767: Apple in Education with Barrett Mosbacker
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Welcome to Mac Power Users. I'm David Sparks. Stephen is out on sabbatical during the month of October. That doesn't mean I can't have some fun guests with me. I want to welcome to the show a long-awaited guest from me. Welcome, Dr. Barrett Mosbacher.

Thanks, David. It's a privilege and honor to be on the show. I was surprised when you reached out to me considering the experts that you typically have on your show, but I was humbled and honored by it. So thank you. Well, as you're going to learn during this show, Barrett, you are an expert too. You've got some real interesting history with the Mac and implementation. We're going to be talking about the use of the Mac in education along with your productivity stack.

The way I met you, Barrett, was through the Mac Power Users forums. There was this guy who kept sounding off in the forums with just great advice and experiences. And I got to the point where I always looked for your posts to see what you were up to. And when we were talking about guests for the show and I knew Stephen was going to be out, I thought, well, we got to get this guy out. So I'm so happy that you were able to come on the show. But tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, you know, it's interesting, David, because I came into education through the back door. So the short story is I grew up in the United States Air Force, so I've lived in lots of different countries and lots of this country. And then I went to undergraduate school, and then I started working for a number of U.S. corporations, including the General Foods Corporation and the M&M Mars Corporation.

Working for M&M Mars is a great gig if you can get it. We get all the free chocolate you could possibly eat. So I enjoyed that. I'm not sure that'd be good for me. Yeah, that was probably not for me either. But it was a fun ride for that period of time.

And then I had an opportunity to change careers kind of midstream there and end up doing management consulting work through the Legal Services Corporation in D.C. And my responsibility was to lead teams of attorneys, IRS agents, financial analysts, and management specialists, and we would evaluate cases.

legal offices around the country for compliance with federal law in conjunction with Legal Services Corporation. So I was doing that for a good period of time. And then one day my pastor called me and he asked me if we could go to lunch. And

And by the way, I'll just kind of give a moral of the story here. If a pastor of a church or a priest were to call you and ask you to go to lunch, there's only two reasons why they do that. They either want you to do something or they think you have done something. So he invited me to lunch and asked me if I would help the church to start a school.

And I looked at him somewhat bewildered and said, well, I'd be happy to do that, although I don't know anything about education, but I can find people who do. And because the consulting work, my time was pretty flexible and I could make a decent living with shorter periods of time. And so I agreed to do that. And for about two and a half, three years, I had a committee meeting in my living room in our home of

about 30 people, created a pretty comprehensive business plan. And then I took it back to the church leadership at that point and kind of, you know, washed my hands and figured, well, that was a lot of work. Glad I was able to do it and ready to move on. And four weeks later, the pastor asked me to go to lunch again, to which I said, no, no. I went to lunch with him and he wanted to know, he said the church leadership wanted to know if I would leave my career.

I joined the church staff, head up the school, and head up all of Christian education, infants through adults conferences. And by that time, I had completed one graduate degree and 40 additional graduate hours towards a theological degree.

And so after prayer and seeking wise counsel from many others, I decided to do that. And so I became the founding head of a school in Charlotte, North Carolina, Covenant Day School. And while doing that, I went ahead and pursued my doctorate at University of North Carolina, did that. And I was head of school there for about 14 years. And then I am currently the head of school of Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis.

So a different kind of background. Well, I mean, yes and no, because like you have, you're a guy that really seems to get your finger on efficiency and, and productivity. And that's what comes out in your posts and the forums as well. Like you're looking for a sane way to be productive. I feel like there, there's a fine line, right? You know, there, there's the ability, you know, you can't go in there with, especially with the Apple tools and just get lost in the tools and not actually get anything done.

And then there's the folks looking to take advantage of this stuff. And that's where we like to focus our show is, you know, we want you to use this stuff to become more productive, but we don't want the tool to take over your life. And you like have landed that. And that's the reason why you have been successful in all these careers. That's the reason why you got asked to lunch, frankly, right? You're a guy that could, if I needed a guy that could build a school,

someone like you would be the guy I would look at. And it's just very impressive, your career, how you just continue to bring that skill set to whatever you do.

Well, I'm actually very grateful and humbled to have the opportunity. I get up every morning feeling like that what I do makes a significant difference. My job is to resource, support, and help the other staff to be the frontline folks in transforming the lives of students. And I can't think of anything that's more meaningful than being able to do that day in and day out. Now, at what point in this journey did you start looking at Apple gear?

David, that's actually a funny story. So for almost 20 years, I was a Windows power user. In fact, I would say I was probably more of a power user of Windows than I have even been able to become as a Mac user. Well, in fairness, you kind of need to be on Windows, or at least you did. Yes. I still have this gnawing sensation that I'm supposed to defrag my hard drive. I was going to mention that. I feel like every Windows, recovering Windows person feels like

well, wait a second. In fact, to this day, I get emails from people that are switching saying, well, you know, they listen to the show and they're like, you guys never talk about defrag. How often do you defrag? And I'm like, the last time I defrag was like on a, you know, Windows 1998 machine or whatever. I don't defrag. You don't do that. In fact, with SSDs, it's probably a bad idea. Yeah.

Yes, probably. And it's liberating to not worry so much about some of the guts of what's going on with the computer. But my story is, so I was a Windows user. And then one day, an Apple sales representative stopped by my office at the school, and he wanted to talk to me about Apple products. And I wanted to be polite, and he didn't really have an appointment. But I said, well, sure, I've got a few moments. Let's sit down and talk. So we talked for about 30 minutes to an hour.

And I looked at him and said, you know, well, I appreciate it, but I really don't think I'm interested. You know, we're using Exchange servers and we have all these, you know, Windows devices and all of that. He said, I'll tell you what, I've got a MacBook Pro here in my bag. I'm going to give it to you. This was during the early 2000s, I believe. And he said, hey, you just try this for a couple of weeks. I'll come back in a couple of weeks. You let me know what you think. So I said, oh, sure. And so, you know, I took it home.

And what I decided to do was I, I, I,

At the time, I was using a Dell computer. I said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put this under my credential, under my desk, and I'm going to just try to use this for a couple of weeks. So I did, keeping in mind I had no instructions, but I more or less figured it out. So he comes back two weeks later, and I looked at it and said, you know, it's a nice machine, but it's a computer, and I don't think it's something I need to worry about. He said, keep it two more weeks, and then I'm going to come back and talk to you again. So he did that.

And as I got more comfortable with it, I realized that maybe there were some advantages of it. So I did some online search and different things. And to make a long story short, David, I ended up personally switching to a Mac for about a year. I decided to give it a try. I told the IT department, keep my Dell in case I need to fall back on it. But I'm going to try this for a year. They begrudgingly agreed to let me do that.

And after a year, I became convinced for a whole host of reasons. We can get into those later if you'd like, but a whole host of reasons for why I thought the Mac not only was better for me personally, but actually might be a much better device for educational purposes as well. So that's kind of the journey that I took moving into the Apple world.

Yeah. You know, that's a common story. And back in that era was when IT was generally not in favor of Apple. You know, it was when they had switched over the Intel chip. So people were wanting to use them. You had found the ability to run Windows software on them if you needed. But, you know, IT understood, understood their, you know, their fleet of Windows PCs and

This odd ball Mac is, it was always, I think, weird for people. I remember when we first started making the show, that was a very common question was like, how do I convince my IT department to let me do that? I don't hear that anymore. I think people have kind of figured it out that they're pretty good.

But boy, that was a pretty good sales job by that Apple guy. It was. I wonder if they do that anymore. I feel like they might be a little too proud these days to just like say a Harris one, try it out for a few months. You know, I don't know. They may have tightened that process, but I will say one, I remain friends actually with that sales individual for about three or four years. But in addition to that,

I had an occasion on two occasions where I was invited to the Apple headquarters, one on the old campus and then one on the spaceship campus for briefings with Apple. And that was a tribute to his willingness to have me a part of that process. So I thoroughly enjoyed that. Interesting. Well, was it about education? What did they bring you in to talk about?

Yeah, so it's fascinating. I was so impressed. I became more impressed with Apple after visiting their campus twice, not because of the facilities, although those were clearly impressive. Yeah.

But what they did was before going, it was for educational purposes, and they usually had big school districts like Los Angeles School District, New York, Chicago, et cetera, et cetera. And then there was us. And there are these separate briefings. And what they did was they asked us very specific questions before we arrived, said, what are your issues? What are your questions? What would you like to accomplish, et cetera?

Then we get into this briefing and I brought about five or six of our key staff. We're sitting in this briefing room. And then for about four days, they go through explaining the product, how it applies to education, what the resources are, some of the training that was available, et cetera. They actually brought financial people in, marketing people. It was really a fascinating experience. And then at the end of it,

as they debriefed us, they went through every question that we had outlined in every issue we wanted to cover and said, did we cover this? Did we cover that? Did we cover that? So what impressed me, David was I was expecting a template, uh,

They bring all the districts in and they cover the same material. But they didn't. They customized the briefing to meet our specific needs. And I walked away as a real fan, a fanboy of Apple because of that. I was very, very impressed with that approach. And I know I sound like a fanboy. I've been up to the various campuses over the years and talked to them. But I really believe...

They do seem to hire people that are very mindful of the product and the service. And when you talk to them, they're very laser focused on that. And it just maybe it's the company culture. It's the people they hired. But that is it's impressive the way so many Apple people I've met have such laser focus on the product.

And by the way, David, I think you'll find this fascinating. So when we, I can't remember if it was the first or second trip, but I think it was the second trip because it was the new campus. Yeah. I believe I'm right. Steve Jobs had died maybe two or three days prior to our arrival there.

And throughout the campus, there were these huge banners of his image, but also some of the quotes from Steve Jobs. Yeah. It was a sobering time, but also a very fascinating time to arrive on campus then, after his untimely death. Yeah, and that was probably pretty soon after they opened that building, too. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think Steve Jobs was really good, and he's the reason Apple did...

became the company it is but i do like to resist the you know the kind of the deification of him that apple does sometimes i think you know the company needs to evolve and continue to evolve you can't get hung up on it you know kind of the walt disney problem and i do think they've managed that pretty well but yeah you can definitely feel his presence in the apple culture yeah

What did you think of that building? So not many people on our show have actually been there. Oh, it is. Of course they were pretty restrictive about where we got to go, but you know, they took us on the inner inside with the gardens and the walkway and the fountains and all that. And then we had access to a couple of key. Oh, I wouldn't say key, but,

corridors and offices and things like that. It was very impressive, David. This sounds silly, but one of the things I noticed was when we first arrived, we had some baggage with us or bags with us, and they took us to basically a walk-in closet. And I'm telling you, David, there wasn't a speck of dust anywhere. I mean, that place is absolutely immaculate.

But then we walk into a big conference room and they have these glass paneled marker boards that are both electronic and pure glass at the same time where you can mark on them but also do other things. It was just a very impressive setup in terms of the actual facility. That is, again, like it's the attention to detail that is so impressive there. I mean, every…

Like, I don't know. I've talked about it. I'm not going to go over it again. But like everything from the latch on the bathroom door to the railings to just it was a very mindfully created building. Yeah. It's all inspiring in its own way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, either way. So you got started and then you've kind of moved your love of Apple technology into some of the education stuff you do. And we're going to talk about that. But what Apple gear are you using these days? Oh, well, I'm blessed to be able to have one. I have an M1 MacBook Pro, which I think is just a fantastic machine. The little one or the big one? 14 inch. Okay. Yeah, 14 inch.

And then I have the M4 iPad Pro. I have an iPhone 13 Pro Max. I'll probably not upgrade until the iPhone 17 comes out, so I should be able to nurse it along for one more year. And I have an Ultra Watch 2 and more HomePods and HomePod Minis than should be allowed in the home. You and me both. You know, the M1 MacBook Pro. So that was the original Apple Silicon MacBook Pro.

Now we're hearing rumors, probably, if not by the time this episode airs and within a couple of weeks, we're going to get the announcements for the M4 MacBook Pros. Are you feeling itchy at all to upgrade or is the M1 taking care of you? I'm probably, again, going to wait until the next cycle of these. Part of that is because Apple was just at the very nascent

or phase of rolling out Apple intelligence. So the M4 iPad will handle that all great. And I know the M1 will handle it as well. The iPhone will not. So I'll probably just upgrade the phone and the MacBook Pro pretty much at the same time. So I'll probably wait another 10 to 12 months. Yeah, I'm getting a lot of questions about that now, people, because there are a lot of folks like you. They got in early on Apple Silicon. They're like, well, now there's the M4. Maybe it's time for me to upgrade. And my advice is,

Look at what you're doing and if your existing technology is holding you back. I think with Intel computers right now, if you still got an Intel Mac, they are holding you back to a degree. Some of the new features aren't coming to them. They're hotter and slower. So if you can update to an Apple Silicon, you're going to appreciate it. I'm not sure that's true for everybody that owns an M1 though.

It just depends what you do. There are definitely use cases for which the performance improvements of M4 are going to justify an upgrade, but not everybody. I think for a lot of folks, the M1 will get you several more years. Yeah, I'm not a developer, and I don't create videos or things of that nature, so the M1...

It could probably last me another three or four years if I wanted it to. Yeah. So I think I'm good for my purposes. I feel that way because I have an M2 studio, and I'm thinking, when will I think about upgrading this? Maybe M6, maybe M8. But I hate to say it publicly because I also have another side of me that always wants the latest Mac. Hey, David, frequent listeners of MPU would never hold you to not purchasing new hardware.

There you go. Well, thank you, Barry. You are free to change anytime you like. That's the affirmation that I desire. There you go. I'm an enabler at heart. There you go. But you did upgrade your iPad. So you've got the new M4 iPad. What do you think of it?

It's a fantastic machine. You know, the thing that impresses me the most, I mean, the prior iPad was perfectly suitable in terms of actually doing my work. The thing that stands out for me on the M4 iPad is the beautiful screen. And in fact, one of the reasons why I like to use it as much as I do is because even in comparison to the MacBook Pro I have, the screen is just amazing.

phenomenal. I'm hoping that the new Macs, when they do come out, will have a similar screen because the screen resolution, the blackness of black, et cetera, is over and above what the MacBook is on the iPad. Yeah, they are really crushing it with those screens and the iPad Pro and honestly the MacBook Pros as well. So I think

That'll be true. Now, what kind of iPad user are you? Are you a guy who watches movies and does content consumption, or do you try to do work on it? What's your iPad Mac mix like?

Yeah, I actually do a good bit of work on the iPad. A lot of what I do is writing focused. And I find that with the exception of working on a book, which we can talk about later if you want. But except for that, I find the iPad to be an ideal device for focused writing. And so I use it a lot for that. I also use it for most of my reading. I've got a very extensive library at home of hardback books. But in the last...

8 to 10 years, almost everything I've purchased has been digital. And so I do a lot of reading with that. And I do a lot of annotation of PDFs and other research articles and things like that on the iPad as well. The Mac I use, like if I want to use Scrivener for a book, it's better for that purpose.

I use it for file management, things that the iPad can do but not do as well. And there are certain programs that just don't run on the iPad, for example. And I'm a very minimal, limited user of keyboard maestro, but I do use it some. Sure. And, of course, that only works on the Mac. So I almost use the Mac as a utility player in many respects.

and use the iPad as my primary device because of my focus on writing, giving presentations, things like that. If I have to work on a more complex Excel spreadsheet, obviously I'll do that on the Mac. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's the truck and car analogy kind of brought to life. Do you, because I would assume in your role, you walk around a lot at the school. Do you like carry the iPad around with you or is it just, do you pick it up when you work it?

Oh, no, I carry it too. I use it mostly, almost exclusively for meetings. I find a laptop to be a little more, for lack of a better word, distancing or putting a barrier between you and other people during a meeting. Yeah, absolutely.

Even the iPad with a keyboard seems less so, but I typically try to take handwritten notes, well, digital notes, I guess, using the pencil on the iPad. And that way, even though if I used a laptop, I would not be multitasking. I would be focused on the meeting, partly because I'm leading them. But

People don't know if you're checking email or something else. And so having the iPad on my lap, taking notes with Apple pencil, pencil, pencil shows my, my focus on the meeting. And I think that's a good thing for a leader to be able to demonstrate. I absolutely agree. The laptop is a wall in the meeting and the other person doesn't know if you're goofing off on Facebook or Facebook.

you know, playing angry birds or whatever, as you do on a laptop, as opposed to paying attention. And, you know, there's a piece of news on this that we haven't really covered much yet, but artificial intelligence for all its, you know, complications, it is incredibly good at optical character recognition. That's the reason Apple has been putting in this feature where you can handwrite and it translates it live for you right in on device. And,

Um, but even if you have handwriting that is indecipherable by Apple, other artificial intelligence is good at that. And I've talked about that recently in the max Berkey labs. Cause I write in block text, you know, where you, um, like architect style, I guess you'd call it. Hmm.

And no OCR engine has ever been up to my handwriting. It just never worked. And just for giggles, I threw some stuff at ChatGPT and it got it like 100% right. Oh, wow. And I think that...

Apple is not far behind. So I think we're going to increasingly see that optical character recognition or the ability to sit in a meeting and handwrite no matter what your handwriting looks like and get text out of it. So that's even more reason to carry an iPad around for stuff like that. Yeah, and I'll also add, David, I think even though my practice now is to come back and then type up

The parts of the notes, there's certain advantage to doing that, I think. And it forces me to kind of consolidate what's really important and ignore everything else. I have the written notes for backup, but it does, I think, help me to curate, I guess, my notes to really the important stuff. This episode of the Mac Power Users is brought to you by 1Password. Go to 1password.com slash MPU to get 20% off your plan.

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Barry, I love the idea of productivity stacks. We talk about it all the time on Mac Power Users. And I know from reading your posts in the forums that you have given a lot of thought and done a lot of testing to figure out the tools you use to get your work done. So I thought it'd be fun to go through a few of them. And one we were talking about on the phone before we started recording was your increasing love of AI Writer. Tell us about that.

Yes, so I can be like every Mac Power user, I suppose, and get caught up in the rabbit holes of jumping down different apps. And I've certainly done that when it's come to writing and note-taking apps in particular. But just most recently, I've started using iA Writer almost exclusively for my writing.

One of the big things just recently that IA Writer changed, which made a big difference for my writing workflow, was they add organizational features within the IA Writer library itself. So I did not have to depend upon the finder in order to organize all of the files within IA Writer.

That made a huge difference. And so what I basically do at this point is I might use MindNode to map out ideas for an article, presentation, whatever it might be. Then I will export it as Markdown directly into IA Writer. I will then finish up the writing, the drafting of it in IA Writer. And it will remain there if my only purpose is maybe to post it on the blog or

Or if I'm using those notes for a presentation, I can do it directly from the iPad with no other work being done. However, if it's to become a bit more of a formal report, let's say to my board or a financial assessment or something of that nature, I will then export it as a Word document, open it up in Pages, and then finish it up there. So for all book writing at this point, IA Writer is my go-to app for those purposes.

You know, it really has evolved so much. I mean, when IA Writer first showed up, it was just a pretty text editor. That was kind of my initial take on it. But the developers have really kind of focused in on...

Writing tools, I guess if that's the right word in terms of just like just for getting that cursor moving. They've added a lot of features over the last several years that that help you out. Like if you import text, it'll gray it so you can see stuff you brought in versus stuff you wrote there. Yeah.

And it gives you a nice contrast. I think that's a really clever feature. This feature you're talking about, a document organization, is brand new. I mean, that just came out in the last month. But it's really well done. And I think that was always kind of a weak spot in IA Writer. And they've got that. And even like the focus mode where it can highlight the sentence you're currently writing.

I think it's pretty cool. Yeah, and I was struggling between IA Writer and Ulysses for a while. The organization feature now with IA Writer was one factor that caused me to change. The other was I figured out that this is not an issue on the Mac, but on the iPad in IA Writer, you can't open up two incidences of it. And so one of the problems for a longer article is you can lose the flow or the structure if you have multiple links.

which I tend to have. But I realized that all I needed to do was use an app like iWriter, for example, open it up next to it, and then just have it show the preview for the outline purposes using their code block, but doing the writing actually in iA Writer. That worked well.

The other thing, David, that I think is really cool is I have indexed my IA writer folders and documents in Devonthink. And so if I need to or want to, I can go to Devonthink, access all of those. And then because Devonthink has such...

robust conversion features and ability. I can convert almost anything in IA Writer to almost any other file format that I want. And so in some ways, I have the best of all worlds by combining IA Writer along with Dev & Think. It works beautifully together. Yeah, and you can even have Dev & Think open text files in IA Writer. So it just works kind of seamlessly. Yeah.

Yeah. Dev and Think is such a great resource for any sort of external file, whether it be text, PDF or whatever. I don't know. Have you played much with the Dev and Think PDF tools? They've actually improved that over the last year.

I have, and I've tried to use them some. I still find, at least on the iPad, which is where I'm going to do most of that kind of work, annotations, to still be a little clunky with Devin Think's mobile app. So I actually prefer PDF Expert for those purposes. Yeah. I was going to ask, because I'm sure you read a lot of PDFs. Yes. PDF Expert is very popular. A lot of people like that application. Yeah.

So Barrett, you had mentioned earlier that a lot of times your ideas start in MindNode and you are speaking my language there. I have a full screen MindNode open most days. And tell us a little bit about how you go about using it.

Well, you know, you've probably read some of my material where I really try to avoid subscriptions, and I've avoided most of them. However, I did try SimpleMind Pro as a replacement, and it's a great app. It's actually got more features than MindNode, but it does not export to Markdown. And so that is the reason I decided to go ahead and pay the subscription for MindNode. I use it...

In ways, David, that you've described in the past where I'll start with a couple topics or branches on a map. I'll come back to it another day and add some more. And I just sort of gnaw on it over multiple days. And I find that I do better work if I do that.

And what I like about MindNote is not only can you see it in a mind map format, but you can change it immediately to an outline format at the same time. So if you want to look at it linearly, you can do that. And so that's how I typically use it. And I'll add some key notes into the note fields that it provides.

And then once I'm more or less satisfied with the overall structure of whatever it is I'm working on, that's when I will go ahead and export it to a writer, then finish up the work at that point. Yeah. It's so beneficial. I, I, we made an episode on this, I'm at power years. I think it's gotta be like 10 years old now called cooking ideas. And yes, people ask me to do an update on that. And it's, I think about it, but,

I haven't really changed my workflow at all the whole time. I mean, when I did the show, I explained, I opened a mind node, I go into it every day or two. And then like my subconscious mind has come up with ideas and solutions for

And so, you know, the trick is you got to start early. Like you've got to have enough time to let it cook, you know, simmer almost over time. So at the end of the process, you've got this great like basis, whether you're going to write or dictate or go and do whatever with it.

And I use the same app, the same workflow, and it still works. And I'm glad you're doing that. Yeah, I'd use another analogy because I lived on a farm for eight years. I call it kind of chewing the cud like a cow does. And you just keep chewing until it's completely refined. And so that's kind of how I use my node. Chewing the cud. So is the cud like the grass? Yes.

Yes. Okay. Gotcha. So just keep chomping on it until I'm done. Yeah. All right. Were you a dairy farmer or what kind of farm? No, but when my dad retired from the Air Force, we moved to a large farm for about eight years. And so I was on the farm during that period of time and I raised beef cattle to help pay for college. And so, yeah, I loved the farm as well. And I've done everything on farming, just about everything on farming. So, yeah. Just one more skill set, Barrett. Why not? Yeah.

Yeah, I've told some ornery students that I've castrated bulls, so don't mess with me. Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to tell it. I'm sure that got around, too. Yes, I'm sure. Be careful, Dr. Berry. Yeah, I grew up really near Chino, California, which when I was growing up was the dairy farming center of Southern California. And boy, on certain days that the wind was blowing, right, you knew it.

Yes. So we got MindNode to mark down to IA Writer. You're doing all the nerd things there. But you also had told me you use OmniOutliner. And now that MindNode has the outline feature built into it, I'm curious where you draw those lines between something like MindNode and OmniOutliner.

I used to use Omnia Outliner a lot more than I do now. I will on occasion, if I really need linear thinking and I have to have multiple levels of headings, then I do find Omnia Outliner a little more conducive for that purpose.

Having said that, it doesn't export as seamlessly to things like IA Writer as my node. So the majority of what I do is my node. Omni Outliner would be my backup if I really have to go deep into the structure of something. Yeah, and I'd add to that, it's very good for sharing with other people who won't be working on the document as PDF because they're very pretty outlines. If you want to share an outline with somebody, that's a great source for it.

You are, we talk about notes often, and we've had this revolution in notes, you know, as complex as Obsidian, as simple as Apple Notes. We did a whole show recently on NotePlan. You have landed on Apple Notes, and I know that wasn't just a shot in the dark for you. You took some time to figure this out. Tell us how you're using Apple Notes.

Yeah, so like most or at least like many on Mac Power users, I've worked with for some time with Obsidian. I've tried NotePlan, a number of other note apps.

And I settled on Apple Notes for a couple of reasons. First off, I do tend to be an app minimalist in the sense that I try to keep my app stack relatively limited. It's less overhead for me to manage in the process, less expensive too. But Apple Notes has really been at the forefront of Apple's development, I think, of its own default apps. And they have done a great job. And so recent changes, including headings and the hyperlinks to other notes, etc.,

And it's so deeply integrated into Apple's ecosystem that it just works seamlessly with very little friction. And the fact that I can import all of my Apple Notes directly into Dev & Think as markdown files or plain text files, I'm not worried about lock-in. So Dev & Think removes that concern that someone might have with Apple Notes in that regard.

But the thing that I really enjoy using it now for is I've created a map of content within Apple Notes, what I call a quick reference map of content.

And I have headings within that that I can collapse as needed. And then those under each one of those headings, there are links to really important documents that I want to be able to find quickly without having to go to Spotlight or anything else. And it's and I'm able to stay within the single app in order to do that. And if I'm in a call, let's say, for example, this morning, I had a Zoom call with the executive committee of the board.

I'm able to quickly access almost anything. In fact, some board members are pretty amazed because they're trying to find their stuff, and I found it within like 10, 15 seconds because of the way the system is set up.

The other thing I like about it is I can use the pencil when I want to. I can use it on the iPad. I can use it on my other devices. I can embed all kinds of documents and images into it. And so it's just an easy way to manage the notes that I have. And it works very well for me and for my purposes. Yeah, there's a bias against Apple Notes that goes back because Apple

The technology they used to sync notes years ago was bad. You know, they used an email technology, which didn't make any sense. But if that's your concern, don't worry about it. I mean, they have fixed it. It's got a rock solid sync engine behind it. So it really does work. I mean, like, have you ever had any data loss with Apple Notes, Barrett?

Maybe a year or so ago, I had some problems with a couple things weren't syncing. And so I'd have a certain number of notes showing up on my iPad, but the same number wasn't showing up on the Mac.

But that has been resolved, and ever since then, I've not had a single problem, and the sync is nearly instant. So it's just not been a problem at all. Now, I have not tried this yet, but the new feature is I believe you can record and transcribe notes and things during meetings. I've not tried that, but I'm looking forward to trying that as well. I mean, it works. I mean, it's not as good.

as some of the custom notes apps that like will allow you to play back the recording and sync with what you were writing. Like, you know, there, there are applications like while you're taking the note. Yeah. Like notability. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not as good as that, but it is kind of a ubiquitous application that shows up everywhere. Syncs. Well, it's, you know, backed by a trillion dollar company. It's not their most important project, but they're not going to walk away from it anytime soon either. Yeah.

You were talking about maps of content and how you hyperlink out. And so the idea for folks who those are foreign terms to it, it's like you can have like a home document and say, you know, budget meeting or, you know, a list of different things that are on your plate as the head of school and,

And then you just create a link to individual notes that address that. So you can tap the links and go to them. Now, in applications like Obsidian and NotePlan, they automatically create them backlinks because you've linked that note, then it gives you the ability to go back to the source note. Apple Notes doesn't do that as of this recording. Hopefully that's on their list. But you can also manually create those backlinks. Is that what you do?

No, actually two things, David. One, I do hope, I, I, I do not understand why it doesn't have the automatic backlinks. It seems like that's such low hanging fruit, but, uh, no, uh, there's a keyboard shortcut where if you go to a note, you can quickly go immediately back. You don't have to try to find it, but I just find it, you know, the option command F and then just start typing in a couple letters will immediately take you to whatever note you need. So it's really not that important, uh,

I don't try to create a separate one. That's a lot of couple of extra steps that I've not found to be needed for my purposes, at least. But you do have like a source page or you don't use, use the, the fine command. Oh yeah. I'll use the fine command. But if I, for example, if I'm on the, the map of content, the source page in the sense that here's, you know, all of my documents. And then I click on one of the links that takes me to that particular note. If I hit command option and the left bracket, uh,

it automatically takes me back to where I was, that source page or whatever note it was. And I find that pretty quick and easy. But if I've gone beyond that point, you can still keep hitting that button if you want to. I mean, the keyboard shortcut and two or three times to get back where you were. But what I just do, command find, and then just search immediately what I want.

It takes half a second, a second maybe. And another way to solve that would be because Notes has the ability to pin a note, just pin your maps of content, and then you can always get back to them through the interface very quickly. So there's a lot of ways to do it. It's not as good. Every time this comes up, people write me. They say, yeah, I'd like to do that, but no backlinks. But honestly, I guess it depends how complex your system is, but for most folk,

it's okay. And backlinks would be nice, but it's okay. Yeah, I've just found that, again, everyone's mileage will vary on this, but for the workflow that I have, I gain more from the deep integration with an Apple's ecosystem than the minor areas of friction and I wish I could kind of issues than if I was using a third-party app because they have their own friction points as well. Exactly.

Okay, one last app on your key software, Freeform. I am very interested to hear what people are doing with Freeform, especially someone like you who has already invested in things like MindNode and OmniOutliner. Where does Freeform fit in the mix for you?

I create diagrams or illustrations that I then end up putting in Keynote or Pages document or something. I recognize I could do those kind of diagrams using Pages. I can do them using Keynote. But I find that Freeform works better partly because it's an unlimited canvas. And so I can spread things out. I can make multiple versions all in the same place.

combine things, move things, connect things. I just find it tremendously effective. So rather than going to my communications department here in the marketing department saying, I'd like a diagram to illustrate X, Y, Z,

I'm actually getting to the point where I don't want it to be quite so fancy and I'll do it more, almost look more hand-drawn in a way and then group it all together, copy it and paste it into a keynote. And it almost seems more personal somehow than a completely slick one. Now, there are times when I want those for a keynote at a conference or something, but for staff and things, I just find that to be a very fluid way to do it. And I enjoy doing it on the iPad in particular with the Apple Pencil.

Yeah. That's where you want the big iPad. I didn't ask, are you using the big one or the little one? Yeah. The big one. Okay. Yeah. That that's where it really helps. Yeah. I feel like free form is making slow progress. It's, it's definitely not as powerful as some of the online tools like Miro, but it's,

It's if you're in the Apple ecosystem, it's just there and it still is plenty powerful. And like you, I am continuing to experiment with it, but I haven't exactly figured out like part of me wants to make it more of a team tool where I build up free forms for all the workflows we do and then everybody can access them.

I mean, I feel like there's more to do with it. I'm a little disappointed, frankly, with the Vision Pro freeform implementation. I feel like there could have been more there. And I'm still trying to figure that one out myself.

Did you ever try Vision Pro? I forgot that. I guess we need to add that to our gear list. No, I've got an Apple Star not far from me, and I could certainly go. Honestly, David, I think Vision Pro will get there, and I think it probably is in some form, augmented reality, virtual reality, those sorts of things will be the future in many respects for much of, or if not much, at least a lot of computing companies.

but in his current state, it's just not an interest of mine. I just don't have a keen interest in strapping something that big to my head, uh, to work. And it's too expensive for me to justify with reference to watching movies. Um, I know a lot of people use it for that purpose, but that's an expensive movie theater, uh, to have. And so for my purposes at this time, it's not something I've really looked into much. Uh,

That may change in the future when it's maybe a little lighter and maybe there's more apps that are actually developed for it on a productivity basis. But for now, I'm just sort of holding back, kind of put it on the back burner. Well, let the record reflect, you said, at this time. Yes, I'm definitely going to caveat it. Have you at least gone into the store to just do the demo, though? I have not. Barrett, what's going on? I know.

We might have to take your nerd card away from you. Because I don't trust myself, David. I don't trust myself. I'm likely to go to the Apple store, be so impressed that I purchase it, go home, and try to figure out how I'm going to explain this to my wife. I just spent $4,000. Yeah, you go to the store, but you tell your wife, go get coffee, and you give her your wallet. And then you just go in without any ability to buy one.

David, I bought a new BMW one time without asking my wife. That was not a good move. And so I'm not going to go and buy a Vision Pro. Okay. All right. Well, next time we have you back, we're going to hear all about your Vision Pro. I can feel it in my bones. All right.

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Barrett, one of the things that you told me that was very interesting to me was you were one of the leaders in one-to-one programs in education. Yes. I don't believe I was, I'm certain I was not the first, but I was among the first number of schools that probably implemented a comprehensive one-to-one program. I did so, I believe it was in the early 90s. And at that time, there weren't

iPads and things of that nature and laptops were big and heavy but we implemented a one-to-one program with Toshiba laptops and and I've done I've implemented a total of three one-to-one programs at this point and I've done quite a bit of national international consulting regarding effective one-to-one programs so what were the reasons you did it and how did it work out

Yes. So there are multiple reasons why I did it. One of them is that technology is ubiquitous in all of our lives, and that is particularly true of our students. And it will only become more so, particularly when you consider things like augmented reality, AI, etc. We swim in an ocean of technology.

So I believe ethically, I'm not imposing this on anyone else, but for me personally, I feel an ethical responsibility to come alongside of our students and help them to use that technology well and responsibly in a way that is healthy for themselves and prepares them for both college and career. I would feel...

irresponsible not to. Now, you don't have to do a one-to-one program to do that, but restricting technology to their phones and or computer labs is not the way the world works. And I feel that it's important we come alongside of our students and help them to figure that out so they are

healthy, effective users of that technology. Yeah, that it's going to be essential in the future for certain. The focus in Silicon Valley is not necessarily to teach people how to safely compute, but to sell advertising. And let's put a pin in that one and come back to it. But just when you start doing these one-to-one programs, what were the lessons you learned generally? And well, let's start there. I mean, what,

What made sense and what didn't as you started putting these plans into effect?

Well, let me just say this. There are wonderful exceptions to what I'm about to say, but I think it's accurate for me to say, based on my travels across the country and elsewhere, is that most schools, public and private, do a very poor job of implementing one-to-one programs. And that's part of the reason why it sometimes gets a bad rap, because that bad rap is deserved, because they have not implemented it well.

In all too many instances, technology is implemented in the classroom and the schools because it's part of a marketing or PR effort, or somehow they feel like they're compelled to do it, they ought to do it. But they start usually with the hardware and the infrastructure and the apps, and that is the last place to start.

To do this well, you've got to answer the question, why are you doing it to start with? How does it align with your mission? What are your academic goals specifically for the technology? What are you trying to accomplish pedagogically through it?

And so you ask the why questions and then the how questions and you start again with the pedagogy, the software and the applications. And then and only then once you've addressed mission, academic goals, the way you're going to teach and then you choose the applications to help you accomplish those things.

then that determines the hardware selection and your infrastructure design. And so that's the biggest lesson, one that I learned, but also that I try to convey to other school leaders as well, that you don't be careful not to start backwards with the process and be very clear-eyed about what you want the technology to do and what it cannot and should not do as well. What are the big advantages when done right?

Oh, there are several. I could give so many examples. Everybody's done well. Let me just say that I had an early exposure to Apple's AR because when I went to their, it was their new campus. When I went to the briefing, they demoed their initial foray into AR and they did it.

I'm using the human anatomy and creating almost like a hologram effect where you could dive into the human body and go deeper, deeper, deeper, all the way down to the cellular level in this 3D type of navigatable image.

And so I realized for our students, if they're able to do that sort of thing, they could do it with geometric shapes in advanced mathematics. They could do it in human anatomy, etc.,

their level of comprehending what it was they were studying would skyrocket. It would go well beyond memorizing material and regurgitating that in a paper or on a test to deeper, deeper understanding. They'd probably feel more real to them as well, right? Oh, absolutely. Well, it's not only more real and not only does it deepen their understanding, but kids like technology. And so they're more engaged with it if it's done properly, right?

So that would be just one example of it. We're about to start an entire aviation academy here. We have a B-2 stealth bomber pilot who's heading up that program along with Boeing engineers and several others. We'll have simulators built into how we work this virtually.

And they'll learn aeronautics, physics, mathematics, et cetera. They'll go to the airport. They'll be able to take certain courses and become certified pilots, potentially by the time they're a senior in high school or soon after graduating. So again, this technology allows us to do things that would not be possible any other way.

Barrett, you're making me want to go to your school. Come on. Tuition's not bad. You know, something from the outside looking in, it looks to me like Apple is missing the boat a bit on education. Because I remember when I was a kid, Apple IIs were in every school. That was kind of the thing.

And we had like one in the school, but if you were nerdy enough and, you know, please the right teachers, you could get in and program on it. And it seems like Apple and education were so closely tied, whereas modern Apple seems like they're not as interested in that. And Google has done such a good job of taking that space from someone on the inside. How is Apple doing on education?

They're doing okay. I'd give them a C plus. Well, let me back up in terms of their support, in terms of the way they drive forward, in terms of cost side of things, I'd give them about a C or a C plus in terms of hardware, you know,

software, reliability, those sorts of things, I'd give them an A. There are a lot of reasons why we chose Apple for educational purposes. I can share a couple of those if you like. So I agree with you. Now, part of it, it's understandable, David, in part because Apple wants a certain margin on their product.

And public schools in particular, but even private schools, are very cost sensitive. And there's a tendency to default to the least expensive option, which almost always, there are exceptions, but almost always for many schools will tend to be a Google product, a Google services, Chromebooks, those sorts of things. I don't think that's the best return on investment option.

educationally, ultimately. But I do think that that's a, Apple doesn't want to be driven to the lowest price leader in this process. And I think that's probably one of the challenges they face.

Yeah. And, you know, he said almost always Google, and I would add, and almost never Apple. Yes, very seldom. And that is hard. We've chosen to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars almost on an annual to semi-annual basis for our technology because we do believe there's a high return educationally for doing so. Yeah. Yeah.

We don't need to preach to the choir here, but Apple tech usually doesn't need the maintenance that the other stuff does, and it usually lasts longer and all that. Well, there's another reason too, David, in that if I use Windows or I use Google, I'm restricted to one or two platforms in terms of software applications. Interestingly enough, if I use Apple, I get Apple, Microsoft, and Google all that I can use on my devices. And so I have...

the best of everything available to faculty and staff and students as needed. So I want to talk to you about the idea of technology in education as a distraction machine. I mean, there's a, there's a big book out now, the anxious generation. I recommend it to any parents or teachers out there. I think there's a lot of good science in there and a lot of good information. In fact, I've bought like four copies of it cause I keep giving it away to people. And yeah,

that we're finally starting to publicly acknowledge the downside of social media on children and girls. We're seeing an increase in suicide rates, especially younger girls. And with boys, we're seeing this kind of failure to launch crisis happen. And a lot of it is attributable to some of the technology and particularly social media.

As an educator, how are you guys dealing with that, and what's your thoughts on it? Yeah, so I've also read The Anxious Generation. In fact, much of our staff have actually read it, and we've conducted internal seminars on the book as well.

I've got a couple of thoughts. First off, I think the biggest culprit is not school technology. The biggest culprit are iPhones, any kind of phone, and social media. And so I think we have to distinguish screen time. There is good screen time, and then there's detrimental screen time.

And so what we have chosen as a school was before we launched, there's a whole systematic way in which we approach launching one-to-one programs and technology, which is a two- to three-year process. It's not a nine-month process. But aside from that, so what we have done is we own all of the hardware and all of the applications.

And so there is nothing on the student iPads that is not educationally relevant. They can't add things to the iPad. They can't delete things from the iPad. Everything on that iPad is related to the coursework and or productivity apps, such as calendars, note-taking apps, those sorts of things. And so that's one reason why we do not advocate a bring-your-own-device approach. The

The second thing is we do not allow cell phones during the school day at all. So those are off. And then during the course of the school day, we do allow them during breaks, for example. But we have...

Phone-free harbors is what we call them. So you can't have phones in the school's cafe over lunch. We want you to talk. We want you to build relationships with people, not be staring at your phone. They obviously can't have them in a chapel services and things of that nature. So we're very strict in regarding the phones, but very liberal in a good sense with reference to the use of technology that works.

we have deployed within the context of classrooms and for the purpose of learning. I hope that makes sense. No, it makes perfect sense. And I think...

I think the world is waking up to that. You know, I think that that is the safe and smart approach. I mean, I've told the story before. My daughter is a high school teacher and I had been preaching about the ills of social media for their entire childhood. So like, I would not let her get a Facebook account. She was like the only kid in her school. I didn't have a face. Good for you. And when she started teaching,

She came, I called her after her first day in high school and I said, how's it going? She's like, oh, it's going great. But dad, these phones are a real problem. I just laughed because it just took her one day to realize it. We just passed a law in California. It's not in full effect yet, but as I understand it, they're going to be putting phone lockers in all the high schools in California. And when you show up to school, your phone gets locked up and you get it back when you go home. And,

I told my daughter about it and she's like, they can't, they can't do it soon enough. But, but her rule is she has a, like a shoe thing in her classroom. And when you walk in, you put your phone in the shoe thing. And then when you, when you walk out, you can get it back. But she teaches art. She's not teaching like a hard science, but even then she said, they just can't help themselves with the social media platforms. So I I'm really relieved to see that this book is taking off and laws are getting passed. I think,

you know, technology is a great thing if we use it right. That's the whole reason I do this, because I feel like if we master the technology in a way where it serves us and we're not serving the algorithms, we can make our lives better, but you got to be smart about it. And, and when you're 14 years old, you really don't have that ability.

Hey, I know 40 years old that aren't that smart about it. Yeah, true. The point you're making, David, is absolutely essential. I have a phrase that I use that technology is,

has its place, but must be kept in its place. And too often we allow the technology to interfere with our conversation. I mean, I go to restaurants and I see husbands and wives sitting at the table and they're staring at their phones. They're not staring at each other. And I just find that profoundly sad.

Yeah. When I see that. Yeah. No, I see it all the time. We, you know, my wife works for Disneyland. So we, and we are fans, you know, a lot of people who work for Disneyland never go there. That's kind of an interesting thing, but, but we go probably weekly. It's our, like our Saturday night date. We leave the kids, uh,

The two of us go and we have dinner together and it's a very enjoyable night. And we were walking down main street of Disneyland. I mean, Disneyland, how many people in the world would love to go to Disneyland at this moment? Right. So we're walking down main street and we see this family and they're pushing strollers, mom and dad pushing two strollers. And in both strollers is a kid, you know, I don't know, between three and six between the two of them. And they're both looking at iPads as they're pushed down the

I mean, Main Street USA, there's a castle at the end of the street. How could you monitor that? And I'm thinking, shame on those parents. These kids need to experience the world. You're spending all this money to get them here, and they're going to be looking at an iPad?

Goodness gracious. I'm surprised they weren't looking at their phones as they were pushing the stores. I know. I don't like to be that guy. Every older generation complains that the younger people aren't getting it right. But sometimes they're right. But sometimes the older generation is right once in a while. I do think that, um,

We'll just read the anxious generation book kind of lays out my, my position on it. I think that when you're young, your brain is particularly susceptible to, to dangers that social media companies are aware of and they're actively engaging there. These are not people that are innocently damaging your kids. These people are knowingly doing it. And, and,

You as a parent, teacher, educator, you need to step in and make sure that you stop that. And I mean, we just had a family gathering over the weekend and a relative asked me, his 14 year old daughter wants on TikTok, what should he do? And I said,

Absolutely not. In the Philippines, Tito is the uncle. I said, tell her it's Tito's fault. There's no 14-year-olds that need to be on social media. Their brain right at that point is completely susceptible to all the worst things that TikTok can do to a person.

Yeah, I agree. And frankly, I think even adults, I'm not saying that adults shouldn't use social media, but I think we need to be very prudent because it can affect us as well. And usually in a pretty negative way. People tend to be much freer with negative, demeaning comments on social media than they would ever be in person. And so I'm not sure it's even healthy in too large a doses for adults as well. Well, you know, it's funny because I get even, I just think the online presence is,

It anonymizes you enough that you feel sometimes entitled to say things that you would never say. And even just email. I get emails sometimes from folks that are unhappy about something I've done. And it depends. If it seems like it was written in rage or hate, I just ignore it. But sometimes if I feel like there was some genuine...

something to the underneath i'll write back and they're always very friendly after you write back you know once they realize oh wait there's a human on the other end yes barrett we always like to finish up a show talking about some of your favorite apps and services i've heard from many listeners this is one of their favorite segments on the guest episodes so let's do that a bit um tell me some of the apps and services that you're digging in on these days

Well, a couple of them we've already mentioned. Obviously, MindNode and IA Writer. But I also use Scrivener extensively for book-level projects. So I like using Scrivener. It's got some unique features I think particularly useful for doing something like books. But I tell you, most recently, in fact, within the last week, David, I discovered something that I'm sure many of our listeners may already be aware of, but those who aren't may find this intriguing, called Notebook LM.

And, um, what it does is you upload a document and then it converts the document into an AI generated podcast between two personalities. And I've got to tell you, it is so good that if I didn't know it was generated by notebook LM, I would think it was a legitimate podcast. Um,

The language, the way that they phrase things sounds extraordinarily human. So I've written an article that I'm going to be sending to our community here in a week or so regarding the election, how we should respond to it. But I'm sending it prior to knowing the results of the election. So for fun, I uploaded this article to Notebook LM and it created a podcast. And I'm considering having the marketing department send it along with my article to

clearly indicating that it's AI-generated from my article because they add things

in terms of commentary to what I wrote that is spot on. And in some cases, say it in a way that's better than maybe what I wrote it. So it's a very interesting tool. And I think it has the potential for great good, but also for great harm. It all depends on how it gets used. But I find it a fascinating service. And right now, it's free.

Yeah. I've had several people send me notebook LM recordings based on like my productivity work and other things. And it is fascinating. It's more verbose and more conversational than the source material.

But, you know, it's a good example of where the AI kind of needle stands at this point. As a podcaster, I don't know how to feel about it, I guess. You know, is this going to ultimately replace me? I don't know. I think people do actually like hearing from other humans. Well, here's where I found it helpful, David. I know I agree with you, and I don't want to be listening to an AI-generated podcast. Here's where I found it interesting, though. By...

Converting it to a podcast conversation format is

I was listening to it while I followed along with my text, and it helped me think in terms of, you know, I could make this phrase or this paragraph more conversational and a little less formal. So it almost served like an auditory editor for me. And I find that to be a fascinating use case. Yeah, I was thinking about it like there are certain things where there just isn't.

like a podcast about this thing. And I was, last time I was in London, I spent three hours in the Parthenon room. I was just fascinated by these 2,400 year old pieces of this building. And like, there are certain parts of it where there's a lot of written information about them, but wouldn't it be nice to sit there and listen to something like a notebook LM narrative and

about the pedestal sculptures as you're looking at them. I think there are uses for this, and it's only going to get better. I mean, that's one of the first rules of AI. Whatever you're using now is the worst it'll ever be. Yes. And it's very interesting to me. Another thing you had just mentioned is using it as a way to kind of critique or check your own work. And I am a huge fan of that with AI. A lot of things I write...

I don't send it to AI to rewrite for me, but I send it to AI to critique it for me. And I find it quite useful for that. I did a thing over the summer. You'll appreciate this in education. I did a bunch of high school and college kids. I took them through the productivity field guide together over the summer. I called it Productivity Summer Camp. And

uh, communicating with them, I was a little intimidated because I'm used to talking to middle-aged folk, you know, that's kind of my audience, love it or leave it. Right. But the, um,

So I was writing these kind of things for their consumption. And I went to AI and said, you're an expert communicator in educating high school and college, you know, young college kids. And this is something that I want to tell them. Tell me where you think I could be more effective in communicating these points. And it came back with some suggestions that I incorporated.

And I think there's something there to a lot of this stuff. It just like we were saying earlier, though, you've got to find the safe space. I'm certainly not. And this isn't just me being a selfish podcaster who doesn't want everybody to leave my show. I, I feel like, you know, at the end of the day,

the best content should come from humans, you know? And humans, what's our point of being on this earth if we're not here to communicate and help each other? And so I think you've got to like approach AI in a way that helps you do that better, not that replaces you in that role.

Yeah, I don't want AI to do my writing, but I do like to use it. I don't want to be a ghostwriter for me, but I do like to use it as a form of an editor. I'll tell you another simple way I've used it I find rather fascinating and helpful is I like to use alliteration whenever I can because I think it helps people retain and remember what it is that you're trying to communicate.

And on occasion, I'll get stuck. Like I'll have two or three of those, but I can't come up with the last word that alliterates properly. And so I'll ask AI, and if I do it two or three times, nine times out of 10, it will actually come up with a word that I had not considered to help me do that. And so there's just these kinds of small use cases that I think AI really contributes to what you're doing without replacing what you're doing. Yeah.

Yeah. Which engines do you use? I use, well, I use ChatGPT 4.0. So I pay for that subscription and I use Perplexity for more of the research kind of side of things. Yeah. Yeah. Those are the two I primarily use. I've backed off Perplexity and a fit of Peak. They were scraping parts of the web that they weren't supposed to be scraping. Yeah.

And that made me mad, but I do miss it. So I don't know what I'm going to do about that. I think most of the tech companies have done some scraping. So I don't know where you get all these lines. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But I do think like if you're listening and you and your feelings about AI are on an extreme where you think it can do everything or you think it's bad. I think the answer is somewhere in the middle and take a look at it.

There's definitely uses for it. And I'm using it increasingly. Like I'm in the midst of finishing up a field guide and I should be able to ship it with multiple language captioning. And that's entirely because of AI.

Yeah, and I think even educationally, we're considering using an LM model and feeding it exclusively our own curriculum, study guides, examinations, that kind of thing, and then working it up to become a tutor for students. So it doesn't replace anything. It doesn't write papers for them, but it helps quiz them and tutor them on more difficult concepts in addition to what the faculty does. And so we want to train our own AI, our own LM to be able to do that.

Yeah. I mean, there are so many things you're seeing education related where, you know, there are kids in parts of the world where they don't have a physics teacher available to them. And then AI can step in and coach them on physics. And I think that is something that I'm, you know, I'm happy to see give more opportunity to more people.

Well, Barrett, I'm so glad you could take some time to share some of your wisdom with us today. Thank you for coming. Oh, David, like I said at the beginning, it's just a tremendous honor. I can't believe you asked me, and I'm honored that you did and humbled by it. So thank you for the opportunity. We are always looking for Mac Power users, and you are certainly one of them. If people want to learn more about you, Barrett, where should they go?

The primary place would be my LinkedIn profile. That's about the only social media I do. I'm not sure I consider MacPower Users Forum as a social media platform, but other than MacPower Users, LinkedIn would be the place to go. I have a blog called The Christian School Journal. That's primarily for school leaders. They can certainly go there.

So those would be the two places that could most readily reach me. Excellent. And we are the MacPowerUsers. You can find us at relay.fm slash MPU. The forum we've been talking about can be found at talk.macpowerusers.com. Go check it out. There's a lot of really nice people there, a lot of really great information. I want to thank our sponsors this week, 1Password and Squarespace.

For more power users, subscribers, stick around. Barrett and I are going to talk about his adventure in writing a book and the related technology. Otherwise, we'll see you next time.