529: Slop Trokt

Music Music From Relay, this is Connected, episode 529. Today's show is brought to you by ZocDoc, Ecamm, Squarespace, and Masterclass. I am your Ricky Benchman, Mike Hurley, and I have the pleasure of introducing Federico Bottici. Ciao. federico hello mike and it's good to be back i'm welcome back thank you thank you and it's also my pleasure since i'm back to introduce steven hackett hello steven hello federico welcome back hi

Thank you. How are you guys? You're doing good? Yeah. Good. Yeah? Yeah. Stephen, are you cooking the turkey for Thanksgiving? There was such a good pause on that. Are you cooking? You better believe it. He's cooking up. No, because some people buy them. Do you cook or do you buy? So there's a more complicated answer to this. I'm not cooking or buying a turkey. We did buy a honey-baked ham. So we live in our hometown. All of our parents and aunts and uncles are here.

And even as like people in our late 30s, late, late, late 30s, we still, I'm not really complaining because I don't want to do this. But we are not the people who host the holidays. We still go to our parents' houses. You're still kids. Still kids. When it comes to the holidays. And so we are bringing things to other people's Thanksgiving dinners. I think we're going to four this year.

But it's... Wait, wait, wait. Four? So... Oh, so it's more like a period. It's not like a single Thanksgiving day. It's a Thanksgiving period. That's right. It starts tonight. The season of giving. Season of Thanksgiving. It starts tonight and runs through Saturday, I think is our last one.

Um, but you know, we've got to go see like my father-in-law's family and then we're going to go see my mother-in-law and then we're going to see my mom and then we're going to see somebody else. Like, it's just, it's a lot. Okay. I'm sure it's nice, but it's also rough. Yeah, what are you bringing? What are you bringing? Mashed potatoes? What are you bringing? Some salad stuff tonight, like a broccoli salad. Mashed potatoes to one place.

Okay. That's better. Yeah, I don't want to eat the broccoli salad. It's just a thing. You just take it to every one of the get-togethers because nobody eats it. Nobody eats it. Mary was making it. Yesterday? And I came in and she was like dumping grated cheese into it. I was like, oh no, I can't eat it. You know, like what a bummer. Oh no, terrible. I was lucky to look forward to it so much. I know. Yeah, so we're just, you know, we're beating it.

bopping around um our brother-in-law is gonna come stay with us and uh it's gonna be good it'll be a good time very cool yeah thank you happy thanksgiving everybody We're going to do some giving of thanks at the end of the show today. That's right. But first, we have follow-up. Federico, many, many... Many people suggested LLM tools for you to cram your iOS and iPad OS reviews into.

So then you could do LLM things out of them. Really, so you don't have to write one ever again. You just tell it what you want next year. Sure. The top contender was Google's Notebook LLM.

which lots of people wrote in and said it was perfect for. This is the thing that makes the podcasts. Yes. Yes. One of many things it does. Yeah, but this is what I think people mostly... know it for that right because that's the thing that kind of went viral like it can make like the podcast i mean y'all haven't recorded an episode of analog in months it's just been notebook lm it's just well here's the thing multiple people have written into me to be like

hey, that sounds like grey, as if it's like a thing that is happening or I can do anything about. But people think that one of the voices sounds like grey, which I can only hear in the sense of like... Just a slightly gravelly American. It's like that's kind of as far as I hear it. He's kind of gravelly. Here's the thing, though. Let's just step back for a second. So Gray's job is to read a bunch of stuff and write a script and make a video.

He's basically in Hello Limb. I'm not comfortable with where this conversation is going. I'm just saying. I don't want to be here while this conversation is happening. Bye! Other people suggested... Tools that support retrieval augmented generation, or RAG. Yeah, I've seen that. I never heard of that before. I hear people say RAG a lot. This is the first time.

that I've heard the, the full, uh, acronym or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. The reverse. And so chat doc and paper chat were two things that were suggested here. Chat doc. And then you may have been actually pretty close with Claude on Claude Pro or Claude for work. They have a projects feature that may also. uh, take care of this for you. So lots of suggestions. So let me, let me offer some, some answers. Okay. Uh, cloud won't work.

That's what I've already tried with projects. Even Claude projects. Did you try Claude projects? Yeah, obviously. I have my projects. Yeah. No, no, no. You can... the reviews if i go over three reviews i go over the character limit for the because these projects that the reference files they're basically input tokens for the project so you're going over the limit and it's like it becomes a longer conversation and claude cannot have it um so that won't work however

I literally just tried, as Stephen was talking, Notebook LM, and it seems to be working. I just fed it 10 iOS reviews. which are the 10 reviews I've published. And it did a very quick scan. And then I asked, when did widgets become interactive? That's sort of my first question. And it said interactive widgets were introduced to the home and lock screens in iOS 17. And it's got...

Oh, this is actually very nice because it's got a reference that I can click and it takes me to the point in one of the reviews where I mentioned this. So it's linked to the source in a way that allows me to click and see my exact words. It's called the source guide. Let's see, do you guys have any question about the past of iOS that we can double check?

How many different versions of Control Center have there been? How many different designs? Yeah, different designs. Different designs of Control Center. This is interesting, because I just actually hit the same problem as you did, so preparing for the yearly themes episode of Cortex, and I wanted to just... upload the transcripts of all of the episodes. Because I always struggle with trying to very concisely explain yearly themes in audio. I always feel like I could do a better job.

And so I wanted to get its help, but it couldn't. The transcripts were too long. It was just like, Claude was just like, I can't do anything with this. This is too much. So I didn't bother in the end. Let's see. Control center design through the years. Four distinct designs. iOS 7, the debut of Control Center. Is that right? Was that iOS 7? Yeah, 7. iOS 9, this iteration featured friendlier, rounder buttons.

iOS 10, this was a radical shift that abandoned the single page design. Yeah, this is accurate. iOS 11, this redesign reverted to a single page layout. iOS 18. Okay, so this is funny. So it got it right. from iOS 7 to iOS 11. I also fed it the iOS 18 review. Let me double check. I did feed it the iOS 18 review, right?

Yes, I did. And it says at the very end, iOS 18, parenthesis, not a real version, introduced a redesign control center. So what it's doing here is it is... analyzing and quoting my iOS 18 review, but I'm betting that because of a knowledge cutoff, it thinks that iOS 18 is fake. iOS 18, not a real version. Oh, I understand. Because the system doesn't know iOS 18 exists.

Oh, yeah. This information is only found in the sources within the context of an iOS 18 review, which does not exist as of October 26, 2023. There you go. Hilarious. Incredible. That's fantastic. You can feed Gemini with like fake info now if you wanted to, maybe. Yeah. Or you could invent new versions of iOS, basically.

This is actually quite impressive for me. I might try this too. It's basically a search engine for my own reviews, which are, we mentioned like it's, what was it? Over half a million words? Yeah. Yeah. oh this is great why is all of this free why is this free why because where's the catch

Because everybody wants to charge money for these tools, but nobody knows if they can. So everybody has to try a bunch of things to see if any people care about any of them. And then as soon as you care about them, they can turn them into real products. But right now, it's absolutely unknown.

if anybody truly cares about these tools, right? So here you go, I have it for free. Yeah, Notebook.lm. Well, this is going to be, especially the part about linking back to the exact paragraph where I say something. That's perfect because it allows me to actually copy myself when necessary. Interesting. I asked chat GPT 4.0, which I've been playing with.

You know, I did not feed it your reviews, obviously. Yeah, and four, iOS 17, iOS 10, iOS 11, and iOS 18. You are not amongst the sources. Rough. Sick. Sick burn. Good news. iPhone mirroring. It's pretty good. Yeah. You're using this a lot, huh? I am. A ton. Every day. Yeah. Okay. What for? Well, I wrote a blog post. No, I know. You could feed into an LLM.

The blog posts, I don't really want to read them on the podcast. So I kind of use the blog post as a reason to ask you a question. It's like a typical podcasting method of engaging in conversation. Yeah. It's the entire business model for upgrade, basically. Yeah, yeah. That's how it goes. Yeah, that's how it goes. Yeah, I'm using it a bunch. I realized that it's something that has really made its way into sort of my daily work.

You know, like everybody, I've got iOS apps that either don't run on the Mac or like really janky on the Mac. And sometimes they're handy to get to. Although the primary one is now available on the Mac, which we're going to talk about a little bit later. But my main use is running test flight builds of Widget Smith and Pedometer++ and Sleep++. Like as David is working on them, I can, of course, I can build them in Xcode and run them in the simulator. And I do that.

But there were also times like it's just easier to have the test flight and or even if I'm just like helping somebody with something or like looking something up, like being able to open the app from my phone, but on the Mac and like just quickly do it. It's pretty great. The app itself, you know, there's a little, you know, there's some weirdness. It definitely works better with a trackpad than a mouse. Some of the gestures and stuff just don't really don't really work if you're on a mouse.

And there's no way to get to control center. I do this by having a shortcut, but it's not easy. They have keyboard shortcuts for like the home screen and the app switcher. And so I hope that Control Center, of which there have been four designs, apparently, that that would be more easily done. Because they have keyboard shortcuts. Command 1 is home screen. Command 2 is app switcher. Command 3 is spotlight.

and you can make the sizes larger or smaller of the whole phone. That was something I saw a lot in response to this blog post was, Oh, it takes up too much screen on my laptop or not enough. I want it bigger. You do have some control over that, but not a ton. But I think the big thing that's missing right now is like easy access to control center.

How do you change the size? Under... In iPhone mirroring on the Mac, under view, there's larger and smaller. Man, I missed that. This is one of the reasons I haven't been using it. It's because I'm like, I don't think it's big enough. Okay. This is good to know. This is good to know. Yeah, it is a feature. The reason I wanted to ask you about it is it's a thing that I've used and I'm like, this is really cool.

I just don't know what I would use it for. For me, my iPhone is like there, you know? Like why not use my iPhone? I love the feature. I think it's a fantastic thing. I just have yet to find... like a really good, um, use case for, of my own. Yeah. So my question was going to be to Federico, like, do you think this could make an impact or has it already made an impact in your writing? Like you're covering an iPhone app.

I guess you're not using a Mac. Maybe this is a question for John. John, let us know. I haven't touched my Mac in months. Ah, I just made it larger, and this is perfect. This is what I want. Federico, is your Mac still cut in half? It still is, yes. It's still that Mac. I just don't use it anymore. Where's the screen?

in the trash you got rid of it yeah i mean i thought i was gonna i was gonna put it back together i thought i thought maybe you were storing it nah man when it when it dies it dies whatever you know Yeah. I don't know. I think I missed that when we talked about this the first time. That might have been the first time he said that.

I kept it. Yes, I kept it initially. And then actually like a month ago, I was like, yeah, I'm never going to put it back together. I'm never going to do it. Might as well recycle. So I put it in the recycling thing and got rid of it. Wow. Yeah. Okay, I have a gamer follow-up for gamers. Okay, it's time to rise up, gamers. Welcome in. Taylor wrote in. It connected 528, Steven.

spelled it with a V, but I forgive you, Taylor, mentioned that there's never been a successful app store that wasn't part of a platform. I think Steam is the key counterexample there. It has been wildly successful. and is very much not part of the Windows platform. Valve's new foray into being a hardware platform owner with a Steam Deck has been successful because of Steam, not the other way around. What do y'all think?

I agree. And I think if anyone failed, it was me for not realizing this and pointing it out in the episode. Fake gamer. Fake gamer, yeah. Fake gamers rise up. No, this is legit. Like, Steam have made... I mean, it's a software store, right? It's not an app store. But essentially, that's the same thing. And they have been incredibly successful. And they're successful in multiple places. Obviously, their business model was different to Apple's, which is in that it's not only first party, right?

the steam steam does not only exist in the steam deck right it's it's on anything that can run it they will just put it there they don't they don't care like it's on the mac too like they'll put it anywhere that they're allowed and if like playstation would let them they'd put it on there too like they will put it anywhere that they can um but they have been very successful and even similarly they are kind of an outlier too where they're successful and

There aren't really anybody, a lot of the other game stores doing fine, but not to Steam's level. I completely agree. This is a very good exception. Potentially the only one. Yeah. Because, I mean, we've seen, you know, Epic Game Store. It's not really taking off. So, yeah, I don't know what else to say. I wish I thought of it. But, yeah, Taylor is right. Good job, Taylor.

Good news. The Relay membership sale continues. You want to go to giverelay.com and you can get 20% off any annual plan across. any show on relay, but this is connected, right? So I'm going to tell you about connected pro connected pro is a longer ad free version of the show.

We do each and every single week. This week, we spoke about holiday planning and the new Linkin Park album. And at the end of the show, we picked titles. That's also part of Connected Pro. But it's a longer, ad-free version. It is normally $70 a year, but it's 20% off right now at GiveRelay.com.

But in addition to Connected Pro, you also get a bunch of other really cool perks. You get access to the Relay Members Discord, which is the best place on the internet, access to a monthly newsletter, and a couple of... monthly members-only podcasts. Mike, do you want to tell people about those? Yeah, so these are two different...

Podcasts are available for all Relay members. One is called Spotlight and one is called Backstage. On Backstage, it's a monthly show where me and Stephen come together. We talk about... What's going on with us with Relay? We talk about the behind the scenes stuff and we take questions from Discord members. And then there's also a spotlight where Kathy Campbell interviews a Relay host. And that can be, again, and these questions are...

Again, also all taken from the Discord. And these are monthly bonus content for every Relay member. Yep, go check it out. GiveRelay.com. This runs until... December 18th. So you got a little bit of time, but now's a great time. So get it for yourself. Get it for a nerdy friend. I think you will enjoy it.

Yeah, you can buy these for yourself or you can send this to somebody in your life, you know, who's looking to get you a stocking stuffer and be like, oh, hey, make me a cool person and get me a relay membership. Yeah, you can put the three of us in a stocking for somebody. And who wouldn't want that? You know? We'd peek out and be like, Merry Christmas! Because we'd be really small, right? So we'd be tiny like that. I was picturing a giant stocking, to be honest. Nope.

Regular stocking. Regular stocking. Tiny podcasters. Follow out. What's up with this, Federico? Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. I was listening to Upgrade. you know, as I do every week. Yeah, thank you. I've been listening to you and Jason Mike at 1.5x. I've gotten used to it now. I progressively worked my way through starting with 1.2, 1.3 for a long time.

I stayed at 1.4 because I was struggling with Jason. Not so much with you, Mike. You're more of a slow talker than Jason. But now I've gotten used to 1.5. Yeah. And anyway, Jason... People always say, right? We hear this all the time. You meet people and they're like, oh, you talk slower than I thought because you still listen to us. Yeah. Isn't that a problem? Because you actually like... We're doing this right now. Am I not really boring for you right now? Like I'm too slow for you?

No, because when we're live, you know, there's the excitement, there's the adrenaline of being live. The adrenaline of the moment speeds up life. The adrenaline of Zoom, you know, in the moment, like this is happening now. But then when you're listening to a podcast later, when it's... async as they say in Silicon Valley then that's when I speed you up anyway Jason had this really good story and this really good segment on the show about the fact that the Mac is the model for Apple.

for app distribution that Apple should follow and that the App Store era should end. Go read that story and go listen to that segment. I don't want to rehash all of it here, but I agree with Jason. And I was thinking, I had this thought. I don't think it's a coincidence, given that whole story with the app store, the gatekeeping, the regulations in Europe and other places.

I don't think it's a coincidence that by far the biggest innovation in tech in recent years, large language models and chatbots, I don't think it's a coincidence that it's coming from the web and from web apps. I think there's a whole generation of new... builders, right? Whether it's programmers or designers or people who just want to build stuff and they're doing that on the web. They're doing that with web app and web services and web APIs. I think there's a line that you can draw.

from the App Store and our phones and our tablets being unwelcoming places for coders and programmers to this new generation of kids. And now 20 something year olds, you know, founding startups or getting hired by startups, building and going to the web as the de facto place where they can just build. with no control, with no gatekeeping. They can progress their ideas safely, right? Yes. And it's actually like, I really like this.

point of view like because it was it's building on something that we were talking about on the show right which is like the ideas that never happened

There have been ideas in technology that have never come to pass because they were ultimately going to have an app that somebody knew Apple wouldn't allow. And this situation... is it makes it easy to to not have to worry about this stuff that like you can have an idea for these new forms of technology and as you say like really it's all happening on servers and you can just have it happen on the web and like maybe there can be an app but it also doesn't need one um and

Yeah, I think you're right. I would feel confident saying that that is not a coincidence. So, very good point. I went to go get that Macworld link for the show notes. I realized, and I read this article and I linked to it. I didn't notice. Yeah, I've seen this image so many times. The top photo, which is from Foundry, whatever that is, is a desk with an iMac. So you have the keyboard and the mouse.

but the iMac is turned around. So if you were sitting here, you're looking at the back of the screen. Very confusing. But the keyboard and mouse is in front of it. Yeah. Yeah. There are two books, two books with Macworld on the... Yeah. On the cover? Why? So I think I know what those are. When I worked at the college paper, we had these. It was every year we had all of the newspapers bound into a book.

for archival purposes. So I would guess that those are archival magazines and I would love to scan them. So someone send them to me, please. I mean, look, you know. It's obviously a good image because the Mac looks good, right? Yeah. If you turn it around, but it's still...

It's a very funny thing to see. It's like, oh, I've got to get some work done, but I don't want to see it. Considering Federico was very kind in bringing Upgrade for follow-out, I also wanted to follow out to two other podcasts. One is to Mac Power uses episode 772, which is one half of the State of the Platform series that Stephen and David do every year, right? You do it every year. We do.

Yeah. And it's basically looking at every device platform and operating system going through them and giving your overall thoughts on them for the year. And I thought it was really good. And obviously the second part of that, I assume is coming this weekend. It is. Sunday afternoon, part two. And then the most recent episode of Ab Stories. Federico, you weren't on it, which is a shame, but I also really enjoyed it. Not because of that, but just like...

in addition to, maybe is the word I'm looking for. But basically, I enjoyed App Stories. One True John had Brendan Bigley on the show. And again, just like, Brendan's really cool. Like, Brendan is just like, so cool. Yes, we have established that you think Brendan is cool and I am not cool anymore. You are cool, but Brendan's also cool. Not as much as Brendan. But also, I don't know Brendan, right?

So that makes him cooler. Oh, so that's fascinating for you, I see, because it's like this aura of mystery. Yes. Yes, okay. I would like a personal relationship with Brendan, but I don't have one. Right. So he is both cool and unattainable to me. so that makes him even cooler you know he's just out there being cool and taking like cool fun and being unattainable also yes yes and I can't get to him so cool I bet he's taller than you are

Do you think he's taller than you are? No, I think Mike is taller. Yeah, but I think he is though. You gave me the... You perceive him as taller. Giving you tall vibes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if... if the tall thing, the tall thing and cool don't go together, it's like tall and like, I think this person's smarter than me. Can you be cool in a small package? Yeah, you can be cool and small. Okay.

Yeah, small is cool. Okay, I see. This episode of Connected is brought to you by ZocDoc. Sometimes searching for the right doctor is a bit like bad Mad Libs. You need a... blank specialist who takes your blank insurance, who is within blank miles of you. Well, ZocDoc makes it easy to fill in those blanks and help you find the right doctor for your specific needs.

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So we live in the age of social media for good and bad and no one can stop it. No one can stop it. Here we are. So we spoke a little bit about blue sky next week, which I didn't once call blue ski, which I did want to do. And I don't know if anybody's done yet. But like how I call Mastodon the Don, I think we should call this one bluesky because I just think that that's funnier. And is it one word? It is.

It's not camel-cased. It's just Blue Sky with all lowercase. I've been camel-casing it because that makes the most sense to me. Okay, so Blue Sky. I wanted to get me and Stephen gave our early thoughts on Blue Skin. I have some more.

I do have some continued thoughts because I've been using it for more of the week. But I wanted to get your thoughts, your initial thoughts on it too, Federico. What are you thinking about Blue Sky? I like it. It gives me, so far at least, a very... early twitter vibes like that era of like 2010 2011 just last night i saw the developers of helied and kino put together a giveaway for indie developers. Like, yes, this is exactly Twitter 15 years ago. Yes, it is. What is it? Mac Heist?

Yeah, yeah. I also used to organize those giveaways. So it's like, yes, that is excellent. It's exactly that type of vibe. I like it. I think it's the kind of Twitter-like product. that i've been missing so much not just because i dislike mastodon i really like mastodon and i'm really grateful to have quite a quite an audience there um but i was missing this type of thing Obviously, I don't want to post anything on X, but I was missing the shorter posts, which...

require me once again to exercise that muscle in my brain because I got so used to the longer character limit on Mastodon. I was... very surprised at how often I was hitting the character like what are you talking about how dare you how dare you and I think I'm liking it so far because it's that mix of oh there's the nerds but there's also like people who are interested in art entertainment there's the you know there's a wider mix of people instead of like just like everybody being

sort of adjacent to me. So that's what I appreciate. It's obviously very early. It's missing a lot of features. The fact that there's no replies view is wild. I appreciate the better moderation tools.

I can say that I've been thought through better as a post-Twitter product, like being able to detach a post from a... from a quote post because people are dunking on you, being able to subscribe to a block list and block all the accounts in that block list, like all those things, they make me more optimistic about Blue Sky. compared to other products. They have a lot of work to do. There's no iPad app. And sort of the backdrop in all this is that for me...

And Threads, and I know you're going to disagree with me strongly, Mike, Threads has really gone off the rails for me. I ain't disagreeing. I ain't disagreeing now. I think Blue Sky has shown what Threads should have been.

Yes, yes. I don't know. I don't think I've done anything wrong with my Google searches in a way that could potentially influence the algorithm on threads. But I don't know. It's almost like after... the US elections, they flipped the switch and it became this, the main feed became this weird mix of like pure engagement, baby stuff. And people complaining or praising Trump. Oh. It's like, I don't want to see any of this.

Can I ask, how recent has this been? Because we're going to talk about it, but they just made some changes to the main feed. Even yesterday. Something's poisoned your algorithm. Something has. Something has. And I think...

I look at blue sky and I look at threads. So I'm always going to keep Mastodon there on the side. That's where the nerds hang out. That's, you know, the equivalent of going to, it's basically the equivalent of going to a meetup for your favorite tech podcast. It's your people are there. but when I look at Threads and Blue Sky as the other possibly wider social space Blue Sky right now has the momentum

And none of the engagement baity stuff that Threads has. Will it last? I don't know. But you asked me for my opinion right now. And that's my opinion right now. Like the engagement bait exists on the platform, but you're just not following the people, right? Which is like, that's the idea. And it's also not heavily recommended to me, you know? Yeah. Like you can go find it, but like you gotta...

You've got to choose to go there, right? To go find it. Yeah. Yeah, so it's fun. I'm posting there and, you know, even the silly stuff that wouldn't necessarily be appreciated. Like yesterday, for example, I posted a stupid thing about Drake suing Apple because Drake thinks that Siri recommended Kendrick Lamar songs over his songs.

Yes. I saw that and it is gold. Like that post wouldn't have gone well on Mastodon. I would have gotten a guy on Mastodon me like, oh, so do you agree with Driz? You know, the type of reply. You would have gotten a mastodon. No, I just think it's silly. I just think it's silly, you know? No, I reply from a guy. Reply from a guy, be like, oh, do you know Drake? You know, something about...

politics or whatever. And instead of Blue Sky, you can be a poster without caring about it. So that's what I was missing. Yeah. Yeah, I would say the vibe... remains good for another week. I think the vibes are good. Again, you've said it, Federico, and everyone's saying it, but I'm going to say it as well. It does really feel to me like...

When I enjoyed Twitter, it felt like this, of the type of content that I'm seeing. Do you know what? Honestly, I think I might have just hit what it was in my mind. Like, for me, because I use the official Twitter app, right? And I think you did too, Federico, right? Or at least you moved in and out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess, like, and I didn't really use the For You feed, but...

Even if you didn't use it, there was still like an element of like people playing to the algorithm, I guess, where Blue Sky is not really like that, as you say. And so maybe that is what what made Twitter. bad was people playing to the algorithm and like a lot of these services it's just that kind of content isn't for me anyway It surprises me some of the features that they don't have. That's the thing that I've noticed in the past week of having used it more.

The ability to not turn off reposts from people, that is a significant issue for me. Because... I try my best to see as little politics as possible in these feeds. So I want that gone. There are people who... I want to follow, but I don't want their opinions on everything. And that includes the things that they reshare. And so the fact that I can't turn that off is wild to me. And also, I cannot believe that they don't have editing. There's no editing.

like what year is it you know i can't edit posts like what is happening um but yeah so there's some there's some creakiness i think to the to it but overall uh i like it and like the main thing for me is that like there are people that I want to see that aren't there. I actually think I'm going to get into that more in a minute. So Stephen, what are you feeling? I think my feelings basically mirror yours. The more time I've spent on it, the more I'm sort of frustrated by.

some of the lack of what we consider, you know, basically like needed features at this point. Um, but also like, I don't envy their. position of like, you've been working on this thing for a while and you're having these, this big wave of growth right now. Like, I'm sure that's stressful. And like, there have been times where like, it just doesn't work. And, you know, I think there.

scrambling to shore up the base of what they have before they can work on new features. And that's just part of this, I think. One thing I really like, and I did one, so we set up a Relay account. And I set up a starter pack on that with all of our like hosts and like moderators that kind of relay people who are on blue sky. That's a really cool feature because it's, it's like a list, but.

it's more interesting than that. You can kind of talk about, you know, why this exists. And like, I know y'all did the same thing over on Mac stories, Federico, but in it, there's like, Even that's kind of buggy. So like Kathy Campbell, our community manager, is on Blue Sky. I follow her. I cannot add her to the starter pack. Like it does not find her searching for her from the starter pack user interface. Maybe Kathy blocked you.

Maybe Kathy blocked me. Have you thought about that? Or blocked. This is how I find out. And so, you know, again, that's not a problem. I think that's a growing pains. And again, like I'm sure they have people working bananas hours right now. to keep things moving. And I definitely don't envy that. The thing I'm really struck by every time I log in is it just ripped off Twitter's UI. Like it looks like Twitter. If you, if you did like the Pepsi challenge between these two user interfaces.

I'm not sure you could tell the difference. Well, didn't it start as a Twitter spinoff? Yeah, it did. Years ago? With Jack Dorsey there. And Jack Dorsey is gone. You know, it's different leadership. And I get it. Like, Twitter... For better, for worse, they did work on that UI for a long time. And I guess standing on their shoulders is fine. But Threads is, I think, an example of how it can be really different. Threads doesn't look like Twitter.

or a blue sky in terms of where things are. And I just, every time I log in, I'm like, oh yeah, you're actually really kind of similar UI-wise. But I agree the vibes are good. How long that lasts beats me. I'm not optimistic long-term about any of these things. But for now, it's fun. I mentioned threads. Threads has been running scared in the last seven days. It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible to see. So this is what's happened in the last week.

They first tuned the algorithm to make it show more of the people you follow. So like on the algorithm page. And I saw mine change immediately. And there are people, I'm like, oh yeah, I follow you. I hadn't seen these people's posts in ages. Then they enabled a... their version of a custom feeds feature. So there are hashtags on threads and you can make any hashtag like a custom feed that you just see content about that hashtag, which is whatever. They then announced a...

test, they'll let you set any of these feeds as a default, which would include the following feed. So you will basically be able to have a default of the following feed. And then... Today, I think, I saw Stephen just put this in the notes, they're also doing starter packs too. I respect it. I respect it, man. Just go for it.

just do it like people are telling you they want these features do them you should have done them when people are asking or other than when you just had competition but like why not just do it I saw I saw that because Casey Newton on Blue Sky wrote, Blue Sky is truly having an incredible run as Thread's head of product. I love Casey Nealon. So good.

And, you know, that's, you know, Matt has done that for years and just they're kind of their kind of their MO. I, my guy also noticed the threads difference on desktop. I have for you and then following set up side by side and. And I think on iOS, like setting the default, like I don't know if they're rolling that out or it's A-B testing. Currently, I can set a custom list as my like home.

but i cannot set following like that's in a different part of the ui maybe that's coming or maybe we all misunderstood but Mark said on threads. You know what they're like. They're slow. They just roll this stuff out. They A-B test things to the nth degree. They're doing this. This is something that they wanted to announce.

Because they've started testing it, because then it kind of gets the heat off them, I guess. Yeah, but they are, I mean, definitely, I think, feeling the heat from Blue Sky, which I believe is much smaller than they are. But Threads has had the juice for a while now, and they don't want to give that up. Yeah, but when they start... Anytime Meta starts, used to be Facebook, now Meta starts copying stuff from their competitors, they don't seem to understand that's when they stop being cool.

Like it's always been this way. It was this way with Facebook. It was this way with Instagram. Like it's. Well, I mean, one of those things is stories though. And like. Yeah. But like, I don't know as. I don't know. It just seems desperate.

But do they care about being cool? I don't think they care. I mean, Zuck currently cares about being cool. But the company, this is what they do. They either buy or copy. Like, they've always done this. And it works out for them. I agree with you. It doesn't make it fun. i guess it seemed like here's why i don't like it because it seemed like for a moment for like the past year it seemed that meta could build a successor to twitter

without having to copy anyone. Yeah. And now they're back to the copying and that makes them look just, you know, old. It looks weak. And weak, yes. Yeah, it looks weak. Because now they've been made fun of. right yeah like they would they were i mean this is what started good guys up right was threads people were excited about something that he was building and then that kind of like changed his public perception but yeah they they did a bunch of stuff and it didn't really

continue it. They slowed down. Some of these things, if they would have just done them on their own when the users were asking, would have been fine. Some of this stuff, if they would have like... borrowed from blue sky would have been fine like say like starter packs or whatever in my opinion but some of this stuff like tweaking the algorithm

doing the choosing your own default feat. This is stuff they should have just done because people were asking for it. People weren't asking for starter packs before Blue Sky started doing them. And so like, you know, like whatever. But yeah, there's some stuff in here which is just like... People have been asking you for this for ages. So if you felt like there wasn't a good reason to do it, then you shouldn't be doing it now either, right? Because now it just looks like...

Why are you doing this? You obviously had a reason, or I assume you would say you had a reason why you didn't want to do these features. So why are you now doing them? That's where the weakness comes in, right? Yeah. An anonymous user wrote in and said, so, the Blue Sky thing.

Why? Mastodon has your audience and it has proper client apps. Blue Sky will be Twitter in no time. And before you know it, you're playing the social media game again, posting things to gain traction, tying up your worth in it, etc. Plus the creator. or is still just a tech bro? I don't know. Why are you doing it? Well, for me, at least, like I said, it's nice to see people join from outside of our tech.

bubble i've been able to follow again people from pokemon twitter for example people from gaming twitter like people who never bothered to join mastodon because of many many different reasons you know it can be daunting it can be a little strange or what's a mastodon instance like Also, here's an opinion. In social media, most people don't care about federation. We, the nerds... appreciate a good protocol when we see one.

Because it tingles our senses. You know, it's like all the things we love. Ah, yes, RSS. Deep and open frameworks. APIs. All the things we love. Most people, my mom doesn't care. My mom and people like... People like, I don't know, not even my friends in real life. They don't care. They want fun. They want instant gratification. They want to sign up for the thing. Post, get five likes, follow their favorite TV celebrities and be done with it. People don't care about the Federation. And so me...

Someone who tries all the things. An intellectual. An anonymous. I heard that too in my head. Me, an intellectual. Me, an intellectual who tries all things, dear anonymous. It's fun. that I get to follow people that don't always talk about WWDC or Apple Intelligence or SwiftUI, that just talk about Pikachu and the Steam Deck and all my other hobbies.

Because I don't find them on Mastodon. And if you don't understand this part, I don't know. This is exactly it for me, right? With Blue Sky. Is that... There were a bunch of people that I really enjoyed following who I have not seen anything that they've had to say since I left Twitter because they either... didn't join Mastodon, or they joined threads and weren't willing to go all in and just stayed on Twitter. And this is a lot of tech reporters.

and a lot of people in gaming, like both reporters and creators. And these are people who I really enjoy their work and I get it in other places. So I listen to their podcasts, I read their newsletters, but I also want...

everything that that person might say if i can like i want to have access to it and so like that's i think when i keep talking about like the twitter thing is because oh it i'm seeing those people i'm seeing what those people have to say again i have not seen what those people have had to say in this way in like two years because they they didn't go all in on one of these services but twitter so blue sky has enough twitter in it that it is pulling these people in like they're actually willing to

to do it and to try where they haven't been willing to go all in. So like, that's, that's why I'm using it. Like for me as a creator, I don't think I'm really like, I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I genuinely now I have no. idea what i'm doing anymore i don't know what service to be on i don't know what to post anywhere it's way too confusing i i have absolutely no answers for you but i just know that as a

consumer of content I'm enjoying I'm enjoying what Blue Sky has to offer for me but like I got out of the game of trying to post things for engagement a long time ago like It never really suited me, and I was never good at it. I do want to say one thing about this anonymous feedback.

It was created and spun out of Twitter, but Jack Dorsey, who I think is the quote unquote bro you're talking about, Anonymous, has been gone since May. But to be fair, and this came out, I was talking with a friend of mine earlier today. Blue Sky has raised a lot of VC money as recently as like a month ago. And I think some of the players in that are like worth keeping an eye on.

It was led by blockchain capital and, you know, some others. And just keep an eye on it, you know? I mean, I saw people say about this, but I mean, I haven't looked into their VC too much. Like I saw someone saying today, like, oh, the VCs are very into... blockchain and AI. It's like all venture capitalist companies are investing in these areas now. These are the areas that are being invested in. And I will just say, like, not only is...

the person in charge of Blue Sky, not Jack Dorsey. It's also a woman, not a bro. And so I think that that is something just worth knowing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and it's, oh, there's a funny thing. So this person's name, they go by Jay Graeber, but their full name is, I'm going to say Lanshan Jay Graeber, and... That name, L-A-N-T-I-N, means blue sky in Mandarin Chinese, which is a pure coincidence. Isn't that incredible? No, that can be, right? That's what I said. Really? Yep. That is perfect.

Isn't that incredible? I'll put their Wikipedia page in the show notes. I saw that the other day and it's on the Wikipedia page, so it must be true. Yeah, I mean, we all know those are accurate. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that a beautiful coincidence? Benjamin. Breaking news. Breaking news. Breaking news. I am launching a social media network. Oh. Yeah. What is it? It's called Michael. That's my middle name. Okay.

What a coincidence. And it's only for people who have Michael in their name. So, sorry, Federico. So, me and you? Me and you. How do you feel about me being on your social network? Are you happy about that or sad about that? I mean, it's, you know...

Terms of service, you're going to have to be followed. Steven, that's literally called iMessage. You know me, I'm always breaking into terms of service. You can't hold me down. It's called iMessage. I got things to say. I got things to say. And I'm going to say I'm on my call.

It does, you know, we're going to have some problems with that, but I mean, we'll figure it out. The VCs will figure it out. Growing pains. Growing pains. Growing pains, yeah. Yeah, you're going to need to submit some form of identification. Okay. It's very exclusive and just loaded with terrible ideas. Great. Jim, cut all that. Benjamin also wrote in and said, I find it interesting that when you talk about the different social media platforms you're on, you usually omit Discord.

Besides the promotional aspects of these other social media sites, what are they giving you that Discord doesn't? So I'll start off and say, I don't think a Discord is social media. Ding, ding, ding. It isn't. It isn't social media. It's a community discussion app. It's closed in a way. Like I know there are open discords, but like you still have to go into the discord to see what's said in the discord. It's not like this stuff is posted like broadcast to the world.

And also, it goes back to the same thing, which is the biggest thing for me with social media is being able to see the things that people say that I wouldn't be in a group chat or Discord with, right?

I want to see what people I respect, people that are taller than me, what they have to say. And I don't get that in... every discord that i'm in like i can't get everybody that i enjoy in gaming to like join a discord with me to just tell me what they think all the time like they are different there are different types of things there i will agree there is an overlap to a point

of being in a community and talking. But Discord is closer to forums than it is to social media. Yeah. I feel the same way, and I'm willing to admit that that's our... use of Discord. I'm not in any big public servers with billions of people. Yeah, but it's still not the same even if it's a public server. It's chatting. You're chatting, right? You're not posting.

I do think that there is a distinction there. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair. If you are confused by all the cross-posting business, we have good news. Our friends behind Croissant have released an update today, actually. that brings their cross-posting app from the iPhone to the Mac and iPad as well. So this was one of my uses for iPhone mirroring, and now it's just a Mac app I can launch.

It looks great. I think they did a really nice job bringing it to the larger screen sizes. And go check it out. It's in the App Store. This episode of Connected is brought to you by Ecamm. Ecamm Live is the leading video production and live streaming studio built for the Mac. Ecamm does all aspects of video, not just live streaming, so it's perfect for simplifying a bunch of different parts of your workflow.

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And existing customers, you'll get a special offer if you're part of their email list. So go to ecamm.com to learn more and our thanks to Ecamm for sponsoring the show. So Apple revealed their... Once again, they're app and game finalists for the annual App Store Awards. These are 45 apps and games. There's a full list on the Apple newsroom.

It's organized with the same categories as last year. There's the App of the Year, Game of the Year, and a separate category for Apple Arcade, Mac App, Mac Game, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro. Also included this year. That last one got me. It's like, man, anyone who wrote a Vision Pro app is eligible. Yeah, we're giving you an award. I think it's nice that there's a... Possibly a... healthier mix of like really popular titles and some indie

Picks, like Kino, for example, has been nominated for iPhone App of the Year. Tripsy, which is excellent. Do you want me to run through them? We can talk about them? Yeah, sure, yeah. Yeah? So, iPhone App of the Year, Kino. which is the cinematic recording app, Runner, which I've not heard of, but is a running app, and TripSee, which is a trip planning app, which actually got a big redesign.

I think that's really good. That's like two, I mean, maybe three, two indie apps that I know about. I don't know who makes Runner. But that's pretty cool, right? Yeah, definitely. And then we have iPhone Game of the Year. AFK Journey, The Wear Cleaner, and Zendler Zone Zero. I only have heard of Zendler Zone Zero. Yeah.

I think it was on PC where you were like Apple's latest friend. But Hoyoverse, they always have the Hoyoverse games. Yeah, always. Good reason, though. These games are absolutely massive. True. Kind of makes sense. Have you heard of the other games, Federico? Do you know about these? Nope. First time I'm seeing them. Maybe worth trying. iPad app of the year. Bluey Let's Play. Moises, which is an AI-powered music practicing tool.

And Procreate Dreams, which is their animation app from Procreate. Yeah. Procreate is iPad's best friend. Always. Yes. Always. We used to podcast with somebody named Moises. Yeah. Now he's an app. We're still out there. Oh, they've been sucked into the app. Yeah, that's rough. iPad Game of the Year, Assassin's Creed Mirage. Oh, this is Apple's new best friend also. Yeah, Ubisoft at the moment. Federico, it's so funny. So CD Projekt had their earnings call a couple of days ago.

And they were talking about how successful Cyberpunk has been for them. Like, I think they sold like 30 million copies or something. And they, in the earnings call, they referenced how, like, they're really excited about the progress on Cyberpunk and its sales.

And they're really looking forward to that, to when they launch on Apple Silicon next year. Powered by the power of Apple Silicon, they're launching on the Mac. And as if to suggest it's going to be a big boost for them from an earnings perspective, which I thought was very funny. I found it really interesting that specifically calling out Apple Silicon, there is question about is Apple paying these companies to do this? Are they paying...

Ubisoft, are they paying Kojima? And the way in which the CFO specifically called out Apple Silicon, it sounded like a line he'd been given to say. It was weird to me. This is pure conspiracy time, but it stuck out to me as a weird thing to say, like an unnatural thing that somebody would just say. But Assassin's Creed Mirage, Disney Speeds. Storm and Squad Busters are the iPad Game of the Year finalists. Apple Arcade Game of the Year finalists. Bellatro Plus.

Outlanders 2 and Sonic Dream Team. If Bellatro does not win this, I do not know what is going on over there. That is, yeah, this is the game of the year, not just Apple Arcade game of the year. Mac app of the year. You ready for this, Steven? Adobe Lightroom, OmniFocus 4, Shaper 3D. The classics. Yeah.

Mac Game of the Year, Frostpunk 2, Stray, and Thank Goodness You're Here. Great games, actually. Like, actual, legit, good games in Mac Game of the Year. Stray, isn't it from, like, two years ago? It was PlayStation exclusive. So it came out on the Mac I think around the same time that it went on the other platform. So basically the Mac Game Awards are like the Game Awards with a two-year delay. Well, Thank Goodness Your Hair came out this year and Frostpunk 2 came out this year.

You know, I'm being kind to the Mac. I'm being kind to the Mac. Making progress. I'm making progress. Thank goodness you're here, by the way, is really good fun. And it's like a game anyone could play. It's a very weird game of a lot of strange humor, but it's basically a point-and-click adventure game. I recommend it. It's good fun. Apple Watch app of the year. Lookup. Lumi. Watch to 5K. Very cool.

Yeah, Lookup got a redesign this year, I think, and it's really solid. Well, congratulations, Vidit. I'm very happy for them. And Apple Vision Pro App of the Year, Jigspace. This is where you can look at the Formula One car. NBA and What If, an immersive story.

I find it interesting that there's also a game of the year, which is Luna, Thrasher, and Vacation Simulator for Vision Pro. And I find it interesting that they put What If in the app of the year, not the game of the year. I mean, it's kind of entertainment, so it probably fits more in app than games, but...

That was interesting to me. And then Apple TV app of the year. Dropout, F1 TV, and Zoom. Zoom. Zoom should win. Zoom. Let's go. And then Cultural Impact Finalists. There's a lot of these. Give me a second. Arco, The Bear, Better Sleep, Brawl Stars, Daily Art, Do You Really Want to Know Too, EF Hello, NYT Games, Oko, Partiful, Pinterest, and The Wreck. And this is, they bring...

This category brought users powerful stories and helped them bring out their best selves to create a lasting impact. Very broad in nominations for this this year. Like, I think that is a, there's a game like Arco and then also like New York times games and Pinterest, you know, it's like a very, very broad category, but.

There have been some years where I'm like, we're all like, this is what is happening. Like, what are these? And this year, I wouldn't say that. I think there's some great stuff in here. Of course, these awards are fine, but... They're not Mac Story Selects or the upgradies. That's what I'll say. Sure. That's what I'll say. Is Mac Story Selects coming soon, Federico? Yeah, how's that going?

They are coming soon. The awards have been finalized. They've been sent for production. And I really like the list that we have this year. And they will be published in the very near future. Also, you've like, the winners are chosen. Yeah. I voted in the User's Choice Award. Yes. Can I say what I voted for?

Or is that breaking rules, like election rules? No, you can. I voted for TGTabs. And if TGTabs does not win, I will be so mad. Thank you. TGTabs should win the award. And if they don't, I will be very disappointed. I just want everyone to know that. It's too late now. Because the vote is closed. But I just want everyone to know I'll be disappointed. And what about the upgradies? Are they in process?

Yeah, you can vote now. We're doing, well, you can not vote. We do nominations. You can go to upgradeys.vote. You can put new nominations. That closes on December 13th and we're recording on December the 30th. I will say, I will say. Yeah. Connected won in 2022. And we won back in 2018. So we are one away from a Lifetime Achievement Award. And so I'm just saying, favorite podcasts, connected people, go. It's difficult for connected to win that because I'm never going to put...

my own show forward. So like it has to win the Upgradient vote and Jason has to be feeling it. That's the only way it's going to happen. Downstream is one. Maybe you can start pressuring Jason. Okay. Yeah, but when that happened, that was me putting it forward. And maybe Jason doesn't have the same ethical rules as me. I don't remember. But I just can't, in good faith, say that I should win an award that I will give to myself.

It's like the meme of Obama putting the medal around himself. Like, that's what it's like. Like, oh, yeah, my podcast should win this. But as I've said many times, I'm always genuinely surprised that Upgrade isn't at the top of the... nomination list it's always like i get what i get it but also it's like come on like we're here what do you want from us but yeah doesn't work out yeah i was really saying to let that for

I would like to be a lifetime achievement winner. Sure. You know, look, honestly, we've had a great year. Company turned 10. You and I were awarded creator of the year from St. Jude. This would be like, this is the EGOT of podcasting, you know? Interesting. Interesting. Upgraders. Are you willing to say this is what you truly want? I feel like that's a reference I'm not getting, but sure. No.

I'm just like, you know, we've had a lot of things happen that have been great this year, but is this what you, like, are you willing to say? I'm just saying it would be the cherry on top. You know, it's just the little extra that would really make this year just really shine. So now here's the thing. Obviously, Jason will listen to this. I wonder if you saying this will make him more or less likely. That is an interesting question. Yeah. Is he going to be more or less likely to want to give it?

Well, we'll see because it's all up to the, I do genuinely believe this one is up to the Upgradians to put their votes where they want to put them. Yeah. I already have like a long short list of my favorite podcasts of the year to put in, so I'm not going to help. Unfortunately. The long, long short list. Mm-hmm. Well, Connected's a pretty good show. I like it. It's fine. I'm biased. It's fine. This episode of Connected is made possible by Squarespace.

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It's just all integrated and knows about each other. So head on over to squarespace.com and sign up for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash connected to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain name. That's squarespace.com slash connected for 10% off your first purchase. and to show your support for the world's greatest podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for the support of Connected and all of Relay. Federico, you have been on a journey.

with Apple frames, uh, version 3.3 was released this week. And I read the blog post. I know talking to you that, uh, this really, you really got thrown a curve ball with this. Uh, tell us what the, what's the deal. with display P3 and sRGB and screenshots. Yeah, so I have been working on this shortcut for months because I wanted to update it initially with just the M4 iPad Pros.

In the summer, when I started testing it in June, I had the beta of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 installed, and I quickly put together a version with the new frames. for the new ipads and it didn't work in the sense that when the shortcut overlaid the screenshot on top of the device frame The device frames, they always have a little bit of transparency around them. They are transparent PNGs. But when I overlaid the image, the transparency would become a solid black border.

around the image and i thought well that's weird that's wrong it doesn't doesn't have to do that And I just assumed that it was going to be a temporary iOS 18 beta 1 setback. It continued for months. The shortcut has this action called Overlay Image. And it stayed broken in that state for months. Obviously, it all got worse in September when the new iPhones and Apple Watches came out. And a bunch of people, like a lot of people.

use this shortcut. And a lot of people have been sending me emails and replies on Mastodon and threads being like, hey, why isn't this working with my iPhone 16? Because it doesn't support the iPhone 16. Because I cannot add support for it. Because I'm waiting for a bug fix. But this bug fix never came. I submitted the feedback. I talked to some shortcuts people privately. Nothing.

Until last week, I thought, well, let's try the last thing that I can try. Going public about it. You know, there's this new space on Blue Sky. Let's take it as an opportunity. You know, people are paying attention here now. Let's bring this up on Blue Sky. And sure enough, within 24 hours, I got a reply and an email from two different people sort of coming to the same conclusion that something was going on.

with color profiles in shortcuts. Specifically, a reader and listener, I believe, Douglas, found out that on their Mac... Some screenshots were being captured instead of sRGB 8-bit as DisplayP3. 16-bit. Oh, man. That's my favorite one. And the behavior was inconsistent. Like some screenshots were 8-bit with one color profile. Other screenshots were not. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. You...

I mean, my understanding is you could not find a pattern as to why the system did this. My personal theory is that, slash conspiracy theory, is that I've done a bunch of tests. It seems like every single time I take a screenshot of Siri, like the new Siri with the fancy colors and the fancy animation, it's always in 16-bit P3. So like Siri, they make it look better.

in screenshots uh but but like it's wildly inconsistent like most of the time plain white uis are captured in the old format so 8 bits srgb Whereas sometimes, but not always, but sometimes, images with more colors, like more colorful screenshots, are in the wider color gamut. My expectation would be like...

the system is doing something to determine if it should be in higher color or not, right? I think so, too. I think so, too. They're just like, oh, this one, it will look better if it's in 16, so it's just in 16, and like, whatever.

Now, what was the issue? The issue is that this is not communicated anywhere. And the overlay image action seemingly... has no awareness of this mismatch when you're trying to overlay an image in 8-bit or in 16-bit on top of another image that is in a different color profile with a different bit depth. The overlay image doesn't say anything. It just quietly fails and removes the alpha channel from the underlying PNG. And...

I wish I thought of this sooner. I wish I thought of checking for the color profile myself. But basically, that put me on a path. to figure out a solution. On Blue Sky, fellow shortcuts creator Antonio Bueno, they proposed a way to use a JavaScript-based... workaround inside shortcuts to re-encode a screenshot in a different color profile that method worked but it added a lot

of memory consumption to the shortcut. To the point where if I tried to frame more than two or three screenshots, the shortcut would crash every single time. Because it was doing a lot of JavaScript for every screenshot. And that's very memory intensive in shortcuts. So I thought I was stuck again. And then I...

I realized, well, maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe the solution is not to alter what screenshots look like. Maybe I gotta try the opposite approach. Maybe I need to change the frames instead. So my theory was, okay, so the 8-bit sRGB frames, they cause these issues. What if I upgraded the frames to 16-bit? What happens if on a 16-bit frame I overlay an 8-bit or 16-bit image? And that worked. Upgrading the frames to 16-bit.

made sure that regardless of whether I'm overlaying an 8-bit image or a 16-bit one, the alpha transparency stays the same around the frame. Got some help from John to re-encode all of the images with a terminal command. There's a script called, part of an open source project called ImageMagick. You can run it on the terminal on macOS and it basically re-encoded the images without altering the colors, without altering the sizes in 16-bit sRGB and it doesn't matter.

that the frame is sRGB and maybe a screenshot is in display P3. What matters is the bit depth of those images and that did the trick. So I was able to basically create a new folder. of frames with a different uh with a different bit depth and that fix all the problems now um finally i was able to release apple frames 3.3 but i want to i want to leave you with a bit of a teaser

Because a couple of nights ago, as I was thinking about Apple, Apple frames has been on my mind a lot this week. And I was thinking like how cumbersome it had become to scroll that screenshot.

to add new features or to double check a specific portion of the screenshot and i had a bit of an epiphany for a different approach altogether that i could use for the internal logic of Apple frames that checks what type of screenshot are you dealing with what type of resolution is it I had this epiphany that I will actually go a little much more in depth on the upcoming episode of App Stories, where I deleted 509 actions.

509 actions deleted. And all that logic is now contained in a single JSON file. That gives me... much more room for adding new features, which I've already done, and fixing bugs, which I've already done. and making Apple Frames even more flexible than before, which is what people have been requesting. So to sum up, I think Apple Frames 4 completely rebuilt.

and with more options than before, I think I can release it before the end of the year. That's awesome. I think a shortcut of that size is just terrifying to me, like I couldn't. I couldn't even imagine, like, scrolling, because, like, what if you accidentally moved something? And, like, how would you ever know? Well, I create backups of the shortcut, but yeah.

even then man that's so terrifying to me like yeah do you have like a shortcut that makes a backup of the shortcut please tell me you do yeah i do i do love that love it oh i love that yeah you could just every time you run it

Just make a backup. Just keep doing it forever. No, but the thing is like, so this shortcut is used by a lot of developers and a lot of designers. Like a lot of people use it for production work. And I know that they've been asking for... more options like for example why is it that you know why is apple frames 3.3 defaulting to an iphone 16 plus in ultramarine because that's what i picked uh but what if what if

what if you could pick what kind of iPhone you wanted to use? And also, we are now running into the issue of some Apple devices sharing the same resolutions. So for example, in Apple Frames 3.3, I had to make a decision. At the same resolution point, both the iPhone 16 Plus and the iPhone 15 Pro Max coexist.

They have the same resolution. So when I give you a screenshot, it could be either one of those. And with the old Apple frames, I had to make a decision and be like, okay, I'm going to default to the most recent iPhone. But then I get replies from people saying, why is it?

that when I capture and try to frame a screenshot from my iPhone 15 Pro Max, it comes out looking as an iPhone 16 Plus in ultramarine, right? And so I have been able to fix that problem. That is also one of the things coming in Apple Frames 4. Very cool. Yeah. It's been a bit of a journey, yeah. Yeah, I know this one has been a bit of a downer for you, really. That's always frustrating. Especially with this new system.

I feel very energized about it. It's actually pretty awesome. No, that's good. That makes me feel good. Because it's frustrating, right? Where you have so... You have zero control, zero say over what happens in the system and you're trying to build on top of it.

I would find that really demoralizing to just kind of be banging your head against the wall, trying to work out how to make it work. So I'm really happy that you're able to fix it. And I'm actually really happy that you're able to fix it in the way that you did, right? By putting it... out into the world and you've got people to come and help you. That's the nicest thing that can happen. It's lovely. I agree. I've been battling my own mystery.

here recently uh steven frames steven frames uh i've got a original launch day apple watch ultra And my phone's running the iOS 18.2 beta, whatever the most up-to-date one is. But my watch is on the public release of watchOS 11.1, whatever the current one is. I don't...

As a rule, don't run watchOS betas. On my main watch, I have a development watch that, you know, gets sacrificed to the beta each summer. And that's been fine. Like, you know, for years I've done this where my phone's on betas, watch isn't. And it's been fine. But in the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that my Ultra...

The battery life is really fading. And I've even said it on a couple of shows. Like, you know, this watch is entering its third year and it's starting to really kind of feel it. The health reports at 88%. battery capacity so it's taken a hit but not that bad um but i have noticed that in addition to like some days i'm just before i'm in bed you know i'm hitting the

The low battery thing, which on an ultra, I just has never happened before. Uh, for years, I've worn it all day. Slept, sleep tracked, slept, tracked it with it. Slop truck. Slop trucked it. And then. charge it when I'm getting ready for the day and it's basically good to go again. So that rhythm has been broken, which is annoying. But the final straw is that over the weekend, I've noticed a couple of things happening.

One, it would show me the red phone with a slash through it. Like it wasn't connected to my phone, even though my phone was with me. So I would notice that like, oh, the calendar hasn't updated or... Carat weather is just like, it's just spinning if I tap the complication. But then Monday it detected or collected no activity information. So no stand hours.

no movement, nothing. That's not good. That's not good. Not good. So my watch on Monday thinks that I just stayed in bed all day. Yeah. I did not. I went to work. I was like, okay, like something's, something's. clearly wrong here so i like well let me you know erase the watch and set it back up like you know mate like this could be a hardware issue like i was afraid oh gosh the the watch has like a hardware failure like the wi-fi or something

and the watch is dying, restarting when it fix it. Sometimes it would fix it for a little while, but clearly something's going on here. It's out of AppleCare, so let me restore it and just hope that it's a software issue. I went to go reset the watch from the companion iPhone app and it wouldn't do it. So I took a screenshot of this error and it's on, it's in the Macedon post. It's in the show notes, but what it read was could not.

Could not connect to Apple Watch. Make sure your Apple Watch is nearby, powered on, and not in airplane mode. So it's, at this point, sitting, charging on my nightstand. I'm sitting on the edge of my bed. I hit erase Apple Watch content and settings. And it shows me this. So at this point, I'm like, well, is it so broken that I can't restore it? Which would be real bad. But then someone on Amazon posted out that you can also reset the watch.

from the watch itself so it's in the settings app you dig down far enough and there's reset apple watch content settings so i did that and it it erased itself it came back and it came back up as a new watch. Like, great. It restored. It seemed to restore fine. Like it was slow, but that it's always slow when you restore an Apple watch. And I restored my backup to it.

And two days later, it seems like it's okay, but definitely like a looking into the abyss because I do not want to buy an Apple Watch Ultra 2 because it's a year old. What would I do? I don't know. So hopefully it continues to be okay. I did, before I erased it, I did file feedback.

Uh, feedback one, five, nine, six, two, three, six, eight about my poor battery life. All the logs when associated with that. So if you work on the Apple watch and you would go dig into that, like please do. Um, but so far so good. this is when it gets weird okay oh oh we've taken another time yeah so far annoying but like you know got it fixed so i'm telling mary about this mary has a launch day series eight so we we updated our watches at the same time, a little over two years ago.

Mary has the small size series eight, and she's always worn the small Apple watch. And I've just known that that means that she's going to get three years out of an Apple watch before it needs a battery. And so she's on basically a three-year update cycle. And it's like, well, that's weird. Too soon for that to be the case. Her battery's also at 88% battery capacity, just out of weird.

But she's had a couple of cases where her watch is doing the same thing. Oh, no. Dying in the middle of the day. So earlier than a small watch normally dies. She's like, be at work. 1 p.m. Her watch is like, I'm dying. Goodbye. And she's noticed that it drops connection to her phone. Now, the way she discovered this. is that Siri was not working on her watch. And she uses Siri on her watch a lot more than I do on mine. And so her watch is exhibiting similar symptoms to mine.

To my knowledge, it has not dropped a day of activity tracking. Like she works out basically every day. Like she would tell me like, hey, I worked out, nothing happened. Or she's very in tune with her rings and filling them. And so that has not taken place. on her watch yet like well that's weird like maybe they're both maybe it's just like older watches and she's not on any betas right she's on watch os 11.1 and ios 18.1 fully up to date on the public release

Imagine if you were trying to diagnose that and she's like, oh yeah, I'm on 0.2. Yeah, I'm running the beta. What are you doing? Her phone is not capable of Apple intelligence, so there's no reason to put her on the beta.

And she thinks AI is terrible. So she wouldn't turn it on even if she could. In fact, she got a notification on her Mac about turning on Apple intelligence. She was so mad. She's like, get out of here. I don't want this. Blames you. Like, why have you done this? Yeah. Yeah. So then I had a brainwave. About two weeks ago, okay, so about three weeks ago, I swapped to a fast charger on my side of the bed. I was using like the standard Apple Watch puck.

that I got probably, honestly, years and years ago. And I was like, you know what? It would be nice to fast charge my watch. And the USB like multi-charger thing I had like powering my nightstand, I needed to replace it anyways because I needed one more USB-C port. I was like, well, let me get a modern one and I'll get a new Apple Watch charging puck and I'll fast charge.

which is really nice, especially if you sleep track it. You just drop it on, it's very fast. And if you wear an Apple Watch Ultra, you will know that it's very slow to charge on a normal Apple Watch charger because the battery is so much bigger. And so...

I was like, I'm enjoying this. And Mary's like getting into some sleep tracking. I was like, oh, you would really benefit with a small watch plus sleep tracking. You would really also benefit from fast charging. So I did the same thing on her side of the bed. Um, her multi USB thing was newer. And so she actually had capacity for fast charging. So I went to the store, got her a fast charging Apple watch puck, put it in her studio neat nightstand thing she uses. And it was after this.

that both of our watches started doing weird things. And I'm not saying fast charging is an issue or that it caused it or that like, but it's weird. You're not not saying that. I'm not not saying it. Yeah. And so I'm going to see how my watch does. I'm going to restore hers, I think, over Thanksgiving at some point, just like borrow it for a little while and put her back on. This was all the same.

But weird, right? Yeah, this is absolutely not the same thing, but I have like a weird thing happen with charging on my Apple Watch too, where sometimes I get the thing and it's like, Harry, your watch is dead. I'm like, how could this happen? And then I go home and I put my watch on my charger and it doesn't charge. Like it just won't charge. But if I disconnect.

the Apple Watch charger from the brick and plug it back in again, then it works. It's like every few months I have to unplug it and plug it back in again. This isn't the same thing, but like... I don't understand why that's happening. I will say my charger is very old. It is a USB-A Apple Watch charger. Yeah, it may just be time for a new... I think I need a new one. But it's like, then I also have to buy a new power brick.

right it's like you so it's like i've kind of just like procrastinating on it because i just don't really want to have to just like because then i have to like i have one of the studio neat things and i have to like unwire every yeah i need to like Do the whole thing. So like I'm really procrastinating on it to the point where I guess it doesn't work anymore. But anyway, but that's very strange. Very strange.

obviously I can't think of any logical reason why charging would do this but why else is it happening to both of you that's odd when she told me she was having trouble with it like my mouth like fell open. I was like, what? Did you get the immediate instinct to make a YouTube video? I did not. Charge gate? No, there was no hissing, you know, so there's no, there's no hook.

And she was like, you know, because she has had the smaller watch for years and like, she's like, Oh, like, you know, is it, is, do I just need to like consider an upgrade? I was like, you know, I don't think so. Like, um,

I don't think it's time for that, but it's definitely weird and I don't like it. No. So, I don't know. I'll keep you all posted, I guess, and see what else the... what else the watches may do but hopefully hopefully they're okay after restores but it's definitely concerning because i she would just get a series 10 like an aluminum she always gets the silver aluminum like small like

I can buy her a watch on autopilot at this point, but I don't know what I would do because I really don't want an Ultra 2. If it needed a battery, I think I'd pay to have the battery replaced. You want the black one, though. You know, no, I thought that and I saw it in person. I don't like it in person. So it's very like smudgy and fingerprinty and like not dark enough. So I don't know what I would do.

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to masterclass.com slash connected for their current offer. That's up to 50% off at masterclass.com slash connected. The link is in the show notes. Our thanks to Masterclass for their support of the show. So it's Thanksgiving week in America. which I think has become Thanksgiving around the world. Yes, very much so. I don't know if you guys have seen this year. I really don't like this. I've seen both the use of Black Week and Black...

month instead of just Black Friday. I really don't like that. I don't think it sounds good. And I also just am tired of the sales. I'm going to give you a little quick pet peeve for you both. You know we're running a month-long sale on membership. Yeah, but we're just calling it a membership sale. We're not calling it the Black Month sale, are we? I don't care about people offering discounts. Anyway, do Black Friday on Black Friday. Other than that...

you're doing a holiday sale. You know what I mean? Respect the sanctity of Black Friday is what you're saying. Exactly. But also, just Black Friday outside of America is madness anyway. Put the Friday back in Black Friday. You know? Oh, Stephen. That's what I'm saying. Yes. I love it. You should make a t-shirt, you know? You should.

the war on black friday that's what we're doing over here um i have another pet peeve that i would like to share with you real quick about i thought we're giving thanks not giving we are we are but now i'm in it now i'm in it now I find it really annoying when brands have this whole thing about why they're not doing Black Friday. Right? Or like...

We're doing it, but it's not what you think. Either just do it or don't do it. It doesn't need to be your moment. We would never do a sale. Just do it. Either do it or don't do it. Anyway, that's my pet peeve. But anyway, because it is Thanksgiving season, it is the season of giving thanks, and I thought that we could all share something in technology that we are thankful for right now. I would like to know.

I can start if you would like some time to think, but I have... Would you like me to start? Please. So I was trying to think of something that was new, new to me, rather than something that I've had. And I think genuinely the thing that I am most thankful for in technology this year is large language modeled.

powered search engines this was also going to be on my list yeah because i i really i mean i've spoken about it a bunch already but like i think that it is helping me navigate the web better than I have in years for finding helpful and interesting answers to questions. Like, I feel like I'm able to get to what I want with less work. Today, I was Googling. I was just Googling something. The sentence that I put into Google was absolute gibberish because I'm trying to get what I want.

Right? Because I was in my web browser, so I opened a new tab to type it in. And I'm like, I don't even remember what it was, but it was something like... Safari, no work, replace. You know what I mean? You're just talking in this truly unhinged way to try and get what you want out of Google. But the good thing about, like, I like ChatGPT search the most.

is that you can just be like, I'm looking for this thing and I'm wondering about this thing and it can give you results and maybe you don't like them. So you kind of like say, no, give me more of this or like give me more of that. You're actually having like a back and forth in trying to refine what you're looking for. in English, like in actual just natural English, which I like it. And then also, because of what these services are, I don't just blindly trust what they say.

Now, the thing is, I should never have trusted Google this way either, but I did. But I'm more likely to check sources. I was looking for some restaurants a couple of days ago. And it wasn't really giving me what I wanted, but there was one interesting article and it had a link and I clicked through on the link and then just browse the website for like 20 minutes.

Like, because they took me to, like, what looked like a website that would have more answers for me to just click around on. But, like, the problem is with, like, that, and what I like about it is it gets, it really, like, gets to the heart of, like... what the SEO industry is trying to make hard for me. It can search tons of lists and tons of websites and cut out a lot of the stuff that...

is trying to just get my eye, you know? Or it can cut out the 20 paragraphs of description before a recipe or whatever, you know? And so I feel like this stuff is especially good for things like...

products you're looking to buy, restaurants you want recommendations for, because it just does such a broad search and can correlate and collate answers that appear in a bunch of places. So I found this to be really good at... I think making me better at searching because I'm not just blindly trusting the first response or whatever the snippet is, which is how I trusted Google.

And I feel like I'm getting more information. I can refine it in a way that is natural and then also use the sourcing. And it does a way better job of sourcing than Google does, I believe. ChatGPT does. And I could just kind of click through and then go to the websites. and get what I want. So I really like it. Yeah. Yeah.

also largely replaced Google search with chat GPT search and I have noticed the same behavior in myself like I'm actually clicking through the sources more and I don't know, maybe it's a byproduct of the fact that I don't necessarily blindly trust the AI not to hallucinate some kind of...

web results but the thing is like the reality is i'm clicking through to websites more than i did with google where google you know by extracting a little snippet it sort of prevents you from having to click through in the first place So it's making me rethink a little, like, if this is a better tool for people to find results and actually open those results, like, how should we approach this?

you know, as Max Stories, as a company. But as a user, like, I don't know, I found the next car I want to buy. thanks to it, because I did a lot of research in natural language, like being able to compare, like being able to explain what is it that I actually want. And, you know, it brought up a bunch of... different models and we were able to pick the like it was honestly a great experience thank thankfully you didn't use grok for that or you would end up with a cyber truck yeah exactly

Powered by Memphis. It doesn't matter what you ask for. Like, I would like to buy a moped. Have you considered a Cybertruck? I want to buy a boat. Have you considered Cybertruck? Just down the street from me, I could go.

You know, unplug it. You could go put a floppy disk in and load some good results up there. That's good. I'm going to mention two things. The first one is the Steam Deck. I am... really thankful for this handout that can do it can do everything without a lot of power and for a long time I prioritized you know more powerful handhelds something like the legion go or the rog ally to have a handheld with just a bit more specs

But ultimately, I always go back to the Steam Deck as sort of the baseline that is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. But in doing that and in having SteamOS... with the native suspended resume, the friendly UI, the stability of the actual native SteamOS instead of like a fork, like Bazite, for example. Yep. Valve really created a beautiful balanced device with the Steam Deck that, you know, I've been playing Dragon Age. And sure, I got to play Dragon Age at low to medium settings.

But I can play Dragon Age and put it to sleep whenever I want and pick it up two days later and I'm still there. So there's something to that. And you have the store, right? We were talking about earlier, right? You have the OLED one, right? I do. Question for you. Sometimes things are so bright on that screen I have to close my eyes. Do you ever have this?

Like a game flashes to what, like in Dragon Age or whatever? Like sometimes you go to a memory, it's like, oh God, like I had to close my eyes. It's so bright. It's amazing. It's very bright. It's an incredible display. I'm also going to pick an AI thing. I've been on this kick for assistive AI products. I think I mentioned this on the show before. It's Claude. Claude 3.5 Sonnet. I've been using it a lot for like research and helping me with coding for Apple frames too. Again, lots more details.

in the next app stories but yeah i've been using it for a lot of like me uploading a lot of like reference files that's usually like my content or some of my files that are used for shortcuts and being able to ask cloud questions in terms of like how do you how do you how would you do these things when did I mention this thing in this story like being able to work with my data

And to have a natural language conversation, I don't know, it makes me feel really empowered. And it doesn't make me feel... uncomfortable about the fact that I'm using AI for these tasks I also appreciate Claude and the principles that Anthropic has sort of for the kind of AI that they want to make. It doesn't produce images. It doesn't produce music. It doesn't produce videos.

and it doesn't have access to the internet, which is a bit of a, can be a bit of a downside, but that's why, you know, you can use multiple tools for different things. But yeah, Claude for... sort of referencing my own projects, my own files, and also as an aid for coding, I can tell you like... For my tests, it's been way better than ChatGPT to the point where ChatGPT was actually fading. It was like producing multiple errors and Claude just didn't care. So, yeah.

That's, it's been a, it's been a, like just another tool in my toolbox and a really good one at that. Assistive overgenerative. Yes. Yes. Big, big time. Yeah. For me, I mean, it's fresh in my mind, but I'm really enjoying my new networking at home. the ubiquities I haven't put in. I had several people ask me, and I thought I said what I had installed, but a bunch of people were like, hey, what'd you install? So I guess I didn't say it. So I'll...

I am running as my, as my router, the, oh gosh, I'm trying to log in. Oh, come on. Unify. The Cloud Gateway Ultra as my router.

I've got two switches, the USW Ultra 210 watt. I've got one of those in the house and one in the office. And then my wireless access points are the U7 Pro wall. So the ones that are wall mounted, not... ceiling mounted and i got several of those so that's uh that's what i'm running uh really enjoying it in fact i talk about on um the mac power users that comes out on sunday oh in the

bonus segment for members we talked about home kit i was like there's part of me that's kind of tempted to go down the road of like the ubiquity like cameras and stuff and get rid of my ring things but I don't think they really offer everything that I would want to replace, but it's interesting that they offer all that stuff. So definitely enjoying that. It's one of those things, like I set it up, I've tinkered with it a little bit.

A few people sent me a couple of articles like, hey, here's some things to kind of look out for. And because it is pro level stuff, right? You can go and like change all sorts of parameters and very much enjoying that. The other thing I thought of was the Bux Palma because I forgot. I've already forgotten that I own it. I was very excited about it.

I was very excited about it. You're thankful for it, but you forgot about it? Well, I mean, so when putting this list together, I was like, oh, like what tech did I get this year? I was like, oh, the Books Palmer. I was like, oh yeah, it's dead in a drawer. It's just hard to beat the Kindle. Sorry. Sorry, Books.

Hang on. I'm sorry. I'm struggling to follow here. Yeah. So you had put it in but forgot you had it. No. So I was thinking about the list. I was like, oh, just like what is new in my tech life this year? books palma is new oh right i don't actually use it so it's very an aspirational it is thanks a little e-ink smartphone is great there is a version of me that would that would like this yeah

It's like the paper white's so good. And although I am interested in, I know Jason kind of didn't like it, but I am very interested in the color Kindle. So I actually have one on order, but it's not shipping for like... six weeks or something. So I'm going to review that on 512 in the new year. And then the last one is kind of, it's a vibe. It's a feeling.

And I think it's one reason, like once I typed this out, I was like, oh, maybe this is one reason I feel so weird about all these text-based social media networks like coming into their own again. It's like we had like a resurgence of blogging this year. Like people were excited about.

having their own sites and owning their writing right and some of this is i'm in some circles that are pretty anti-substack of like own your own thing and i 100 agree with that like i've published under my own banner for 16 years like Strong believer in this. Federico and I never left. Everyone else left us. We're still blogging. We're still here. Oh, yeah. I feel like there's renewed interest in publishing on your own site.

And I have really found some, just some real gems of some writers in the last year or so. Some writing about tech and tech history, some writing about other things. But it feels like it's enjoying a moment. And I hope that Macedon slash Thread slash Blue Sky doesn't kill that. In fact...

I experienced this because my iPhone mirroring blog post that we talked about two hours ago, that was just a thing I put on social media. And people were asking me questions about it. I was like, oh, that should have been a blog post. I have struggled with that in the past, like what goes where. And, you know, it's just easy to get into your own head about that. But I feel like blogging is having a moment here in 2024. Would not have expected it.

And I hope that that doesn't fade again with the resurgence of short-form text-based social media. I think that is it for this week. Thank you. listeners for spending time with us. We are very thankful for you and your continued listenership and support of our show. We've been doing this a long time and it's a real joy to get to sit down and talk. and then have y'all come along for it. So thank you very much from all three of us. If you want to find us on social media,

You just have to search now. Yeah, how? Honestly, at this point, I think the move is just to say we're on Blue Sky Threads and Mastodon. I just think now... Look, I know people keep saying, it's not a problem. No, Blue Sky's naming system is madness. It's bad. It's like they chose every wrong way of making it searchable. I bought a domain this week to set it up.

Just try and type into a URL bar what you think my URL would be. You know what I mean? Like, oh, you forgot that it's actually bsky.app and not bluesky.com? Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. Dude, I've... I type that a lot.

user, oh, a profile, slash profile, right? That's actually, it's not profiles, the word that you would use. Oh, okay. Like it's impossible. So you just got to search for people now. We're all in the places. You just got to find us. You can find us. We believe in you. You're strong. You're strong. I trust you. Yeah.

Vattici, iMike, and ISMH86. Just plug that into any search field. Yeah, but you see, I'm not iMike on Blue Sky. Yeah, but they'll find you. Just search our names. You know our names. Oh, yeah, no, it's somebody else. Search the names. Search our names. Search the names. Search our names. Find us. Say hi. Say hi on social media. That's how we know you found us, if you say hi. That's true.

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