170: ‘Kicking Dirt on Them While They’re on Fire’ With Ben Thompson

Special guest Ben Thompson returns to the show. Topics include voice control with AirPods, how to get your entire music library onto an iPhone while using iCloud Music Library, Apple Watch durability, the Dash/App Store controversy, the disappointing and frustrating state of Siri and voice-driven AI assistants, Google's new Pixel phones and the strategy behind them, Snap's (née Snapchat) Spectacles (and why they're nothing like Google's ill-fated Glass), and more.

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Links:

• How to download your entire music library to a device using iCloud Music Library.
• 1991 TidBITS story on NowMenus, a classic Mac OS utility.
• BetterSnapTool, a Mac window management utility Ben uses.
• Clipboard history managers for Mac:
  • Copy’em Paste
  • LaunchBar
  • Pastebot
  • Keyboard Maestro
• Draft: web app that’s Ben’s preferred writing tool.
• Fluid: longstanding utility that let’s you turn any website into a standalone Mac app.
• Me on Twitter, posting a photo of my wife’s Apple Watch that fell apart coming off the charger. And then cracking wise.
• Me on the the Dash/App Store controversy.
  • Dash developer Bogdan Popescu’s “full story”, in a statement to iMore.
  • The circumstances that led Apple to link to the two developer accounts.
• Phil Stokes on Dropbox’s abuse of admin privileges and Accessibility permissions on MacOS: part 1 and part 2.
• John Hempton of Bronte Capital on Twitter:
  • “Some Comment on the Twitter Buyout Rumors”
  • “Measuring How Bad Twitter Is”
• Walt Mossberg: “Why Does Siri Seem So Dumb?”
• Ben Thompson: “Chat and the Consumerization of It”.
• Charlie Warzel, writing for BuzzFeed last year — “Apple’s Junk Drawer Problem” — under the premise that most people replace Apple’s apps on the iPhone with Google’s.

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.