Welcome to episode 353 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro podcast recorded live on September 13th, 2023. This is a show about Microsoft 365 and Azure from the perspective of it pros and end users where we discuss a topic or recent news and how it relates to you. Today we were going to take a break and talk about the latest Apple announcements. Instead. They were a bit boring so we decided to talk a bit about containers and about Microsoft Ignite, which registration has recently gone live for.
Then we will do a bit of an after show about a couple Apple topics. So if you're curious about hosting and managing containers or you wanna know our thoughts on registering for an attending Microsoft Ignite November, this is your show. If you came for the Apple News, skip ahead about 30 minutes. Enjoy the show. Look at you. I know fancy right? Yes. So you sent me this screenshot the other day that Stream white deck was updated to work with O B S 30,
which is still in beta . It doesn't just F Y I , not that I would've upgraded to an O B SS beta just to try it, but it doesn't. I didn't but kudos to you 'cause I sent you a screenshot and you said we're not using that version of O B S and I said, oh okay. I don't know what I'm running, it's fine. I don't check on these things 'cause I stay on the stable branch.
I would assume that they dropped an update to the mainline stream deck software that like powers your entire macro pad that hey this is where it needs to be. Yeah, and I went and looked at O B S and my version of O B SS was still on 29. You said 30 was in beta and I said I'm not gonna bother. And then you wrote me back two minutes later and said, oh but it's beta three. Yeah see? Which made me think, hmm, he's gonna do it, he's gonna think it's stable. I did it and it's. Not, it's not. There. .
The nice thing is with O B Ss, I will say this about O B S and MAX in general since Max might turn into the theme of the show anyways, is that usually, not always, but usually to downgrade those things it's super easy. Like for O B Ss, you just go download the stable 29.3 0.2 or whatever and you open it up and you copy it and overwrite 30 and everything's back to normal. Yeah, I don't feel like Windows is always that easy. I. Have a favorite little app if you're on Mac os, where is it?
I'm gonna be looking off to the side 'cause I'm on my other monitor here. So normally on Mac oss, like for people who haven't done it a whole bunch before or maybe you're new to the Mac, like typically you'll download what's called disc image like A D M G. Yep.
And you mount that disc image, like you just double click it and it shows up on your desktop kind of thing, mount it and then you'll usually have to like just a.app file and you just drag that.app file into your applications holder and then you're good. And I think it gives people the impression that apps on Mac oss very much like iOS, iPad, OSS watch s blah blah, all these other OSS things that Apple has run in a single container. Great, I've got.app and then everything runs in there.
The reality is apps do all sorts of stuff like they might install in some cases drivers, they might have custom configurations like files do get outside the app bundles. So there's a little app out there, it's called App Cleaner. So what I like to do when I like reinstall or install over the top or anything like that and this is totally free, you just go grab app cleaner and you drag your app into app cleaner when you're
ready to delete it. Okay. And it takes the.app bundle and then it crawls your hard drive and figures out like the rest of the stuff. Is there anything else in like your user library and system library Are there maybe like dot files, like configuration files and like hidden dot directories in your home folder, things like that. And it helps you just like really clean it up and wipe it out. Super helpful for software like Adobe software that installs all sorts of crap outside the app bundle.
Certainly things like the stream deck which you know has stuff floating all over the side. I imagine O P Ss has to have some stuff outside the app bundle just for configuration and other stuff. So you never know, okay if I'm going from V 30 to V 29, did something get updated in the V 30 configuration, now it's gonna wipe out my blah blah blah whatever. So generally a good practice to to go through. I might install too much stuff on my Mac and because I install too much stuff on
my Mac, I'm always going back and uninstalling it. , uhhuh, . It's, it's a way to live one's life if you will. , I don't use App cleaner but I use Clean my Mac and that has something very similar to that where it has an uninstall feature and there's a couple different ways that one actually shows up in that. One, I can open up, clean my Mac, go look through all my apps and pick the ones I wanna uninstall and actually use
their uninstaller and they do something similar. Go crawl the hard drive, find all the other stuff that it shoved into corners in your Mac. The other way it works is it, we'll just run in the background and if I drag an app to the trash, 'cause that's how Apple tells you to uninstall a app. If it, I clean my MacBook watch and say do you wanna installed this by dragging it to the trash or something to that effect. It may not have uninstalled everything.
Do you want to go clean up the rest of the files and I can click yes and then it'll go grab the rest of the stuff as well. Yeah. I can't remember. It's been a while since I've seen or taken a look at Clean My Mac. But is the uninstall functionality free? 'cause clean, my app is typically like a, it's a paid thing, right? So if all you're looking for is delete your app then app cleaners the the way to go. The free one. It is the thing to do. But clean my app is clean my Mac, I think it's clean.
My Mac X is like the official name of it. Yeah. Is another good one that's sitting out there. If you're looking for a paid app that not only can do like the delete thing but it can do a lot of other stuff too. It it can. Yes. Like it has a scanner to clean up a bunch of random junk that just accumulates or free up ram that certain applications teams may take a bunch of, it has an updater built into it. So I will go use that updater sometimes shredder like actually delete stuff, not just hide,
delete it where it goes and rewrites your drive. It's got, I've used when I had some Mac at smaller storage spaces, stuff like space lens and large old files too if you're trying to reclaim some space. So it is absolutely paid and like you said it is a suite of like maintenance type tools for your Mac. It's. Got some stuff going on. So yeah, that's, that's another option that's out there. Hey I have a question for you. Okay, so yesterday, well what's today? Today is the. Wednesday.
I don't even know day's the week the 13th. Yeah. Today's a Wednesday. Wednesday the 13th. It's early in the morning. Wednesday the 13th. So yesterday was Apple's annual iPhone watch thing event. Yep. And while that was going on, 'cause it was like a boring show to watch, I was doing some other stuff on my home network here. So I think I've mentioned in the past that I run containers, like a bunch of containers on my on, on my nas, on my qap. Yep.
So things like HomeBridge, I've got scripted running on there for bringing my cameras into home kit. I run Plex as a container on there. Like all all sorts of stuff like that. One of the frustrations for me, particularly with NASS vendors, be it QAPs, Sonology, all these things is they have like very opinionated interfaces for container management. So when I like a qap that's Container station, I freaking forget off the top of my head what Sonology calls there. I.
Can't remember. I could go look. They basically. Have like these bespoke interfaces for managing containers, be it managing container images, managing running instances of containers, container configurations, heck what runtime your container is gonna use, right? Does it use run C? Is it an lxc, is it an L X D container? Like all that kind of stuff. So because they're so opinionated, I'm not used to them 'cause you don't run into containers in the real world that
way. Like at least the other things I do in my job, right? If I'm working on like a Kubernetes cluster, I'm on the command line and I'm using cobe control or or cobe Cuddle for those who are monsters , you do things like that or you're on the command line and you're just doing like docker, run, docker compose, all those kinds of things. And I can do all that on qap like I imagine you can do the same on Synology, go ahead and s s H into your NAS and then then play with it that way.
Sometimes it's too heavy handed. So, so yesterday I had a new version of the scripted container that I wanted to go and update and run. And the way you do that in the qap software is you would take the existing container, go look at it, go through the gooey page by page, take screenshots of configuration, copy pasta, like whatever you're gonna do, delete that container and then recreate it and then hope that you got all those
settings right. Again, like it is a horrible way it lives one's life, right? If all you're trying to do is update a container to like the latest version because you have to remember all that and it's super manual. So I've been looking for a way around this for a while where I, I don't necessarily always want to go to the command line.
So I'm a big fan of Docker run and things like that, but I don't always want to have to do it. Like sometimes a gooey is just easier, especially for a one click update me to the latest version of this container. So I started playing around with a container management
tool called Port Container. I, so I, I don't know if you've ever seen this one but poor container is at least for like the community edition that's out there, it's like a dashboard for managing your containers, your container images, like all the same things that you can do in your native like gooey software just with all the bells and whistles you want.
So for me to update a container to the latest image, all I have to do is go in and hit recreate and port container and it remembers all the settings. Like pulls in all the settings from the current running container and then it just does a docker pull grabs the later image, the latest image and redeploys for me. So my question is are you running containers? And if you are, how are you managing them? Are you like a command line person? Are you using something like just a built-in software?
Are you like maybe you're already on Porter and you never told me about it or are you using something else that's out there? And keep in mind this is totally for the home network kind of thing. This isn't me trying to manage some crazy application at scale in the cloud or anything. This is like my home cloud , getting all that going. My. Home environment, I use very few containers in those that I do. I just don't use 'em that much.
And I think this is one I've just never done much with containers. So I would say from a comfort level, what kind. Of life are you living over there? I don't write. So from a comfort level I just, I don't do it. And the things you mentioned, so I know you're running a few for, you mentioned like home assistant and Plex and some of those I run Plex natively right on my nas. So I didn't mess with a Plex container, I just installed the Plex app right on my Sonology, well.
I run multiple plex servers so I, I also run a plex server on my NAS and then I have some one-off Plex servers for like a concert library and some other things that I just didn't want to junk up my my my is. Your normal, see no this is your problem. You're just overcomplicating your life. . I. Don't know that I am ho Hold on. So I'm gonna log into Porter. Okay really quick. So well you do, that's what I do for Plex Home assistant. I actually run it on a raspberry pie.
So I bought like a little rack mount and I did a P O E hat for my raspberry pie and that's what I do for home assistant versus running all the different doctor images for the different home assistant stuff. I did some stuff. So the containers I do run, it's unify reporting stuff, it gives you some additional unified logging and reporting and I spun 'em up, I was playing with it. I don't use them a ton. And for that I was just using the built in UI on my synology for running those containers.
So I don't mess with the command line or anything like that. I don't know how Plexus works. Synology at least to me is pretty straightforward. But again, because I'm not go run containers every day and build them and blow 'em away and upgrade 'em and all of that isn't something that has come up. And even if you ask me like Azure topics, all of that containers would be right down near the bottom of my list in terms of my comfort level with managing them, implementing them, all of that.
Like probably along with data warehouse type stuff just 'cause it's not something I do on a daily basis. Oh. Well that's super interesting. So I run 12 containers on my nas. Funny enough, the very first one that I run is Port Container itself. So I'm running my container management interface as a container. As a container. Just to be, yeah, just to be like extra, extra made there. I've got a Plex Media server running in a Docker container.
I've got a Minecraft bedrock server for my kids HomeBridge home assistant and I have all the Plex supporting things in here. Sonar Radar jacket, all that kind of stuff. Also a one of those clients that can grab things off the back of a truck and do all that kinda stuff. And then scripted, I also run in a container and then occasionally I bring in things just like at Runtime to spin them up. So, uh, you're a Plex user. I'm a Plex user.
Sometimes when you bring things into Plex, depending on the clients that interact with your Plex server, like my parents have like an old ro uh, Roku box and they log into mine. So I have to transcode some media into certain formats to get it to just do a direct stream without transcoding. Like I'd rather just do all that compute up front and get it done. So I have a container that has a bunch of, has F F M PEG and a bunch of other like helper scripts pre-installed on it.
So I just spin up that container and then I just can basically say, Hey run this shell file and point it at this whatever it is M K V, MK MP four a A v i, blah blah blah. And it converts it into a format that I know is not going to transcode when my parents watch it later. got it. Yeah. See I just don't, I don't have all of that stuff. I'm. Surprised to hear you're not into containers. We get, we gotta get you into that. Probably I need to find, so truth be told, I need to find a need for 'em.
Like I've just always never, I've never had a big enough need for 'em that I've made it a priority. We can find something. I'm sure like there, there's a contact form on the website. There's people on Discord. Tell us what containers Ben should be running and he's missing out on in his life. So you're not gonna help me in my quest here to find his porter the answer for what I want or is there something else out there? I am not. It would be interesting to do a comparison though of Yeah,
all of that stuff. You're not gonna be able to get to my nas. I. I. . . Yeah. Uh, the joys of using shared workspaces and etches. I see Ben. Ooh I know what IP your NAS runs on IP and Port doesn't do me any good. Yeah. You do. It's a 1 92, 1 68 IP address. . I did not go to my public IP address. There is a public way to get into it but I think it's D N Ss and yeah, same thing. Me. Do you feel overwhelmed by trying to manage your Office 365 environment?
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What else do we got? We were talking Apple stuff. So we were talking Apple, but before that I have a question for you that came up in Discord and as it's getting closer, it just started pouring out here. Squirrel, someone asked in. It is hot here. Like I'm in hot, humid, sweaty mode over here. So oh, I should go open my blind so I can see how hard it's raining 'cause it sounds like it's raining really hard. Anyways, somebody asked in Discord,
are we gonna go to IGN night in Seattle? So that is coming up Scott. I have started seeing a few more things for this and Ignite in Seattle appears that registration must have just opened because I did just start seeing a bunch of stuff for this just. In the last couple days. Yeah, yeah. So it's in Seattle again, similar to last year, November 17 through something 14 through 17. So that three day,
14, 15, 16, 17. But I don't know how much is on the first day in the last day, uh, I don't see a session but there is an early bird deal right now. $1,500. So this may be cheaper than last year. I think last year was like two grand and they have a buy three get one deal going on. So if we find four podcast listeners that all want to go, we can buy three and get one free on the website. They do have the comparisons between Seattle in person and it is gonna be digital online again.
So two different options to go. Are we gonna go, Scott, are you gonna go? What is your thoughts? I know you end up in a different boat working for Microsoft a little bit. I think. As of right now I have no intention of going. So I, I think Ignite like taking it back for a second, Microsoft used to have a bunch of conferences and there was things like Ignites and there was Tech Readies and there's builds and they all focus on different audiences and different
skill sets and things like that. And over time Ignites kind of turned into, okay, it's the one conference that rolls everything up and it's marketing architecture, technical, deep dives, all those kinds of things. Like hey, what's the in-depth kind of technical content that I can get across this stuff? And for better or worse, as the more technical conferences have gone away, ignite is a marketing event. I I think holistically, right? If you look at all the sessions that come out, it's,
and very much so this is the way it should be. It's like, hey, here's what's new. Here's what you might've missed in the past six months. Heck here's what you might've missed in the past year. All all those kinds of things like that. So for me, and I would probably argue for somebody like you, like we tend to keep up with the news, right? It's part of the job. So I don't need 85, 90% of the content that's there. Like I'm already gonna get it or or consume it in in some other way.
So I, I don't know that it's worth $2,000 'cause that's really what it's gonna be, right? It's gonna be 1500 plus you and I are on the East coast, like that's easy. A $400 plane ticket to get to Seattle, probably another 500 to a thousand for hotel in downtown Seattle given rates and things like that. So really it's like a $3,000 trip. Like we've easily doubled it. I don't know that it's worth $3,000 for the hallway track unless there's some
other major reason to be there. And I, and I think you can get a sense. So one of the things Microsoft does every year with Ignite is they also release, I I don't know if you've ever looked at these, the email templates that they put out to give to like your manager to justify the cost or things like that. And I, I find that to be a good way to go out and just see hey, what are they at and what are they doing and, and how are things gonna look?
So I went out and downloaded the one for this year. So okay, what opens up like, hi, my name is blah blah blah. I would like to attend Microsoft Ignite on November 14 to 17 20 23 at the summit building in the Seattle Convention Center. Microsoft Ignite is where I can participate in world-class training and technology demonstrations that provide insights into Microsoft's innovations with ai.
So I can gain invaluable skills to maximize my impact within our organization to accelerate innovation and productivity as a technologist. I run into like slight issues with that stuff, right?
Like I, I get that you have to do demos to show people things, but you and I have talked a bunch about how we're more hands-on kind of folks so I'd rather have a deep dive two-day lab right on, on something like hey here's how to use open AI in Azure and you're not gonna get that out of a 15 minute demo session A along the way. So that's like how it opens up. Great. We're gonna look at Microsoft's innovations with ai.
If I'm not interested in ai, like I'm already potentially off the cuff, next paragraph, attending in person will allow me the additional benefit to connect with Microsoft engineers, partnered executives and other technical decision makers. IT implementers developer leaders and data and security professionals. Ooh, that's quite a sentence. But basically you're gonna interact with the PG who is going to be giving sessions like the engineering groups and then all the other attendees out there.
More importantly, this is a, a massive opportunity for me to engage with hundreds of industry experts who will be onsite ready to answer any questions about the Microsoft technology we use daily.
Additionally participating will allow me to dive into topics like security data and I data and AI infrastructure, cloud native and hybrid business applications and more choose from over 140 interactive learning sessions containing in-depth technical content relating to the breakout and discussions I plan to attend. Be the first to learn about emerging technologies from Microsoft leaders and connecting with experts to get answers to questions I have specific to our
environment and the following ongoing projects. And then they say, Hey you should insert your projects, environments and all that stuff here. So if you think that you're looking for dives into topics on security data, night infrastructure, business applications and more that you're not gonna be able to see those online, I would argue like the major stuff, you're gonna be able to see all that online.
Like not to take away from the in-person experience, but this is a hybrid experience where you've got two days virtual where people are effectively getting the same content. At least you're seeing the same sessions. But if you're there in person and I'm not, you absolutely have an opportunity to go ask additional questions, talk to those speakers, attend maybe round table sessions or other stuff that I couldn't as a digital attendee, is that worth $1,500 to me? Eh, I don't know.
Some of the other stuff, hey be the first to learn about emerging technologies. A again, everybody's gonna hear that at the same time it comes out in the book of news. The keynotes are all streamed, all the, all that kind of stuff. So I think it's hard in this virtual world to justify some of it. Like it it, it is it it's tough and people need to rationalize it and justify it. So for like me personally, unless my employer is paying for it, I don't know,
like personally I can't justify $3,000 just to go and do the hallway trek. Yeah. That's interesting. I will say I think you end up in a little different boat than I do because there are not saying everybody at Microsoft but being internal, you definitely have access to some of those people that are a little bit harder for others to get access to. And I would say even as an M V P, there's also some access that I'm able to get some of the news that we see ahead of time that does make it harder.
I would say my cost too goes up even more than that $3,000 because for me it's also four days of not working. And when I'm hourly and I don't work for four days, not only do I have to pay $3,000 but I also don't make X number of dollars because I'm not working those four days. I will say I am probably leaning myself towards not going yet this year. A couple reasons. One previous years before they went to this whole hybrid thing and it was
the big 20,000 person in-person conference. We would always, they had media events in all transparency we got to go as part of the podcast and to your point, we didn't have to pay for registration. We still paid some of our own expenses but it did make the cost a little bit more feasible. But also the size of the conference, like one thing that stood out to me in that email you read is over 140 sessions, there's a reason they didn't say over 150 or over 200 sessions if I remember
right. Like the ignite of old there would be like over 2000 sessions or 1600 sessions, 140 sessions to cover all of the different technology and stuff to me is not very many. And I start wondering, and again I don't there the session catalog isn't out yet. Is there gonna be enough sessions that I'm interested in or to your point, do I care about the sessions? Maybe not.
'cause you and I both tended to go for the hallway track, we'd go find people to interview for the podcast, we'd go interview Microsoft employees about different products, about different announcements. We would do stuff from keynotes and all of that with this hybrid scenario. And with it being in Seattle, we know it's not gonna be a 20,000 person conference.
Is there gonna be enough people in person to make that hallway trek worth it and enough people that to your point you want to talk to or I want to talk to that we can't just talk to already other companies, other people that maybe this is your one chance to actually go corner a Mark Cashman or a Dan Holm or Carolina or some of those Microsoft employees that you see from hear from all the time and you wanna actually talk to 'em in person.
This is a good opportunity to do that, assuming they're all gonna be there in person. And I know that was one piece of feedback from last year that I don't know that I've seen addressed yet is there were a lot of those speakers that were still virtual last year. Is this going to have more in-person interactions than last year or are you going to go expecting a bunch of in-person product group interactions and they're not actually gonna be there?
I think that's something else that you have to weigh. I don't know, like you, you and I, before we started recording today, we were talking about like the Apple event from yesterday. And one of the things I like about watching the Apple events is just seeing the production value and we're like what they put into it and how they produce it. And that's very much like a byproduct of the pandemic and and things like that. Like employees have moved away, they've gone remote.
If you can record your session from home or frankly, even if you're like, you're in Seattle, right? Like where Microsoft is based in Redmond and you can drive over to one of those production studios and shoot a slick video for your session and your session's gotta be broadcast online anyway. Like I I I can't fault companies for going down that path, right? It's in their best interest to put their best foot forward and then have that material to be reusable all all over the place.
So I think you've seen that as well, like to like, hey, people might not show up in person 'cause they already recorded their session a couple weeks before and it and it was all produced and ready to go and, and ready to be streamed online. Yeah. The other place, this is super valuable and I tend to forget it earlier when I was asking about containers who said, oh I don't do a bunch with containers and maybe that's something that's not in my ecosystem.
There's a lot of folks out there who uh, are especially like senior, not senior leadership, but even like ics that tend to be super crosscut when it comes to how they deploy Microsoft technologies. And and sometimes I forget this, I was talking to a customer the other day and they're trying to do blah blah blah secure something in their storage account and it's like, ooh, you're like totally thinking about this wrong.
Like you're thinking about it from the lens of like just a storage account is this thing, you've got this whole other ecosystem of tools that's available to you, right? Like it was a, a data exfiltration convers conversation and it's like well you're already a Microsoft customer, right? You have Microsoft 365, you have D L P in your environment. Like in the case where you're trying to collect uh, get your clients to where they need to be.
Like it's very likely you either have client controls rather than just wholesale blocking like fully qualified domain names in the Microsoft environment, to make your applications work they need to and to make you feel as a company like you're secure and where you need to be. But because I was talking to the storage people, they didn't necessarily recognize and I can't fault them for this 'cause it's a very wide ecosystem that there's all this other tooling and stuff that's out
there, right? So, uh, conferences like Ignite, like it's not an Azure conference, it's not a Microsoft 365 conference, it's a Microsoft conference. So it's covering the width and breadth of the entire stack that's out there. And I think that can be super valuable and and helpful to folks. Again, you've gotta rationalize like in-person versus person versus just attending virtually. So, uh, I I think another consideration there is the dates are a little bit weird.
So the dates for in-person are the 14th to the 17th. Those are not the dates for the virtual conference. The virtual conference is two days, which is the 15th to the 16th. And without session catalogs out yet, like you said, this is hard to figure out what's the value add for those extra two days. Is there something in those two days that's really gonna make it worth your time? I don't, I don't know. We're still 62 days as of today. We're still 62 days out from Ignite.
It's gonna take time for the session catalogs and things to come out. You gotta weigh, ooh do I want early bird pricing? Do I want regular pricing? I don't know what it'll be but let's say it's 500 bucks more $2,000. Like do you have to wait for session catalogs and and things like that to come out. What I will speculate, I'm gonna make some speculations here that at least the first day, so you said it's 14th through 17th and 15th through 16th. That 14th.
If you go look at the comparison of in-person versus online and we'll put this link in the show notes, it does say that there's optional pre-day labs and those are an extra $225 per pre-day lab. I'm going to assume that those pre-day labs are on the 14th, not pre the dates they specified. So that if you're going, I was gonna go look at a calendar here 'cause this'll probably tell us 14th is a Tuesday, huh? like that's what I don't know 'cause the pre-day labs could be on Monday.
I've seen them do that before And the conference actually starts on the 14th. Is there gonna be additional sessions? Are those just days where you can go? Do they do have some live in-person interactive labs or in-person demos? Keep. In mind do you pay you pay per lab as well? Yes. So there's a two, yes two, $225 uh, fee per pre-day lab. So.
That's the pre-day lab. Is that the interactive lab or are they gonna have, because I know before at Ignite they've had like lab areas where you can just go sit down and work through labs where they just have a bunch of machines set up. It's not a in-person guided lab, it's a computer guided click click type of lab. So I wasn't sure if that's what, although in-person interactive that I wasn't sure what interactive labs were, if those were the same as the pre-day labs.
'cause there are two different bullet points. It's the problem with marketing, right? Like I think you and I are folks who look for clarity here and unfortunately that clarity is not gonna come. It's just not there. Another 40, uh, not for another 45 days . Yeah, we'll see what happens. There is an evening celebration, there's no attendee party like attendee parties of old it appears but there will be an evening celebration. So you do get, there are some added benefits to going in person.
I think it to your point it's just weighing is the cost worth it or shoot if your employer will pay for it, go for it. I think there's absolutely still gonna be value in person. I find way more value in person. I just don't know if I find that much more value in person when they're still doing hybrid. I would love to see this go back to the massive conference.
I would definitely be more likely to go once I see this show up as like a Vegas conference, an Orlando conference, a Chicago conference, Atlanta, one of those five big cities. I wanna see it in like Munich or London or Paris. Heck let's do it in like Israel. You can do Ignite Tel Aviv. I just need to see it be in a big city. Even that stuff has slowed down. So I'll, it was a little buried on the Ignite site.
I'll put a link in the show notes for everybody to that download the convince your manager letter if you want to take a look and see if that's something like, if that's the path that anybody wants to go down and you do need to justify that and and get it going. But yeah, E Ignite is out there and kicking around. We shall see. That we shall and I do. I'm with you. I just needed clarity especially 60 days out. I feel like this is the time to buy plane tickets.
I don't wanna buy plane tickets a month out but I need more clarity before I would be willing to commit to the pricing. I think. So we'll see. We'll keep everybody updated if we change our minds. . It'll come as it comes. Uh, easy enough. Alright. Well we were gonna talk about the Apple event too, but we ran outta time and frankly Scott, like you said earlier, I was bored by it. All the announcements were minuscule to me. Maybe we'll trickle some out here and there but. Yeah, I walked away.
I don't feel like I need to spend a bunch of money like this year. Nope. You and I were talking offline the other day about what to do with phones and things like that. So like I bought a new camera lens the other day like I'm liking the new camera lens that I got here so I don't feel so bad now about spending the money on that 'cause Yeah, . See I'm the same way that.
Could be doing a. Phone only I bought a truck and the event did not convince me that I need to go buy a new phone on top of my truck. I'm gonna be probably be content with my phone for another year and I'm very happy with the truck. So. Yeah, the there you go. Yeah. I was the same way like previous. Well I feel like it's been lately more and more updates are incremental and it's like my phone works, I don't need a faster phone, I don't need a better camera.
I can update to the latest version of iOS. This one is A U S B C charging port worth 11, $1,200. Probably not yet. Maybe once my phone dies but I'm not gonna go spend $1,200 just to get U S B C charging. Especially like you and I were talking, we do a lot of wireless charging like why do I need a new port if I'm using wireless charging. MagSafe all the way, which now MagSafe iss gonna come to everything else as well.
So that's the new Q two standard. Uh, so for those like wireless charge qi qi charging, there's a Q two is basically taking the same magnetic alignment rings that apple's been using in MagSafe and bringing those into the standard. So now even Android devices and things are gonna do that. Nice little k snap to the ring on the device, which I really look forward to. Like I've got like a pixel here that I keep to play with Android stuff.
It is super hard for me to find like where this goes on the GMAT that's on my desk versus just like plopping my phone down and it hits it mag safe style and boom go goes in and does what it needs to do. So I'm looking forward to things like that. No. What I did, we said we were done talking about Apple. I still have a iPhone. That's fine. This is the after show. This is the after show. I still have an iPhone 11 which does not have MagSafe. It has the key charging but it doesn't have MagSafe.
I went and bought a MagSafe case that adds a magnet to the back of it. So I cheated and instead of buying a new MagSafe phone, I just bought like a $30 MagSafe case or my phone . Yeah, for the most part, right? Like it all works, you just can't use like mag safe accessories. I think that's the part where Apple's gone above and beyond to wireless charging standards is having like wireless devices that attach and then can have additional information in 'em. Like the wallet was fine.
My even like their charging brick, which funny enough they canceled or at least they, they've stopped selling after that event could communicate like hey how much battery's in the brick versus the phone and things like that. So I, I don't know. Well we'll see where it all goes. But u s BBC's nice but it's not U S B C on all the things yet. So there's still other stuff in the ecosystem that needs to be upgraded. Headphones, AirPods, all, all that kind of stuff that needs to come along. Although.
Most of the AirPods they upgraded, right? At least all the new ones. None of 'em. Oh I thought there was a couple, was it just new ones that came with the U S B C charging case? I thought I saw one or two. Not even new ones. So they have a new U S B C case that they're gonna start selling with the AirPods Pro two. Okay. Like for me, so I have AirPods Pro two Yep. That are already in Q Chase, uh uh Chi case, MagSafe, blah blah blah, all those kinds of things. They do a N c, transparency,
blah blah blah. My case is lightning. They're the new ones are the same AirPods, like they're the same stems but they updated the case to be US U S B C and then apparently they added something else in the case for like lossless audio with Division Pro. But nobody's gonna get, I mean I would like to get Division Pro but I'm not gonna get division pro kind kind of thing to get it going. So yeah, it's the same stems that I have today just with a new case.
But they're not gonna let you buy the new case. They're gonna make you buy the whole bundle. They're. Gonna make you buy all of it. Yeah and I still have a bunch of old iPads around the house too that are still lightning. The kids use those. Yeah, me too. So we still have a bunch of lightning charging ports around so it would maybe allow me to get rid of lightning in the bag that I carry when I go places like once every two months. But it's one cable and again,
not worth that much thread radio. Scott, you don't want the thread radio in the new iPhone that not even Apple knows what they're going to use it for yet. Don't want thread radio that I don't know what's gonna happen. I think. There's potential. I did this a while ago. Grab some if you don't have 'em already, like the three in one charging cables, I'll put some links in the show notes.
I really like the anchor three in one cables, but it's just a micro U S B 'cause I still have some micro U S B crap that's out there, right, like speakers and stuff like that. Yeah. But then it has the ends to convert micro U S B into Lightning or U S B C. So I've taken these things and I've just peppered them like all over the house. And then I use just like the GaN chargers, like the four to six part GaN chargers.
I have those plugged in everywhere and every single one of them has four of these U SS B cables, just running off of it and coming out the other side. And yeah, they work just fine for what they need to do. Get yourself a three foot, six foot, three in one charging cable and you'll be right as rain Perfect as they say in the movies. Sounds good. Well yeah, I think that's about all that I had from the Apple event. Again, I, nothing jumped out at me.
I think the most exciting thing for me that I now know is the release candidate dropped for iOS and iPad OSS 17 and we know that Sonoma will be coming out September 28th. I believe it was the release of iOS and iPad 17 is coming out this week, the eight 18th or is it next Monday or Tuesday? Five days from now. I think I. Already updated. So I think this is gonna come out too late.
But may maybe for folks who don't know this trick, so with the latest iOS stuff, at least developer and public betas are open to everybody. Like you don't need to register, you can just go into your software settings on your device and do that.
When Apple drops the RCS release candidates, what you do is, even if you're haven't been running the beta the whole time, say you're running like today, iOS 16 and you go, Ooh, I want to get on before everybody else and just beat the rush when the r c comes out, flip yourself over to one of the beta profiles, update to the R S C and then just take yourself out of the beta program and then you're all set. You've updated early and you're ready to go.
So I took all my stuff yesterday when they dropped the release candidates and I did all my phones tablets, did my watch and everything and just spent last night and and did that nice and easy. Yeah, I did that too. Sonoma. We'll see, I'll probably do it with my laptop after I have a conference Friday. I was not about to touch my laptop before a conference. I have learned my lesson , but as soon as that conference is done, once I see the RC drop, I'll probably do the laptop.
I won't do my main work driver of the studio till it's actually released, until I've vetted everything on the laptop. Because even though the release drops, I have found not all of the software vendors always update right away to a version of their software that supports the RC iOS iPad oss. I don't seem to have that problem nearly as much as I do on Mac oss.
So I'll test everything on the laptop, make sure all the stuff that I use regularly works, and then maybe do the studio or see if I can convince Scott to do it before I do on his daily driver. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. But we'll see. I gotta wait for the r c to drop for that one. So. Yeah, that's our Apple News on the after show. And with that I have some documents to go write meetings to attend. I got a meeting, you know. Conferences to prep for no.
Matter when we record these things in the afternoon at night. In the morning, like no matter what it is, there's always another meeting to go to. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah, we should get to it. All right, well thanks Scott. Enjoy your weekend and we'll talk to you next week. Thanks. Ben. If you enjoyed the podcast, go leave us a five star rating in iTunes. It helps to get the word out so more IT pros can learn about Office 365 and Azure.
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