531: Gill Sands

Hello and welcome to Connected episode 531. for Wednesday, December 11th, 2024. My name is Stephen Hackett, and I'm joined by Ricky Benchman, Mike Hurley. Hello, happy to be back. And I am the Ricky Benchman, and I have the pleasure of introducing Federico Vatici. Hi, Federico. Hello.

My time could be coming to an end on the benchmanship, which is very sad. I haven't actually looked at the annual rickies and how we're doing on that. I'll leave that for another day, but I hope I win because I don't want to lose the benchmanship. Yeah. Well, this is a good time for me to let people know what's coming up on the show. That's a good point. This is episode 531. It is the last normal episode of the year because next week we will be performing.

The Annies is our year in review episode, and we grade each month based on the TG scale. Classic connected show. Definitely something that me and Federico... remember it happened it didn't have to be reminded before the start of the show this week that we do that yeah so that'll be december 18th january 1st will be a special guest episode what are you talking about

We've never had guests on this show. That's true. Scratch that. And then January 8th, we will be grading our annual picks for 2024 and making our annual picks. For 2025. So a very exciting month of content coming up here on the Connective program. Yeah, we really stack the end of the year, don't we? We do. We really do. But Mike. Yes. You.

have the ultimate end-of-the-year announcement. I guess I do. Yeah, so if you follow me on social media, you may have seen this by now, but if you don't, then I'm very happy to... let you know, dear listener, that passionate one, that my wife and I are expecting our first child. And they're due in February. So soon. Very soon. But yeah, we have a baby girl coming at the end of February is the due date. Who knows when it will actually be.

But yeah, very, very excited. As you can imagine, this is something that we have wanted for a very long time. And we feel very, very fortunate that we're at a place now where my wife is pregnant. She's doing great. handling it so well and uh yeah everything's going fine and we're very very excited yeah deepest congratulations and love yes to the hurley family thank you much love to both of you to all of you

Yes, yes. Yes, the three of us. You can love the three of us. The three of you. We have a related question about this very topic. Peter wrote in. Many congratulations and much happiness to Mike and Adina. My question is for Federico, who... who are you going to call daddy on this show going forward? Should your co-hosts dedicate the next podcast-a-thon to deciding who the best daddy is? Now, Peter, obviously, Stephen is always going to be our daddy.

Yes, both of us. I propose that we refer, starting next year, we will start referring to Mike as Father Mike. Oh, okay. I was going to suggest Big Daddy, Little Daddy, but you can... Me too! I was also going to suggest that. And I could be... Or we could go with that. We could go with that. I would prefer Father Mike. It gives him a certain gravitas. It really does. I think it's stolen valor, but I'll take it.

Little daddy. Stephen, how particularly do you feel about me being called Father Mike? I mean, that's not my particular flavor thing, so. Oh, so it's okay? It's cool. Okay. It really feels like you're moving on a little widgey. You know, we've got to also contend with that. What about, like, Daddy and Papa or something? Papa. Papa is nice.

You should consider that. We could go with the Italian, but we could be like Padre Mike. That would be an idea. Oh, Padre. Once again, I feel like I'm stealing valor. I feel like there's no good way around this one. Have you considered calling me the Pope? Would that work for you? That's a step too far. It's a step too far? You've been cancelled. Now you've been cancelled.

Yeah, we'll think about it, Peter. But to answer your question in the strict sense of the daddy energy, Stephen is always going to be the daddy. Yeah, big daddy energy. Big daddy energy. Follow up. Many people wrote in saying that their Macintosh screensaver gets stuck on green. So I will continue to fight for you, dear listeners. Who owns this notion? Nobody.

I mean, like, because can we, can we like kick Stephen out? No, it's mine. I pay for it out of my own pocket. I think it's actually Stephen. Yeah, it's Stephen. Yeah, that sucks. It's kind of expensive, but it's fine. Yeah. Have you... Actually, I'll save that for another time. Wait, what? No, no. Another time. Another time. I'm kind of concerned now. No, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Darren wrote in, hearing...

I just noticed that Darren misspelled your name. Hearing Frederico, like the Christmas tree place, try to upload all his articles in Notebook LM, but being limited by the number of files, made me think. Since these files are... I guess they're in Obsidian. They're just marked down. Could you combine them into one mega review file and upload that?

I was thinking the same thing when hearing you talk about it last time. That's an interesting idea. I wonder, I mean, there has to be a character limit at some point. Yeah, or file size. There has to be something. We recently exported the entire Mac Stories archive. So not just my articles, but all of Mac Stories, 15 years of Mac Stories. Hey, are you using my writing for training? Oh, sick. Yes. Did you not check the contract? I own all of your rights, Steven. Wait.

Including 512. Oh no! You got OTJ'd. Dang it. You just got OTJ'd. No, but seriously, looking at 15 years of work. in a folder that is 150 megabytes there's something there's something i don't know strange about that like all of your work it's not a lot is it it's not a lot It's a lot for plain text. Yeah, but... But in aggregate, it's like one podcast. Yeah. Did you know, did you just do like the XML export out of WordPress?

I don't know. Rob did it. I'm going to do that. I'm going to see how big mine is. How long is that going to take, do you think? Is this an immediate thing you can give us an answer to? I will follow up during the show. You reckon it will be done by the end of the show? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hang on a second. You don't have this all stored already? Well, I looked, and my previous backup is a month old, so I want to give a... Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I can't believe it.

I do it every 15th. What if your computer caught on fire? No, every 15th. Look, it's backed up in real time thanks to Vaultpress. Okay, here it is. My XML is 53 megabytes. Oh, you're like a third of Federico. In this regard, yes. In odd regards. Height-wise, we're pretty close. I don't know. You both seem pretty small to me. Wow. Wow. John Cena is my AI now. Speaking of feeling small.

Yeah, this is incredible. I had an update for the meta Ray-Bans, which took away my ability to do some AI tasks. That's like a whole thing. but whatever but now I can choose to have John Cena speak to me instead of the meta voice and it's incredible when I put my glasses on and John Cena tells me the battery level it's so good every time amazing

They have a bunch of choices. Kristen Bell is there. But yeah, John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key, Awkwafina, these people, I guess, got paid a bunch of money by Meta. Yeah. You know what's actually kind of funny? I posted this from Blue Sky. I think someone said, like, hope they're getting paid for that. And it's like, come on. Come on. Do you think...

Meta just took that and we're like, oh, it's fine. Like, we'll just take John Cena's voice. It's fine. He won't care. Like, of course they got paid for that. Yeah. Famously in June, Kristen Bell told Instagram to get rid of AI. and then took their money. Yeah, and I think that's the perfect way to deal with it. If they're not going to take your information out of it, so you might as well get paid from them. It's true. This feels like the new version of...

Do y'all remember if you had a Garmin GPS in your car and you could download different voices? This is just the new version of that. Meta, call me. Oh, you would do it. If you want somebody who has a vaguely Southern accent whose voice cracks pretty often, I'm your guy. Whoa, what a deal. It is remarkable that I talk for a living.

I mean, maybe. But both of those things are because you talk for a living. Especially the accent. You think you have a vaguely southern accent. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be. Go back and listen, man. Oh, yeah? What is the name of the computer device that you have in your pocket, Stephen? An iPhone. What did it used to be? iPhone. iPhone. iPhone. It's changed. Yeah. It's changed. What's going on with WordPress? Oh, man.

so much. So we have spoken about this on and off the WordPress WP Engine feud that I'm sure people are familiar with. A judge in California awarded a preliminary injunction. against automatic for blocking wp engine so remember they cut off wp engine's access to wordpress and then they had a checkbox in wordpress that you have to like swear on your heart that you're not involved with wp engine um

That's all been set aside for now. There will be a trial that will decide how all that goes. But just before, basically as we started recording, Samantha Cole at 404 Media, which, like, they're doing some great work. I pay for their stuff. Like 4 for Media is awesome. I'm going to read from Samantha's article. In the immediate aftermath of the decision, Automatic founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg asked for his account to be deleted.

from the post-status Slack, which is a popular community working on WordPress's open source tools. This is what Matt wrote, according to screenshots. He's taking it well. It's hard to imagine. Listen to this. This is what the founder, automatic founder and CEO wrote. It's hard to imagine wanting to continue to work on WordPress after this.

I'm sick and disgusted to be legally compelled to provide free labor to an organization as parasitic and exploitative as WP Engine. I hope you all get what you want. I hope you all get what you and WP Engine wanted. His username on that Slack has been changed to gone with a skull emoji. Hosting through it.

Posting right through. Yeah, he's posting. Actually, no, I don't think he wants to anymore. I think he wants to stop posting. Look, I don't really understand what's going on here, but I... I do at least feel sympathy for the fact that he is clearly very upset. Whatever it is that he feels, he feels it very deeply. I would love to know more about what is going on with him.

I can see that he is very emotionally affected by WP Engine. Yeah. Which, again, I will say, terrible name, WP Engine. WP Engine. WP Engine. P Engine. I subscribed to his blog when this started happening because he also just posted on his blog noticeably silent today. Anyways. Silence is deafening. It's no fun to be on the losing end of a court battle. We've all been there. Sure, sure. I have received my fair share of injunctions back in my day.

Could OTJ text us what an injunction means, please? John, what is injunction? Speaking of injunctions. Okay. MacStory Selects Awards have been handed out. Are you issuing an injunction? That is not the meaning. That is not. I mean, Jonathan texted us yet. No one knows. No, I'm just kidding. I was just looking for a segue.

Federico, tell us about this. Who won? Why didn't I get one for being a good podcaster? That's a great point. Why haven't I gotten one too? I'm holding out for the Upgradies Hall of Fame. Which if we don't get, I will burn relay to the ground. Look, I was going to say I don't control the upgrades. I absolutely 100% do. It's not looking good.

We haven't even done it yet, but Jason has gotten me hooked on his favorite podcast. The rest is history. They don't even care about the Upgradies. We're one away from being Lifetime Achievement. Nobody cares about the Upgradies except podcasters, it seems, which is very funny. I care very deeply about that. But our listeners do, and me and Jason do. That's important. I'm just saying. It's looking bad. It's looking bad. I could bookend.

the back half of my year with St. Jude creator of the year and upgrading lifetime achievement. Well, I mean, I, You have to hope that the upgradians have voted in like their droves for connected because that might sway Jason because I'm going to ask how you can flood a Google form with answers. I will not.

like, vote for my own show. I cannot do that. Jason. Jason's listening live, I believe. He's in the Discord. Jason. Okay. I will Apple pay you 20 bucks. Ooh, $20. Look, I know you just bought a MacBook Pro and that's partially my fault. Yeah, you're probably not in his good books right now unless he really likes that computer. I hope he does. Because it's like, what, $20 against like $3,000 or something? Like, I don't know. It's probably not helping.

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What do you want to know? I mean, this is our annual award ceremony to award our favorite apps of the year. Some of the, I mean, let's talk about spoilers, right? Because this came out a couple of days ago. Best new app we chose Croissant, the cross-posting utility. We felt that there's been a bunch of well-deserved new apps this year, but this one in particular, I think...

It sort of checks all the boxes in terms of like the utilities that we're looking for. And it's of the moment, right? Like this is a very of the moment app. It's a new... Right now, it's like you say, all of the moment, it's getting better. Like now it's on the iPad, it's on the Mac. So we felt that it was, you know, the right choice for best new app. And we selected...

I wanted to mention some of the other ones. Moom 4 on the Mac. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, I don't use a Mac, but I mean, obviously it looks really nice. Every day Moom asks me to upgrade and every day I say I really want to do that and don't. And I will eventually get to it. I have a tab open for Moom 4 because I use Moom. But getting the award is like another thing where I'm like, yep, I definitely want to upgrade to that, but I've just not gotten around to it yet. Nice. You should do it.

A couple of awards for Play, the Watch Later app. We selected it for the best new feature, for the channel inbox feature that allows you to more easily follow your favorite channels on YouTube. and see just the videos from those channels and quickly save them for later in play. We selected it, but it also won the runoff in the CloudMax Stories Discord.

by just a handful of votes for the Reader's Choice Award. So it got two awards. TGTabs got rubbed. Yep. What would you have done if you were in my position? Well, I really wanted to put my thumb on the scale for this one, but I didn't think you would appreciate it. So I did. Mike, you have your own awards. Just give it an upgrade. Hey, look. Again, I can't just go around like granting these things. You know what? I'm going to do it. This is the first, Jason's listening, the first annual.

512 Pixels Award Ceremony of Awards. The name needs a little work. What's the name of the award? I'm giving TGTabs Back App of the Year. and I'm giving... Did you say Mac app? I did say Mac app. iPhone, iPad app. This award ceremony is terrible. I'm doing it on the fly, man! This is like when they gave the Oscar to the wrong movie. That's like what you're doing. Oh, I forgot it.

about that. Whoever did that, they got lambasted on social media for it, too. Well, you would, wouldn't you? TGTabs is Apple ecosystem app of the year. Okay. Connected is a... eternal achievement award-winning show beyond our lifetimes. Our children will carry it on. Incredible. And I'm going to give...

I feel like I should give some sort of media award. Okay, why do you feel like that? So I'm going to give best blog about Retro Max to 512pixels. Wait, you have three awards. You gave yourself two of them. You know, it's the will of the people. Okay. And I am nothing if not a man of the people. Anyway. Maybe Jim would cut all that. Or maybe it stays in. We've got to keep it in. No, no, no. We've got to keep it in. You can't cut all your failures.

Delta as App of the Year couldn't believe that Delta came out this year. That felt like a really long time ago. That was all this year. I mean, obviously. Delta technically didn't come out this year, but on the App Store, it was a 2024 thing. I had the thing, because again, thinking through the whole year, the Vision Pro was this year, too. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Did you consider a Vision Pro award, Federico? Yeah, we decided not to do it because there's like 20 apps for the platform. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will accept it for Widget Smith, though, if you want to do it right now. Witchsmith is on Vision Pro. Come on. This doesn't sound like it's going well. The silence is deafening. This doesn't sound like it's going well. No, I will give you the award in spirit. I don't want the trophy.

but to actually print out a trophy for you, what's in it for me, you know? 20 bucks. If Jason doesn't claim it. What is it with these 20 bucks? Do you have one $20 bill? Is that what you're dealing with? It's all the money I have in my name. Did you find it on the ground or something? I don't know how to use it. So I picked this up from my dad because he has a sense of humor. But I was asked for my ID somewhere the other day. And I was picking up an online order. Were you getting arrested?

yeah okay i was i was going clubbing as i often do wow and i handed i handed this uh younger than me person my d i was like oh yeah like i just found this one in the parking lot and they were like wait what like they the dad joke whizzed over their head like a missile. And then I just had to like explain that I wasn't very funny. And then she gave me my order and I will never go back to that store. Sorry about that. It's rough. What are we talking about?

We're still talking about Backstory Select Awards. Yes. Yes. So Delta is the app of the year. We felt that it was the app that... you know what was the conversation for for a few weeks during the year and it also was a symbol of the this new category of apps that are possible on the app store you know gaming emulators and um

I don't know, it felt like the obvious choice. It's on the iPhone, it's on the iPad, it syncs with iCloud. Now they have online multiplayer for like Nintendo DS games, for example, which is wild. Yeah, so I believe John has already shipped. the awards, so they are now traveling to each respective winner. Have you had to have them made in a new place? No. No. Okay, because I just think that John's moved, right?

No, no, no, but we still have our awards guy. You have an awards guy? That's cool, right? We have an awards guy. I got a trophy guy? It's like to have a trophy guy. It's like, hey, don't worry. That is cool. Yeah. What is the font that says the name? Is that like one of the classic Apple fonts? You know, like where it's got like Moon 4, Minitrix, selected as best Mac app by the Mac Stories team. Do you know what that font is?

I have no idea because Sylvia did it. It looks like... No, actually, no. No, Sylvia didn't do that part. The awards guy did that thing. It looks like... I can't tell. It looks like one of the classic Apple fonts. Could it be Myriad? Yeah, I think it's Myriad or something very close to it. You see what I mean? It is that classic Apple.

Tell you what, I'm going to take a screenshot of this. I'm going to ask an AI. Oh, what fun is this? You know, I never thought to do that because there were like apps and services, right, that would do that. But I guess the AI tool should be able to do that now. I don't know. We're going to find out. We're going to find out together. What font is in this photo? Let's see what the chat GPT app says on the Mac. The font used in the image resembles Gil Sands. I think it is Gil Sands, actually.

Is Gil Sans... Is that what Apple used? No, but it's... But it's close to it, though, right? Yeah. And Gil Sans is very popular, so... Yeah, they look really good. I love the clear look. Do you think it was named after Gil Emilio? Oh, my God. Was it? I don't know. If it was at the beach, it'd be Gil Sands. Stephen? Yeah. Just ignore that. Just ignore that.

No, it was designed by somebody called Eric Gill. I was going to ask if there was like a modern version. We could call it Tim Sands. I don't think this is Gill Sands. I think it kind of looks like it. Gil Sands is used by the British Railway system, and it's a thicker weight font than this. I don't think that's Gil Sands. You're a thicker weight font.

I am. I really am. I've just been in America. I'm a thick-a-white font man. It was a couple of weeks ago, I'll tell you that. I'm Mike Bold right now. Anyway, Federico Good Awards. Thank you. I always enjoy this. There's always at least one app that I pick up from this every year. And what is it this year?

It's two, actually. Chronicling, which is I want to try again. That's on the watch. This feels like it's even more helpful on the watch. And I want to try out Play because I was aware of Play but never really felt like I needed it.

But the way that you described the channel inbox kind of feature and the fact that it's got chapters like a podcast, like a chapter selection like a podcast. For certain videos, like certain channels that I subscribe to, this actually looks like it could be really, really good. It looks like it could actually be a nice way to use YouTube as a podcast app. If you want to start fresh, you can obviously import your channels manually.

You can also automate it with shortcuts, like throw it like a bunch of URLs together. It's going to subscribe to those. Or if you want to... exactly replicate your YouTube setup. You can use the Google Takeout export file and import all of your existing subscriptions from YouTube. Not to be outdone, we have the App Store Selects 2024. They don't call it that. Apple has done some things. Who won? Did we win? Well...

Connected won best podcast of the year. Wow. That's actually not true. I know that one. What was it? It was a podcast with a dude on it. Let's see. Apple Newsroom. That's great. You really crushed that one. There are many of such podcasts. There are some. Hysterical. Okay. Hosted by Dan Taberski. Morin. Okay, no, not Dan Warren. Look at that. Congrats, Dan. Good job. So to run through the list quickly, iPhone app of the year, Kino, the video app by the Halide folks.

iPad app of the year. Moises. Music app, I think. Mac app of the year. Guys, you're never gonna guess this one. It's Adobe Lightroom. Wow. Friendship ended with Microsoft. Adobe is my best friend. Apple Vision Pro app of the year. There are some of those. It's What If, an immersive story. This is so good, though. This is so good. Even if there were lots of Vision Pro apps, this one could still win.

The Apple Watch app of the year, it's Lumi. This is a good app. It's a really nice utility for tracking sunlight and sunsets. planning outdoor stuff like photographers for example can use it it's really nice um and the apple tv app of the year it's f1 tv mike is f1 tv a good one I don't and can't use F1 TV. It's not available on FK. Well, there you go. And as for games, we got AFK Journey on the iPhone.

Squad Busters on the iPad. Sick. Now, finally, a good one. Mac Game of the Year. It's Thank Goodness You're Here from Panic. A game I recommend to both of you to play if you've not played it. We got the Apple Vision Pro Game of the Year. It's Thrasher, an arcade odyssey. And the Apple Arcade Game of the Year, of course, it's Ballatro+. It should win Game of the Year.

It's only one Apple Arcade game of the year because they were lucky enough. Well, not lucky enough. They paid enough money to get it on Apple Arcade. Oh, my God. The launch is so good. Yeah. I also want to quickly mention the cultural impact winners. We got all... OKO, EF Hello, Daily Art, New York Times Games, The Wreck, and Do You Really Want to Know 2. So that's the cultural impact winners. I think...

It's a decent list. They've gotten better. We said this in the nominations. They've gotten better. To me, Kino winning iPhone after the year is like... This is a... narrow use case application in the sense of like the whole app store right sure um and it's it's a great app well made by people that know what they're doing and i'm happy that apple have recognized that and yeah it's nice it's also like

It's an iPhone app that costs $10. And it's not the kind of app that most people will need, but it's also using the latest technologies, the latest integrations. It's from an indie... team. It's nice that Kino won. It's an example of what good apps can be, right? And I think actually all of these are, right? Like I think in each category...

These are apps that are like, this is what a good app can be. I mean, I would maybe, I mean, I know people like Lightroom, but like, I would like to see a better example of user interface design that actually feels like a Mac app. as Mac app of the year than an Adobe app, which feel like Adobe apps. But by and large, I do think they're picking really good examples of what these things can be. And even like...

Thank Goodness You're Here is a really good game and is a good example of the type of game that can run on a Mac, which is realistically not the biggest stuff. You know what I mean? I know they're getting better. I'm actually surprised that it wasn't like, I don't know, they give it to Death Stranding or something. So I'm happy that they didn't do that and they won't with this game. So it's great, which is published by Panic, by the way.

This is one of the games published by Panic. That's nice. They didn't make it. They publish it. Right. It's made by the developer, I think, is Cole Supper is the developer's name. Cole Supper. But Panic published it. Just another... success for panic yeah they're killing it within the next five years if it hasn't already happened i would expect that they are majorly a game publisher rather than a mac app developer yeah yeah i think that's i think they're well on their way to that

Yeah, they are doing hit after hit. Even if you take Playdate out of this, they have a very good taste for games. They keep publishing games they either win or get. Game of the Year nominations. They published multiple games this year. That game's on the Mac? Yeah. But this is what they do as well. They make sure these games find their way to Apple platforms. So what we're saying is that Mac gaming...

is more successful than FTP apps on the iPad. Just let that soak in. Yes, you could say that. I mean, no, because it isn't only on the Mac. They put it on the Mac, but this game's life is on PlayStation, right? No one's ever even heard of it. True. I mean, I played it on Steam Deck, so. Cool. Go all these winners.

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episodes that we've done since, I don't know, what, 2020? So you've got years of extra content that you can go back and listen to. We use chapters so you'll know which stuff is extra, which is good, so you can go and get that. You also get a bunch of other bonus content for being a Relay member.

monthly shows that are only available to relay members and access to our discord and the email newsletter and so much more. And as I believe Steven has written in a document, this show now helps support four children, three dogs, one cat, one fish. One snake. Gross. And an untold number of handheld gaming PCs. So you really should go and sign up. Go to GiveRelay.com and find out more about it. Look, if you don't sign up, Mike's child is going to starve.

I mean, it's not impossible. So if you would like to support my growing family, you should go to giverelay.com and sign up for a membership. Yeah. Is this emotional blackmail? Yes. Yeah. Do we care? No. I have no problem with that. GiveRelay.com. Steven, do you have anything else you would like to add? I mean, yeah. Thank you. The direct support has really allowed us to...

Continue to do this. You know, the ad market is up and down and all over the place. And Relay and us as hosts, we're a much more stable ground with membership. So go check it out. You do get Connected Pro, which is longer and ad-free, but you get the Discord server, a newsletter, a couple members-only podcasts. It's a great deal, and now's a great time to do it because you're going to get 20% off. Yeah. No, no, no. I knew it.

We get it. Welcome back to the Quizzies, the quiz show of in a podcast where I'm Mike Hurley, quiz my connected co-host randomly and by surprise on a variety of varying subjects. Welcome back to the quizzes. This is going to be the final quizzes of the year. It's always entrapment. I always have to say I have some other topic in the document. Or it can't be by surprise.

I just put the screenshot from Notion into the chat. Your topic was, Mike has some observations, secret thoughts, and I had written, if this is the quizzes, I will throw myself down the stairs. So you're going to do that, or are you a liar? Well, in hindsight, maybe after the show. We'll see how it goes. Do you even have access to stairs? Where are the closest stairs? Where would that be? Going into my attic. And they're actually getting replaced as we speak.

So you could actually conceivably fall down those stairs. Right now it's a big hole. It doesn't have stairs anymore. So that's why you wrote it in the document. Wow. Conspiracies. So this is the points for the year so far. Stephen is at 540. Federico is at 580. Wow, I'm winning. Coming from behind, boys. These are the final quizzes of the year. So the winner today takes the year. I will remind you of the previous two years.

In 2023, Federico had 2,000 points and Steven had 2,020 points. Ominous number, but he won that year. In 2022, Federico had 8,000. 801 points. And Steven had 10,673 points. And he won that year too. I've really tried to like... calmed the scoring down over time. You got to do some deflation. I got a little out of hand. I got a little out of hand in year one. But here we are. And I have a special game. I have a new game today.

And there is some setup for this. Boys, I need you both to close Discord. Okay. Okay. Gone. And confirm to me that you have done this. It's closed. I have done this. Welcome to a new game. It's called the Jeremies. What? The Jeremies. The Jeremies and the Annies? Nope. It's J-E-R-A-I-M-I-E-S. I have created 10 Genmoji that I would like you to guess the prompt that I asked for. Oh my God. I will show you both at the same time the Genmoji image over a zoom.

Screen sharing, which I will set up in a moment. Oh, my God. I should probably make sure you can screen sharing. Well, we'll find out. The first one to guess the prompt I've used gets the points. When you see it and you have your guess, you need to say your name aloud. And then I will ask who I hear. That's the buzzer.

That's the buzzer. I will ask who I detect as the first person to buzz in to give me their answer. If you get your answer correct or close enough, I will give you the points. If you do not... I will ask your competitor to give their guess. From that point, you can take alternate guesses until somebody gets it. Does that make sense? So you're not going to keep buzzing in forever.

But why do we have to close Discord? Because I'm going to share the image in full with Discord so that they can see the image. Because I don't want to be doing a lot of file management. So they're going to see all of it. And Steve and I have created chapter artwork for you, which I will share with you after the show. I have to do a chapter per pick? No, no. Just a full grid. A full grid of art. The same way as we do the Jeremy's. Okay. This was an hour and a half.

of work yesterday. Thank you for doing this. Getting this ready. We'll see how you feel about that afterwards. So I will be giving the points if you get close enough. If your guest is close enough, this will be judged by me. and nobody else, there will be 20 points available for each correct guess. Okay. All right. So you've both closed Discord? Yes.

All right, I'm going to share the artwork with the Discord so that they can follow along. And now I'm going to be sharing with you both. So let me do this. Where am I looking? In Zoom? You are going to be looking at screen sharing of Zoom. Please confirm to me that you both see what should currently be a gray box. I do. All right. I'm about to show you the first one. Are you ready? What do you both have to do when you have an answer? Say your name. I got to say Tici. Tici. Yeah. Okay.

Okay, you ready? Yeah. This is number one. Stephen. Tici. I heard Tici first. A fish with three eyes. Okay. Stephen, you have a guess. Weird fish. Correct. That is Stephen's points. I hope now at this stage that you both can understand the way in which these prompts may have been given. Yeah. Right? Okay. You ready for the next one? Yeah. Steven. I heard Tichi first again. You got it. Orange men. Steven.

Daddy. Federico. Yeah, I did. Do you have another? Neither of you have gotten it. Okay. Sorry, what I should say is, if you have... Another guess. You can give it. Oh, okay. Okay. Sure. I don't know. Donald Trump. Oh, my God. Stephen, do you have another guess? Mustache man. No, I'm going to cut it there. The prompt was, Joe, it's orange. Ah, okay. Okay, so I'm going to, at this point, let you know, these are all connected memes. Okay, okay, alright. Here's the third one.

Tici. Federica. Greengate. Yeah, you got it. You got it. What's the little statue? What is this? What is the little statue? I didn't just go with the first one. What I did was I gave it the prompt and I would scroll through it and my phone was so hot. Oh, my phone was like nuclear. and I kind of went for something that I wanted it to at least hint to what I was asking for and also

In most instances. Some of them maybe never got there, but I wanted to include it anyway. But also, if something was peculiar, I wanted to include it. And I like this little statue. I don't know why. I just said Green Gate, and it gave me a gate, which is... Very peculiar that the gate is not completely attached to itself in some places.

And there's a little golden man inside. It looks very fancy. It's a lot of questions about this one. What's going on there? So are you ready for Genmoji number four? Yeah. Steven. Federico. timer coalescing perfect perfect i think i'm at disadvantage because he's closer to you physically like my voice is taking longer to get to you

I don't think that's true. The biggest issue that I had with this game is how I would show you this. Because originally, I was like, oh, I can send it to you via iMessage. But then I was worried about data connections. Yeah. No, this is a very smart way of doing it. This is the only way of doing it. So currently in this game, Steven, you're on 20 points and Federico, you're on 40 points. Uh-oh. Are you ready for the fifth? Yeah. Jemoji. Gosh.

What am I looking at? I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? Not really. Here's what I'm going to do for you both this one. This doesn't at all. Not even close.

get close to what i was asking for did you so at this point oh federica round robin nice that's not it but that i like that i like that i'm going to continue saying what i was saying Just think of connected things, connected related things for this one is the best that I can give you because it really, this image doesn't in any way suggest what I prompted, but it was so funny that I put it in there.

Steven, do you have a guess? I honestly don't. I am at a loss. Federico, do you have any more guesses? No, I don't know. Triple J. What? Can you believe? I just figured this one was going to be very easy. But what it gave me was the spinning top. And there were many variations of the spinning top with the three diamonds. So many variations of this. I would love to know from... the passionate ones.

This is going to be fun, actually. Send me your Genmoji for Triple J. I just want to know if this is what it gives for everybody. Send those to me on social media. I would like to see them. It's a very fancy... spinning top with three jewels. I guess the triple is the three jewels, and then maybe this is a spinning top called a J, and I just didn't know about that or something. All right, here comes the next one.

Tichi. Federico? Fiber snake. It's the thing with the snakes in the fiber cabinet. Steven, give me a guess. I mean, I think that's what it's referring to. In terms of the prompt, I'm going to say Internet Snake. I'm going to give it to Federico. Because he was first and understood it. The prompt was internet service provider snakes. Yeah. That was the only way I could get anything close. What's going on with it? My answer was closer than his.

Yeah, but you were building on his answer, right? No, I knew what it was. He just beat me to it. Yeah, but he gave me enough context for it, right? Like snakes in the fiber cabin, you know. Okay. Also, the end of that cable. Yeah, what's going on there? It's real messed up. No, it's plugged in. To what? Another cable. The left side kind of looks like a firewire connector.

It does. Yeah, it does look like a 5-hour connector. I don't like this one at all, by the way. No, it's bad. It's very upsetting. All right, you ready for the seventh gemmoji? Yeah. Steven. Steven? Yeah, yeah. It's the Benchman. Yeah. That's it. The Ricky Benchman is the full prompt, and I'm going to give that to you. Look at Ricky Benchman. I really wanted it to be me, but I couldn't get it to be me. It wouldn't work.

So it's very sad. I wanted to be the guy sitting on the bench, but then it would have been the Mike Benchman and that would have been cheating. Yeah. Ready for the next one? Yeah. This is my favorite one. Stephen. Teach you. Stephen. It's the Money, Money, Money song with Jason Snell. No. Federico? It's Jason flipping a coin. It's the Jason coin flip. Oh, no!

It looks like a way that Jason flips a coin too. So I'm happy that Image Playgrounds understands this. The emoji gets it, you know? That is a Jason coin flip if I've ever seen one. He's so tan, right? All of the gemmoji I've made of this. Jason, he's been on a very long vacation. Why is he so puffy with the red cheeks? He gets worked up flipping a coin. You know what he does? It's a full body workout when he flips a coin. All right. Jemoji number nine. Tichu. Sorry, come.

Red Gate? Stephen. No. Stephen? His Gate. yeah yeah nice okay oh boy that one i didn't know what i i don't know what i wanted this wasn't it but i liked it anyway the gate's burning hot it's hissing yeah I will say, this is probably too late to have said this. Obviously, this image will also be in the show notes. I hope people have worked that out by now. Okay.

Send me an image. Yeah, I will. I've got it all for you. Don't worry. I've got like a Photoshop file. If you want to mess around with that, you know, I'm going to send you everything. Don't worry about that. And the 10th and final Genmoji in the Jiriamis is... Stephen! Federico? It's hammer time for the Hammer Theater. Hammer Theater! We have done so many shows. Wow, this...

Was a bit of a... You know what? Not too bad, actually. No, I feel like I got beaten pretty thoroughly. It felt worse than it was score-wise, I think. So, Stephen, you got 60 points. And Federico, you got 100 points. Nice. So that means... Which means... Which means... You have finally won... A Quizzies. I did it. I told you. 2024 was going to be my year. There it is. The 2024 score.

ends with Stephen at 600 points and Federico at 680 points. Federico, you'll be very happy that I am now putting the trophy next to your name, which denotes that you were the winner. of the quizzes for this year. Quizzes will return next year. Thank you so much to everybody who has listened. And at this point, I will return you to your regularly scheduled programming. Oh, boy, that felt good.

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Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the show and all of Relay. Guys, I did it. I flipped and flopped. I did it. I felt so bad for you listening to last week's episode. Because this is one of the issues with the job that we have, which is we're not allowed to change our mind in peace. So do you want to talk about what you've done? As I suggested last week, I thought I was going to try and switch back to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which I was using before the 16 Plus.

uh out of my concern that because of the camera in the 16 plus i was not taking enough pictures and i did it and for the past week i've been using the 16 pro max again And I've taken way more pictures, way more photos that I really love with the 5X lens. It's like it all comes down to photos. and that lens in particular which i really like using it for dog pictures for

portraits in general, for taking product shots, which is something that I was doing today. I've been taking photos for the last big article of the year that I want to publish next week. I just... I... I guess it's one of those things where I didn't know what I was missing until I didn't have it anymore. But the asterisk here is the weight of the phone.

compared to the 16 plus and the lack of color, like that kills me. Like every time I pick it up and like, it's heavier and it's boring. Like you're going to put it in a case, maybe a fun case. I don't think so, because I don't want to use a silicone case. And all of the fun cases are silicone these days. I have on order the Nomad Leatherback again, which is what I used to use with the 15 Pro Max last year. Should get delivered tomorrow, actually. But those pictures, man, like those photos.

the amount of photos and great photos that I've taken in the past week alone I don't know there's something about it that even though I dislike how it feels in the hand I dislike the color or lack thereof Just having that gallery of photos in my library, it's just so nice. I wanted to ask you a question about this. Because I think you kind of got into this last week, but I wanted to get a clarification with you.

Are you taking that many photos with the 5X or is it just an opportunity cost thing where you're just not doing it? I really am. I really am. And I think I am because most of the time... Most of those pictures tend to be Zelda and Ginger either sleeping or doing something funny on the couch. And I typically work in the living room from a distance. And so that's why I use that 5X a lot.

So, and most of my pictures are like that. Like either I, or maybe for example, I walk into the bedroom and I see Zelda sleeping on the bed in a funny way, like without waking her, like from a distance, I switch to 5X and take a photo. So that's what I do. It's mostly dog pictures at 5X. That's what it is. Okay. Yeah. I guess just an aside, you may remember the long-term piece of follow-up for why I got the smaller phone is because we were having a baby.

oh yes oh yes that was the thing that i didn't share at the time it's like i wanted to be able to use my phone in one hand more easily because i expect there will be a lot more times where i'll just have one hand free so That's the main reason why I wanted to get the smaller phone. So that was why I flopped. But I have not gone back. I love the smaller iPhone. Did you consider that, by the way, like the Pro rather than the Pro Max?

I did, but I know myself, even though I dislike the weight of the 16 Pro Max. I know myself. I like a big screen, you know. You know, the screen is quite big. I know, I know, because I have Sylvia's 16 Pro to compare it with. And I try to use it, but every time I pick it up, I'm like, ah, this is so small for a phone. I don't have that problem. I don't have that problem with the 11-inch iPad Pro that I've been using for like almost...

Six months in December? Yeah, kind of six months now. I don't miss the 13-inch iPad Pro at all. But with the phone, the Pro is still too small. Okay. So, yeah, that's a sad story of something that, you know, with these things that, like you said before, Mike, unfortunately, because of what we do, like... everything needs to be an announcement, you know? Yeah. Because otherwise you get people, like today, today, today, I posted a screen recording on Blue Sky.

and threads for a shortcut that i'm working on for this week and of all the feedback there was the person who saw the screen recording and saw my home screen and was like todoist question mark todoist yeah Oh, wow. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you get that kind of like, oh, is that what you're using? And I get it. And I get it because like, I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining. It just, it comes with the job, you know, that.

You need to explain every single detail of what you have, what you do, what you use. Because we do, right? That's what we do. We explain all these details. And it is this funny thing of like... You know, this is like a microcosm of just like a lot of the problem with media. And I see this, it's in everything, but I see it a lot in gaming media, right? Where like, if you say something... An ever-change course, people are like, but you said you were going to do this.

You're not allowed to change your mind, yeah. You're like, oh, you're such a hypocrite. You said you wouldn't do this. And it's like, yeah, I understand. And I really wanted to do it some way or not do it some way. But that's just not how things shook out. Like we had to adapt. But it's like, yeah, but you said...

You said you would never charge for this, and now you're charging for this. Like, I can't believe you've done this to me. How could you do this? You're a liar. And it's like one of these things of like, ah, it's only because everything I say is recorded. If I didn't record everything, maybe you wouldn't notice so much, you know?

like it's just like one of these funny things of like of media in general and this has happened to you here where you know I'm sure you could go back to that episode and you said something along the lines of nope I'm set nothing's gonna change my mind I love the regular phone I'm so happy

and I don't need... And you even said it in the show, right? You said, like, I bet I said I don't need the bigger camera. I'll just get closer. But, you know, opinions change, people change, and now you're back to the fun. And also, like... I may have been wrong in what I wrote. I thought it was going to be something, and it didn't turn out to be. And it's like, you know...

Sue me, I guess. I don't know what you want to do. You got excited. You're excited. There's nothing wrong with that. I still miss that blue color, though, so much. Yeah. Yeah, that sucks. So much. That's the real tragedy. Just let me buy... a pro phone with fan colors. Like, why does it have to be so difficult? Have you ever considered a skin? I... Okay, so here's the thing about skins for me.

I have tried so many times over the years to get into skins. The dbrand ones, some of the other ones I've tried. I don't know if it's the skins or if there's something wrong with my hands. I cannot for the life of me, given all the possible instructions, given all the possible tools that they send you, I cannot apply a skin in a way that looks as good as they make it look.

good on the website or the promo videos. Steven, I bet you can apply skin well, can't you? I don't want to hire like a skin person to do this. Skin person is a phrase I never want to hear again. No, I do. I bet you're good at this, Stephen. I bet you could do this. I probably could. You never done it? No, I'm also not really a skin person.

Remember that time I told you on the show that when you think about it, skin is like human leather? I mean, it is. It's just the undried form, I guess. Yeah. So anyway. Maybe, actually, the thought that I had was maybe I could get a custom-painted iPhone, but I want to send my iPhone for a custom paint job somewhere and then wait for it to come back.

Yeah, my concern with all these kinds of things is like, it's so much effort and money for something you only keep for another 10 months. Less than that. Good luck next year selling the phone. Yeah. If you have like a custom colored iPhone. Yeah. Well, congratulations. I don't think you're happy about it, right? It's a weird feeling that I'm like, I am begrudgingly happy about it.

It's like you're satisfied. I'm satisfied, but it's the sort of thing where I look at this phone and my first reaction would be to insult the phone, but also at the same time I appreciate the photos. It's like a love-hate relationship going on right now. When I look at this thing, but at the same time, look at those photos. They make me happy. Is there anything else that you prefer in it?

Not really. Okay. It really is just the camera. The display is slightly taller. It's nice that I get like an extra line of text, but it's not a big deal. Promotion, I am ambivalent about. Because now that I look at it, I'm like, yeah, that's nice. It's more fluid. But promotion, I was totally fine without it. You got used to it, didn't you? I got used to it. It was okay. It was okay.

Yeah, it's really mostly about the photos, about the third camera. When you think about this, do you get concerned for like... You know, there's maybe going to be this like slim iPhone, right? Very much so. I am very concerned right now that next year we're going to be in this situation where there's going to be the high-end fancy new design phone.

with the lesser camera system yeah or something right like it's probably camera i mean it's definitely actually no it's definitely camera if it's thin right it's kind of like all they can do but and like what are we gonna do then like we're going to have to make a decision between do I want to get the best possible camera, the best possible performance and all of that, or do I want to get... Because the last time they did it, like with the iPhone X,

or the iPhone X, as most people call it. It was like, it was both. It was the best possible camera and the brand new iPhone design. Nobody got the iPhone 8 or the 8 Plus. Everybody got the X. And it was the combination of those two. It's the best phone with the new design. Yeah, they went maximum on that one, didn't they? That was kind of the point of that phone. What an incredible phone that was. It was.

continues to be an S-tier phone in hindsight. Did we put that in S-tier in our tier list? I think we did. I think we had to, right? If we didn't, we may have to redo it. But surely we put it in S-tier. But like, yeah, that was like... That's very high up there. That is a great iPhone. And like, yeah, if they do, I mean, this next potential error of iPhone design, the things that they're going to be solving for are going to cause downsides. It's going to be really interesting to...

It's probably the same with the Apple Watch too, right? We've all spoken about it. At some point, they're going to come out with a new Apple Watch, which isn't the Ultra. We're going to have to decide if we want to let go of the battery or not. But that's because there's solving for different things. It's going to be interesting to see what the next few years looks like. This episode of Connected is brought to you by Masterclass.

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And that's 50% off right now. So go to masterclass.com slash connected. That's M A S T E R masterclass.com slash connected for up to 50% off. Our thanks to Masterclass for the support of the show and all of Relay. So today as we're recording, iOS 18.2 is available for everybody. which includes a variety of features, a lot of the generative AI stuff, so Image Playgrounds, Gemmoji, Image1. It includes ChatGPT integration.

an expansion of the writing tools, but also expands Apple intelligence outside of the US. So if you're in the UK, for example, you can now download and use any of the Apple intelligence stuff, including the stuff that was in point one. So that would include. the new Siri design that would include, I mean, you get all the writing tools, but it would include notification summaries and email summaries and stuff like that. Federico, you had a big article about it that I really enjoyed.

Thank you. You kind of took the tact of like, ah, the generator stuff, whatever, which I think is... Good. And then, Stephen, you did a good article, too, kind of, like, talking about some of the generative stuff and, like, showing off some examples. But, I mean, I think at this point, anyone that's listening to this show has seen examples of the image stuff, too, right? But it's good to get some side-by-side.

and to kind of get those things out there in the world. But Federico, in your article, you focused on ChatGPT the most, actually, which I found to be interesting. I think that... The things that you show, and maybe you'll get into some of them, I think really underscore that this was rushed. Because there are some very interesting things that Siri can use CheckGPT for.

But they're very limited. But it shows a potentially exciting future, is kind of what you're talking about here. Yeah, this is the kind of integration where you can tell that it was done very quickly. In the sense that there's so many... There are so many ChatGPT functionalities that you cannot access, first of all. If you have a ChatGPT account, you know there are...

Features like, for example, the ability to store data in your personal memory in ChatGPT. And you can do that by explicitly saying, ChatGPT, remember this about me. I don't know. I live in Rome and I'm 36. And ChatGPT will say, OK, I remember that about you. So that will be used for future questions. You cannot access your personal memory storage when you invoke.

chat GPT via Siri at all. Or via writing tools, for example. Even if you're not using Siri. There's no... The most important thing to understand about this integration, I think, is that... It is ChatGPT, but it's not the conversational standalone, you have your chats, you can go back there days later. style of Chagipiti experience. This is Chagipiti coming in when Siri thinks that it cannot answer your question for you, or when you manually say, Siri...

Ask ChildGPT about this. By default, first of all, the ChildGPT integration is disabled by default. You need to turn it on. The system tells you there's a splash screen and everything. You can use it for free. You can use it while staying logged out or you can sign into your OpenAI account and you can even upgrade to a ChatGPT Plus account directly from settings. Of course you can.

Do you think Apple's taking 30% when you do that? Hang on a second. Is that an actual question? Do you think? Well... I don't know. It is kind of an actual question. Of course they are. It's a subscription. Of course they're doing that. You think they are? Yes, of course they're doing that. I think it must be something less than 30. I think it's less than 30, but they are taking something.

Nope, I think they're taking 30%. We'll see. Absolutely no world in which they're not taking 30%, in my opinion. Because when did they not do that? They always do that. They get their 30. To be fair, OpenAI has given them a really favorable, free use. Apple does not see it that way. Apple says to OpenAI... You're so lucky that you get to be integrated into the iPhone and you're the premier partner. There is no world in which Apple considers themselves the helped one.

But they are. I know they are, but they don't go into the conversations that way. Yeah. In any case, Siri by default tries to determine whether it can answer your question or... No, shut up, Siri. It activated on my phone. If the assistant thinks that he cannot answer your request, it goes to ChatGPT. Again, by default, there's a confirmation prompt. You can also turn that off in settings. I've been using this thing for the past month.

after much deliberation, a lot of reading, a lot of like trying things, this is what I do. I try things all the time. And for the past month, I've really like tried a bunch of AI things. Coming out of this experiment, I think I addressed this on the show before. I am more convinced than ever that I absolutely do not care about generative AI stuff like create images, create videos, create like...

replace human creation for something else. I think there are some use cases that are not creepy for those things, but I am just personally not interested. I am very interested. However, in basically treating AI as the future of automation, I've always been into automation. I've always been into the idea of the computer, the software doing things for me because I couldn't be bothered. to learn how to do those things or do those things manually.

It used to be URL schemes, then it became Python for a bit, and then obviously workflow turning into shortcuts. I've always been into automation. And when you think about it, this modern flavor of AI, it is a kind of automation, but it is an automation that you trigger. be a natural language. You just literally tell the computer what to do. And so that's what, for the past month, I've been using ChaiGPT and Cloud a lot for my work. Not for editing stories, but for research.

coding tasks, looking up, to give you an example, like looking up how to do regular expressions in shortcuts, for example, like that sort of thing. And so I've been comparing ChagPT. the vanilla standalone ChatGPT experience versus the kind of ChatGPT that you get in iOS 18.2. And to say that it's an approximation of the full ChatGPT experience would be an understatement.

This is basically ChatGPT coming in to answer a question. If you want anything more, you've still got to go to the ChatGPT website or app. If you are logged in... Your Siri conversations will be saved in your OpenAI account. And fun fact, there's a screenshot in the story that shows you how those conversations get saved. It's so annoying. It's literally... I wish they didn't.

do this i and this is an example of like was this integration done quickly there must have been a way to do this in a more polished put them in a folder like by default or something in a folder like like wait A conversation gets saved in your sidebar and your original request from an iPhone or Mac or iPad is a bit of JSON code where you have... keys and values for the prompt and the surrounding text. It's like programmer level presentation.

what's going on here. Still, despite all these limitations, I have seen a couple of interesting news cases that I have documented in the story. when it comes to working with Apple Notes and ChatGPT together that I thought were pretty cool. So the Notes stuff that you're doing, like there's a couple of things that you showed that were Notes, right? Yeah.

I think what you, you have a very good way of doing this that I appreciate in that like you think to do things that I would never consider, but in hindsight are so obvious. Like there's one where you have like a list, you have like basically a note that has no formatting. Yeah. And you just say like basically give it some parameters to format that note for you. And now it's like, oh.

I would have just sat and formatted that note. And I think it's going to take me a long time to internalize the thought of asking the system to do this for me, but it's incredibly good that you can... can just be like, hey, put some headers on this, format all the numbers as euros. Stuff like that, that is the kind of user automation.

that Apple should be making very easy for people to do because that is like basic user stuff, right? Things that people could do all day, every day and are likely to come across all the time. Yeah. Yeah, because like... create an email on my behalf or make this sound more professional or summarize this. We've all seen that sort of stuff. And everybody's doing it now. There is almost no email app on the App Store. This is one of those research...

things that I've done lately. I went to the app store and I was like, I haven't looked for new email clients in a while. Let me see what it's like now. And boy, it's really different from three or four years ago. Now, every single modern client... has a compose feature and a summarization feature. It's become the new, I don't know.

smart inbox categorization. AI in an email app is no table stakes for an email app. If you're making an email app, you have to put this in there. Now everybody has it. Everybody has it. And Apple has it now, too. They can compose text and summarize text. But what I think is much more fascinating and where I think...

The real opportunity is for Apple is Apple owns the operating system. So instead of putting AI features into this... standalone apps like okay your email client can now write emails for you cool like what if we took it to the next level and what if we could do things at a system level

And right now you have a few examples, like you have your visual intelligence that lets you just press a button on your phone and you can ask, hey, what's this? And you can actually have a back and forth with chat GPT. You have writing tools, which are... integrated system-wide, and there's actually an API for developers to optimize their text fields for writing tools. If you use something like Obsidian that is not optimized for writing tools and you still try...

and invoke writing tools, it's not going to work. But if you use something like Ulysses, for example, which has optimized for the writing tools APIs in 18.1 a few months ago, that's going to work just like in Apple Notes. So Apple has this advantage to say, it's not just like putting AI into your Gmail client. What if we took these AI features and put them everywhere across the operating system?

There are some early signs of that, but obviously Apple has revealed already much bigger plans for the iOS 18 cycle. So in 2025, at some point, probably in the spring, we're going to get an 18.3 or 18.4 release, and that's going to have the App Intense functionality. that will, in theory, allow Siri to string together multiple actions.

Kind of like shortcuts, like multiple actions from multiple apps. Those are, in fact, based on shortcut actions, but all of that will be done with natural language. And what I think is interesting there is that now... I don't know how tuned into the latest AI news you guys are. I've been trying to read more about that space lately.

Now the hot new term is agents. Everybody's doing agents. Agentic AI. Agents here, agents there. And I think it's interesting that what Apple has previewed... at WWDC a few months ago is basically their own native take on agents in a way. in a very roundabout way, where basically you're treating apps on your phone as the agents that can do things for you. Now, I think it's going to be fascinating to see.

how much of that promise comes true when the feature actually lands on our devices. I'm skeptical because if there's anything I learned... about modern Apple software is that Shortcuts is based on a shaky foundation. It's the kind of app that breaks on every single iOS release every year. They have changed that framework multiple times over the years. It's a weird mix of like, right now, if you open shortcuts, you can still use.

legacy actions for apps that build shortcuts with like iOS 12 technology. And most of those still work. There's a lot of legacy code in there that. I'm sure, like, dates back to the workflow days, even. I'm fairly certain that you can go on Mac Stories to an article from 2015 or something. Click on a workflow downloadable link and that's going to install a shortcut for you in the shortcuts app in iOS 18 today.

pretty convinced that's gonna work there's a lot of like legacy stuff going on in shortcuts and something about that makes me a little skeptical about like okay but is this really ready for a large language model next year i don't know I hope I'm wrong. I mean, there's also, I think one of the things that this year has taught us is that developers aren't necessarily just willing to go along with whatever apple wants them to do and like for this new smart like

personal context Siri to work and to take actions on our behalf, as they say it will do, it requires developers to support app intents. And of course, there are lots of developers that have, but I would expect Netflix has not, right? And won't. Google has not and won't unless there is a good reason given to them to like deeply integrate every element of their application with AppIntense, which.

is what Apple wants them to do, but why would they? Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking if there's anything else that I covered. primarily focused my story on chat gpt and there are there's another example of like the sort of thing that is impossible now if you just want to use chat gpt via apple um the whole custom gpt feature that you can get via the main charity website or app there's an example in which i took a screenshot of a list in the reminders app and

There were some tasks in there. And I asked ChatGPT, both on the web and via Siri, I told it, like, this is a screenshot of a project in the Reminders app. There are two tasks in this image. I want you to extract the title of the task and the details that you can understand, like if there's a due date. If there's a repeat pattern, I want you to extract all of this info. And in both cases, it did it.

Because ChatGPT on iOS, it does have image recognition. It does have vision capabilities. You can send it images, or you can send it even full documents, like PDFs, for example. You can do that. So in both cases, it worked. But then after that request, I was like, okay, now that you know these tasks, can you create reminders for me based on these tasks? And on iOS, ChatDpt said, well, I cannot do that.

I don't have that integration. Siri obviously did not understand at all what I meant. Siri had left the room. I was like, Siri... Can you take that information that ChatGPT assembled? Can you do something with that? I don't remember the response. It was like... I'm pretty sure I have a screenshot somewhere that said, I don't see a calendar event scheduled for that. It was like, okay, whatever. But in ChatGPT, after it extracted the information from the screenshot...

I was able to invoke the Todoist GPT and say, can you create tasks for that in this project in Todoist? And after 10 seconds, it was like, yeah, done. No problem. So that idea of like putting the large language model in between you and the work you got to do, right? Like take this complex thing, extract image from it.

and put it in my task manager, I think that's a really fascinating kind of automation. And it's something that I hope at some point we're able to do on the iPhone and on the iPad as well. Yeah, it's almost like right now ChatGPT on the iPhone is like a message in a bottle kind of thing. Yes, yeah. it's getting a request and it sends the request back, but that's the end of it. Like it has no ability or function to be able to do anything past that, right? It's just like, here's...

Here's what I can tell you. You can't then continue to ask it stuff like you could if you were using the application. It's like Siri asks the question, it gets the answer, it displays the answer to you, and that's it. And sometimes you can ask another question, and maybe if you're lucky you might get it, but it isn't, you know, it's not reliable in that way.

It's the same in the attempts that I've had of trying to invoke ChatGPT while talking to the assistant is also unreliable. Sometimes you just say, ask ChatGPT and it will do it. Sometimes it will ask me a question. I'll ask a question. I don't get the answer that I want. And I say, hey, ask ChatGPT this. Half the time, it will do it. And half the time, it's like, I don't know what you're talking about. It's like, what is going on? I just...

I'm really intrigued for how the next few weeks are going to go, right? So like 18.2 is now out to the world. And up until now, it's been nerds like us who have used it. But we kind of had a feeling of what we were going to get before we got it, right? Apple has been telling the world that Apple intelligence is a big deal. Like, when I was in the States,

you know, TV on a bit like, and there's every ad, every time they mention the iPhone, they say with Apple intelligence, right? They just say it like all the time. They just say it like it's a big deal. And I'm just really. interested to see what is the response to these features? What is the response to if Siri is smart or not?

What is the response to ChatGPT integration? What is the response to Image Playgrounds? What is the response to Genmoji? Is there even going to be one? I'm really intrigued for what these next few weeks will look like as people actually start using.

these features and and getting like what are the reports going to be are there going to be any scandals you know like what is what is what is the next few weeks going to be like i'm really interested i'm sure there are a lot of people at apple that are incredibly nervous I give it 36 hours before there is some post about image generation doing something it should not have done. Yeah. Yeah.

I wonder if it's still going to generate the things that I saw months ago. I never tried again. I hope not. We'll see. If it comes out, if it comes out, we'll talk about it on the show. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. Because people are going to try the same way as you did, right? Oh, yeah. There are people right now. You know? Yeah. Yeah, there was one last thing I wanted to mention. I liked your...

The way you kind of sum up the article, Federico, was pretty good, and it was a take that I enjoyed, where you say that, kind of talking about Apple being behind, right, which we all feel that they are behind. It's clear to say that they're multiple years behind their competitors. But you say...

Will OpenAI, Anthropic or Meta, have a mobile operating system or line up computers of different form factors in two years? I don't think they will, and that buys Apple some time to catch up. I like that take. Thank you. Because it's valid, right? Like, I mean, maybe Apple, even with those two years, they're still going to be behind. But like, can they get closer? I mean, and they definitely can. It seems more feasible.

that Apple can get closer to the AI companies, then those companies can get close to having conceived. Like, okay, great. Sam Altman and Johnny Ive are working on something together, right? How good can it be? Version one, how good could it possibly be that it could take a dent out of Apple? Even if it's incredible, like going against the phone, you know? It needs to be.

incredible, right? Which is like a level of incredibleness that we can't even imagine. Because it has to be, it has to make us want to stop using the iPhone. So, yeah, I don't know, man. Probably going to be a pen. That seems like the future. I still think that form factor is good. Right? Like something that...

that can see what you can see, but yeah, I don't know. I saw that they had an update the other day. I was like, wait, Humane's still around? Aren't they licensing their Cosmos? That is their new thing. They're trying to make their OS something that other people might want to buy. Which, to be fair, probably a better idea than the pin.

I think this should show a concern because it means that they couldn't get someone to buy them for the hardware. Yeah, also that. And that's not good. Didn't they want like a bajillion dollars? They wanted, yeah, a lot of money. And apparently, like, HP was in the conversation. Ah, yes. The people that saved WebOS. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Not great for them. No. Man, rest in peace, WebOS.

Is it gone? It's not on the TV? No, it's living on TVs, but you know, it's not. It's on my TV. It's on your TV. If anything, you know, it's had a good life. Home and away on my LG. Stephen, I have a question for you before we wrap up. From the developer perspective. Yes. I am developing perspective. Yes. I was surprised to see that there are developers that can integrate.

image playgrounds into their apps. I missed this. I didn't know you could do this. I mean, you're just invoking the UI and it will drop in. I saw, I think it was Charlie Chapman did it for dark noise. It's something that... I don't want to spoil any plans or whatever, but is this something that you're thinking about? Yeah, we've had conversations around it. You know, I think there could be interest there of like, oh, you want to make a widget with like this AI art you made?

but have uh no announcements to make yeah like a phil underscore staring at me through the internet makes sense makes sense i don't need to get in trouble with the boss i will say the image playgrounds app it like It's kind of confusing. It has its own image library within the app. And then you can save them out or share them, but sometimes it doesn't work. At least in the last beta, I had issues like copying images out of it. I don't know.

I was very pleased when doing my work for the Jeremy's to find that you can, in Genmoji, can just airdrop an image to someone. I don't think that that was in from the beginning. But I was very happy about that. Because what I thought I was going to need to do was send myself a bunch of Genmoji and then screenshot them all. So I was very happy that I could just hit that little three dot thing and just fire away.

That was good. We'll see what the future holds with app adoption of image playgrounds. Are you getting anybody to contact you about this, Federico? Are you seeing anyone trying to use the Apple Intelligence tools in any interesting ways in the third-party apps? I honestly haven't. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm not surprised because there's only so much you can actually do right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Welp, I think that does it for this week.

If you want to find links to the stuff we spoke about, look in your podcast player or on the web at relay.fm slash connected slash 531. You want to get... Connected Pro, which is a longer ad-free version of the show, it's 20% off for another week. Go to giverelay.com. That link is also in the show notes. And if you do support us directly, thank you for your membership.

You can find us online. Federico is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net. Lots of great coverage of the .2 updates. And, of course, MacStories Selects. Lots of stuff going on over there. And you can find Federico across the fractured social media landscape as Vitici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I. You can find Mike on a bunch of other shows here on Relay. You had your...

yearly themes episode of Cortex that came out yesterday. I'm about halfway through it and I'm really enjoying it. Good, good, good work. Good, good themes. I don't know. That sort of fell apart on me. Go check it out. And you're working, of course, at Cortex Brand. And you are iMike across social media. Not really, though. Or Mike Hurley. Or Mike. I'm just going with find me. You know, you'll find me.

Find him. If you want to that badly, you can do it. I believe in you. Yeah, it's a nightmare. You can find me as ISMH86 because I have a coherent social media strategy. And I write at 512pixels.net. and host Mac Power Users here on Relay. I'd like to thank our sponsors this week, FitBot, Ecamm, Squarespace, and Masterclass. And until next week, gentlemen, say goodbye. Arrivederci. Cheerio. Bye, y'all.