660: I’m a Dirty Cheater

It's time for episode six hundred and sixty of the Clockwise Podcast from Relay, recorded Thursday, June. 2026. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, thirty minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast that ships on time, unlike the new Siri. Heroes, Micah Sargent, and I'm a liar. And I'm also joined this week by the one, the only Dan, the Man Morin. How you doing, Dan? I'm doing great, Micah, for certain values of on time. What is what is time, really?

We'll never know, even though we keep watching the clock. All right. Uh all right. Let's uh introduce our wonderful guests to my left, senior developer advocate at GitHub and co-host of MacBreak Weekly on Twit. It is Christina Warren. Hello, Christina. Hello, hello. Um go next. Uh that's all I'd like to say. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing game last night if uh if if anybody watched fantastic, fantastic sports.

Sports. Uh, and to my left this week it is business unicorn relay, switch on, community manager, and host of conduit right here on this very podcast network. It's Kathy Campbell. Welcome back, Kathy. Hello, Dan. Thank you so much for having me and Go Sports Ball. Woo sports. Yay. Uh while we all quietly celebrate our sports, I will get things underway because we have four topics and just thirty minutes. Mine for you is this.

At WWEC, Apple touted a lot of small improvements and a lot of little tiny updates. I was curious, what's something that you're hoping to see fixed or changed in the entirety of the twenty-seven twenty twenty-seven platform update? And also bonus points if you have already looked through and you saw that your change is going to be taken taking place, but it's okay if not. Uh Christina, we'll start with you.

Yeah, okay. So um this is gonna be like uh one everyone's gonna roll their eyes about, but I really was happy to see the uh changes to liquid glass in terms of how much you can tone it down or up because there were very real accessibility problems.

With liquid glass, like beyond just the design not working, there were things if your eyes aren't as good or if um you know you're viewing content uh in in in certain conditions where things just didn't look good. Uh in w it wasn't even they didn't look good, they didn't work. And so the fact that you can basically tone that down, especially with some of the accessibility settings, looks like you can almost turn it off. I think is a very, very good thing.

I am sorry to all the developers that already worked really hard to implement liquid glass who now have to do additional work, but it is what it is. Uh the other thing I would say, and I don't know how much this will change, but I'm hopeful because they did give a shout out to the corner radiuses. in mac OS 27 being consistent now.

hope this means that I don't know is that it also means they'll be smaller because my personal biggest gripe um with the the current version of macOS twenty six isn't just that like I don't like the the UX design. It's that

the windows take up more space. And so you don't have as much screen real estate, especially if you're on a fourteen inch screen. So I'm hoping that the consistent um corner radius is also means that it's smaller so that maybe, you know, I can fit more windows on my screen without having to uh change the resolution on my screen.

Before I give my answer, I'll tell Christina they are tighter than the Tahoe corners but broader than the previous I can't remember Sequoia. They're somewhere in the middle. So they're a little bit in the middle. But they're pretty they're better. They're better. I'll take it. It's better. It's an improvement. I'll take it. Exactly.

Um, I appreciate that there are tons of these small updates. I'm gonna pick all right, I'm a dirty cheater because I already have the beta installed on a few of my devices and so I know what's there and what's not there. I spent the morning

looking for one of my most hoped for updates was that which is that I would be able to do clipboard history on the Mac with a single keystroke because you can't do that now. You have to hit command space to bring up spotlight and then command four to see your clipboard history. Or click the little button that shows up.

It's not there. And that made me very upset. I already filed a feedback on it. That's how upset I am. I don't file feedbacks for lots of things because I'm as we established in the pre show, I'm lazy. But I did it for this one. Um but that said, there are some things in here that I was super excited to see on that giant wall of features slide.

And among them, the top one, a thing that I have requested, is that shortcuts now has support for not just if else, but multiple else conditions, which is a, or else if, as you say in some programming languages, which is to say you can give it a condition like if this equals this,

And previous just your only option would be if this equals this, do this. Otherwise, do this thing. And it's like, all right, you only got two options. But if you want it to filter for multiple options, well, if this equals this, do this. But if this equals this, do this thing, and otherwise do blah.

And that is just a little quality of life update that makes my life so much easier when it comes to dealing with so many shortcuts. Cause previously if you wanted to design around that, you had to like Nest if statements in other if statements. And not only was that just a giant logical headache as you tried to think through like the implications. But Shortcut's editor was so clunky at times that dragging the stuff around was just difficult and at times almost impossible. So

Among the many sort of big shortcuts updates that we saw, that little detail really made me happy. And as Jason Snell and I have surmised, one of those situations where Apple realized, Oh, if we're letting people generate shortcuts, it needs to be able to do this. What? It doesn't do that? Quick, well let's add that. So, you know, that's a nice thing. Kathy, what about you?

Yeah, I'm super excited for the shortcuts things because uh anyone that has heard me talk on anywhere, I'm not a tinker. I want it to just do the stuff that I want it to do and and and have it be done. Uh but my most excited thing is the hope Th they implied it and kinda discussed it a little bit but Every few weeks, I uh hit command space to go into Spotlight and search for something and it will be like indexing. Indexing. And I'm like

Cool. Let me go into any of the other ways to launch programs and grumble the entire time because I don't want to go into whatever it is where you have your fingers and you swipe in. Whatever that's called now, I don't know, mission control, maybe. Uh, whatever it is to like find the software that I want to run. I want to just Open it the way that I always do. And so I'm hoping that the consistent indexing that it does means that I will have fewer of these things pop up.

Uh one of the most annoying things that uh has been a problem up until now, although may continue to be a problem, we'll see, is that I often will with my phone swipe down uh to access spotlight search. and do basic calculations there, twenty-six and then a slash and then two uh to get thirteen.

Or obviously, I mean, I know that one, but if it's one that I don't know, then I use that as my little calculator there, the quick little uh spotlight search calculator. And half of the time it works, half of the time it doesn't. It just returns search. searches for twenty six slash two that I don't know they think is some I've no idea, but it's it's it's wrong and it's not it's not what I want. I have not confirmed that that has been fixed.

Uh, because it's one of those things that it works sometimes, it doesn't work other times. So we've got to see. My other thing is. I have had issues with car play, um, wireless car play in particular, where It it's just inscrutable on what is actually going wrong and not knowing exactly how to fix it. But what I just want is for wireless car play to work.

uh without me having to interact with my phone or with my in-dash console. Whether that's updates to Bluetooth or um peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, I don't know, but I'm hoping that those things get fixed. And I committed to because I'm also running the beta, I committed to uh filing lots of feedback this time and I've already filed some for things that I've seen because yes if you don't vote, you can't complain, as they say.

Uh thank you all for your answers on that topic. Let's go to our next one, which comes from Christina.

Okay, so this WWDC and I guess technically uh September will officially mark the end of the road for Intel Max. They will get, I think, one additional year of legacy support, but no no new features are coming. Now, do you still have an Intel Mac? And if so, what do you plan on doing with it now?

You know, I do think there's still a lot of stuff that you can you know, if you've got an Intel Mac running as a file server or something like that, I think that's handy. It's also handy to have around to keep some of that legacy software running'cause I definitely know there are places where it's like, Oh man, I can't run this thing anymore.

Although less and less than I think there used to be. So I s you know, I still think there's some value to having an Intel Mac even if it's not running the latest and greatest operating system. um for maybe nostalgia or maybe just a you know an easy thing to have around for some basic features, your your household Mac or a Mac at a vacation home or something like that. I don't know. Like there's

There's still some utility for it, but I do think that especially with the uh, you know, long hi you know, six years of of Apple Silicon Max now is uh is a pretty good run. Um and I think that Uh people upgrading from the Intel Max to the Apple Silicon Max I find uniformly are always like, whoa.

This is way better. So Audios Intel Max, you were uh you ended up being this kind of weird era of Apple history, honestly. But um yeah, that's why I started my writing career about Apple with the Intel Mac transition, like two th in two thousand six. So wow, yeah. At the end of an era, indeed. Uh Kathy? So my child has my old iMac Pro, uh so that is is running and they're doing some work for me on that because that's it's not child labor if it's your own child.

Um and and listen, I'm paying them. It's fine. Uh and then they ha they have uh laptop that's an Intel and so technically yes they exist in my house but I don't use them anymore. Um, so for me, yes, I do have uh an Intel Mac. I've got an old MacBook Pro. I don't use it at all. I don't need it. I don't use it. But I have trouble letting it go because w what if uh one day I need it for something? Um but I'm curious to hear, Christina, uh your experience.

Yeah, I'm kind of similar to you. So I still have um an Intel um iMac uh from uh from twenty twenty. So like the last one that I I bought knowing obviously the transition was happening. Um and I I spec'd it out, I got the highest end. CPU GPU I put 128 gigs of RAM in it, which, you know, now but six years later is actually seven years later six years later it was a very good investment. Um and I I don't really use it much other than just kind of like profile server things, but

This is what's complicated. It takes up space because it's a 27 inch IMAC, and I can't do anything with the gut. from it. So I'm gonna have to figure out like where I'm going to put it and use it. Um but as support drops, like you will you can obviously still use it for some things, but application support's going to go away. I might wind up just, you know, trying to run Linux on it or something full time.

Uh I have some older Intel um Mac minis as well that I've I've used as uh as servers, but but those have been running Linux almost entirely for for the last couple of years. So yeah, I'm I'm I was just curious because yeah, it's been a long time for the transition. I think most people are happier, but there are still machines out there that work really well. And I think that it it'll be interesting to see what happens to those machines, you know, in the next 12 to 18 months.

All right, folks, we have reached halftime here on Clockwise, which means it's time for me to remind you about our swag. Clockwise.social is where you can go to learn about our swag, and we would love for you to, well, frankly, buy it. Because when you buy our hats, our totes, our stickers. our phone cases, et cetera, you help to support the work that we do here. And every time I get that little Zoom bill hitting my account,

I thank my lucky stars to those of you who have made a purchase of our swag to help uh make sure we can continue to call each other and do this podcast. So please head to clockwise.social to check out our swag. All right, we are back from halftime, and that means it's time for Dan's topic.

Uh yes, my topic. Well, of course, one of the big pieces of news to come out of WWC this week was Siri AI, the revamped version of Siri, the new Siri that we've been promised for so long that we've dreamed of. Um it is coming later this year. I am curious to know uh with given your experiences with current Siri.

Will you be willing to trust new Siri AI? What does it need to do to earn that trust? What are the kind of things you are excited about it potentially doing for you? Or are you just like, nah, man, can't can't trust it. It's Siri. Boo. Kathy, what do you think? Listen, I have very select things that I trust Siri for. Uh I ha use the male international voice.

I I don't know what number. Um, but I call him Surrey, uh,'cause it sounds like a British butler and it's great. Um, and so he will remind me when I get home to do things or when I leave to do things or I'm in bed and I'm like, Oh yeah, don't forget this thing in the morning. Remind me in the morning, any of these things.

Perfect. Flawless. I have never the the hardest thing is sometimes I will like do a reminder and it will tr mistranslate like what I want it to do, but it's good enough reminder because it always comes up. It always reminds me. It it does its job. I think that's probably all I will continue to use it for unless somebody comes up with a better reason or something to do with it. But as of right now, I'm good.

In preparation for new Siri, I said to myself, you know, you're gonna you're gonna try to be more open minded. And so the other night, because what what typically happens is I will think of a thing and then I will ha I'll take a split second going, I wonder if Siri could do that. And then my years of doubt that have been instilled in me say, nah, and then I just do it instead. But the other night I took a risk and I was happily surprised

And this is something that it could already do, but still, I didn't even expect it to be able to do this. I have the like bedtime routine thing set up in my phone. And so because it's a sort of special morning alarm, I thought. Surely Siri wouldn't be able to do anything about a special morning alarm. So I asked it, uh, instead of going in and just changing it myself, I asked it, what what alarms do I have active right now?

And it told me that I just had the one alarm active. And then that was already like, oh wait, you can actually read that? I thought that that was a special thing. And then I said, could you change it to X time? And it was able to do that. And so last night, once again, I used it to interact with my alarms. And, you know, I it's it's sort of a re a a repairing relationship. We've we've suffered lots of ruptures in our relationship for sure.

And my nervous system is healing from that damage. And I've been very impressed. So I think I will continue to try to do more interactions with Siri. in preparation for this. And when I do, I'm very excited um about frankly the personal context part of of Siri and having All of that just kind of like, Hey, I know that somebody sent you this message and you got this email. Here's what you need to know as part of that. Christina, what about you?

Yeah, so similar to you, I have and I'm I'm not running the beta right now, but alarms have been kind of my go to Siri thing for years because it's the only thing that you could almost rely on. And I say almost because I did have it. on more than one occasion be like, No, I can't set an alarm for you and I'm going, It's literally the only thing you're good for. Um, no, I look I'm going I'm going to give it a shot. I'm actually very encouraged to hear that it was able to read

six and and read accurately, it sounds like, what alarms you had set on your device already. That's the sort of thing that I want from an integrated assistant because if it's just chat stuff, I can use Claude, I can use Chat GPT, I can use Gemini. Um, the the whole thing that would actually make Siri AI worth using for me over those other solutions would be if it actually has access to the things that are running on my device.

Um, I do not think that I will ever use this on a Mac. I just don't think there's in a universe where that's going to be a thing unless it's invoking something like, you know, creating shortcuts or some other sort of feature. Uh, but I'm I'm more open to this than I ever have been in the past, which I think says a lot and i I'm I'm I'm I'm heartened to hear that the

good results um that that you're getting just just from the beta so far. I I do think though that that Apple's going to have to earn back a a lot of trust from from users just because we've all been burned over the last however many years. So there's going to be kind of a a a relearning process um for all of us to go, Oh, okay, we we can actually uh get work done with this thing now, which fingers crossed remains to be seen.

I've been playing around with it in the the beta of the last day or so and I've been impressed at some of the things that it can do. It does feel closer to working with a chat GPT or a Claude. I mean, you know, I'm not necessarily going to put it through the same exact paces, but

It is it does feel as though Siri has really expanded there. Like like most of you, I had like a small number of things that I would do with Siri most of the time. And so I would like, oh, it's great at timers or it's great at telling me the weather or playing some music. And I think one of the questions for me, and I really haven't had a chance to try this as much because I've been using on the iPad and the Mac, which are not my primary Siri devices, is whether those features are

it's slowed or less effective as a result of everything else that it's done. Right? Oh, it can do so much more stuff, but if the stuff that I used to rely on it for is slower or doesn't work as well, well that's a challenge too. because now you've removed functionality or degraded functionality in terms of and added a bunch of new functionality, but I I want the stuff that's that that used to work to still work.

Um that said, I I think some of the demos I've seen and again some of the brief time I've spent playing around with myself has really impressed me in terms of its its ability. If anything, I think one of the limiting factors seems to be You know, indexing like this morning I was ac asking for some photos on my Mac and it could only find I was like, Oh, photos from this trip. And it's like I found a photo. I was like I'm sure that I took more than one picture on that trip.

Yeah. Um and it's like uh you know, okay, it's still indexing, it's still getting up to speed, so I th I'm willing to forgive it for the immediate future, but if that's still the case when it is shipping later this fall um then there's some other, you know, kinks to still be worked out there. But I think what's interesting about Siri as a brand is that even though many of us in the the tech uh savvy space have been burned by it in the past.

It still has way more brand recognition uh amongst the average person than many of its competitors. I mean, to the fact, you know, y you'll see jokes about Siri on you know, television shows, right? And everybody knows, everybody understands what that means. when somebody, you know, talks to their phone. So they do have that benefit of being able to say, like, oh, well, you know, now it's good or now it does more stuff and potentially be able to onboard people into doing more of that stuff.

just because they are already aware of Siri being out there. So I I'm interested to see how this progresses. I I'm feeling weirdly optimistic about it. I was not feeling super optimistic about before WWD C but from what I've seen so far it seems like they've done a better job than I had expected. So Great to hear. All right. Let's go to our final topic, which comes from Kathy.

How are we feeling about Apple's answers to child safety and age verification? Despite the fact that Apple, I feel, has done a good job of providing a lot of tools and a lot of options to parents and guardians. They have been um difficult to, especially during onboarding, to, to get everything set up. And in seeing what Apple has done uh in its improvements to screen time and its improvements to these uh child accounts.

I've been really impressed with the onboarding part. Now there are expert-backed recommendations that are provided and given by default. In the setup process. And I think that that's going to reduce confusion and also make it possible for more people to make use of these tools.

as needed because uh again anecdotally I've seen people start to go through this process, set up a child account for their child, and then bail halfway through because they don't have time. They don't have uh the, you know, cognitive availability at that moment, whatever it happens to be, and then they just end up creating a normal account and handing over the iPad to their kid and then they've got full access.

And that's not what we want. So I think that these changes, uh, these updates are a good step. And of course, you know, I'll continue to to watch things going forward. But in particular, the fact that these expert recommendations are baked right in is good. Uh I would be curious to hear your thoughts, Christina.

Glad they're kind of wrapping all of this together and making this easier for for uh parents um or other people who need to, you know, maintain these types of uh uh accounts. And and I'm glad that they have you know the the sensible defaults. I will say just kind of on record, I'm against any age verification law, period. I I d I don't support it and and I I don't like the way that

that uh the tech companies have kind of been forced to figure out workarounds for these things. But I I understand the reality of the situation that we're in, but I I f I fundamentally do not support any sort of age verification law at all. That said, I think that if if this is something where you're creating a child account and you trust Apple with your birth date information and they're the ones who are handling, you know, the the passover to application developers.

I'm I'm better with that than with, you know, states or or cities or governments uh getting access to exactly who is accessing content. But I am glad uh that one of the features that was not available before is that you can, you know, add in a a child account if it wasn't already part of your family account. I know a lot of people have been burned by that sort of thing before.

And so I think whatever you can do to make the Apple ID process easier to manage, that's great. And whatever you can do to make it easier to just uh to to your point, not have to bail halfway through the setup. But just go forward and actually be able to do something I think is is fantastic. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting stuff here. I think though they spent a lot of time in the keynote, I think it only scratched the surface of some of what's happening here.

Um, among other things, my what I understand is that they've actually revamped the entire like architecture of this. So Uh it works unlike previously when it did not work. Like screen time was easily bypassable, like it sometimes did not respect the limits that had been set. It was just kind of a a f a trash fire. So uh what I've heard is that they have re architected and it is actually more stable and more reliable now, which is a great first start.

Um, they also have uh talked about implementing defaults during the keynote, which is a thing that's based they're using the American Association of Pediatrics. to use like sort of gauge based on the age of, you know, your child, what is a reasonable default. Now I understand that that is something that may differ from country to country, so it'll be interesting to see

How that goes, you know, other countries may have different recommendations. You know, I think of N NHS and the UK may have different recommendations. They may be similar

And I don't think they're gonna be wildly off, but like it would probably add some peace of mind, right? That, you know, people in other countries are like, Well, why do I have to listen to what the American pediatricians say I wanna do? Maybe maybe my country is different. I know there's been some concerns about these tools and the ways they can be abused.

It's it's a difficult question. There's no perfect solution here. And the the simple fact is that I and I speak as a parent here, you do need some ability to monitor or just manage this because you cannot give a child unfettered access to a device, obviously. And so as a tool for parents to help manage their children's, you know, use of of devices, I think it's good that they are adding in some more features. You know, it is not a replacement.

for a parent having a relationship with their child and being able to have communication and things about this. But it is a supplementary tool that can help you enforce more guidelines and that. And so I think it's good that they're they're adding a lot of this and that again, that they've beefed up the the responsibility and the effectiveness of the tools that are there.

I think there's probably still some some frustrations. Um for me personally, as I've as a person who's trying to deal with this, I'm very annoyed that there is no improvement to parental controls on the Apple T V, which is a Bad system. Because in order to do that, uh what I end up having to do is set restrictions on my profile.

so that he can't get into stuff, you know, uh be browsing around in my profile. And that means every time he tries to open or I try to open an app, I have to enter a code. Why do I have to enter a code every time I want to watch something I'm I'm able to watch?

Why can't I just password like protect my entire profile so that he can't get into that profile? Anyways, that's my one of my rants. I'll save that for later. But I think it's a step in the right direction. Kathy, why don't you wrap us up here? I have some definite concerns about the age verification, um, just like Christina. There's always going to be a delicate balance between um the experience.

Extremely uh restrictive type parenting roles that um don't allow their children to be humans. Uh and the ones that just let their kids you know, go to watch a rated R movie at four. Uh the it's a delicate balance. Everyone has to parent their own way. I love the idea of having um default. and the ability to then adjust them. My one thing that I really hope is there is that it is easier slash faster for the requests to come in. So that we ended up turning off my own kids' restrictions.

fairly quickly, um, I think they were about eleven or twelve when we finally were like, I can't handle this because we would set things, but uh on the weekend you can have more time than during the week and and it just would

take forever to get the messaging to send the request and sometimes you'd click accept and then it wouldn't go through and it just was a nightmare. So I'm I'm really hopeful that these changes will make it easier for parents with uh future and younger kids right now to be able to utilize it. Um, but yeah, we ended up just using our own conversations and talking to our kiddo instead of um having the device do a lot of things.

Alrighty folks, uh if you can believe it, that's four topics, which means that it's time for our bonus topic. Very easy this week.

When you're eating an apple, assuming you are, do you have it in slices or do you just go in and have the whole thing? Christina? I prefer apple slices, but I'm gonna be honest. I'm often too lazy to cut the apple into slices, so I will just bite into the whole thing. But if I if I have the time and inclination, I always prefer an apple slice.

Uh, I don't really yeah, I don't really like whole apples. I prefer apple slices. I don't know, just the logical brightening into it thing makes my teeth stand on edges. I'm weird. If your teeth are standing on edge, Dan, I think you have some problems. You should probably contact your dentist. I'll be right back. I um slices or I won't eat it the apple.

Uh I am definitely the same as Christina. I would prefer to have it in slices, but if I'm feeling lazy, I'll just go in for a bite. We're teaming. Uh if you out there listening would like to get ad-free episodes with an extra unwound episode every week where Dan and I talk about a given topic, you can become a member of Clockwise. Go to relay.fm slash clockwise to sign up.

Up$7 a month,$70 a year to help support the show. And with that, we have reached the end of this episode of Clockwise. All that's left is to thank our wonderful guests, Christina Warren. Thank you so much for being here. But thanks for having me. And Kathy Campbell, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. I've been so excited to have this on my schedule for weeks and I'm always excited to talk to you. Yeah. We love planning ahead.

Just you know, for the perfect topics. Uh well, that is all we have time for, which means that we must remind everyone out there listening, before we return next week, watch what you say. And keep watching the clock. Bye everybody.