart ring market is going to look like this year and what improvements we might see there we saw uh the maker of pebble come out with this idea of a little um

you basically talk to your finger um but talk to your finger uh the problem with it was that it was not rechargeable and i kind of would like to see other ring makers do that idea, but in their rechargeable option, because there is I have the just press record on my watch, but. i don't always have the ability to like click or whatever on my my watch or i might not think about it as much but with my ring there is something really clever about just

taking my thumb and pushing my ring and then being able to talk into it. So I like that idea. And I'd like to see what other people might do with, with wearables this year, specifically ring wearables. Yeah. Cool stuff.

Well, we hope that you are not only interested in those wonderful technologies, but maybe you're interested in listening to Clockwise every week to find out more about what's going on in technology in the new year. We hope you enjoyed this little taste of our Clockwise Unwound segment.

uh again if you would like to get this every week along with ad free episodes you can go to relay.fm clockwise you can sign up for just seven dollars a month or seven dollars a year um obviously as i said help support our show and ads have been a light this year. I'm not seeing that changing in the near future. So honestly, listener support is the way this show keeps going. It's how we pay our Zoom bill.

You know, it's how Micah and I are able to invest the time into the show and book guests and, you know, organize recordings and all of that. It helps pay our editor, all these things. So support for the show is really... It's really critical and we hope that you will. But thank you very much for listening. Micah, a happy new year to you. I'll see you in 2026. Happy new year to you. And I too will see you in 2026. And we will see you in 2026. We will. But until then.

Well, we'll hear you. Or you'll hear us. You'll hear from us in 2026. That sounds too threatening. But until then, we remind everyone out there listening, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. Bye, everybody.