538: A Future That Is Now Stuck in the Past
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From Relay, this is Connected, episode 538. Today's show is brought to you by our excellent sponsors, Squarespace, Fitbot, and ZocDog. I'm your annual chairman, Federico Vittici, and it's my pleasure to be joined by Stephen. That's just how I'm going to introduce him. I don't need a fancy title. Sure. Not even a last name, in fact. I mean, I would like a title, but I didn't earn one currently, so...

So there's that. Hello, Stephen. We are joined also by our keynote chairman, Mike. You want to give me the full? Mike O'Hurley. Thank you very much. I mean, what is that? Just Mike? That's unbelievable. Mike O'Hurley.

Whatever you want to call me is fine, but just give me the full name treatment. Thank you for covering for me last week. I appreciate it. My week exploded. And I'm sorry to the passionate ones for not being here. It was a good practice run because you're going to be gone for a while. Yes, that is coming soon. Oh, boy. We spoke about baby classes and my experience with that in the pro show today. Go to getconnectedpro.co if you want to hear more. It was more of your... I just want to clarify this.

It wasn't the conversation. It wasn't about what you learned in baby class. It was the social dynamics. Yes. Desperate need for friends. Yes. It's a better way to put it. That. Yeah. Okay. This is the show. We're going to start with some follow-out. It's a report card season, which is always fun. Mike, tell us about the six colors report card.

Yeah. So I'm really happy to have done this again. Everybody liked it. My, my report card. Uh, no, Jason puts together this every year. We all participate. Um, we also have an episode of upgrade that has gone up where I forced Jason to make his picks, which he, uh, never wants to do, but I make him do it. Um,

which I enjoy doing. And I like that episode a lot. I actually think if you don't usually listen to Upgrade, I think this is a really good episode to listen to where we kind of break down each category. We talk about it and look at some of the responses that people gave and then give our own. But you both do the thing that the bloggers do and post your own responses in full on your websites too. Yes. Yes, we are bloggers with blogs. That's what we do. Yeah.

I was listening to Upgrade, really surprised by your five out of five on the iPad, which I understand why. I disagree with the idea that... I was actually listening to you and mentally saving this feedback. I disagree with the idea that you're not supposed to...

ask for something more than what the iPad and iPadOS is today. Sure. Especially when... And I disagree because, like, especially when you're spending 2,000 euros on a product that is advertised as a computer... Yeah, but I'm the sucker in that scenario, though. Okay, then that is fine. Right? Like, I was thinking of you at that point, and then also was thinking of you later on, which I'll get to in a second, but...

But I was thinking of you in that moment because if anybody I know is going to disagree with me, it's Federico for a good reason because you love the iPad and want it to be more. And I don't think that other people should necessarily feel the way that I do. But it was just I feel that way now. It's like I'm...

If I keep asking for Apple to make iPadOS like macOS, I'm just going to continue to be sad about it forever. Oh yeah, it's a very sad life that I will agree with. And so I've just decided that I am where I am with the iPad and I am willing to spend a lot of money infrequently to get that experience. Right? Right.

I'm not going to be upgrading my iPad at the time, like kind of the time frame that I upgrade my iPhone, say. It'll probably be more like an Apple Watch where it's once every few years when they do something that's good enough for me.

And I'm actually pretty happy now that I upgrade fewer and fewer products, right? Like on really now for me, the iPhone is the only device that I upgrade annually. And then everything else is more just like whenever, like my MacBook Air, for example, my M2 MacBook Air,

It's going to be a long time until I feel the need to get another one of those. Right. And, and, and my iPad is kind of fitting into that now that like, I can't imagine anything within the next few years that they would do that would make a significant change to the old iPad pro. And so,

Because I'm accepting it for what the iPad Pro is. I'm not like desiring the M6 or whatever. You know what I mean? It's just like, whatever. You just keep, I'll wait until you make it the thinnest. It's because it's the thinnest iPad ever. Incredible screen. So that is what it is. The thing that I thought you were going to mention, Federico, was that I specifically, maybe you haven't gotten to this part in the episode yet. I was very surprised about people having complaints or even comments about iCloud syncing.

I did have those complaints. Indeed, during the show, because I was just reading Jason's summary, I'm like, who even thinks about that anymore? And I read your comment in full, because I didn't read the comments, I didn't read the full transcript before, I didn't have it. But yeah, I can see what you're saying, iCloud is very... Oh, yeah, there's a whole story here, actually. Okay.

I wanted to stop paying for Dropbox. My annual renewal was up and I was like,

is there a world in which I can stop paying for Dropbox? And, you know, I have all this iCloud storage that I never use. And in theory, they did those shared folders a couple of years ago. Like, what if I stop paying for Dropbox and I keep everything in iCloud Drive? It was a nightmare. It was an actual nightmare. Like an actual leap-waking nightmare of me, first of all, like having to download all of these files from Dropbox, which was okay. And then I kept them in local storage on the iPad.

I organized all the folders. And then when the time came that I wanted to transfer from on my iPad, that's the name of the local storage, to iCloud Drive, I figured, well, I'm just going to drag and drop everything and it's going to work like Dropbox. It took, I'm not kidding, it took like three days for this syncing to complete. Whenever I was, and I know that it's not my fiber connection because I use my fiber connection to upload like video files and audio files on a weekly basis. Um,

And I know that, for example, like a 20 gigabyte video file, I can get it done in like 12 to 15 minutes with Dropbox in Safari. I don't even use the Dropbox app. I just open Dropbox.com in Safari, select my video file, upload it, and I see a progress bar that says 12, 11, 10 minutes. Like, great. It's connected to my fiber connection. It works beautifully. When I go drive, everything is a mystery.

You don't have a proper progress bar. You see those... I'm trying to keep this show clean. Those icons in iCloud Drive that mean absolutely nothing. We have to deal with these with Dropbox and the Mac too, which is like... Yeah. Those icons, they don't mean anything. And so John and I, we lasted for like not even a single week. I think it's worse than that. Dropbox has the labels, like the icons...

But on the Mac and iCloud, if you have a shared folder, it says added by me, added by Mike, like out to the side of it. I do not need that ever. Like it is clogged. Especially if you use column view like a gentleman, it really is a mess. I would say that

When I saw iCloud syncing, I wasn't thinking about iCloud Drive. Like I was thinking about like, because we all remember the days when like, who knows if your notes are going to sync? Oh, no, that hasn't happened in quite some time. Yeah, so that was why I was surprised about it. But even then, I understand your point.

But I guess this maybe is where me and you think differently. I would never have assumed that was going to work. I would, I would never think about it. I would never do it because even the like shared numbers documents that I have or whatever, sometimes I open them and they're like, oh, well, this is a conflicted copy now. And it's like, I don't know what's going on here. But that's not right though. It's not right. It's not right. I mean, like,

Like, we are paying for this stuff. Like, and I think we sort of, like, because I have been part of this, like, we sort of just gotten complacent. They're like, oh, yeah, it's iCloud. But like, no, it shouldn't have to be this way. It shouldn't. It shouldn't.

Yeah, so anyway. The summaries were... I was curious, like those summaries on Upgrade. I assume Jason or you threw everything at a large language model to get the summary of all the people for every single section? We spoke about this on Upgrade Plus. Ah, okay, I haven't gotten to that. Jason used one. No, I do pay...

But he used it as a summary, but heavily edited it. Nice, nice. That's the approach. I'm so happy he did this. It was actually, me and him were talking off the show and we were talking about that. And I think I've recommended he try it because it's too much. Because I can't read it all. Like the full transcript that he has is just like obscene because people like you two use it as an opportunity to actually blog.

inside of the google form yeah i turned in uh 2200 words i think this time right that's like terrorism to jason i don't know why why do you do that just give a line and then do what you give it give your full blog post on your website if jason didn't like it he would put a word limit on the text i have said to him i have told him many times and he's like i don't i don't know you can do if you can do that on google i'm like yeah you can but he doesn't do it but i think you should do it

but he doesn't. So he is kind of asking for it. When he does it, Stephen and I will comply. Yeah. No, he doesn't. You'll submit two entries. He didn't do it twice. Or we just drop a URL in each one and it's the full comments. I struggled. Can you imagine? I struggled with it this year a little bit because I didn't know where to talk about Apple intelligence and

And so I shoved it into my iPhone comments. And so I gave the iPhone a two out of five, which made me an outlier this year. And, uh,

And I don't envy, I mean, Jason and I have talked about this, about like, how do you, like the wearables category, right? Like, does the Apple Watch stay in there? Does the Vision Pro go in there? I argued the Vision Pro was separate, but he stuck into wearables. Like, it's hard to make this adapt over time. But I stuck Apple Intelligence to the iPhone because that's how Apple talks about Apple Intelligence, right? Yeah.

They advertise it as an iPhone feature. And even on like MPU, we did a review of Apple intelligence a couple of weeks ago. We basically talked about it in the context of the phone. And I hadn't really thought about that. I wrote this kind of as we were prepping that MPU episode. And I kind of realized like in my mind, at least they're kind of two sides of a coin right now, because I think that's how Apple talks about them.

Yeah, see, to me, it fit very naturally in Apple's operating systems. Yeah. That was the category that I put my Apple Intelligence comments into because I didn't think it was fair to do it to the iPhone in a way. I see why you would do it too, though. Like, I think there is a... That's part of the fun of it. I agree with his wearables saying Apple Classes Division Pro is wearable. Like...

It's in that bucket when it comes to the earnings report. But I think it's in the trying not to create 20 categories, right? And it breaks the historical data, which I really liked this year because it's 10 that he was able to do more of that. Yeah, mixed it up a bit. Yeah, mixed it up a bit. So...

It's a good asset, the report card. I was going to say, it's good for the community. I'm glad he does it. I know it's a mountain of work. And I know that people like Federico and I make it harder than it needs to be. But I'm glad it's a thing.

So we had some follow-up by listener Steven that I wanted to bring to the show and have a little discussion about this because I think it's an interesting comment. Steven wrote in on Blue Sky, I think, to say,

This was mentioned in the Apple Machine Learning Research blog last year. The same blog post where I and other people went a little crazy because Apple confirmed that they had already scraped every single website in existence with Applebot to power Apple intelligence. But these details were provided...

Is that what you said? Oh, you think a little is too little? No, no, no. No, no, no. No, that's not what I'm saying. We were great. No, I just was surprised you said that. Look, I reckon... No, no, no. Look, I am fully aware that I'm a person of strong emotions. Yeah, sure. The passion.

It's the passion. Sometimes it overflows and you've got to be mindful of it. But yes, that's what I said. And I was right, but we don't need to go over all of that again. So this is an interesting follow-up, which I remember this because this is what's going to be part of...

the iOS 18.4, in theory, rollout. I simply didn't think to address it because I think what we're looking at here is something completely different from what I meant and from what we were discussing. Last week, I think we did the DeepSeek segment. DeepSeek. DeepSeek. We were obviously talking, I was obviously...

referencing the sort of large language model that hundreds of millions of people use these days which is in you know most people just say chat GPT that sort of become the the generic term almost like an iPod to describe this entire generation of chatbots most people when they think

First of all, parentheses. Most people don't call them large language models or LLMs. Most people just say chatbot or chatgpt or just chat, which is also something that I've heard. But that's what I meant. Like when I said Apple doesn't have a large language model, I meant Apple doesn't have anything that can compete with

with Chagipiti or Gemini or Claude or DeepSeek or Lama or whatever. But this correction is interesting because let's talk about these foundational models that Apple pre-announced last year.

And I'm going to quote from this article. Our foundation models are fine-tuned for users' everyday activities and can dynamically specialize themselves on the fly for the task at hand. They mentioned they use small neural network modules, adapters, pre-trained models. They're fine-tuned for specific tasks on your device. So all this to say, this is the technology that's going to power the...

pre-announced Siri that will be able to perform actions across multiple apps for you. We are all sort of expecting this ability to show up in 18.4 at some point, maybe even today, maybe even right now, who knows. Is there a new beta out? I have no idea. It'll show up. I don't think so. Okay, good, thank you. What Apple has built here is a domain-based

large language model that can recognize a handful and by a handful I'm pretty sure that the initial rollout will support 12 categories of domains. Now when I mention domains, I mean that this model, this 3 billion local model and a bigger one in private cloud compute, will be able to handle

actions in your favorite apps organized by category, such as, is this a document reader application? Is this a music listening application? Is this a task manager? Like actual domains supported by the schema that is behind this large language model that Apple has built.

This would be what in the tech industry these days they call a specialized model. It's a large language model built with roughly the same technologies that are behind other large language models, but it's been trained, it's been fine-tuned to work with specialized categories of tasks. This is what Apple is building. Obviously,

very different from what we are seeing these days with a chatbot where you can go and write down something in any language and have more or less a conversation with. I also wanted to mention the benchmarks.

that Apple used last year. It's good to keep them in mind. And I'm really curious to see if and when they will get updated by Apple whenever this large language model with the task integration comes out. Last year, Apple benchmarked their model against saying that it was outperforming Lama 3 8 billion, Mistral 7 billion, and Fee 3 mini.

Interesting. Interesting stats. They also mentioned in a footnote that they compared their model against GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4 Preview, another Mistral, a couple of Mistral models, and Lama, both the small model, the $8 billion one, and the $70 billion Instruct model. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. How many of those names did you just make up?

I'm actually reading them because they are in our documents. They're all real names. The AI industry has a severe naming problem. They do. All of these names suck. They're terrible. But here we are. So, for Khan, to explain this in very simple terms...

Last year, Apple benchmarked their upcoming... So we still haven't seen this model, I'm guessing. They benchmarked against ChaGPT 3.5 Turbo, which nobody's using anymore. They benchmarked against a preview version of GPT-4, which nobody's using anymore because we're all using GPT-4.0. They did not include any Gemini model.

Just today, Google had a big rollout of Gemini 2.0 in multiple flavors, Flash, Pro, Flash Thinking. Google is doing all sorts of wild things.

And in Apple's benchmarks, there is obviously, in none of these benchmarks, Apple is not considering any reasoning models, but I give them a pass on this one because I believe in the first half of 2024, reasoning models were not exactly out in the wild, available for people to test.

But then again, whenever this large language model comes out, it'll be interesting to see if Apple benchmarks against recent models, let alone reasoning models by OpenAI and Google. Also, in the meantime, by the way, Apple was benchmarking against Lama 3. Lama 3.3 is out and very different from that version that Apple included in the benchmarks. So,

All this to say, we still have to see this large language model. It is not the kind of large language model that people are used to interacting with on a daily basis. I think my personal opinion is that if Apple could offer today a large language model, so to speak, like a Siri GPT, comparable to what's on the market today,

I think they would obviously do that. If they could, they would do it. But they can't because they don't have the technology. I don't even... They must be... Like, I would be... I would die to know that Siri GPT, what stage they are at right now. Are they in pre-training? Are they in actual training? Like, I would love to know how that thing is moving. Um...

Apple is taking, for now, Apple is trying to... There's an expression, I'm sure, in the English language, to make the best out of a bad situation that they're in. They are releasing these specialized models. And they have been for the past few months with Apple Intelligence. Cleanup, mail categories, Genmoji, image playgrounds. These are all specialized models that do one thing

with varying degrees of well or not well. And they're doing this because this is all they can do. With the training that they have been able to do so far, and App Intents, the upcoming App Intents, are going to be another example of Apple releasing smaller specialized models that can, in part, run on device and anything else goes off to private cloud compute. So,

Yes, technically speaking, it is a large language model, but is it the large language model that most people globally in 2025 now expect? Probably not. This is not to say that what Apple is doing is not interesting, because I think it is, but I just wanted to address this follow-up because I think it's an important conversation to have regarding Apple's approach.

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There's a new category of apps that I'm seeing people talk about that are being called timeline apps. It's a good name. I think it's a good... I know that you don't like nicknames. No, no, I like it. No, no, I don't like... I don't like... I don't dislike new names. Okay.

Except the guy who made up his own name, you know? Yeah, I just... No, so I said, I said, I don't dislike names. I dislike certain, like, platitudes or, like, phrases that get used to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This, I like this. Timeline apps is just actually just a great... It should be a larger catch-all than it is. Like, at the moment, timeline apps seems to be describing apps that, like...

pull in a bunch of different timelines into a unified... But I actually think just Blue Sky is a timeline app, right? I think it is a better name than a Twitter app, which is kind of like the easiest way to describe now. Like, oh yeah, like Ivory and... They're just Twitter, but they're not... Anyway, timeline apps is like a new term being used to describe apps that are aggregating different timelines. We had touched on Reader, the new Reader in the past, and it all kind of said...

this isn't for us tapestry just came out which is from the icon factory which is their kind of like response to a post with the world so they they used to make twitterific when twitterific went away they did not do what tap bots did they did not just like work on making a mastermind client they decided they were going to take a break you try something new

And they have come out with this. And Federico wrote on Mac Stories about this, linking to the piece that David Pierce wrote about on The Verge. And I kind of echo a lot of what Federico was saying. It's great that these apps exist, but they're not for me. And Tapestry is early, but Tapestry and Reader have a similar problem at the moment, at least, in that

while they are places to view the content, you can't really do anything with it that you would do if you were logged into the service, right? You can't reply to posts. You can't like posts. They don't yet allow you to do much. It just will send you out to an app. And I just think for me...

I don't want YouTube RSS and tweets in the same feed. Like I don't, they are absolutely massively different forms of content for me. Now, what I could do is just have blue sky, mastodon and threads in theory in one app. But even that to me is,

doesn't work now. I think like my experience in these different places is different and I prefer it that way. I was thinking about this and I thought of like this analogy of like sometimes I see this

by so-called influencers being like, hey, why don't you do the blender diet where you take all these ingredients and instead of cooking them individually, you put everything in a blender. And so you see these people doing crazy things like, oh, let's take the pasta, let's take the meat and some carrots and some almond milk, let's put everything in a blender and you're going to have one delicious dish

that contains all of the nutrients that you need. But in doing that, sure, you have a unified meal, but you're losing the taste of every individual component. And so to me, this is sort of equivalent to that. Like, yes, you have a unified everything, but in the process, you're using the individual characteristics of the single components. Yes. They...

Pasta isn't inherently interesting because of its flavor. It's the texture that the flavors are applied to that provides that to be a good experience. I do not want to eat a pasta smoothie that is removing for me the whole point of even having the pasta. I would put something that would be inherently better for me in that smoothie. So now I'm on a different track. I think it's great.

that the weirdly, in a way, more open web that we have in 2025 allows for people to make projects like this for the people that want them. Yes. But I was playing around with Tapestry today, and I was loading up a bunch of things in it, and it's like, I don't even really want to consume RSS this way. This isn't really my thing. But I am very happy that...

that new services are created now that start with the idea of this should be a thing, right? That you could build an app and get the content from that service into a different app. I do think that is a very good thing that allows for this, but I just don't think that this is the way that I want to be an internet citizen. I think the more I think about it, the more I feel like

It's great that these apps exist. And I know that there's a group of people, a group of like, there is a part of our audience who is really into these sorts of apps. I am concerned that this is more of a good idea, that these apps are more of a great principle than an actual great experience. Like, it's great that they're all based on the open web.

And I think it's important for reasons unrelated to Reader and Tapestry. But I am concerned that this new wave of timeline apps, they're good in spirit, but ultimately most people will always be better served by clients, dedicated clients. So yeah, that's my concern. Steven, do you have any thoughts on these?

I agree with you all. I would rather have an RSS app that is like built for RSS and all the little things I want, including feedback support. I want to watch YouTube videos on YouTube where I can save for later or comment or, you know, like I want the experience a bit more natively. I think it's great. I mean, obviously we

All three of us make our living on the open web and we're very excited about this, but they're not going to replace anything on my home screen at this point. So speaking of apps...

In our group thread, you all seemed excited about the new Instapaper. One, that there is a new version of Instapaper, which is always just a nice thing to see, Instapaper 9.1. But they've added some new interesting features. They have good support for handling logged in sites, which could be good for six or seven of your favorite websites, if that's a thing that you care about.

And this just sparked a conversation between you and you three. So wait, three. There's only two of you. So it's you two and John, OTJ. We're talking about how you use Read It Later. And I just said Apple Notes is my Read It Later. Federico seemed really intrigued about that. I mean, who wouldn't? Please expand on this. So Read It Later services to me are pointless for me because they just become...

apps that have loads of long articles that never get read. I learned this a long time ago. I used to use Instapaper. I used to use Pocket. They just became these just like holes that I would put videos and articles in and they would never be touched again. I think that's really common. I think a lot of people feel that way. So for me, information that I read, like articles that I read, they are for work.

That's what I'm reading for. Like my RSS, right? So where I get the articles that I want to read is from RSS. So I have reader. So I'll open up RSS. I'll do this a few times a week, most likely, because I get the day-to-day news I'm consuming in other ways, right? I'm seeing it in Discord. I'm seeing it on Mastodon. I'm seeing it on Blue Sky. I'm listening to it on podcasts, right? It's kind of like from an interest perspective, how do I consume my news? But then I need to also consume things in more detail, right?

for work. And that's where RSS comes in, right? And so I have a bunch of feeds to a bunch of sites that I like and trust. And that's when I'll go through that a few times a week to make sure I kind of triage on what's happening. When I find an article that I think I will want for this show, I share it to an Apple note for the show. So I have them for my kind of news-focused shows. So I have one for Upgrade, one for Connected.

And I will just share these links to that. And I could see those in other places. So if I saw an interesting link on Mastodon, I could share it to that note too. And then on the morning of the show...

I open my Apple Note and I have a bunch of links there. I rearrange them. So like maybe some links are connected to each other. And I also will kind of like separate them into topics. Like I do this for upgrade, right? So like I'll rearrange them and like, all right, these are the rumor roundup ones. These are the upstream ones or whatever. And then I will go through and I will click on those links and I'll read the articles. Then I'll delete them from my Apple Note.

Now let me tell you something that happens with this. Apple Notes over time, it just gets lost and broken. So at the moment, in my connected follow-up note, I have nine Rich Links. So I have five about Pebble,

which we might talk about at some point. And then I have a few about Alt Store, which I was wondering if we were going to talk about today, but I don't think we're going to. It's too sticky of a situation. I wouldn't say... Oh, God. I would say it's just... There are things... It's like this thing happened, Apple got mad, everyone's mad, and no one's happy, and that's the end of it. That kind of isn't really...

I would be surprised if me and Jason didn't talk about this on Monday. What does the word prove even mean? You know, exactly. I think that is genuinely, I think me and Jason will have a conversation about that. I wasn't excited to talk about it on this show today. And none of you put it in the notes and we have things that I care more about. So we're talking about those. But my point is there are nine things in here. My preview says connected 80 attachments.

So there's like 70 things that it thinks are in this note, but they're not there. So over time, Apple Notes will get lost with these rich links. But that's my read it later system. I just take links and I put them into notes with the little extension because then it gives you the rich preview in notes. Shortcuts can't do this. Shortcuts could never do this. And it always makes me sad that it can give you the little rich preview. And then that is how I use my, that is how I read things later.

Yeah, that's not a read later system. But it is how I read later. So it is. Yeah, well, you're basically turning Apple Notes into a mini bookmark manager. That's what you're doing. What's the difference between a bookmark manager and a read it later system? Well, typically a read it later system would support like a text only article view.

I mean, when I click on it, often it opens into Safari, which has a text-only view by default. You are doing the Galaxy brain move of... I've rolled my own. Yeah, rolling your own using default Apple stuff, which is something that I've also done myself. Yeah. Look, we've all experimented with Safari reading list. You know, we don't have to be ashamed of that. No, yeah. I'm ashamed of it. Do you, Mike...

Are your articles only saved as potential topics for a podcast? Yeah. Okay. So you don't read anything else on the web? Nope. Okay. Why would I do that, you know? No, just for your own personal curiosity. Like, I don't know. I don't know. Why would you read...

I see things, you know? You see... Yeah, that's good. That's good. And what I'll say is I do leave some things in Reader that are for me that I never read, you know? Right, right. Like, this is the thing of like, oh yeah, in theory, in Reader, there are some articles in some feeds. So I have like five Club Mac Stories articles here that I want to read. One of them is going back to October of...

of 2024 sure i'm sure you'll get to it eventually hey look dude that's like one errant mark has read away from being gone yeah yeah but also that's fine though right okay it's not like a it's not like a personal memory i'm moving here i have my entire insta paper history and when i switched to good links imported all of it i got everything

It's like sometimes, look, sometimes you've got some articles that are left unread from a website that you like and they break their RSS feed and then you lose them and you're like, well, goodbye articles. I don't know. Pfft.

who's ever broken an rss the thing is i'm talking about someone specific here but everybody that i know is going to think i'm talking about them because everybody does it everyone breaks their rss feeds was it drank but it was drank but when that happens it's like well okay goodbye articles you know like they're gone now it's fine they're gone life moves on life you know what life does move on life moves on

If something is that, if an article is that important, I'll see it again. It'll come back to me. It'll come back to me. The universe will bring it back. Yeah, it'll bring it back to me and that's fine. Well, that was a, that was...

Interesting. My system is read it later, maybe. That's my... Yeah. I mean, that's really everybody's system. You're just doing it in that way. Exactly. But I'm the only one that'll own it, you know? I'm the only one that's here owning it. I currently... I'll read it. I currently have seven unread things in Good Links. A couple of them are here because I need to save them to Dev & Think. One of them is...

a link to some software I'm going to check out for an MPU, and like a couple things are things I'm going to read. So what is GoodLinks then? It's a read it later app. So what's a bookmarking app? Like RingDrop, for example. Or Pinboard.

No, people don't use Pinboard anymore. That's true. But it is one, though, even though you don't use it. It was one, yeah. It was one, yes. Oh, okay. It's still around. Okay. Is it, though, like you subscribe and you pay for it and then you never get access to the features and you try to email the guy and they never get back to you? So, like, I don't know. Is it still in business? Wow, this website looks terrible. Yeah, it's real...

It's just a bunch of plain text with some buttons on it. Okay. Very different to Raindrop. So with Raindrop, what, you're not reading? It looks like an RSS app. No, no, no, no. So Raindrop is...

It lets you save web pages as bookmarks with more controls that you would normally get from Safari's built-in bookmarks feature. Okay. You can create folders, collections, give them custom icons, have multiple view options, save cached permanent versions of web pages. They give you basically a lot of controls. People...

See, there's a very fine difference, I think, between a bookmarking app and a read later app in the sense that like you can... Here's how I would explain it to you. You can use a bookmarking app as a read later app, but usually you cannot do the opposite. You cannot use a read later app as a bookmark manager because the typical modern read later app...

Has the text-only view, lets you listen to articles, lets you tag them, integrates with newsletters, like that sort of thing. And then what's Readwise? What is that one? So Readwise started many years ago as a service that sort of collected your Kindle highlights. Okay. They launched this spin-off. So that's a highlights app.

It's a highlighter. It's actually a highlighter and flesh cards. There are too many apps for reading, all right? I'm just going to say it. I'm just going to be out here saying it. Everyone needs to stop reading. There's too many apps, all right? You're never going to get through them all. Don't listen to Mike. That's bad advice. They launched this spinoff a couple of years ago called ReadWise Reader, which is what I use. It's a read letter app.

Terribly named. Terribly named. Nice icon, though. I really like the icon. I think they have a nice looking artwork. What's wrong with ReadWise? What is wrong with ReadWise? I can't do it. So that's the problem. I found out myself. And the Mac app is pretty bad. What do you mean, what's the problem? Stephen said bad names. Like, what's wrong with the name except the fact that I can't say it? That's the reason. No one can say it. Yeah.

Better than Reader, though, right? Because that one is just like... Reader with two E's? Yeah. Man, I gotta say, Reader Classic, just like totally breaking down on iOS already. Oh, really? Yeah. Sometimes I tap an article and it just doesn't load anything. So I switched to Unread on the iPhone. You know what? Works great. Nice and fast. Mm-hmm.

And what is that, a bookmarking app? It's a RSS client, and you can send things to any number of reader apps. Also, Unread, also not a good name. Unread? No, the name is fine, but it's too hard to find these things. Yeah.

What is it with RSS bookmarking? Why are all these apps named this way? You know what I mean? Like Reader, Readwise, Unread. I mean, really, Marco did the best job. Instapaper is a very good name. Very true. Yep. I think Pocket was also really good. Pocket is also a great name. Pocket might actually be my favorite name because you sometimes just put something in your pocket and you forget about it, which is exactly the point of what happens with these applications. Why don't you name your kid Pocket, you know, if you love it so much.

Because I'm not going to forget about her. Put her in my pocket. Pocket Harley. That sounds good. That's a terrible name. This episode of Connected is brought to you by FidBod. When you want to change your fitness level, it can be hard to know where to start.

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Already? This just makes me sad. I didn't realize. I was honestly hoping I could get through this week without doing this. But here we are. I will say, when I was roughing in the Notion, I just had this as a topic, and Federico put a gif of a tumbleweed, which is very funny. I opened Notion and was like, um.

man. I'm sorry. I didn't really want to do this. Yeah. Well, we got to do it. We got to do it. I reread my review this week. Okay. I'm very proud of it. Like, I think it's, I think it's the, maybe one of the, I think it's the best thing I wrote last year. Very happy with how it came out. I'm also wearing the exact jacket today, which led me to a question because I had this debate with somebody in real life last week. Is it a hoodie? If it has a full length zipper,

Yeah, because it has a hood. It's a zip-up hoodie. It's a jacket. No. No, because it has to be made of hoodie material to be a hoodie. Right?

If it's made out of the same material as a hoodie. It's about how you get it on. Do you get in it with a zipper or do you pull it over your head? That's a hoodie. No, no, no. Think about what you're saying. A hoodie is about why you put it on? No, it's got a hood. Yeah. But jackets have hoods. Rain jackets have hoods. They're not hoodies. Right, but rain jackets are for rain. Wear a hoodie in the rain and see how that makes you feel. Yeah, this is like judging from the material. This is not a jacket. Hmm.

It's a hoodie. You're wearing a hoodie. That did not go my way. And this is the most interesting part of this segment. Is it a hoodie or not? That's the game we play. Is Vision Pro a hoodie? I challenge Robot or Not to take this on. What's a jacket? What's a hoodie? Do it. Okay. Just put it out there. I know you're listening. So I read it and...

A couple of things jumped out at me as still being pretty good. The first one is that I still think that the pass-through video is very impressive, but not the future. Like, I don't think seeing the world through cameras and screens is where this will end up. But I closed my review with a bunch of questions, like...

Will we all be wearing computers on our faces in the future? Will vision of West be able to grow beyond its iPad roots and become a more general use computer? And I don't think we're any closer to those answers. Like it is, it is, I think become less of a computer than the iPad because it doesn't have any software and you have to put it on your face and it's really expensive. And I don't know, I'm, I'm not using mine. I don't think about it unless we're talking about it on a show or

Yeah. I don't know. It's been rough. Okay. Let's rip this band-aid off. This is obviously very sad for me because I had such high hopes for this device. And I really thought it was going to change. Like, this is not a hyperbole. I really thought it was going to change my life in the sense of, like, this is a brand new type of computer.

I've been working with computers for the past 16 years. I thought I saw the future and I thought, oh, I'm going to be wearing this thing every single day. I basically never use it anymore. I got to be honest with you guys. I have thought about selling it, to be honest. You can't get anything for them. The market is so bad. There's got to be some rando in Italy. You need a sucker. Yeah.

Is it still unavailable in Italy? It's unavailable in Italy. You might get a better price than places where it's available. But, you know, it's also the first one and, you know, I kind of feel bad about it because, hey, who knows, maybe...

Maybe they're going to do... I don't think I'm going to do it. I don't think you should sell it. I'm just saying I am not going to, but I have thought about it. But you want to. Well, I mean, do you hate money? I don't. Well, but if I could return it for the same amount of money, that's a different question to if I could get 10% of the value back. Sure, sure. But...

The truth of the reality of the situation is this thing is sitting unused in a drawer on my nightstand and has been for the past several months. When I'm home alone, like any typical afternoon, I just prefer to work on my iPad Pro. It's the computer I want to use. I can use my magic keyboard with it. It's got all the apps that I want to use.

Now, the Vision Pro could have the apps I want to use, but Apple doesn't let me use my iPad's magic keyboard with it for reasons. When I'm with Sylvia,

I cannot quote what I wrote in the document, but I don't want to use it when I'm around her because I don't want to be the person isolating himself, you know, next to his partner. I wore it in my house one time and Mary was like, do not bring that back into the house. exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like it's not, it's not a good look. Um,

When I'm doing, usually I got like, I got like a couple of hours to do my things, like read my articles on Like Mike, watch videos, play some video games at night. I got that hour, hour and a half to do my quote unquote media consumption.

And I don't want to put it on in that moment either because I'm in bed. I got my dogs and Sylvia next to me. I don't know. It's kind of just awkward, you know, just, oh, I'm in bed and

And I'm wearing a headset with a person sleeping next to me. I don't know. It's, you know, it's, it's awkward. In public, I can, I cannot use this thing in public, you know? Okay. Because I, you know, people are going to look at you. You're going to look like an idiot. And even like, even if I'm waiting in the car,

for 30 minutes or something. I just feel very self-aware of putting this on. You'll end up on local Italian news. Exactly. Like people taking pictures of you, people making fun of you. Now, I have enough confidence to absolutely not care about it, but

I am concerned about the risk of somebody trying to break into my car and, I don't know, robbing me at gunpoint or something if I'm using the Vision Pro in my car in Rome. You know, that has happened. You know, people, you know, robbing you because of your watch or your phone. So, like, I don't want to do it either. So the reality is that I'm not using this thing, even if I could...

Even if I wanted to, Apple doesn't let me because it doesn't integrate with iPadOS and my iPad Pro. The third-party app ecosystem is pretty much dead. There's nothing new and interesting that catches my attention that I want to try. It's a shame because I really think VisionOS looks cool and it looks like the future. And for a moment in time, which I will cherish forever, the

The Vision Pro felt like a revolution. But the thing is that I think that any revolution to be actually revolutionary, it needs to be sustained over time. And it kind of feels like Apple is sort of like a lost interest in it or lost, not interested,

They have lost momentum, I think. I don't think they had a choice with the way that the year has gone, though. And I have this line in my head that I kept thinking about that I wanted to bring to the show because I was looking at Android XR and

And obviously, you know, look at Samsung's Project Moon, which some people are saying, oh, it's a Vision Pro copy. I agree with you, Mike, that it looks more like a Quest Pro, if anything. But regardless, like I look at Android XR and how it combines mixed reality with Gemini and AI and how that obviously feels like the future.

For this category, for this segment, you know, not to mention the whole like glasses form factor, which is what I want. But even if you look at Android XR and integration with AI and Gemini, obviously that is the future of this thing. And the line I keep thinking of is that Apple was too early here and that Vision OS feels like a future that is now stuck in the past. Yeah.

That's what I keep going back to. That's nice. That's a nice, like I've, I've often said it's like, it's like an alternate timeline. Yeah. That is a nicer, more poetic way of putting it. Like it still is very futuristic when you use it, but where we are a year later is not where we were a year ago. No. Yeah. Technology has moved more in the last year than it has maybe in the last five years.

Like, of what the potential is. And, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't think they had a choice, really, right? Like, Apple Intelligence had to become the thing, and that's not even the thing, right? Like, they haven't gotten it to where it needs to be, and they won't for a while, most likely. But they couldn't continue putting Vision OS as, like, this is our future. Like, they couldn't do that. Even if they... I don't know if they would have anyway, right? Like, I realistically don't know the answer to that, but...

I think that's a nice way of putting it. Thank you. I want to use it more than I do use it. So my Vision Pro stays at the studio because I'm not moving it backwards and forwards and it makes more sense for it to be here. From a technological perspective, I think it's the most impressive computer device I've ever used. Like what it is doing that I am aware of what it is doing is incredible.

The way in which you use it and interact with it is not perfect, but the fact that it works at all is a marvel, right? That like you just look at stuff. It's really incredible. And it's in a way is like one of the more intuitive things that I've ever used. Like, and I see it in other people more than any piece of technology. I've tried to get somebody to use from having no information. They get,

they understand it very quickly because we tend to look at things that we want to interact with. It's very impressive. My problem is I lack the when to use it, like everybody else. I think that

For me, I am happy to continue using it the way that I'm using it because something that I use it for somewhat frequently is telecommunication. And I think it is the best telecommunication device that exists. Spatial personas is absolutely the best feature of Vision OS.

without a shadow of a doubt. It's incredible. You cannot describe how good it is until you've used it. It genuinely feels like the person is sitting in front of you and you're just talking to them. It is incredible. And when you couple that with the fact that most of the apps that I need for the services that I need when I work are available there, and there is also just a fully featured web browser, you end up in a scenario where

screen sharing and presentations and the calls. It's incredible. I have meetings in it somewhat frequently and it is to me vastly superior to any other way that I would do it except for meeting somebody in person. But it is the closest feeling that I've ever had of meeting somebody in person without actually being in person with them. Outside of this, I'm not getting what I want from it. Using my Mac is a better experience than

using my Mac inside of the Vision Pro, right? Like it's a better experience. It's too big and too involved for travel for me. Like it's not really, it's not something I've ever taken on a trip, even though I've thought that I wanted to, but when push comes to shove, I don't want to carry it in my backpack.

However, if I was going on a long work trip, I would take it. I didn't take it when I went to Memphis last year, and I regretted it every day because it would have been so helpful for when I was working, like to actually have the bigger display rather than just my laptop display because I use my Mac with a display, and that's what I like. But on a 13-inch laptop that's too small, it would have been better. So,

for the podcast-a-thon this year, which will probably be the only travel I do this year, that is... I will take it for them. I feel pretty confident in that. But then the content is just not there, right? The games aren't there, but I'm hopeful for the controller support that is still rumored, that that might make a big difference.

But I think, you know, I will say the thing here that everybody else has said over the last year. Because of the low excitement and the low adoption of the product, and either could have been different and it would have been different. Like they could have sold the same amount, but people could have been like more excited about it. But because of that, we're not seeing as many call apps as we'd like to. I see stuff on threads, like the algorithm knows that I'm interested in the Vision Pro.

And there's a creator called Justin Ryan, who I only know on threads. I don't know anything about them, but I see them a lot. And they posted at this app call recently. I would like to be able to tell you what it is, but my app limit is up for threads for the day. And I'm trying to get around it. There you go. It's called Touchdesk.

It's like a new app for the Vision Pro that lets you kind of use your finger to draw on like a whiteboard, which is on your desk. That looks really cool. But it's like there should be more of this stuff. But there isn't. It is so infrequent where I'm like, oh, that's cool. That's very infrequent. And I would like it. And I thought it was going to be different like everybody did. But I would say the three of us.

I use it more and I'm still more excited about the platform and do still believe there's something in this, but I'm not like, you know, don't take that to mean like, oh, I use it every day because I don't. So happy first anniversary. Yeah. Enjoy the balloons. This episode of Connected is brought to you by ZocDoc.

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It's iPhone only. It leaked, including the code name, which is Confetti, which is like top tier code name for an app that does this. It's an app where you- Confetti. Confetti. Project Confetti. You can set up an event with artwork and date and time, and it'll show weather. And then you can share a link via messages, mail, or just send it out to people.

And you can kind of manage who's coming and the plus one and all that stuff. It is part of, well, it requires an iCloud plus subscription. So you have to be paying something for iCloud, which is... To send one? This is called Apple invites. I'm not sure if you said that. I think we got too excited about confetti. So that is just to send one? I didn't know that. I think so. Okay.

Uh, yes. Cause, uh, I cloud plus this from Apple, I cloud plus subscribers can create invitations, but anyone can RSVP regardless of whether they have an Apple account or device. Okay. Uh, it all, it also has some features I think are really interesting where you can have a shared Apple music playlist or photo library set up right there. I think that part's pretty cool, but, uh,

Federico, are you going to plan all your social events in this? Can I be the honest European guy on this podcast? Yeah.

Nobody's going to use this in real life. Most people just plan a gathering in a WhatsApp group like regular people in Europe. That's it. Or Facebook, I guess, right? Or Facebook. Just any social gathering in my adult life from the past 15 years has been planned with a group thread. Before it used to be Facebook Messenger. Now it's a WhatsApp group.

This is like the sort of experience that people in California are going to use. Most of them working in the tech industry. Well, this would be the kind of thing that I would like to use, but would be too embarrassed to send the invite. Yeah, because people are going to be like, hey, what are you sending me? Also, they'll be like, what is this? And then I have to explain it. Just plan a get-together like a regular person, non-weirdo tech person.

In a group thread. This is one of the things that is an ideal thing, right? If you have a friend group where everybody has iPhones, which is realistically the way to use this, and you're technologically minded as a group, you could send this and it would be great. And genuinely, it would be great because as an app to do this kind of thing,

It does a good job, right? As Stephen said, you can set up like shared stuff. I really like that you put the address in and then it gives you a weather prediction for the time of the event. It shows who's going. They can have little comments. You can add imagery. You can also add image playground stuff. I found it very funny that every post that I've seen

by and large. The majority of posts and screenshots that I've seen is that people have used image playgrounds to create a piece of art for this. But Apple's official newsroom post, they just used a photo. And I thought that that was very funny. Yeah, because they wanted to look good. Yeah.

They have one later on down that's using image playgrounds and they chose a very good one for that where they're not using a person. It's a cake, right? And so I found that to be funny, but it's in there. And almost everyone in that example is using an emoji for their contact photo, which is horrifying. Because who doesn't? I think that it is overall like just a nice product, but I don't understand.

Okay. Dand it. This is where I think my phase of life gives me a slightly different take on this. I get so many invites to stuff for like... Of course you do. Kids and school stuff, right? Because you people in America don't use WhatsApp. That's also true. No, but like, I don't doubt that you're getting invites. Yeah, so... Are they going to be these now? No, no. This is not going to be successful. Right, that's what I'm saying. This is going to die in the same folder as like music memos and where Clips is headed. But...

It is interesting that Apple took this on because the competition is all terrible and super filled with like gross ads and like don't, they don't work very well. But for me, like the angle that they didn't take is like a lot of these things that go out are actually like signup forms. Like, Hey, we're having this event sign up for it. And this does like, this is built on the assumption that,

that you know everybody you're going to invite.

And that's not always true. But how do you invite people then? Well, sometimes it goes out to the class email and parents can sign up to volunteer or something. But you could create a link with this though, right? You could. But it's like, that is just enough extra friction, I think. First of all, no one's going to use this. It is embarrassing. I had a flashback. Some people wrote about the iOS app Cards that came out. But before that...

I was there when the magic was written. Like, .Mac and iTools had a cards website thing where you could send somebody a birthday card from iTools or .Mac, and it had a little Apple logo on it. You could also do it from iPhone. Super embarrassing. This is not going to get traction, but it's super interesting. But I think the most interesting part of it

is that it looks like Vision OS. And there's this rumor, like very wispy rumor out there saying that Apple is going to make more of iOS and iPadOS look like Vision OS. And if this app is a taste of that, like sign me up. I love the way this thing looks. You see, I don't think that's the case. What I'll say is, I don't think this is proof of anything. I don't really either, but... I think this just looks like this. I don't, you know what I mean? Like I don't, I don't,

Because what I don't think is going to happen is that Apple with iOS 9, is it 19? Yeah. Yeah? That iOS 19, they're going to spend a bunch of time redesigning the entire operating system. Do you not think they might be putting that effort into the other big thing? Right? Like, if iOS 19 has a full system redesign, think of a punishment for me. I don't know. It's not happening. It ain't happening. It's not happening. Cool.

they'll keep that for 20 if they do it. Maybe. I don't know. I just like the way it looks and I kind of want that redesign to happen. So I could be reading into it. Well, can I give you just before we go just one totally unrelated bit of personal speculation? Yeah. For the past day, two days or so, no, actually the past day, Apple has been re-uploading to YouTube old WWDC 2022 sessions.

about app intents to their apple developer channel oh that means 0.4 is like yeah yeah including another one 50 minutes ago yeah it's like they're getting ready so it's not this week it'll be next week yeah i unsubscribed from that channel because it was bananas like it just filled up my inbox

It's funny when every two weeks, it's like his six ads. It's like, why don't we spread these out a little bit, Apple? Do we need the whole campaign all at once? I just say, I don't want to be super negative on invites because it's like, to me...

That's interesting. It's fine, right? And when I say I would like to be in a world where this is a tool that I could use, but I'm not sure I'm in that world, that I could make this and send it to people. I mean, I wished I was in a world where all my group threads can be in iMessage, but they're just not because I live in continental Europe and everybody here uses WhatsApp, even though I...

Just WhatsApp. Let me just... I'm going on a little tangent here now. Just stop taking the badge away. If a message is unread...

And I've left a message unread. I know, right? I know, right? Just because I've opened the app, don't now remove the badge. There are APIs for this. You don't have to do this. This happened to me five minutes ago. I got an audio message from my mom, but I wanted to keep it unread. I opened the app. I was in the main list view, but now the home screen badge is gone. Yeah. Madness. Why did they do that? Bad.

But anyway, I think that the invites app is interesting. I think that it's very well thought out as like the things that you could do and like all of the different system pieces that they're bringing into it. But it just...

The whole world does not use iPhones, and even the ones that do. It is like trying, in Stephen's scenario, if there being these existing systems, it's like trying to move your group from WhatsApp to iMessage. You're not going to do it. Whatever the websites are that in Stephen's world people are creating these invites for,

You're not going to be able to convince them to move to this. One last thing, it was very funny to me. I have iCloud stolen device protection on. Stephen sent me an invites link before I downloaded the app.

That was a disaster. I went to the web and it's like, get access. And I don't know why my iPhone needs to give access to my own iPhone to access iCloud.com. And then it was just like, no, we can't do this. It was a very sad scenario for me of trying to see this invite. I couldn't see it. I wasn't allowed. It was a secret party, even from you. I invited your phone. I invited your iCloud account, not you.

I was at an appointment and I left the appointment and I had like 50 text messages. I'm like, well, okay, something's happened. Something's happening. Well, I think that does it this week. Can I invite you to the closing? Yes. Mike, please RSVP. Oh, sorry. I didn't understand. Now I get it. Yeah, good. Yes, I will be there. Okay. If you want to talk to us about something stupid we said, go to connectedfeedback.com.

Feedback is always welcome. A lot of people angling for old t-shirts to come back when Mike's on paternity leave. A lot of feedback about that. I genuinely look forward to how many you're going to sell. Yeah, literally dozens. Five. If you want a longer ad-free version of the show, go to getconnectedpro.com. This week, again, we talked about making friends in your 30s at baby class. It's Mike's lived experience this week. Relatable.

I mean, to some people. To me. Yeah. You can find us all online. Federico is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net. Mike hosts a bunch of other shows here on Relay and works, does some marvelous work over at Cortex Brand. I write at 512pixels.net and co-host MPU here on Relay each and every Sunday. I'd like to thank our sponsors this week for making the show possible. Squarespace, FitBot, and ZocDoc. Until next time, y'all, say goodbye.

Adieu. Adieu. Bye, y'all.