NC_2023_07_16
[0:00] Music.
[0:10] Today is Friday, July 14th, 2023, and this is show number 949.
Well, we are here at Lindsay and Nolan's house because it's Forbes' 7th birthday weekend, so Forbes and Sienna have made their usual appearance for the live show.
Just another one of the reasons you should come to the live show is to see a three-year-old and a seven-year-old take over the microphones. I'm sure you're really glad you missed it.
I mean, sad you missed it.
Anyway, let's see. Next week is Mac Stock, so there will be no live show on July 23rd.
Okay, no live show. I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to get the show out super early on Wednesday of this week or super late on Tuesday of the following week. I'm going to try for Wednesday, but I'm not making any promises. But in any case, there will be no live, no live show while we're in Chicago. We will be live. We just won't be here. We'll be in Chicago enjoying Mac Stock.
So don't look for that next week. Do you have any cables dangling off of your desk or maybe
Magnetic Smartish Cable Wrangler — Pretty and Solves a Real Problem
[1:06] your bedside table or where you watch TV at night? I'm just guessing that you probably do.
These cables are dangling around waiting for when you need them. I'm guessing you've tried a lot of different methods to keep them accessible and not look messy and keep them from falling back behind your desk or your table or your bed. I'm not sure I found the best method, but I found an attractive product that is helping keep my cables accessible on my desk. It's called the Smartish Cable Wrangler.
[1:32] The cable wrangler is a small 3x3x1.25 inch block and it weighs 181 grams or 6.4 ounces if you use freedom units. That doesn't sound like it's very heavy, but since it's very small, that's actually very, very dense. The bottom of the cable wrangler is rubber, so between the density and that grippy bottom, it won't easily move around on your chosen surface.
Now the trick of the cable wrangler is that the top of it is magnetic, And it turns out most cable connectors include metals containing iron, which means they'll stick.
So you simply drape your cables off the table and then bring the connector back up to the cable wrangler and gently set it down and they stick.
[2:12] Now by my description so far, you're probably picturing an ugly magnet sitting on my desk.
Well, the cable wrangler is actually really good looking because it has a woven kind of tweedy fabric cover that comes in boring number two pencil gray, lightly toasted beige, teal me more or I'm blushing. A lovely pink that I chose. The shape is a little harder to describe.
Imagine a pyramid with the top chopped off but chopped off at a gentle slope. So this gentle slope lets the cables dangle at kind of a nice angle. I said that most cable connectors are magnetic. If you have one or two cables that aren't, Smartish includes two little sleeves to attach to your cables that are magnetic so all of your cables can play along. Now all of the All of the cables I've tested so far are magnetic and easily pull off when I need them.
I have a MagSafe connector for my MacBook Air that I keep beside my desk, and that cable sticks really well, in fact, a little too well.
I have to give it a pretty hard tug to pull it off, and the cable wrangler budges a little bit. So I actually put one of the magnetic clip things on it so that I wouldn't use the MagSafe connector to hold it because it was a little too strong.
[3:20] Now the cable wrangler sells for $30 and will easily hold three cables for easy access.
If you need more than three cables or maybe some of yours come with big connectors, Smartish sell the bigger cable wrangler for $40, which looks to be maybe like a third wider than the regular cable wrangler.
I'm really happy with my cable wrangler because it's pretty, it doesn't take up much space, and it holds my cables within easy reach and I know they'll always be there waiting for me.
Check out the cable wrangler and bigger cable wrangler at Smartish.com.
Tech Zebra 3-in–1 Foldable Wireless Charger — by Sandy Foster
[3:52] Hi, this is Sandy Foster. I saw the 3-in-1 foldable wireless charger advertised on the Macworld site a few months ago and I thought it might alleviate a problem. What's the problem to be solved, you ask? It's simply that I'm really tired of having to pack a variety of different cords and plugs, not to mention adapters for foreign lands, when I go anywhere. Add to that the mess of cables on whatever flat surface I can find for charging my iPhone, my Apple Watch, my AirPods Pro, and my iPad. So if I can charge three of those via one cable, it's a win.
The 3-in-1 foldable wireless charger in either black or white isn't exactly cheap, even when it's on sale as it currently is at $45. The normal price is $60.
But I figured it was worth a try.
The single cable is USB-C to the device and USB-A to your own wall plug.
The whole thing folds up into a square approximately 3 inches by 3 inches by 7 eighths inches.
[4:58] Unfolding the device gives three charging areas, including a mag safe for the iPhone, another area for the AirPods, and a center one for the watch. This last one has a built-in plug that can lie flat or be raised so that the nightstand mode can be used on the watch.
One other feature is that it can fold into a pyramid with two sides exposed for a different way to charge and view a device at the same time.
My husband and I recently traveled to Europe and this charger worked as advertised so I'm happy. I didn't actually leave any of my cables behind this time though. I wasn't truly convinced that things would work as planned, so I decided on a belt and suspenders approach and took everything.
However, that won't happen again. I'm already taking some of my cables and plugs out of my travel case. Well that's pretty cool, Sandy. I really like that.
Anything that can eliminate some of all the junk that we have to carry along, that's for sure.
Now, I noticed that Sandy never said the name of the company that makes the 3-in-1 foldable wireless charger, and I figured out why. As she mentioned, she found it on the Macworld website, and you have to read very carefully to find the teeny tiny text that says it's made by a company named Tech Zebra. Well, I looked for a direct link to the Tech Zebra website, but they evidently only sell through third parties. She found it on the Macworld site, so that was the perfect link for her to use in her blog post.
Spurtar Emergency Flashlight Packs a Lot of Capabilities
[6:26] One of the things it's easy to get obsessed with is finding the perfect flashlight.
It's a never-ending game because there isn't a perfect flashlight, and because even if there was, not every flashlight is perfect for all situations.
Even if you do find a perfect flashlight, since you don't need it all the time, invariably at some point you'll go back to it and the batteries will have leaked all over the place and corroded everything and you have to throw it away. That very thing happened to Steve this week, and he went on the hunt for a new perfect emergency flashlight to keep in the car.
[6:56] I'm not sure he found the perfect one, but the one he's found has a lot of capabilities and also shouldn't leak battery fluid into itself. The one he found is called the Spurtar solar-powered flashlight, and he found it on Amazon.
The spur tar is designed as an emergency device to keep in your car.
It has one single button to control all of its functions, and the light performs in three distinctly different ways.
In the primary mode, one press turns on the flashlight, which is a 300 lumen LED, and a second press dims that light.
A third press, and the flashlight goes into a rapid blinking mode.
You could imagine, stranded on the side of the road, that this very bright blinking light might be a good way to catch a driver's attention, that maybe you could use some assistance. If you hold down the button it changes mode.
The spur jar is around eight inches long and less than two inches in diameter, like three and a half inches for the head. The side of the flashlight is an LED light panel.
This long press of the button switches to the light panel and turns it on full blast in white light. Now imagine you're trying to change a tire and you want to make sure you don't lose any of the lug nuts. The light can stand upright and provide a large area of light.
[8:05] Just like the primary light, a second press will make the LED panel dim to around half power.
Unlike the primary light, it doesn't have a blinky white mode.
However, a third long press turns the LED light panel red in one of two blinky modes, fast and slow.
This would be the ideal mode for letting drivers know that you're on the side of the road, maybe you need assistance or at least not be run over while you're changing that tire.
Tire. Now it turns out you don't have to manually cycle through all of these modes one by one to get to the one you want. A two second press and hold cycles from primary light to white LED light to blinking red LED and when you let go you can cycle through the modes within that light.
[8:47] I tried to take some photos of the Spurtar in the LED modes and it was so bright it was blinding me and the blinking red actually made me feel a little bit ill.
I think that's a good enough testament to how bright this emergency light is.
But wait, that's not all the Spurtar light can do. It's got a big pointy metal punch on the side to break the glass in case you're trapped inside your car.
And on the opposite side, it's got a seatbelt cutter.
[9:11] On the tail end, it's got a compass and a tether for the flashlight.
You can unscrew the compass end, and at that point, the spur tower you realize is actually one 2000 milliamp hour rechargeable battery.
So when you remove the compass, you see a micro USB charger connector to recharge the, light. But you also get a USB-A connector to charge smaller devices like phones.
There's a red LED in there too that lights up when you're charging.
Blinking means it's charging, and solid means it's done charging.
The instructions also say that if the LED goes out altogether, that means the spur tower has gone into protection mode and won't operate until you charge it.
Not only is this not going to have leaky batteries, modern cars have USB charging for your devices, so you could actually recharge the light directly from your car.
It's also more environmentally responsible to use a rechargeable light.
They say it'll take like three to four hours to fully charge the spur tower battery using USB.
Now I said earlier that the entire side of the SpurTar flashlight is an LED light panel, but that's not actually true. It's actually three rows of LEDs separated by small monocrystalline silicon solar panels, and all of that is protected by a cylindrical plastic cover.
They say you can recharge the SpurTar with solar power in a snappy 30 to 40 hours.
So maybe not a good emergency solution, but when you're planning ahead, you could just leave it outside for a couple of days to charge it out and use no power at all.
[10:41] Steve and I were originally very confused by the teeny green LED on the solar panel area.
We'd see it on, but then it would go out when we moved the flashlight. Lots of experiments later and we discovered that the light is indicating that it's charging from the sun or even ambient indoor lights. When we were moving it, our hands were covering up the solar panels and that's why the little green light went out. The final trick of the spur tire flashlight is it has a strong neodymium magnet on the side. Their ad says this is so you can stick it to the car while you're, changing that tire. Well, it would have to be a pretty big emergency for me to even consider damaging the finish on my car, but I suppose that could be useful for people who don't care so much.
The only thing the spur tire doesn't do is allow you to focus the primary light by twisting the end ring. The light is a medium wide spray of dimmer light with a very bright center, which is kind of the best compromise they could have done. I also wish it was USB-C instead of micro USB, especially since it says USB-C on the side of the box. Amazon at the time of this writing sell a pair of Spur Tower solar powered flashlights for $28 or 20 bucks for one. If you've, been looking for the perfect emergency light for your car that's versatile and could handle a lot of situations, the spur tower might just meet those needs.
Support the Show
[11:59] Last week during the live show, something awesome happened. Wabbit Magic joined in the fun for the very first time.
Now that's not the awesome part, I mean it was one awesome part, but the other awesome part was that they signed up to become the newest patron of the Podfeed podcast right while we were recording the live show. I mean, come on, that's seriously awesome, right? I learned a second awesome thing from the live audience during the show last week.
Did you know that Patreon now takes Apple Pay?
If you'd like to be awesome like Wabbit Magic, join in the fun of the live show and head over to podfeet.com slash patreon and support and pledge your support for the show.
Marty Jencius on the Pixel Fold (no blog post)
[12:37] Well, I'd like to invite on to the show for the first time someone who is commonly known in our chat room for the Live No Silicast as Drunk Nick Nolte, sometimes Headly Lamar, and sometimes Hulk Smash. So welcome to the show, Marty Gentzius. I just like to keep changing personalities to throw you off in the chat room. Thanks for having me here. This started as a side conversation about, hey, guess what I got, and then you've invited me on to talk about the pixel fold.
Mills Yeah, yeah. Now, I recall, I get the names mixed up, especially since people like you go by four different names and I have to keep track of all of those. But are you the person who said that you don't drink, you don't smoke, and you're wife, and you don't fool around, so your wife's okay if you spend money on everything? Was that.
[13:26] You? Bailey Yeah. Mills Okay.
Bailey Yeah, that's, you know, this is my one vice, and she's been very good about it, she turns her head, and that's great, but everything else is clean, sober, straight, kind of boring life, but the technology piece is where the money goes.
There you go, there you go. Well, we can respect that as a good choice. Now, as silly as I've made you sound, you're actually an associate professor of counselor education, is that correct? Yeah, I have for the last 26 years been training students at the graduate level how to be counselors or how to be faculty to train counselors and have been at Kent State for the last 23 years. Okay. My interest in technology is the that was sort of the thing I started writing about, and so I've been chasing that tiger in terms of our profession and doing different types of initiatives.
So it allows me to spend money and get new toys.
We're all looking for the justification, right? You know, you also create a podcast, is that right?
[14:37] I've done some podcasts in the past. One is I did counselor audio source for a while and then stopped that.
But currently I'm doing Circular Firing Squad, which is questions and answers about life questions and counseling questions to a panel of counselor educators and practicing counselors and we have a lot of fun with it.
And I say it's a direct rip-off of Clockwise, but with more of the academic and counseling background.
Right, right. It's a pretty cool podcast. It's an interesting format and interesting subjects, things I definitely didn't know anything about before I started listening.
Now there was something else I was going to ask you on your background.
Well, let's go back in time just a little bit. You come back from your Punch Card Day person like me?
[15:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was an undergraduate at the time at University of Illinois in Champaign and was volunteering to work in a lab and they had me do punch cards over at the place where they, according to 2001, created hell the computer at the, I forget what, Searle is what we called it.
And so, yeah, I go back to punch card days and Atari computers and writing basic computer or copying basic computer codes and I have been a hobbyist for a long time and then kind of turned it into an academic piece in my field.
And then at some point you turned over to switching to the Mac and you've been an iPhone user for a long time.
So what possessed you to go to an Android phone?
Well, um, I shouldn't say it so sarcastically. Why did that sound fun?
[16:41] You know, and I avoided it for a long time only because I really like the Apple ecosystem.
I switched from a Windows to an Apple ecosystem back in around 2004.
What the motivation was wanting to create, I don't know if you remember these enhanced podcasts. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Because I thought, oh, I can put pictures in this. It can be a learning piece. So I can put my lectures on with slides and students can use it. So I had to make the switch then and did and have been with the Apple ecosystem. The Pixel and Android phone came because I've been working on a grant over the years that brings foreign secondary teachers to the U.S. to spend six to 15 weeks with us at Kent State. And when they get here, we get them Android phones, but I never learned the ecosystem.
So why wouldn't they just bring their phones with them?
[17:48] Well, because the problems with keeping up with everybody, at times some of them didn't have cell phones from where they were coming.
So we tried to get them on the same system in the same unit, and some of them bring their cell phones now, and they still do that.
We still do that, and we use WhatsApp as a communicator, but we're distributing Android phones for them for temporary use, and I didn't know the ecosystem, and so I thought maybe I should start to learn it.
I think it's really fun to play around with. I've bought a couple of Android phones myself.
Unfortunately, as fast as I can buy them and start using them, Google stops supporting the operating system on them, so I have to toss—I have to throw them in the bin or I can't look Bart in the face.
And so, I've got a second one here that I'm afraid to let on the internet, because it's not getting updates. But so, you started with a different phone than the Fold.
You started with a different Android phone?
[18:53] Yeah, I had two phones. I had an iPhone 14 Pro Max, and I decided this is heavy, this is cumbersome.
If I travel to another country, I don't want it stolen or lost.
So I bought an SE. And I thought that would be a phone that I can move around without too much trouble and a separate number for the SE.
And I wasn't using it here.
[19:19] So I got an offer from Google to upgrade or to, they take my old phone and I got a Pixel 7 sometime in April.
And then went through the effort of setting it up, which the first one is always the toughest.
Found that out. And getting used to it took some time to get used to, and then I just couldn't resist the fold when it came out. Not because I was wild about the operating system, but I was really interested in the technology and what it's like. Yeah, so I haven't gotten to the point where I can understand. I am not a visionary. I am the person that you should listen to last on what the the future of technology is.
And I've well established that point. But I look at folding phones and I don't get what problem they solve.
So that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you because you come from my world and maybe you can see something in a folding phone that would apply in my world.
And that's kind of what I'm hoping to learn about.
So the Pixel Fold is a folding phone. Which way does it fold?
Does it fold like an old StarTAC? like folding your fingers down towards your palm, or does it do more like a book?
[20:36] It folds more like a book, however once the book's open, you can flip it on its side and you'll have a little bit different of an operating experience from it.
But it really is, they call it, it's about the size of a passport. So if you want to know, what it feels like if you don't have one, get your passport out and that's it. That is how it is. And it opens up to that size. And again, I was using it in that portrait mode for a long period of time, and then started switching to use it in the, switching it so it's on its side when it's open, and found that it changed some things like in the open portion of the, just opening it like a book, Some of the apps were letterboxed with a lot of space around it.
But as soon as I flipped it, it filled the whole screen.
So if you did it where it would flip, say, fingertips towards palm, we'll call that portrait mode.
If you were in the portrait mode, they would fill the screen.
But if you turned it sideways like a book, that's when it had letterbox on the sides?
[21:47] When you opened it like a book, an app like Twitter, if you wanted to use that, would have a lot of space on the side.
Okay. Thank you.
But if you then turned it so it was more like a clamshell folding phone, it would then fill the whole screen, Okay, and enlarge it. So I guess that makes sense and the developers would have to start writing I know one of the reasons the, iOS works as well as it does across all the different phones and tablets and everything is because Apple has written API's that let things Float appropriately so each developer doesn't have to say, okay I'm gonna write a version for the SE and I'm gonna make one for the seven and one for the eight and one for the 14 Pro Max.
They don't have to do that.
But it sounds like that kind of flexible design or responsive design doesn't maybe exist yet for in Android, at least as it applies to this.
[22:39] What I'm seeing is with the native apps that Google produces, they have that flexibility.
They work really great. They're actually pretty, they are nice looking apps nice oriented apps. Third-party apps haven't got there yet. There are some apps that work really well that are third-party apps like Netflix and Zoom actually works well in that kind of format. So I think either apps are catching up to that. And if you go through Reddit or you search, you'll find lists of third-party apps that work with the Fold.
Oh, okay, okay. So the form factor—and I don't necessarily want to get into the details of whether this is the best folding phone on the market or anything like that. That's, you know, whatever. If there's problems with it, it'll get worked out. That's not—doesn't blow my dress up to argue about, but I'm curious about the usage. So it can open like a book all the way open, and then when you lay it flat on the—would you lay it flat on the table or like would you hold it like a tablet or do you tend to hold it bent so it's more or book-like, or what does it feel like when you're using it?
Um, I have a tendency to uh, 80% of the time 70% of the time i'm using it closed And i'm using that front screen like you would use wait, you would use but you buried the lead. There's a front screen.
[24:04] Oh, yeah. Well, they might not know that No. Yeah. Well good. I mean so imagine the covers of your book. Okay or your passport, on the cover on the back cover there is your were 48 megapixel camera and then telescopic and- Really?
Yeah. There are three cameras on the back of the book.
Okay. They're in a straight line across the- Yeah, they're in a straight line across the bar that's in there.
And the front of the phone when it's closed, your cover of the book has an active screen on it.
So it's all glass on all four surfaces. Well, this is not glass. Oh, sorry.
Okay, the back is not, but the front is and the inside.
And the inside is. Okay. So when you get your phone and you open it up, and you're working with the front cover, the screen that's on the front cover.
[25:07] You're seeing the set of apps that you would normally have on any phone.
In fact, this looks like the same design and layout as what I had on my Pixel 7, because I just copied everything over. When you open it up, it is essentially going two pages deep.
So you don't have an iPhone. By the way, Marty's showing me stuff and I think he's forgetting that people are listening, not seeing, because I'm not recording the video.
So when it's closed, we've got the camera on the back and on the other side, when you first held it up to show me, It had a clock and maybe notifications showing?
Yes. But then you tapped it or something, and then all of a sudden it was an Android phone.
Yeah, I used my fingerprint. There's a fingerprint reader button on the side.
Oh, okay.
And that will then unlock the phone so you get a screen on the front.
Okay, so it's closed, but it looks like a regular Android phone right now.
Correct. But then when you open it, that screen goes dark and all the information switches to the inside.
Yeah, switches to the inside. And what you're getting is on one half of the screen, when it's open, you're getting that home page, and then you're getting essentially the second page that fills up the other side of the screen of your apps.
Okay, so you've got a lot more apps on screen. Does that feel like a tablet to you at that point?
[26:32] Well, you asked what was the problem that this solved for me?
[26:36] The problem that it solved for me was should I use my phone or should I use my tablet?
And it was, I've tried, I've got iPad Pros, I've got, and I've had iPad Minis, and it's like, I'm on my phone, now should I go and get my iPad Mini or should I get my iPad Pro?
[26:56] Opening this phone allows me to jump right to the tablet format if I want to, or what feels like a tablet format.
Okay, so you said 70% of the time you're using it as the phone on the front, but then when you feel the need for the tablet experience, you just flip it open, and you've got your tablet. I flip it open.
You didn't have to go get it. And the time that happens for me, I know you through your stories and telling about how you use your tablet when you're on the couch, or you use this when you're there.
The time for me is at five or six in the morning when I get up and have a cup of coffee, and I want to read the news. Instead of grabbing a tablet, I just take my phone, take the Fold, open it up, and I've got what feels like a mini in terms of a tablet.
And it's basically just more space, not having to change pages and scroll as much and things like that.
Right. Okay. Now, the Fold also has a mode, or maybe this is constantly there from what I understand, you can set it down and now we're in the portrait mode, I guess, is you can bend it so that it sits at an angle.
Does it feel like two screens then in front of you, or is it one screen that's sort of just waterfall flows down the front?
[28:10] Yeah. So listeners could, should imagine what we're describing here is if you took a book and, And you had the binder away from the, the binding away from you and you opened it up like a clamshell.
[28:27] If you're using certain apps, it will give you a keyboard where you can actually use that for that purpose.
And it will sit stable, as stable as you'd expect to do that.
Okay. So the flat part to the table is a little teeny tiny keyboard? Yeah.
It becomes, it becomes a keyboard. And then the part that's up in an angle is the screen?
Is the screen. However, like, so I tried it with Word recently.
And I opened a Word document, and I thought, OK, I want to edit this.
So I put the cursor in the document the way it was. And the document curved around the center of the phone.
And when I went to tap on it, it brought up a keypad from the bottom. The keyboard?
So, a keyboard. So I could then type in and edit the document if I wanted to.
The curvature piece was really kind of weird because you're reading a document around the curve. I didn't expect that I expect it to be kind of separate windows, but it really it curves around, The keypad comes up for only the purposes if you want to edit it. I.
[29:40] Think that would be more pleasing one of the things I don't like about the iPad mini is if you've got it in landscape mode and and you bring up the keyboard, the keyboard takes up about two thirds of the visible screen.
I mean, it's just unusable. You know, I still don't know what people use an iPad mini for.
I can't figure it out. So if you had it in portrait mode, it would be a little bit less, but having that separation of the two would psychologically bother me less, even if it took half of the screen.
But that's interesting that you're saying the words actually came down into the flat part, And then not half of it was the keyboard.
Huh. Yeah, and it was weird to read some of the document that went through the curve, went through the bend.
Was it magnified as it goes through the curve? No, no, unfortunately not.
Isn't that a bit cool?
[30:32] OK, so what do you do you use it in that mode where you set it on the table and watch a video at an angle or something like that?
What do you use it for in that mode?
Well, there's a couple of things that could come up when people are hoping we'll see it with Android 14, I guess, is coming out sometime in August.
One of the things that was promoted with this phone was this thing called automatic translation.
[31:01] Um, where you can speak your language and the person who is, uh, maybe of a different language, you can set it to translate and it will come up with a text translation in their language.
And because of the way it folds, you're able to do that.
They're able to see what you're saying and be sitting across from you in the process.
Um, I'm kind of fascinated with that cause I work with, and we'll be working with international teachers. I haven't watched, I've watched some video on it and I've been surprised of the quality of the video on the internal screen. The audio is a little, it's not the five-speaker iPad audio quality that, you know, that you might get used to with a good dynamic sound that come out of iPads. But this is a smaller form factor, so you could expect that.
I was about to say, well, come on, Marty, it's just a phone, but then again, it's priced at iPad, higher-end iPad pricing, actually, right?
Yeah, yeah. What does a Pixel Fold cost? It's like $1,500 or $1,300?
$1,700 or $1,800, I can't remember.
Okay. And the entryway, I think, is $1,800 for a 256 gigabyte.
Oh, the entry level is $1,800. So you can spend more. Yeah.
[32:25] Yeah, if you go up to half a terabyte, it's, I think, another $100 or $200.
Wow, wow. That doesn't make me- I stop looking at prices after I buy something. I never go back and try to figure out.
[32:39] Which money I've spent on it.
That's funny. I was just looking at the iPad mini I never use, and I didn't realize that that with tip and tax and, uh, and, uh, Apple care, it was just under a thousand dollars.
And I, I did what you did. Apparently I bought it and then went la la la la la.
I don't want to pretend I think about that.
So, uh, do you use, uh, an Android watch? Uh, well, you know, part of the deal, here's what happened.
Um, I got the, I got the pixel seven and my wrist felt naked.
So, you know, shortly thereafter, I went out and got a, a pixel watch and, um, really liked, the integration with it. There are aspects about the watch that I like.
It's not as, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that an, that an Apple watch has, but I don't use all the bells and whistles, but the bells and whistles that I have, I use, uh, on it.
It's, it's lighter in weight, so it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that I have.
On it. It's lighter in weight so it doesn't feel like I'm carrying around shackles on my on my hands.
[33:53] It's a smaller form factor. So there might be some, you know, there might be some challenge in terms of vision. And I started using it with the Pixel 7. Well, the deal with the Fold was you get the Fold, you get a free Pixel watch. I didn't need one. I already had one.
[34:13] And Google wanted to, you know, would be willing to pay for my Pixel 7 phone.
But instead I had a Senegalese doctoral student who's I've known for years working on this project and he, I think he claims that he introduced pixel phones to Senegalese, Senegal, because he loves pixels, and his nephew loves pixels.
And so, his nephew found out I was getting a fold and wanted to sell my seven, so they purchased it and I didn't gouge them any more than Google would have given me back.
But I did share the extra watch with the doctoral student and he's going to use it with his. Oh, that's cool.
So- Since you got it, like it was in a box of Cracker Jacks, you could give him that too.
I'd already paid the dues on the first one. You got to worry when they give them away.
I have a Google Home sitting unplugged on my desk because Bart made me.
And, you know, I got it for free and I'm using it just as much as it apparently has the value.
So I did have it on for a long time, for a couple of years, but then I eventually went, well, if I'm not using it and it's listening to me, I might as well shut it off.
But it does worry me that they're giving the Pixel watches away.
[35:36] It doesn't sound like a thriving business. Yeah, well, no, I mean, people are still buying them. It's just, you know, if you're gonna pay $1,800 for a phone, I guess they gotta give you some bennies.
I guess that's a good point. Yeah, it's not like about a $200 Android phone and got a free watch.
[35:55] Do they have any promise to you of how long they're gonna support the OS on that?
No, and you know, my habit of buying and replacing phones, I don't think about longevity that much because this will be maybe sold back for an Apple folding phone if it ever comes, out.
You know, I just see this as an investment in technology that I'll sell when I need to sell it. So there might be a guarantee that was given to you, but you just don't know what it is?
No, no. No, I don't know what it is. Okay, but I didn't want to mislead people into thinking there wasn't a guarantee because I think they've tried to tighten things up on how long they're gonna support the phones.
I want to say it was something like three or four years, which is nothing like Apple's, what, six at least, I think it is right now.
[36:48] I might be getting those numbers off, but it's a big disparity, but at least it's better than the two years I've suffered through, so I don't want to buy a new Android phone that often.
[36:58] You Yeah, well, in three years, this phone will probably be in Senegal.
There you go. So is there anything you miss? Any apps that you're used to using that you haven't found a good substitute for? Or has it been working out pretty well?
Well, there's a list of apps that I miss. And what I'm trying to do is find substitutes for them.
I'll tell you, Apple Notes for me is a diehard app that I use on my ecosystem. And I can't find the equivalent, um, for that will be cross platform, which is what I'd like, because, so I've started using notion just in the last week and trying to get used to that as an alternative, uh, to, um, Apple notes, Apple mail. I can't find the, I can't get used to Google mail, never have been able to get used to it. And like, and I have multiple, uh, email addresses for the the university, my personal, and then Gmail account.
So Apple Mail always integrated that well for me.
And I'm using on the fold, I'm using Slack, not Slack, I'm using Spark.
Yeah, Spark Mail is really good. Yeah, you know, I like the basic stuff.
So I'm always have it switched on basic. They have Spark Mail Smart and Spark Mail Smart 2.0.
[38:25] And it's like three options of systems. I need one, preferably one that is easy for me to cross over to.
You're Marty regular 1.0. You don't need Smart or Smart 2.0, right?
Yeah, I have a really dumb question. So you can get Apple Mail in Spark on Android.
Is that right?
Yeah, I can get iCloud. I got mail. Okay. Okay. For some reason, I suddenly thought, wait a minute, can you get it at all? I got it. You know, you have to do the permission, you know, the whole thing.
Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's a Ukrainian company, by the way.
[39:02] Yeah. Yeah, I met the guy that runs it. So what is it about Apple Notes that you love so much?
Is it the simplicity of it? Because notion, you've jumped into something that's highly capable and got all these things and you can do so. I mean, databases and all kinds of of crazy stuff that seems like maybe overkill.
It's overkill. Well, right now it's overkill. I haven't learned it enough, but I can easily create folders in notes, and then I can just use those in subfolders. And I'm finding that a little bit more clumsier of an experience with Notion. And I like to use even on, I don't like to use even web-based. That's my preference. I like to have apps that are separate when I'm on Mac OS.
So I like to open up an app instead of having to go into a web browser to get into the app to do the work I have to do. So yeah, so for me, Notes is, I can drop and drag things in. I can.
[40:07] Put all sorts of documents in there that I need. So for example, when I'm teaching a class, I have a folder that's dedicated to the class. And then I have sub pages that are dedicated to the days of the class. And I put my agenda in there. I put everything in there that I need for the class. And I'm starting to do that with Notion. The regret is, I can't get all of that old stuff that I had in Apple Notes into— Dave Hamilton mentioned that. He was looking for alternatives. He was an ever-new user, and then he started using Apple Notes, and he's been pretty happy. But he doesn't like—there's things he doesn't want. He doesn't want an app that's only run by a single developer, where if he's running his whole business off of it, it collapses. But the other end he doesn't want is something that keeps him captive, and he said he couldn't export his notes from Apple Notes. And whenever I hear something can't be done, I think, you know, it's like, oh, come on, that's got to be possible. It is not. It's like, you can't do it. It's really shocking. I mean, I was, you know, doing open package contents and drilling down trying to find the database and everything, but it is all in a mucked up database.
So that kind of makes me not want to put as much of my life in there.
When I was trying to find a way to do this, I accidentally pinned all of my notes.
[41:26] And I couldn't find a single way to say, no, no, unpin all of my notes.
And I think I eventually did find a way to do it more efficiently. But at first I was like, whenever I was on the phone with somebody, I would just sit there going, unpin, unpin, unpin, unpin, you know, to keep me busy. But yeah, I'm not a huge fan of things that, you know, Hotel California, you can get in, but you can never get out.
That's, yeah, well, you know, I stepped out of the Apple ecosystem and learned that I learned that notes is pretty much locked into it.
Yeah, you'd think somebody would have written some sort of exporter or something like that.
Yeah. I also miss Apple Wallet. Oh, yeah.
I haven't quite adjusted to, you know, Google Pay and how that works. How is it different?
And I kind of prefer letting Apple maintain my accounts than having Google maintain my accounts, Oh, I see what you mean. Nothing wrong with the app experience, just who it is has your information there?
Little bit of that, and I just haven't, it's like, is this another app I need to load my credit cards on? You know, I just, I'm just leery of that. And the app experience with Wallet has been great for me, so. Yeah.
Oh, I gotta ask you, does this mean, are you a green bubble person now, Marty?
[42:50] Boy, that has created a family crisis. I have kids that I have well entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, and they hate that I'm using this phone. Because they can't tell which phone I'm on or how to get a hold of me. Oh, okay.
What I've done is set up group chats that include from my phone, from my fold phone, from my Android phone, I've created a group chat that includes my name on my iPhone and, the phone number for that, plus whoever is going to be in the group chat. So I wind up getting.
[43:30] The messages on both phones, whichever phone I'm carrying at the time.
Oh, I see. So by adding your phone number from your iPhone, if you write to that group from your Android phone, that means both sides get it?
Both sides get it. And if they send a message back to me, and I happen to be on my iPhone at the time, I'll get that message too.
[43:51] I've, you know, I'm mocking about the green bubble, blue bubble thing, but I've, been shocked at how quickly threads like that can splinter.
I think I talked about this on the show, I had a, I wrote to Rod Simmons and his son right after I met his son, I told him I'd send him something.
I sent a message, both of them, Rod had just switched to the Android phone from the iPhone.
And when I wrote to them, they both replied and neither reply had the other person on it.
I mean, it was in the beginning of a thread, it was a little group, brought it all back and they were, it was splintered immediately. The instant I sent a message.
So I don't know, that's rough.
And I can't get them on, I can't convince all of my relatives and contacts to go on something like WhatsApp where I'll be able to get in on any phone. You are not obnoxious enough.
You are, I turned my, most of my family and friends, I told them, no, we're going to Telegram.
And so I got, well, I got all my kids and my closest friends all onto Telegram and then a lot of other people actually are already on Telegram.
And there's a few exceptions.
David Roth refuses to use it, but most everybody else I can talk to on Telegram now.
And I just like that it's not, you know, it's not a second-class citizen issue with people on Android.
[45:09] Yeah. It's a big thing. But, well, I told you I didn't want to go longer than 30 minutes, and here I am yapping away, making us past a half an hour here. But let me ask, what would your next phone be based on your experience with the Pixel Fold.
Um, as I, I, I think it will probably be the next iPhone that comes out.
Um, I will upgrade my iPhone and I don't know if I'm ready to.
Jump to the pixelate. I don't think there's a reason for me to do that.
I, as again, I'm more interested in this form factor than I am in terms of having the latest phone at this point.
Um, and who knows, maybe iPhone will come out with their own folding phone and then I'll trade them both in and be safely tucked back into the iPhone, the Apple ecosystem.
So if the newest phone came out in two models, one was a folding form factor and one was just a flat slab of glass, you like the folding enough that you would go to the fold?
Yeah, I would. Not just for experimenting, but because you really like it.
Not just because I like the form factor, particularly this phone. I mean, if they were to do something like this phone. It's not as heavy as you think, it's thinner than you think.
[46:27] And its functionality is pretty slick. It's pretty quick.
That's good to know. Again, I'm a self-avowed lack of visionary, so it's fun to hear from people that I trust on what they think about it. Now, I want to close this out by, we have your contact information, you're mastodongencius at mastodon.social, but you will also be speaking at MacStock, and Chuck Joiner interviewed you on Mac Voices, so if people want to see Marty and hear him talk about what he's going to be talking about at MacStock, but there's actually going to be a MacStock digital pass, so you'll be able to watch the event, so if you can't get there, it's sold out now anyway, but if you can't get there, you'll be able to see Marty's talk at MacStock and we'll put a link to MacStock and to the interview by Chuck.
Yep. I'll be talking about AI and learning with AI. Okay. So we'll have some fun with that.
Yeah, yeah. That's a terrific topic. It didn't sound like it was all doom and gloom. It was like how to bend it to your will and have it help you, right?
[47:36] Yeah. All right. Thanks a lot, Marty. We will see you no matter what name you're under in the live chat room on Sunday night at 5 PM Pacific time.
Well, that's going to wind us up for this week. Did you know you can email me at Allison at podfeet.com anytime you like. If you have a question or a suggestion, just send it on over. In fact, if you have content for the show to help me out over the next month and a half or so, I could use as many reviews as you guys can send me. Anyway, you can follow me on Mastodon at podfeet at chaos.social. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com. If you want to join the fun in the conversation, you can join our Slack community at podfeet.com slash slack, where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely Nosylla castaways, including Marty. He's He's very active over there and he's a lot of fun.
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[48:38] Music.