you From Relay, this is Connected, episode 530. Today's show is brought to you by Netsuit, Squarespace, Smart World, and ExpressVPN. I'm one of your co-hosts, two of them, in fact, this week, not three, Federico Vittici, and I'm a pleasure to... pleasure to be joined by Mr. Stephen Hackett. Hello, Stephen. Hello, Federico. How are you? I am doing fantastic, and we are without Michael this week. We are sans Mike. Yes. Sans Mike. Sans Mike. Yeah, we typically ask people to do something.
to show their appreciation and the fact that they are missing one of us on the show. So I'm going to say that this time they've got to do something on Blue Sky, if anything, because it's the new thing. It is. What can be done on Blue Sky? Let's see. Send Michael. So it's December 4th. We talked about music in the pro show. Send Mike a song that you like, but that you think most people would make fun of you for liking that song.
Ooh, that's really good. Yeah. Like, for example, I sometimes, on occasion, when I'm editing some of my articles, I... can be surprisingly into the first couple of albums by Justin Bieber. Okay. The conventional wisdom would potentially make fun of me. I don't care.
But yeah, send Mike a song that you like, but that you think most people would make fun of you for liking. I feel like I should say mine. Yeah. And... I don't think this was embarrassing at the time, but I think it's embarrassing now because of this artist's... recent public meltdowns. Uh, but it's, uh, yeah, but it's pro I'm scrolling through.
it's probably all of the lights by kanye west oh yeah i mean yes uh i believe we had a conversation about kanye at some point completely off the rails completely from the 2010 my beautiful darkness fantasy not an album you still listen to with your kids in the car no but sometimes i go back to that record and yeah his early stuff's you know much better than his later stuff yeah yeah I completely agree that record was incredible it still holds up surprisingly well
there's a whole like if you're interested like just reading about that album the making of that album from a pure like artistic perspective and like music engineering perspective so fascinating look it up on wikipedia how the album was produced and recorded and um kept in secret for many, many months. Anyway, thank you, Stephen. So, yeah, send Mike a song that you think would be considered embarrassing today, but you still like it, and that's okay.
I see, Stephen, in our follow-up, that one of the... Let's see how I can describe it. One of the best family-run... Small businesses out of Utah, I want to say, are back in our follow-up. That's right. Yeah. So, Frederico Christmas Tree is fully back in. Frederico. Which is how my mom says your name, which is very funny. Frederico, Christmas trees. It's back. They're operational again. You know, Christmas is approaching. And so if you want...
Well, I don't mean to, like, Federico's Kissimmee 3 is not like a sponsor. of this week's show but as we have mentioned this company many times before over the years but if you're looking for a really good Christmas tree and you happen to be near the Federico Christmas trees location, I mean, just look it up on Instagram. They have some really beautiful Christmas trees. that they source from... What did they source them from? From Oregon. They get the trees fresh from Oregon.
straight to the Federico Christmas trees lot. I believe we had a couple of listeners in previous years actually go there and buy a Christmas tree and send us a picture. So if you happen to do that again, please send us a picture. And we would love to see that. I don't know why exactly we started doing this years ago, but it is now a tradition. And so thank you, Federico Christmas trees, for...
Obviously, for keeping your company in business and allowing us to mention this company every year. That's right. Someone submitted it to us. Maybe it was Kyle's the Gray. Maybe. I forget. Their previous life, yes. Previous life. Okay, Federico, last time we spoke about you at Notebook LM, you were looking for a way or a model to feed all of your iOS reviews into so you could have your own personal...
database LLM of your reviews, and how did it go with Notebook LM? Yeah, it went incredibly well. I looked up a lot of alternatives to Google's Notebook LM. And it appears that there's nothing that gets close in terms of like, first of all, it's free and allows you to upload. up to 50 documents and i'll get to this in a minute uh and and it works really well i was able to over the over the past week uh consistently going to notebook lm i created a project for my ios reviews and it's used
the 10 markdown documents that I uploaded. Document length is not a problem. They have a problem with the number of documents. So it's limited to 50. But with my reviews, I was always able to ask questions. and get detailed results with citations that linked back to the original part of the document that mentioned whatever result Notebook LEM was bringing up. Now... I'm doing a lot of research about these tools lately, and it's... NotbookLAM is based on these other sort of...
that has been implemented in the AI space lately, which is called RAG, and it stands for Retrieval Augmented Generation. This is not something I was familiar with until a couple of weeks ago, but it's basically... a system that, and I'm going to oversimplify this because this is not an AI podcast, and also I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm not an engineer, but it's basically this system where...
the results can be much more accurate because the large language model is effectively double-checking all the things that it's saying with a local external database of sources. And so it's not... It considerably reduces the risk of hallucinations because it's looking up the information directly into the data source, the external data set that is...
effectively augmenting the generation of what the large language model is going to say. Now, I also tried to do something else, which is, I thought, well, if it works so well... for all of my iOS reviews. What would happen if I took my folder in Obsidian that contains all of the articles that I published on Mac Stories since I started using Obsidian? So for the past...
four years, I guess, at this point. So not 15 years worth of documents, but four years worth of documents. And I sure was able to upload them, but it stopped at 50 documents. So I couldn't upload those 400-something files, just 50 of them. And still, even with 50 documents, randomly chosen from my archive in Obsidian.
There's an app review. There's a news post. There's a linked post. It's an assortment of articles. Even then, I was able to ask questions like, can you tell me what some of my favorite apps are? And it... and it produced a list of apps organized by category linking back to the reviews like this technology is pretty wild if you are a researcher if you are an academic or if you just want to be able to have effectively a like a super intelligent
fuzzy search system that lets you ask questions in natural language and is fast and produces accurate results that, and this is essential, that link back to the... portion of the doc of the document where that information is coming from so yeah uh pretty impressive results kinda kinda bummed that um
This is the only solution for this problem right now. I would love to pay for a service that has support for unlimited documents and lets me upload my entire backlog of... uh articles that i've published um and you know it's a google product so there's always the thought in the back of my mind saying well they're gonna shut it down
in a couple of months because this is this is an experiment so we'll see what happens but for now it's very good and i also did something else which i don't know um so you probably have seen this online notebook lm as a podcast generation functionality yeah so they can generate a quote-unquote podcast between two fake talking to each other about the contents of the documents that you uploaded in a project. So he created this 20-minute podcast with two AI voices having a conversation.
with each other about the timeline of ios and the evolution of ios through the years now uh there's a link in the show notes you can click the link and and have a listen i mean It sounds passable enough. I mean, the AI voices are pretty good. I don't know. who like would you ever consume an ai podcast on a weekly basis probably not but the only argument that i've read in favor of like what like
Because one has to wonder, why does this exist? Why is this a feature? Why is it useful? The only argument that I've read is that for some people it can be a lot easier to absorb information in this format. with people having a conversation about a topic, then it would be, for a variety of reasons, to read through a long document. For some people... You know, it's easier to listen to 20 minutes or 40 minutes of a really dense, information-dense conversation than it would be...
maybe because it's like an attention span thing or whatever, than it would be to read that information in an article. I mean, it exists. And unfortunately, people are going to make... fake AI podcasts and they're going to distribute them and while we're still here talking in front of a microphone but hey whatever right
I don't think this is coming for our jobs anytime soon. I don't think so. I mean, once again. I hope not. I hope not. You know, the AI will never mention Federico's Christmas trees. I will say we had a bit of a discussion about playing this audio and we decided not to. So you can go click the link if you want. Because the last time we even like...
not even half jokingly, like full jokingly, we put AI generated content in the show. I believe it was like, wasn't it like people got real mad? Yes, it was music. we had songs for the Ricky's rules. And it was a joke. It was a joke, okay? It was like, still. So if you want, you can click on the link in the show notes and, you know, listen for yourself. But, yeah.
Okay, I've been talking about my Apple Watch problems. Oh, have you? I spoke about it on Connected last week. I spoke about an upgrade on Monday. The struggles continue. I have made... A bunch of changes to my Wi-Fi network that they seem to fix it for a while, and then they don't. So pretty extreme battery drain on my Ultra, and it will drop connection to my phone. In fact, the other night...
I was sleep tracking a word that I definitely knew how to pronounce. Unlike last week, I learned how to say it. And it stopped. It like disconnected at two 30 in the morning and that's when sleep tracking stopped. It's like, okay, okay. Like what are we doing? Uh, so yesterday I set up a series nine, which I have for development with underscore.
wiped it set it up as new on my personal phone and i've been wearing it 24 hours like i don't know if it's fixed it or or or not like is this an issue with older apple watch hardware because i'm on an ultra one like i just don't know what to do I have a lot of emails from people with suggestions, which I appreciate. I'm slowly working through those. It's just, it's kind of frustrating. But I did.
Because I got a really good deal on Amazon, I did upgrade Mary from her older Apple Watch to a new Series 10. Thank you, Cyber Monday. And I gave it to her and she said, this thing is enormous. I got her the smaller size.
It's actually the size of the big Apple Watch in the beginning. Like, that's how much they've grown over time. But her watch, since upgrading her to the 10, has not... exhibited any of the problems that my ultra continues to exhibit so I don't know what's going on I'm still digging into it it's very frustrating You don't want to get a new Apple Watch, right? Not really. I mean, I'm not going to buy an Ultra 2, so I don't know what to do. Hmm. Don't know. Historically, this is when...
Someone from Apple, an anonymous listener usually, swoops in and saves the day. But that hasn't happened yet. It has not happened yet. I will say that I have a couple of feedback items open. with logs attached to them, which is like a whole thing. I don't know if you've ever done it. It's a whole thing to do that. But I'm looking up the feedback number. I'm trying to log in. I have to get it to verification code.
Come on. One, six. I probably shouldn't read my two code. No. Yeah, don't do it. Okay. Submitted. Wow. I can't click on anything in the feedback app. Cool. My computer just beeps at me if I try to click anything. And it's frozen. Okay, well, I would read you the feedback number, but I can't because the feedback app is frozen on my Mac. Cool. That's where we are. We can put it in the show notes, maybe. Or you can mention it later. You know, we have our ways.
Oh, got it. Okay. Feedback 1-6-0-2-6-7-9-5. That has logs from an Apple Watch Ultra. Please fix this for Steven. Please take a look at it. The guy needs his Apple Watch to work. 16026795. Yes. We have a couple of listener concerns that we wanted to talk about. Well, I wanted to talk about. You're not going to like these. Okay. Nathan wrote in, I'm using the new Macintosh screensaver. You know, the new one in Sequoia. It's really cool. With random colors. I approve.
I regularly come back to my Mac Mini M2 Pro with a full green screen without any animations. No, no, no, no. After five to ten minutes, it will resume the animations and change color, but it always freezes on green. I would like to know if it's just me or is anyone else having the same issue? Oh, you're sneaky with these follow-up items. You didn't write in the subject of the main item that it was about Greengate?
Is this also the case for the second one? Let's read the second one. This is from listener Greg. So you mentioned Color Gamut and Siri in this week's episode, last week's episode. And I can confirm that the new Siri actually uses HDR for the glow, at least on macOS. As an iMac owner who experiences the jittery step up, step down effect when the screen switches into pseudo HDR mode, it's hard to miss the fact that invoking Siri always causes that to happen.
So my theory that Apple made the fancy screenshots with a 16-bit display P3 to show off the Siri colors was not wrong. They are actually... They are actually doing this. They're doing this for more than just the Siri glow effect. But yeah, interesting. Nathan with the green screensaver. Do we need to say anything? I mean, let us know. Let us know if you're seeing this. Let us know. Okay. More green follow-up incoming. Okay. It never ends.
This episode of Connected is brought to you by NetSuite. What does the future hold for businesses? Well, if you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 different answers. Some say that rates are going up or going down, and other people have different thoughts on inflation. Well, until someone invents a crystal ball, we need NetSuite by Oracle.
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NetSuite will help you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI today. at netsuite.com slash connected. That's N-E-T-S-U-I-T-E, netsuite.com slash connected. Our thanks to NetSuite for the support of the show and all of Relay. I also have some follow out because Mike has been off. I've been just like making the rounds on relay. Upgrade 540. I joined Jason to talk about things. I was listening before.
sitting down to record this episode so yeah pretty good episode i think do you know that upgrade according to spotify wrapped because i'm also using spotify to listen to podcasts um upgrade is my podcast of the year all right yeah I don't miss any episodes. It's like straight to the top of my inbox. And I really love the show. So you should listen to it. Because Steven is a very good replacement for Mike.
On the show. We're basically interchangeable. The thing that I realize is I'm the same way. I don't miss an episode of Upgrade. And I realized when it came out Monday evening, I was like, oh, I can't listen to this. I was on it. It's always a bummer. It's kind of thrown off my podcast listening this week. Honestly. A bit strange.
I was also on Focused, episode 218, talking about sabbaticals, David and Mike. And then part two of our State of the Platforms on NPU came out on Sunday. Very happy with that. But the biggest news. Yes. In podcast land, tell us what your NPC co-hosts are up to. So NPC Next Portable Console, it's my show about portable gaming and handhelds. My two co-hosts, so OTJ. John Voorhees, and Brandon Bigley, the boys are going to Vegas for CES 2025. They are going together.
They got a media pass for CES and they will be trying all the weird half-broken vaporware handhelds and some of them actually real. And weird accessories that will be shown off at CES. John has plans to take videos of everything. We still have to decide how to properly cover. their experience, their daily experience at MPC. Maybe we're going to do some YouTube videos. We'll see. Also depending on actually how many.
gaming-related announcements we'll see at CES, but we usually do, and it's widely expected that we're going to see. I don't know how plugged into the whole portable gaming scene you are, Stephen. You probably aren't. But anyway, there's this... There's this portable PC handheld, right? Sure. Like Asus makes one, Lenovo makes one, and they're all running on this version of an AMD chip. It's called the Z1.
And they're all using this APU. It's like the equivalent of a system on a chip. And it's widely expected that at CES, AMD will show off the Z2. and the Z2 Extreme. And so that's going to be exciting. We're probably going to see more handheld PCs. And so that's why. Brandon and John are going to be there. And of course, there's going to be all these companies out of China bringing their, you know, their much lower priced handles for like emulation and all that stuff to the show. And so...
We'll see. But I'm mostly excited for Brendan and John to be together for a few days in Las Vegas. Yeah. Who knows what they're going to do and if they will survive. Brendan will definitely survive. John is more... John is more up in the air, I guess. Yeah. I agree. When I think about all of our friends who could or have or might go to CES, John being there is the funniest to me for some reason.
Yeah. Yeah. This is not like an age thing. It's just like John. It's a vibe thing. It's a vibe thing. Like, can you picture John in Las Vegas? My only problem, no, but here's a thought. John may surprise us because maybe he's got a dark side. He was a lawyer. He was a lawyer for many years and a bankruptcy lawyer at that. So the guy has seen some stuff in his previous life. And so who knows? Maybe...
Wouldn't be a problem for John to work all day and then go party hard at night. Because maybe in a previous life, he used to do that and never mentioned it. And we don't know. But who knows? Could be. Hey, breaking news. Apple released iCloud passwords for Firefox. For real? That's the whole breaking news. Did they, at the very least, release the release candidate of 18.2? Not that I've seen. Okay.
So yeah, if you're a Firefox user, now you can log into your favorite websites. Yep. Big news for four people. Yeah. You know, it's also big news. The Relay membership sale. It's still going on. It's still going on and you can log into your member account using iCloud passwords on Firefox. That is true. Yes.
It's true. So what is this? Well, each week we do Connected Pro, which is a longer ad-free version of the show each week. This week Federico and I explored our Apple Music Replay and Spotify rap results. And at the end, we pick titles and do some other stuff. And you can get that for 20% off until December 18th. So that makes it... 20% off is a pretty good deal. It's like twice as good as 10% off, Federico. Yeah.
Yeah. Sure. I went to college. Can you tell? I can tell. So you get Connected Pro, but you also get a bunch of really cool other perks. You get a monthly behind-the-scenes newsletter, some wallpapers. access to Backstage and Spotlight, which are two members-only podcasts. On Backstage, Mike and I talk about the business and answer people's questions. And then on Spotlight, Kathy Campbell interviews different Relay hosts.
It's a great show. I love listening to Spotlight. And you get access to the Relay Members Discord, which is a really awesome place on the internet. All of that 20% off until December 18th. The link you want to go to is giverelay.com. That's actually the first link in the show notes. So go check that out. You can get it for yourself. You can send a gift to somebody else. Or, you know, maybe you're hard to shop for. I think like Federico and I can be.
you know, send this link to your aunt and she'll know what to get you for Christmas. So giverelay.com between now and December 18th. So Stephen, I'm having a bit of a crisis. Okay. I'm here to help. Yeah. So I'm going to go straight to the point. Okay. And then we're going to talk about it. Okay. I miss the third camera on the iPhone 16 Pro. Oh no. And now let me explain why.
I love everything about the 16 plus. Literally everything. I love, like I wrote about this two months ago. I love the color. I love that it's lighter. I love that it's thinner. I love that it's fun. And I don't care about the things that most people told me on social networks that were going to be a problem, like the bezels. or the lack of promotion. That hasn't been a problem. But this week, I realized something, and then I talked about it with my girlfriend, and she confirmed that it's a...
It's a behavior that she also noticed. I am taking less pictures than before. And this is a problem. I... I don't know. Well, I think I know because I thought about it and I have a theory. I went to two of our best friends back in Viterbo. They had a baby last year and he turned one. couple of days ago and so we went to the to the you know to the first birthday party that day
That was a pretty big deal. You know, it's his first birthday and, you know, some friends were there, family was there. It was a really nice occasion. And I noticed that I never took out my phone to take pictures. And Silva took them all.
with her 16 pro and and then she mentioned like oh i noticed you didn't take any pictures um and so i and that sort of had me thinking like and i started scrolling through my photos library for the past couple of months and i noticed that it was full of full of screenshots and way way fewer photos than in previous years and so i i realized huh I love the 16 Plus so much for everything else, but the camera part is what gets me here.
And I think then I sort of did some self-research and sort of self-analysis here. I went back to photos from the years before. And it turns out that, much to my surprise, I really relied on the 5X lens way more than I thought. You didn't look at that before the purchase?
No, I thought it's going to be, and I think I wrote about this in the article, I thought, oh, it's going to be fine with 2x. And I'm pretty sure I said, worst case scenario, I'm going to get closer to my subjects. Pretty sure I said this. And in practice, after two months, you know, this is what I like about, like, this is what I like about doing this show and sort of like publishing on the internet and then waiting a few months and then following up on what you said.
There's a lot of, in our community, there's a lot of like, oh, you published something, therefore it must be the law, and therefore you must also be consistent. I mean, you know these are Mr. Flipflop, right? What you said is he's getting ready to flip-flop. Okay. I merely adopted the flip-flop. You were born in it. I was born in it. This is a thing we both do, you know. But the thing is, like...
I took a look at my photos and I realized, oh, wait, this is full of screenshots, full of screen recordings. Why am I not taking as many photos of my dogs as I used to? Why? Did I go to a birthday party? Very nice occasion. And I never took up my phone. It's because subconsciously I know that I got this phone that I really like for like phone and... productivity things and social media things but when it comes to pictures i guess i don't and i guess i'm i missed the the 16 pro max and
And it sucks. Here's the thing. It sucks because I don't want to use the 16 Pro Max. I don't care about promotion. I don't care about the bigger screen. I don't care about the longer battery life. I have been totally fine with the 16 plus, but here's the thing. Phones change every year, right? And we upgrade our phones because we can, because it's what we do for a living. Phones change.
But the photos and the memories, those, if you don't capture them, are gone forever. Yeah. And so even though my thinking is that even though I may not like doing this. I think it's worth doing the flip-flop in my case, if anything, to make sure that I don't end up, like on Sunday, a few days ago, when I went to a really nice family gathering.
And I didn't take any pictures because subconsciously I knew that I didn't have the good Zoom and the digital Zoom was not going to be as good as the pictures that Sylvia was taking on her iPhone. And so... i deferred to sylvia for the taking of the pictures and the saving of the memories and that's not okay so even though i don't like the model i would very much prefer staying on the 16 plus
I got to do it for the pictures, man. Like, it's, I, you know, long term, like, three years from now, looking back, I couldn't forgive myself if... I wouldn't have certain captures of certain memories because I wanted to keep using the 16 plus because of the color and because of the thinness and because of the things I like about it. And I kind of wish that...
I guess all this to say, I kind of wish that there was a cheaper, more colorful 16 Pro Max that didn't require getting the boring white or titanium phone. Yeah. Okay. And look, it's a silly thing that it comes down to color. But I really like the color of this phone. But it's been two months, and it's a problem that I don't have as many pictures as I thought. Hmm. Yeah, I agree it's a problem.
It does. I want to play devil's advocate for a second because Kyle brought this up in Discord. Is there an angle where you were more in the moment rather than thinking about taking photos? No, I was in the moment. I, you know, just... It doesn't take you out of the moment to just take one or two photos or maybe a photo and a video when the kid is blowing on the birthday cake. But not having it, it really sucks.
And I mean, sure, I could ask Silvia for the pictures. And I mean, she shared them in the WhatsApp group that we have. But still, you know, maybe what about a moment? that I want to capture and Sylvia is not there. Like, I shouldn't have to, I shouldn't have to have a backup photographer. Yeah. You know? Interesting. This is how they get you. You know, not with the color, not with the titanium, not with the display that gets you with the camera. Yeah. Interesting. I have found that the...
The zoom is something that I do use quite a bit. And, you know, this year, my phone change was I went from the Pro Max to the Pro size. And I've been I've been very happy with that because the cameras are the same. But next year, if the Pro Max has a better camera than the Pro, I will go back up a size. Like to me, the camera is, I think for a lot of people, the camera is the most important thing. So I get it. It definitely stinks.
You're having to jostle things around mid-year. That's never fun. But I get it. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. So. You will not find judgment for me when it comes to flip-flopping. Thank you. I felt a warmth coming from you as I was explaining my problem. So thank you. You're welcome. So welcome. Well, I guess you're going to sell off the other phone. Yeah. I think that's what I got to do. Yeah. So.
Well, see, I just wanted to bring it up on the show to see it like as a sanity check, you know, just make sure like, am I crazy for thinking this? Yeah. I don't think so. Cool. Yeah. All right. This episode of Connected is made possible by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. So whether you're just getting started or managing a growing brand, you can stand out with a beautiful website.
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video library. This is a really cool way to organize and showcase your content on beautiful video pages. You can even sell access to your video library, adding a paywall to your content. Like I said, I love building on Squarespace. I've done a bunch of it over the years. And I get to use these tools that all know about each other and are all integrated. And that is huge. So head on over to squarespace.com.
slash connected, and you will save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain name. That's squarespace.com slash connected for 10% off your first purchase. and to show you support for this, your favorite podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for their longtime support of Connected and all of Relay. So Steven, I don't know if you heard, but... In the tech industry, everyone is doing AI, right? But now the hot thing are agents. That's true. Everybody is doing agents.
So why are we talking about this? A couple of days ago, the company behind the Arc browser called Aptly, the browser company. Really painted themselves in the corner with that name, it turns out. Right, right. I mean, you're always going to be making browsers, I guess, right? Go dog. Or do you like browsers? It does seem like everybody's making browsers, but we'll get to this in a minute. So they announced their plans to build a new AI web browser called...
Dia? I haven't watched the video. Did they say Dia? I believe it's Dia. Dia, okay. Doesn't mean anything. I don't know. But it's a separate browser for Mark. And it's going to be heavily based on an agent. So a large language model agent, meaning an agent in the sense like... The large language model, in addition to answering your queries via text, can also perform actions. And they showed off this demo where the agent was able to draft an email with some links for Amazon products.
Fun fact, they showed off, I actually did watch this part of the video, they showed off the agent inside the browser sending an email to the browser company CEO's wife. And beginning the email with, hi, hope things are well with you. And is that really how you would email your spouse? Hope things are well with you. Do you remember Mike's example from COVID of...
I hope you're staying positive and testing negative. That's what I always do. Oh my God. Oh my God. In any case, they showed the browser being able to grab some product links and send an email. They mentioned the browser being able to sort of act almost independently and do things in the background, perform searches, collect links, basically do these sort of things where...
it's actually working inside the browser and has the full knowledge of the open tabs that you have, your browsing history, and is able to perform actions on those things based on your commands. Now... This is the hot new thing in the AI tech space, in the large language model space, for a variety of reasons, I think. It all started, obviously, with generative AI and the ability to create pictures and now videos. And that's unfortunately continuing. These new models, they have...
objectively advanced at an incredible pace in terms of the generation of illustrations and photos. I mean, don't look at what Apple is doing with Image Playground because they are effectively two years behind. The state of the art now. Even though it sucks that it exists, if you ask me, I think it's despicable that it exists. But objectively speaking, they produce remarkable results. And OpenAI are...
Supposed to be announcing, I guess tomorrow or in a few days, the official debut of Sora, which is going to be their model to create videos. It's terrible, but these tools have advanced and continue to advance. Then there's been the whole, and this is still... kind of a in the beginning phase of like this assistive version of ai where you know these tools these large language models they're kind of pitched as a way to assist you in your work
And so use them for productivity purposes, for, you know, doing research, code. I don't know if you're familiar, Stephen, but there's this company called Cursor that is becoming really, really popular. especially over the past year. And it's basically an IDE where it sort of writes the code for you. Yeah, it's very popular. I see a lot of people using cursor these days.
The next evolution of this, if you think about it, like if you're using an assistive AI, whenever it comes to productivity and to productivity tools, and we've seen this playbook before, it's almost in the... embedded within human nature, that the next step is, oh, but how can we automate this? Yeah, exactly. It's natural. We think of a new productivity tool. We use the productivity tool and then we wonder, can we automate this process like it happened with...
AppleScript, it happened with Automator, it happened with Shortcuts. It is the course of human nature to find a new productivity system, a new tool, and then to wonder, can we automate it? So now the new frontier is, well, these assistive AI tools, what if we automated them? And so the way that they're doing this is giving the large language model these agent capabilities where...
The model is able to take actions and perform things on your behalf. Now, this takes different shapes and forms. I have seen and in fact have played around with these AI web agents.
And it's kind of funny because when you see what they're doing and there's a couple of services that let you actually see in real time what's happening. These companies have created a cluster of virtualized... instances of google chrome okay and they are running these virtual instances of chrome in the cloud and they have these models that are using uh vision apis so image recognition
the ability to parse the structure of a web page and the natural language prompts to browse around and do things for you i played around with one of them a couple of days ago and i asked him Can you find the latest episode of App Stories on Apple Podcasts and get me the link for the latest episode? And you can see in real time what's going on. And it's a virtualized Google Chrome window with a model.
that is using image recognition and parsing of the webpage structure and understanding of your language to browse around, open tabs, click on menus, and copy links and send you a response. Now, this is the cloud version. It appears that there's going to be a consumer version of this trend built inside web browsers. So this is what the browser company is doing. They have understood that the money... is now flowing in this direction of a version of AI that is more productivity oriented.
And not just that, because they did have AI with this sort of thing before, with summaries and collecting of multiple sources. But the money is flowing in the direction of productivity and... automation based on large language models. So this is what they're building. But here's the problem. They're not the only ones building this stuff. Just today... i saw a link on the verge for a new browser this is gonna be
You know, if we ever do 2025 predictions, I can tell you there's going to be so many of these. Yeah. It's in a surf browser. It's called Surf by a startup called Dita or Deta. I don't know. D-E-T-A. they're building an agent and or as they call them agentic that's the new term that they're using they're building a web browser with an agent inside
So it helps you sort of browse around, take actions, organize, and keep track of things you want to do. But the other problem, I guess the other two problems for the browser company are Google has said, that they're going to do this with Gemini inside Google Chrome and OpenAI. Assuming they still own Chrome, I guess. Assuming that it's, you know, what are they going to call? The Chrome company? Hey, here's a galaxy brain thought for you. If Google is forced to give up Google Chrome,
You know what would be a really good name for Google Chrome? For non-Google Chrome? The browser company.
But I'm just saying, I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if the browser company, this is actually a thought that comes from my MPC co-host, Brendan Bigley. I wouldn't be surprised if this pivot by the browser company is a plan to... get acquired basically pivot until you find the thing that attracts investors that want to give you money to acquire the thing and let me be clear this thing a browser with an agent is the thing right now
If you are in Silicon Valley, this is the thing. So, hey, maybe they'll get acquired by the non-Google Chrome company in the future. We'll see. Could be. But the second problem, so the first problem for the browser company is that there's going to be a bunch of startups doing this. The other problem is that OpenAI is expected to release a browser in 2025. So ChatGPT is moving from... Well, if you think about it, the biggest problem for OpenAI and Anthropic are, well, we own the Assistant.
in terms of like, we have a website that you can go to, we have an app that you can download, but we don't own your operating system. So short of being able to release actual operating systems, these companies are probably going to do...
Two things. The first one, the more obvious and easier one, I guess, is make a browser. Because a bunch of people live in a browser, you know? I mean, the browser is... Well, and Chrome OS is... world is actually true but for most people the browser is the os because you're just online all day doing stuff and the os it matters people like us but for most people it doesn't it doesn't so the first thing they're going to try is make a browser
And the second thing, maybe build the hardware. Now, that's much more challenging. But, you know, we'll be surprised if in the next three years, OpenAI actually comes out with hardware of their own. Now.
This is potentially going to be problematic for the browser company if there's going to be... uh chrome with an ai agent inside and you know uh chat gpt becoming i don't know the gpt browser or something uh where it actually does a lot of things and can you know perform actions for you and do the research for you and all that sort of stuff so right now the browser company is saying ARK isn't going away but you know how these things go this new Dia product
obviously has their attention right now, and this is their pivot. I don't fully understand how and why they couldn't say ARC 2. is going to be all about an agent inside the browser. Agreed. There must be a reason for that in their own minds, but we don't know that reason. First of all, I wanted to know what you think. And then I have another brief conversation I want to have with you about what Apple's role in all of this could be. But first of all, how do you feel about a little agent?
living in your browser, organizing the KBase for you. I mean, who knew that the Rabbit R1 was onto the right idea the whole time? Right? Who knew? It was orange and weird, but... this feels very, this feels very of the moment. And I don't think this is the future. Like this just feels like the late, the latest, like flash in the pan kind of thing.
And while I do think that making the browser smarter and being able to do things for the user, like, oh, that's interesting. But is it going to change the world? Is it enough to build a company over? Like, I look at this and I think you're totally right. I think the browser company wants to get acquired. I do like that they throw shade. Like, AI is not going to be in a button. Like, okay, sick burn to...
What's that product named? What's the AI pin? Humane. Yeah. Humane. But they also say AI is not going to be in an app. It's like, okay, you're betting against apps. Like, good luck with that. But the thing I'm most... This may be interesting. I don't know if it's the future. The thing that I'm most sort of surprised by, it's like, why would the browser company give up on Arc like you said? Arc is not a hugely successful project. It has a lot of weird ideas in it.
But the people who love it really love it. Like in Discord, people are talking about it right now. Like how they enjoy it. It does things that other browsers don't do. And I don't know why you would burn the goodwill you have with your user base. And yes, they say it's going to continue, but clearly they don't think it's the future of the company. And I don't understand why you couldn't have...
this be a feature that comes to Arc first and then other places or like leverage what you already have in the browser you built. It just, that part of their strategy really leaves me scratching my head a little bit. Yeah.
Yeah, I don't really understand this part. The other point that I wanted to raise is... So if this idea of agents... with large language models that can do things for you continues to be developed and continues like becomes a thing chat gpt is rumored to be getting support for agents at some point and in fact i think just today
OpenAI announced that they're going to have 12 days of announcements starting tomorrow. Oh boy. They're expected to announce Sora, which is their text-to-video generative model, and a bunch of other things. Maybe they will... show a teaser for the browser, maybe they'll show off agents, whatever. We'll see. I think it's fascinating to see where Apple may be. Well, not maybe. Well, Apple is behind.
In terms of just the fact that they don't have a large language model, they don't have a Siri LLM in the sense of something you can talk to. Keep the context going. Have a list of conversations like you can with JGPT or Claude. Yeah. They are behind and they're rumored to be announcing Siri LLM next year. in iOS 19 for launch in spring 2026. So they're 18 months away. But they are behind from that perspective. But I'm intrigued to see if they may be...
This is actually something that I'm writing about for my Apple Intelligence story. They may be ahead of the curve if only by virtue of owning the operating system. with their plan to roll out Apple intelligence with App Intents next spring. The idea of Siri being able to perform multiple actions. with a natural language query using your favorite apps that is effectively
So it was almost like a mini agent. I wouldn't call it like a proper agent because the idea of agents is that you set them up and you leave them running in the background performing tasks for you. Yeah. What Apple showed off is... being able to input a command, being like, take my Markdown document from, I don't know, Ulysses and convert it to PDF using PDF Expert and then send it over, send it.
an email to Steven with a document using Spark. Like if those three apps implement the proper app intents and support for Apple intelligence, that's going to be a chain of actions that could be executed. with a natural language query. Now, that is not, based on what Apple showed off, a repeatable, right? A repeatable thing that can happen in the background over time. But...
Apple has the huge advantage here of owning the operating system and owning the native apps, which is what OpenAI doesn't have, which is what Anthropic doesn't have. If agents, here's my angle here, if agents are going to be the thing, if a Siri, so if all these pieces fall into place, if a Siri large language model is actually real, gets announced, ships in 18 months.
If this app-intense infused flavor of Apple intelligence actually works, Apple also owns shortcuts. And that is, by definition, a product... that lets you set up repeatable, consistent chains of actions. Between OS updates that break it, but sure. Right. Set aside the performance consideration. Just theoretically speaking. They do own a system that they are updating it for Apple intelligence. And it's a system that potentially, now we call them automations. We call them personal automations.
I wouldn't be surprised if they get renamed something like agents, Siri agents, and they're actually shortcuts in a couple of years. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think... Apple, they do have the pieces that other companies don't have, right? In some ways, they have the best combination of pieces, but they're like the least prepared to do anything with them, which is...
Which is kind of unusual. I think the only other company kind of in Apple's position is Microsoft. They have an OS. They have a browser. But while they do have some of their own AI technologies, they also rely on open AI for a lot of things. It will be very curious to see what these, honestly, like pretty in the internet age, pretty old platforms of iOS and Windows and macOS, how they evolve in this era. And so far.
A lot of people just want to run a browser and the OS is less important to more and more people. And. Apple and Microsoft seem to be kind of swimming upstream against that to a degree. and it's like does this make that like what does it do to that does it make the os more relevant for the browser company if they could build what they want to build it doesn't because they're just going to have it running in the browser
And it doesn't matter what that browser is running on. But if you start talking about, like you said, integrating with apps and other things beyond just your browser tabs, that's when Apple does have... more in its toolbox to play with and it will be interesting to see what they do there yeah yeah because basically like and i'm gonna write about this i'm gonna show off some examples um the comparison between what you can do with chargpd in siri
and what you can do with a standalone ChatGPT experience. Just comparing the two, like the two flavors, ChatGPT in 18.2, built inside Siri, and ChatGPT standalone in its own app. The differences are kind of ridiculous, like what you can do. And that's due to Siri not being a persistent app.
a place where you can go and find your previous conversations, find your previous context, keep the conversation going over multiple days, which is something that you can do with Claude, something you can do with ChaiGPT. So the comparison, like, it's not even fair, to be honest. And so they're getting some help from CGPT now to, you know, to basically... CGPT in Syria, I think the way that I describe this in the article that I'm working on is...
Basically, ChatDept is now the replacement for I found this on the web for those kinds of results. And that's a much better version. of that Siri gap, right? Siri being unable to fulfill a request and saying, well, I found this on the web. Now, at the very least, if you opt in, because it's turned off, at the very least, you're getting an answer from ChatGPT.
It's kind of funny because if anything, like on one hand, yes, it's useful. And I think a lot of people are going to find it useful, especially because you can use it for free. But for us, the... the critics, so to speak, it kind of is ironic in that it's useful, but it also serves as a reminder of how limited Siri is still. Yeah. Right? So...
We'll see. They are behind, but they have this potentially exciting technology that no one has tried, because this is likely going to be 18.4 next spring. They made a big deal out of... telling developers last June, make sure that every single functionality of your app is now an app intent because this Apple Intelligence feature is coming. They promised it's going to work. No one has tried it. No one has seen it in action. We'll see. I think it's going to be interesting to compare.
To compare these two flavors of go to the ChatGPT app and have a proper conversation, you know, have a lot of context there versus I can tie together the different apps on my phone. without having to build a shortcut by hand just by issuing a natural language prompt. This episode of Connected is brought to you by Smarter World.
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You can listen to these conversations by searching for Smarter World wherever you listen to podcasts. That's the Smarter World podcast. Search for it now. Our thanks to Smarter World for the support of the show and all of Relay. So you mentioned iOS 18.2. We are getting pretty close to that being released. And we don't have the release candidate yet, I don't think, as of this recording. So, yeah, I'm going to...
bit of a difficult spot. So we're going to try a new strategy once again at Mac Stories because we like to keep things fresh after 15 years. After 15 years, people shouldn't expect what they think they're expecting from me. 15 years right i mean you and i we've been on the internet for pretty much the same yeah amount amount of time
you got to keep things fresh. Otherwise people get bored with you. That's right. You know, I wrote performer month just to get, get people excited. Exactly. Exactly. So is what, is what we're going to do. We're going to have. a standalone article about all the changes in iOS and Apple OS 18.2, and I am going to write about Apple intelligence. But with my spin on it.
Because you are running it, right? Can you remind people of what is your state with Apple Intelligence? Yes. My state is that I, for work reasons... because we got to have capital C content. on the podcast and the website, and I don't want to be an old curmudgeon not trying things. I gave up on my dream to use my new real Italian Apple account. I went back to my US Apple account. And even though I am geographically in Italy, with my US Apple account and my device's region,
set to English, I can use Apple Intelligence in Italy. It is no longer geo-restricted like it used to be a few months ago. So, I am using it. Yeah. And I would like to... To have a release candidate, I was sort of expecting 18.2 to come out next Tuesday. Yeah. Right? We're getting pretty close to the holidays, really. Exactly. But usually we would have a release candidate by now. And if I'm not mistaken, didn't Apple release a 0.2 or big 0.3?
a couple of years ago in mid-December. I could see a December 15th or December 16th release, actually. Yeah, so Ryan over at 9to5 put this together. iOS 17.2 was December 11th. 16.2 was December 13th. 15.2 was December 13th. Today's the 4th, so they've got nine days, but I would have expected the release candidate today. Kind of at the latest. Maybe it's, you know, maybe it's tomorrow or Friday, but that doesn't, you know, it doesn't leave a lot of time. It's very strange. We'll see, but...
Yeah, so are you using Apple Intelligent? First of all, do you have 18.2? Yes, I have 18.2 on my carry phone, which is very exciting. Sometimes things just don't work. See, I have been using it and, you know, the features are, are really scattershot. Like I don't envy your task of like reviewing Apple intelligence because. It is not a cohesive strategy. It's a bunch of features scattered across the OS and sometimes in ways that don't make much sense in the way that they're integrated.
well it's easier if you straight up refuse to cover the generative aspects of it that's true which is what i'm doing that is true uh i think the best part of it uh, sorry, is the gin moji. Like, I think they're, that's fun. I think that art style is way better than image playgrounds, which does not look good and is garbagey and. But the Jimmoji is fun. And I've, you know, enjoyed sitting those people. There's some in our group chat floating around.
Yeah, those are decent. I'm not sure if I'm going to include at least a little section about those in my story. But yeah, I'm trying to take another... Trying to focus in on, I mean, I did an episode of App Stories about this with John last week. much more interested in the in the productivity angle here yeah like in the actual like how can you actually use it's like why is it why can this stuff actually be useful to you
when you're using your iPhone or you're working on your iPad, that sort of stuff. And that's the question, right? It's fun to make a little picture of a... You know, somebody on a surfboard surfing on an ocean of money, you know, the day that Apple's results come out. But it's probably not useful for your work. And I think most people like through the productivity lens.
It's things like the writing tools and maybe the visual search, maybe, which out of all the features, those are the two that I've used the least. The visual one, honestly, I forget exists. Like I've used it a couple of times, but it has made no impact on me whatsoever in terms of like sticking my phone at something like, what am I seeing? Like I just, that's not a need that I feel like I have.
yeah yeah so i i'm having fun with this article on sort of trying to compare the kind of experience that you get with apple intelligence and chat gpt versus what you get with other standalone apps. And I think it's going to be... I am going to be interested in seeing if... regular people, where by regular people, I mean people who don't listen to this show or read Mac stories. It's a pretty clear divide, I think, right? ChargeAPT for iOS.
for iPhone, is consistently the most downloaded app on the App Store. And I believe just today, I'm looking up the numbers now. Just today, OpenAI announced they have 300 million weekly active users. Jeez. So 300 million weekly active users and 1 billion... 1 billion, with a B, messages sent to Chagipity every day. Jeez. So, this is from 30 minutes ago. So...
You know, it's obviously, it's the most loaded app on the App Store, continues to grow. One of the, if not the fastest growing piece of software in recent history. skeptical that people will see the new integration in Siri as a replacement for that app experience? No. I think for most people will likely be a fallback of like, ah, yeah, I guess Siri can now, instead of saying, here's web results, I guess now at least it gives me an answer. But it's no thanks to Siri, right?
If anything, it damages Siri's already lackluster reputation. Exactly. You're only getting better because you're getting a little help from your friends. Basically, you're not really smarter. You just struck a deal to get proper answers. Yeah, literally struck a deal as it turns out. Yeah, yeah. So I don't think... having ChatGPT in Siri will change the fact that ChatGPT for iPhone is the most downloaded app on the App Store. But regardless, I'm going to keep an eye, you know.
Keep an ear on, you know, what people in my real life say if they noticed. I mean, I guess they will notice in a few months because in Italy we'll only have access to Apple intelligence. at some point in the spring. But it's going to be... You know what, Stephen? You keep an eye on regular people in America. I will. You do it. I can't. I will keep an eye on America. Yeah. I'll do my best. Thank you. It's not going great. Speak of a difficult job. Yeah, it's tricky in places.
We've talked about this. Other people have talked about this, but it is, I think, the most compelling part of... of what Apple has shown so far is the new, the new Siri, like where it knows about things in your apps and not having that available right now. like I think people are going to be underwhelmed definitely by the new Siri. And like it has that fancy animation, which may or may not be HDR, but it is the same Siri. It just falls back to chat GPT. And like, I have all that wired up.
And I don't think a single time I've gone to chat GPT on purpose through Siri. I just opened the chat GPT app per your, you know, your observation. And so I don't really know what kind of a difference that's going to make. I just, I don't know. Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong. Maybe there are people who have not.
And I'm sure there are people who have not used ChatGPT. This will be their first experience with it. They may not even know it's its own app. And like they don't really understand the difference between like Siri and ChatGPT. I think some of that may be actually confusing for some users, and that's something I want to keep an eye on. Yeah, I mean, there are, at the very least, you know, on planet Earth, at least, you know, six.
and change more billion people that could potentially use CharGPT. Yeah. And obviously like the power, the power of... having it built in your phone right there's obviously something to that you know And knowing Apple, you know they're going to tell you that there's going to be a splash screen somewhere telling you, hey, now you can enable this. And so you know that's going to catch people's attention. But I still think it's not going to change the fact.
That a lot of people... And I see this. I see this right now. I noticed it, especially now with the holidays and family gatherings. I see ChatGPT installed on people's iPhones. Yeah. They don't have an account. They use it for free. Some of them have an account, but they don't subscribe. But I see the app on people's phones. They're using it. For a lot of people, it's like the new Google, right? Yeah. Yeah.
The search is compelling. Jason and I talked about that on Upgrade on Monday. Yeah. Oh, I still haven't gotten to that part. So, spoilers. I do also wonder, I mean, you have Siri, you have ChatGPT. You know, I wonder what sort of average users will think of the writing tools. I think the proofreading stuff is useful.
Are people going to write an email and then hit the button and say, make this more friendly? I just don't know. I mean, that is the one that is really hard for me. And honestly, I think probably you too. evaluate because we are writers for a living. And I mean, I use Grammarly as a grammar checking thing, but I don't let it change my tone. I leave a lot of things that Grammarly says are wrong because it's the way that I write.
But it is interesting, I think, to see what people will do with those sets of tools. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. 18.2. It's coming. It's coming at some point. Maybe. Probably. Soon, but not yet. Watching Netflix without ExpressVPN is like paying for a gym membership, but only being allowed to use the treadmill. See, when you use ExpressVPN, you can change your online location, which can change where streaming services think you're located.
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That's expressvpn.com slash connected to get an extra four or even six months of ExpressVPN for free. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of Connected and all of Relay. I wanted to wrap up today talking about the flex bar. This is the most... If a product could embody your persona, Stephen, and it wasn't... a G4 iMac, this will probably be second in line. Okay. I'm not sure what that means. I don't know. It's got Steven energy all over it. It's got some energy.
Uh, so yes, this is, it's a Kickstarter campaign. I will say right now, I do not recommend backing this campaign. Don't, don't do it. Uh, it is a external touch bar. They call it a touchscreen keypad. Yes. That is, I mean, it looks like a touch bar and the idea is you plug it into your Mac. or your PC, potentially even your iPhone and iPad. And through their software, it'll be integrated with a bunch of your OS and apps.
They promised a bunch of plugins, including, I'm just looking at the screenshot, YouTube, the Office apps, Adobe, the Adobe Cloud, Discord. I don't know if Adobe knows about this product. My guess is that they don't. They probably don't. They probably don't. Using a JavaScript plug, a JavaScript-based plugin SDK. You can easily implement almost any functionality on the Flexbar with your own integrated third-party APIs. Okay, we will see how that goes. That's all fine, I guess. Like, two things.
Several things jump out at me. One, their goal was only $2,600. It actually was $2,569. Nice. I don't know a lot about hardware manufacturing. But that doesn't seem like a lot of money. Can you tell me, first of all, are these flex bars going to be refurbished touch bars?
I don't know where the hardware is. I mean, surely not. I don't think there's a bunch of those floating around. Okay. And they're all tied to the T2. I think this is bespoke hardware. Okay, so this is new hardware based on the same concept as the T4. Based on the idea of the touch bar. Okay. So this is not like, because I saw like some headlines saying the touch bar is back as a Kickstarter, but this is like, this is not the touch bar. No. It's a touch bar for the modern age.
if it exists yeah yes it is the the idea of the touch bar brought back which again i don't know if people want this i mean they have how many backers they have they have some number of backers 582 so there's some people who want this i just don't know i just i think it's interesting that someone that there are clear people who did like the touch bar
let me say first of all, and include people who think that this is a useful tool, but like, this ain't it. Like, third-party hardware, third-party software, Windows and Mac support, like... if you want something like this go buy a steam a stream deck like that's that's the answer not not this thing yeah like i don't understand why you would get this and i don't mean to like
to be negative about like a hardware project by it seems like a new company and obviously best of luck to them but if you're looking for customization and a really vibrant and healthy third-party developer ecosystem, I don't know why you wouldn't get a stream deck. Because maybe it's not as compact as a thin touch bar.
that you can place somewhere on your desk, sure. But it seems to me like this product is trying to solve the same problem that is currently being solved by really popular, inexpensive hardware. by a company with a proven track record and a really vibrant third-party marketplace for integrations. Yeah. And so, I mean, it almost... reads to me as a meme product more than anything. Like, oh yeah, it's, look, we're bringing back the touch bar. You know? Yeah. Yeah, maybe.
It made the rounds in the Apple world so fiercely yesterday, which I think they launched like two days ago. It's a very young campaign. Clearly, they're leaning into that, right? Like, oh, we're bringing the touch bar back. That's what they want people to consider. Right, right. And, like, two, like, I got an email from somebody. Like, maybe I was a little harsh on this in my blog post, but I don't mean these folks any, like, ill will. Like, you know.
go out and try things this just doesn't seem like a compelling product and it and i think saying oh we brought the touch bar back is like actually kind of a really interesting but maybe slightly problematic way to describe this product um I read something, I forget, I think it was one of the many blogs that linked to this, and they were like, the Touch Bar enjoyed great software support for many years. Like, no, it didn't? No. No.
Third party kind of adopted it. Apple never really extended what it could do. And then it went away in four or five years. I think the stream deck shows that people want something like this. I got a stream deck XL right here under my monitor. I use it all the time. And I think the form factor of the stream deck is also more compelling. Like this thing is going to sit flat on your desk and.
It's got a USB-C cable coming out the side. And like, you know, the stream deck is really, really nice. There's one picture or GIF, I guess. On the Kickstarter page of somebody leaning it up like in the hinge of their laptop. Can you imagine closing your laptop forgetting it's in there? Yeah, no. Yeah, no. Game over. Don't do that.
So I don't know. I'm keeping my eye on it. It is interesting, but I don't think it's something that is going to prove successful. I just don't see that happening. Did you ever... you know, if you can recall, ever really used the touch bar? The only thing I consistently used it for was media control and sometimes picking out an emoji.
But like I never got into like, oh, let me edit photos with it or use it in logic. Like it never made its way into my workflows at all. I think I remember these conversations. And I also remember like people doing. Some things like using better touch tool to put together like custom buttons and custom macros that you could execute from the touch bar. I did have a button that had a hot dog emoji. And when you tapped it, the computer said hot dog.
Nice. That's a productivity boost. I'm a developer. You are. You technically are now. Yeah, don't... Put a touch bar in Widgetsmith, please. I will do my best. You know, one may just fall in there. You may be tempted to do it, but don't do it. Yeah. What is this? As an iPad user, so the Touch Bar does live on in Sidecar, kind of. Is it still in there? I don't even actually know. Yeah, it is. I think it is, yeah. But as an iPad user, is something like this, like physical controls?
interesting to you or like the media playback on the keyboard enough there's actually a good question because like thank you that's a few just a few yeah you're welcome um you do have those on occasion um A few weeks ago, I went down this rabbit hole of, do you know, Steven, that Elgato, they made, I believe it's called Stream Deck Kit. Yes. And it's a framework. to support a Stream Deck in your iPad app. I remember this. And I am fairly certain that no third-party developers whatsoever...
have added support for Stream Deck Kit on their iPad apps. I think there's one or two Elgato apps that actually let you use Stream Deck commands. with an iPad app by Elgato, I think it's Elgato Cam and Elgato Capture or something like that. I have looked far and wide, far and wide, and I couldn't find a single result. of a third-party app that said on the iPad, we now integrate with the Stream Deck. Yeah. I would love to have it when I work at my desk. But the problem is, here's the problem.
I would love Obsidian for iPad to support the Stream Deck so that I could execute specific plugins or commands. just by pressing a physical button at my desk when i'm working with the ipad but the problem with the stream deck on the ipad is that due to how driver kit is built
And due to how the, I guess, the Stream Deck SDK is built, those commands are going to be app-specific. When you're on the home screen or when you're using Safari, you won't be able to do anything because Apple is never going to support. Stream Deck Kit in iPadOS. And even then, if you're a developer of an iPad app, you're already part of a niche.
Right? Oh, it's the iPad version of my app. So it's already quite a niche. And then to support, like, it would be like a niche of a niche to say, well, it's Stream Deck Kit on the iPad. Like, I understand why. nobody's doing it and so I am on principle very much interested and I almost bought one of those like Stream Deck Neo models they're adorable they're really cute
And I almost got one, but then I realized, what am I going to use it for? You know? Yeah. Yeah. Let me plug in some buttons to my iPad that I carry around. It's kind of a weird... it's kind of weird kind of weird thing too now i am in favor of weird things of course but those buttons would mostly be blank when connected to my ipad so um yeah i can you imagine though like assign a shortcut to the stream deck on the ipad and you run a shortcut
I mean, the Obsidian folks could maybe consider it. I could see Drafts also being a really good candidate for the Stream Deck kit on the iPad. I could see... What are some automation apps? There's some programming apps on the iPad to get advantage of it. But yeah, it's mostly going to be like apps that have like a strong automation component built in. And so yeah, Obsidian and Drafts come to mind.
Well, we'll keep an eye on that. I was poking around the Stream Deck Kit GitHub project, and it's real quiet in there. Yeah, like I said, nobody's doing it. Yeah. It's kind of sad. It is kind of sad. Well, I think that does it for this week. If you want to find us online, we're pretty easy.
Federico is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net. Stay tuned for his iOS 18 Apple intelligence coverage. It's going to be great. And be sure to check out the huge growing family of podcasts over at MacStories. And if you're going to CES, keep an eye out for John. Yeah. John's going to be there. You can find Federico across social media as Fatici. Just search for him because social media is fractured beyond all repair.
You can find my writing at 512pixels.net and I co-host Mac Power Users here on Relay each and every Sunday. This coming Sunday, we're talking about like family tech support and how to some of the most common things you may get asked. from friends and family. I think it was pretty good. And you can find me on social media as ISMH86. I'd like to thank our sponsors this week for making the show possible. NetSuite, Squarespace, Smarter World, and ExpressVPN.
And until next time, Federico, say goodbye. Arrivederci. Bye, y'all.