apple announcements from wwdc

Apple Announcements from WWDC

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Apple Announcements from WWDC and the Productivity and Technology News of the Week.

Each week, Ray Sidney-Smith (🌐 https://twominuterule.com) and Augusto Pinaud (🌐 https://productivityvoice.com/) review and provide commentary on the week’s news in the world of personal productivity and related technologies.

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In this Cast | Apple Announcements from WWDC

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Headlines & Show Notes | Apple Announcements from WWDC

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Headlines Part A

Headlines Part B

Tools of the Week

FEATURED STORY OF THE WEEK

Announcements

Notes

Raw Text Transcript | Apple Announcements from WWDC

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:03
Hello, personal productivity enthusiast and community Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:14
And I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:16
And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 118 Apple’s announcements from WWDC 2023. And we’re recording this on June 12 2023. Each week of Augusto and I cover the productivity news headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in relativity. And it’s really just related technologies. Augusto, let’s get into the headlines. What is our first headline of the week?

Augusto Pinaud 0:43
First headline of the week is from Chris Gila view. And it is if you’re not getting better, you’re not getting worst. And, you know, it’s always said, Sorry,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:54
it says you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse.

Augusto Pinaud 0:59
And, you know, that’s, that’s in a certain way a reality and is a good thing to do a check of what you’re getting better what you’re getting worst. And if it’s okay, that you’re getting worse than that was, one of the things I love about the article is creasing Lee, I’m getting better at this, I’m getting better at this, I’m not getting better at this is how my business has changed. I don’t need to take care of that. And it was a good article to look at, what are we getting better, and what we are not getting better than we want, or we’re interested in to get better. So good. It was a very good read.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:39
Yeah, it’s one of those articles where you know, it is it is there’s a there’s a truth to it, but you don’t want it to be true. You know, you want you want to know that you’ve done something, and that it’s indelible. And so that skill or that particular body of knowledge, it’s just all there. But if you’re not using it, it’s kind of like a language, use it or lose it, if you’re not using that language, then you’re ultimately going to start having those things fade away. And that just goes with skills, and with all kinds of other things. And so it’s just good to get to know that we need to use our abilities on a regular basis to keep them sharp, onto our next article,

Augusto Pinaud 2:16
or next article comes from better humans and is there is a good way to make a to do list and there is a better way. And he said you know, not all to do lists are created the same. And, you know, he talks about embrace from the static list embrace, you know, the 8020 rule, the Pareto principle, you know, make sure that you are prioritizing, you know, instead as a somehow or to the rescue, because that’s where the matrix was. Can you know less is more intuition is keen, they do not do list and embrace change. And it was again, a very nice article, I have been talking for years about the do not do lists do not do list. And the first time I read about it, I read it from Michael Hyatt, and I thought it was brilliant. And I have a list and I review it often normally in my weekly review and pay attention. I have done any of this. And sometimes the answer is yes or no, it means I need to pay more attention, but also flexibility. You know, when I work with clients, they come with a 77 Items list. Okay? Well, we’re going to fail before the end of the day. So how about you work in a different way you work in a two or three, hey, if you get a three items list, and you need to do and repeat the process of finalizing three times a day, guess what, you’re going to feel successful three times a day. But if you get a 70 Items list and you accomplish the same nine items, it’s going to feel like a failure. So the other thing is that I was not on the article, but it’s something that I recommend is differentiate and be very clear, what are the must and what are the nice to have because it is a difference okay, this needs to happen and is a real need to happen. That is very different than it will be very nice if I get this to happen. And we tend to not establish that distinction that get us in trouble.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:28
Absolutely. On to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 4:32
So our next article come from psychology today’s how to address productivity paranoia. You know, measuring productivity helps managers identify struggle employees, you know, remote work, the challenges that that has bring, and, you know, the paranoia of this productivity that persist between the leaders and employees and the face to face interaction, and all that and I was laughing about this So as a client, we were in a meeting and on the meeting, it was said this will take two weeks. Okay. And at the end of the meeting, an email came from one of the persons who was on the meeting, say, so, can we have it at the end of the week? No, it will take two weeks. Okay. And but that is typical on many corporate environments, you know, where people is on the meeting, even agreed verbally in the meeting? And then a Dan, you know, was, let’s make it more productive? Let’s Well, you know, miracles take a little bit longer normally, that urgent things. So, and we have been trying to measure, you know, in the last three years, how we are more productive, more productive, more productive. And I have never thought about the idea of color, the productivity paranoia, but it is it is going a certain way, and what did you want to be productive for hours, you just want to check more boxes, or how we’re going to measure that actually,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:01
I know, this is harsh to say, but productivity paranoia, to me just sounds like poor management. And so the the idea of us, you know, labeling something as paranoia is, again, pathologizing, something that I don’t need need, that doesn’t need to be pathologized. Right, you know, like paranoia, being a symptom of some kind of mental disorder is, I don’t know, it just doesn’t rub me the right way. So what I feel like is that, yes, leaders do have anxiety about their employees and their their staff being productive when they cannot see them. That is not the right metric. And so they should look for the real data that shows that your employees and your staff are doing the right things. So, you know, the goal here is to look at, look at the right data to get the right result, and therefore, train yourself out of poor management. Right. And this is, again, it’s like, as you said, are we checking boxes, are we looking for results, are we looking for impact, and if we can continue to keep looking at the impact of our individual employees and as a team as a whole, we’ll also always know that we can rank order people as being most productive to least productive, and there’s always going to be a least productive person on the team, no matter how productive your team is. So that relativistic perspective doesn’t really help us understand the deficits of the team, and being able to understand how to shore up those pieces. Now, this particular article seems to be pushing for the idea that people should be hybrid workers, and that they should give some level of in person and remote work. In some measure, I don’t necessarily know that that’s true or works for every environment. You know, it doesn’t work in my company at all, we are distributed 100%. Heck, WordPress, runs on top of is run by a company called automatic they are 100% distributed team, and WordPress runs, you know, what 60% of the world’s websites. So the CMS itself is being developed in this distributed way with this distributed team. And they’re, they’re doing all the things right in that way to manage a company of that size. You know, so I don’t, I don’t buy it, that we need to have a hybrid work environment for every company. But that being the case, I think this is an argument for us, recognizing that if we are having any level of anxiety or fear related to our employees, or our staff being productive, it’s a conversation that we need to have with them, and determine what may be happening in their world, right? Like this is like, you know, compassion, not 101, if the COVID 19 pandemic should have taught us anything, it is to have a level of grace and compassion with regard to our people. And when we do that, it’s not that we can’t be tough, but we have to be tough on the problems not on the people. I mean, this comes from kind of the Harvard Negotiation, project and, and conflict resolution and otherwise, but this really works in this environment, because it’s just good management, if we can go ahead and we can say, Okay, this is why this person is not being productive, we can focus on solving that problem, I really feel that leaders are and managers are charged with making sure that we can get rid of the obstacles in the way of our people getting and being productive. So if we can do that, then we don’t have to be tough on them. We can be tough on the problem. And we can solve a lot more problems than blaming remote work are blaming a lack of face to face interactions or, you know, pathologizing anxiety and fear because of poor management skills in a new era, right? This is new for us, many of us, right, you know, managing in a modern remote environment is new for many supervisors and many managers and leaders. That’s okay. But we need to learn how to manage in that new paradigm. And we’re seeing a lot of mixing right some companies are going fully back to in person, some are are in hybrid, some are still Remote, some are aggressively staying remote. That’s all good, right, we’ll see how those companies fare in the long run. But we should understand that good management is just being dynamic in the face of these particular changing landscapes. All right on to our next article,

Augusto Pinaud 10:18
or our next article from life hacker is a start each week with this digital declaring methods. So well, you know, physical clutter is bad, you should do the digital and say, you know, go on declutter unit spend 15 minutes and clear, you know, your dekstop, your computer, your devices and all that, and I I agree on the practice. And I even recommend people look at the different devices and do something different every week. So, I have been saying for years, our Friday, you know, the second Friday of the month, the third Friday of the month, it depends on everybody’s work dynamic, but one of those normally worked well. And then take a couple of hours that Friday afternoon and flip your to do list, you know, and do the lowest priority of that, and you are going to end up that Friday, feeling king of the world because those things obviously are at the bottom of the list, because there have zero importance. But on your mind, there is no difference between that and the really important ones. Same thing with your RSS feed, pick a day can be the Sunday, that’s my day. So in the morning, I go and clean or tried to claim the RSS depending on the week that possible or not possible. And other weeks I cleaned and the deck stops and the files and the downloads. So don’t need to be everything every week, don’t make it heavy. But it helps to create a certain routine where you go and clean all your digital holes. You know, once every quarter, I go and I have a folder of ebooks and PDF and stuff. And I go and reorganize it and put it in the way I like it. Because a lot of times I get the PDF, you know, put it on the Kindle, put it on the iPad, and then dump the original file in there but didn’t put it in the name the way I like the way I will find it later there is the author and the title. So once a quarter, I go and do that work, have fixed those files. So everything is organized in the way I like.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:29
Yeah, I think that this is a good practice, I would obviously do this very differently myself. And I do because I do this all during my weekly review. So I have a way in which I am going through all of the various pieces of my world and organizing those things like throughout the week, I take a bunch of screenshots and I send them to either Evernote to my inbox for processing into my task management system, I capture screenshots and share them with colleagues and otherwise. So I’m doing a lot of that stuff links, you know, I’m sharing with people. And at the end of the week, I actually review all of those because I don’t need them cluttering my Google Photos, as I have to get rid of them because they all get backed up. And I do want them backed up in my system, just in case I want them. But that’s my opportunity to be able to kind of go through and if for some reason I missed something, it’s kind of a second pass at those items. So it’s not an inbox for me identified. But it is a way for me to shore up the rear guard and making sure that I haven’t lost something in this particular decluttering perspective, digital decluttering perspective, it’s a part of my resume plus, you know, back to the book work clean by Dan charnas, I really believe in the concept of having, you know, your yourself set up like a chef does, you know, in their kitchen, having all of the pieces cleaned and prepared and all of your ingredients ready to go. And this is what gives you that capability of doing that. And I confess, I once had that problem with, you know, the many, many tabs open problem. And now I have a system whereby I’m capturing all of those tabs and placing them into my inbox. So at the end of the week, you know, I do accumulate, it’s like barnacles on a ship, I just accumulate all of these tabs throughout the week. And so now I have them in my inbox. And I can go ahead and process them clean so that I can have that level of management. And you’d be surprised the number of people who complain about their browser being slow. And then I do a screen share. And I see that they have dozens and dozens of Chrome tabs open again, as I do, but I have a fairly robust machine in front of me that can have that many tabs open. And I use a tab extension that goes ahead and shuts down the the tabs down behind the scenes and actually if you’re using any chromium based browser, which includes Chrome, Microsoft, what’s Microsoft Edge, brave Vivaldi, you name it all of those various chromium based browsers actually can are now doing that in the background. They’re kind of shutting down the tabs and they’re not in use. So So save some some resources there. But my point is, is that I see lots of people with lots and lots of tabs open, and a bunch of detritus on their desktops, and, you know, downloads folders that are just voluminous, right? They’re just filling and filling and filling. And I made sure that I added that into my weekly, you know, checklist for my weekly review. And now I’m reviewing those items at the end of the week, so that those downloaded items are going where they they belong, they don’t belong in my downloads folder, they belong deleted, or they belong somewhere else where I can access and review them later. And so that’s a really, really good point. I also like to check my Sent folder in my email, it’s kind of tangential, but just remembering to look in these various places where we can kind of look and see, hey, did I miss something, do I send an email and someone didn’t respond to me, this is a good time to follow up with them and get get things going. One little trick there is, if I send an email I’m checking on Friday, I will reschedule that email, I’ll hit forward on it and schedule it out for Monday morning. So I’m not sending it on on a Friday afternoon to somebody who’s who’s going to obviously be getting ready for the weekend, I’m going to send it to them fresh at the top of their week. So they can go ahead and tackle that at you know, eight 9am whenever they get into the office on Monday morning. So keep that in mind that you want to you want to play to the strengths of the people in which you want responses from and doing this kind of digital decluttering can also set you up for a more productive next week. So great article in that perspective. Onto our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 16:29
Oh, this is what do we have a forum for article so we are gone now going to the break. And a word from our sponsors that this week is personal productivity

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:42
club. All right, cool. So virtual co working?

Sponsor Voice Over 16:44
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:55
Welcome back, everybody to Anything But Idle. We are going to head into our technology headlines for this week of Gousto. What is our first headline this week,

Augusto Pinaud 18:05
our first one is Google can search for books in your local library. And the article quotes Chloe ivyrose, who shows how she was looking for a book called electro the knife then, you know all the information, what you found, you know, release date, everything, including the option to see if it’s stuck on libraries, you know, at the bottom, you can put your zip code if you’re in the United States and check if the libraries are going to have. And that’s very cool. You know, one of the things I love about the libraries here, and we have discussed it here in the show, I have only one but I know you have multiple libraries on different places and rent the book that way.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:52
Yeah, so. So your mileage may vary on this one. So not everyone is going to see this functionality. So just be mindful of the fact that you’re not going to see it on the desktop, you’re only probably going to see this on mobile for most of you. Some of you might see it on desktop. And that’s just an experiment. Google is constantly experimenting with these things. So just be mindful that it’s available in some places, it’s not available and others. Some people claim that it’s always been there, some people claim that it’s never been there. So just be mindful of the fact that this is kind of hit or miss for you all. But on mobile, I believe you should be able to access this feature by by looking in the Google Play bookstore. When you’re in the Google Play bookstore, you should be able to search for a book and then see that ability to type in your zip code and do that. Now. If you do not and cannot find it for some reason, all you need to do is just go to WorldCat. So if you go to World cat.org That is the World Wide library catalog. And then you just basically type in your zip code and you can search any book anywhere, anytime. Now if you want or To get really sophisticated, you can use the library extension, the library extension is called fun enough library extension, just find it in the Web Store for the web extensions store for your particular browser. But library extension is amazing. It connects you both to your local library catalog, and it searches it right there in the page. So like, if you’re on Goodreads, if you’re on Amazon, if you’re on any of the various book sites, it will go ahead and search those sites. And then it will go ahead and automatically search your suggested library. So I have five or six different libraries that I have library cards from. And, and so it will search all of those including like a hoopla, and you know, your your ebook library and audio book libraries, portions, so it goes and searches all of those. So library extension is just like a must have for me in any browser as soon as I install it. So just good to keep in mind as you are kind of making your way through the the libraries in your maybe if you’re moved or whatever, you know, you can, you can quickly and easily get access to them through the library extension. Alright, on to more Google News.

Augusto Pinaud 21:10
Oh, the next one is Google works. Space gains passkey support. And I’m going to let you go into the whole explanation of that one.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:20
Yes. So a few weeks ago, we talked about the fact that Google had a had finally allowed Paschi support, meaning that it’s using your account embedded on any device that allows for passkey. Pass keys is just basically a device based login. So you just authenticate on the device. And you’ll then be logged into your Google account, wherever that might be. So say my phone, my phone acts as a past key. And so when I go to log into my Google account, it’ll literally just prompt me to do something on my phone. And by virtue of of doing that thing on my phone, it authenticates that it’s me trying to log in, because I physically have my phone in my hand, it knows it’s me, and not some hacker or some criminal. And it’ll let me in, that was not available within Google workspace. So only consumer Google users had access to past keys until this most most recent week and Google workspace now so if you have Google workspace for business, if you have Google workspace for enterprise for education, passkey support is now available there and you can go ahead and turn that on by going to my accounts.my account.google.com and going under that privacy and security section and turning on past keys onward to Gousto

Augusto Pinaud 22:34
are our next one remarkable the era tablet revise the PDF experience and the robust highlighting system and this is very cold, you know, they do a full it’s thinking you know, they’re setting a new view on the PDF keyboard navigations more precise searching and even smart highlighting and it is very cool because with the new announcements that the iPad did are the iOS 17 When it comes out at the end of November, October November, when it comes out. It’s Apple’s making a big effort into making your PDF experience much better. So it’s very good to see that companies like remarkable are also stepping up into the experience for PDFs

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:22
fantastic and so that was my ring light that just broke. So if I go off camera again at Gousto it’s because my ring light fell again. So just we’re gonna keep on going the show The show must go on

Augusto Pinaud 23:36
this show must go on.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:39
From the remarkable story on two alternatives for the magic keyboard and Apple Pencil. Last week

Augusto Pinaud 23:45
I talked about a cheaper version of the Apple Pencil and then I found this article on what nine to five called budget iPad accessories and alternatives. I wanted to share this for for people who wants the accessories but one, you know, a different version or more affordable version than what Apple sells. So that’s what this basically article is propose. Our next article after that is apple. We will discuss more about the vision Pro and what the Apple announced but they announced that they bought the same AR company that is behind the Mario Kart right. Los Angeles historical my rat that also do contracts with military and you know they they really have been working into this AR world. So seems like Apple is going all in today’s session. We will discuss way more when we get to the feature story of the week. And for the users of WhatsApp finally You may be able to fix your typos no need anymore to put the star and the word properly spell, they finally invented the edit button. We are very happy about that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:16
Now Now if Twitter would just I mean, unless Twitter is going to implode, I hope Twitter figures that that edit functionality out better than it currently has implemented it as well. And certainly not within the Twitter blue perspective, because that’s just an ungodly amount of money for using a social network. Okay, onward to creating a simple wardrobe catalog on your iPhone.

Augusto Pinaud 25:41
No, this this article was very interesting is another way to use you know how to create a simple catalog for what you have for the clothes that you have. A lot of people struggle with this. And you know, one of the things that is very interesting is at the time they struggle, that’s the morning, that’s when most people tend to be dressed up. And not everybody is a morning, people there is people who are night owls. And for those people, these kind of articles, these kind of techniques to inventory things and make the decision even before you wake up, it’s really make a significance and make an improvement. And you can then sort them into the formal going out cashflow workout, whatever it is, in my case, I pick whatever is on the morning, the night before and I have done it. I don’t know since one. But the reason is that I’ve denied I still think in in the morning I am running I that’s not a decision, I want to to make. I don’t have enough clothes to even a simple wardrobe catalog apparently. But for the people who have it, this will be a good option.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:56
Yeah, there are like Closet Organization apps that are out there and wardrobe apps that are specific to this tool that this this tool need. But I personally don’t have that need, i just i don’t i i Take out the next thing in the closet and I put it on. So I don’t particularly think about this, I’ve organized my closet in such a way that the algorithm is that, you know, as the next pair of pants and the next shirt are in line, that’s the next combination of things that are going to be worn together. And it everything is pretty much interchangeable. It’s very rare that I have to like skip a pair of pants because the dress shirt is just really so often color that it would be weird, I’d look like it was Christmas because I have a red shirt and a green pair of pants kind of thing, which happens a lot because I do wear a lot of red and green. And so and so I just I’m mindful of of basic things. But I’ve organized and purchased items for my closet so that everything is pretty much interchangeable, I have taken to doing something a little bit different, which is I do take a photograph every day of what I am wearing, so that I am aware of what I wore. So if I go back to the same group of people, you know, it could be that I meet with a group once a month. And I don’t want to wear the same thing every time. But it’s very possible because of my little closet algorithm that that will happen. So I do take a photograph of myself in the morning. And it’s not vanity. It’s literally just what am I wearing today. So I can go back if I need to look back at that at that moment. And I save all of that in Evernote. And so I just have a wardrobe notebook. And it just catalogs what I’ve worn. And there are occasions when I think you know what, I really liked that outfit. And then I will go back and scroll through those items and see which one of those those images, details, something that I appreciated. And I’ll usually annotate that. So I’ll write it in the note or annotate that in the in the in the title of the of the note in my wardrobe notebook. And then that way, it tells me kind of the like, oh, I wore this to this dinner or I wore this to this gala, I liked that outfit, I might want to wear that again. And so I can go ahead and do that I don’t even tag in the wardrobe, because it’s all date organized. So I could just scroll through the dates and see them in a chronological order. So I think it’s good for us to kind of keep that in mind that you know, the the way in which we look doesn’t have to be everything. But certainly it’s a component of how we present in the world. And we want to make sure that we look good to some extent. And there goes the arrows. The ring light again. But yeah, all right, I want to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 29:34
So our last story for this segment is another goal from BGR have the name escaping me by gate genius review page. Anyways, he’s saying Christmas he’s talking about how the new Motorola racer plus has driven him on a foldable phone iPhone and he’s cheering, you know, it would be very nice to have an iPhone that goes into this and remind me when I saw the Microsoft Surface foldable phone, because that’s what I want, I don’t want something that goes to half of the phone, I want something that goes double of the phone. So basically, I can go from having a phone to having an iPad Mini. That’s what I want. No, I don’t need more smaller, I need more more size but foldable so I can carry with me easier.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:31
I’ll have to say that I looked at the razor Plus Ultra, I think is it’s called not available in United States currently, that I’m aware of. But it is it harkens back to remember when the Motorola Moto rail razors were the were the the thing that de rigueur of the day, and oh my gosh, it just brought back all of those memories. And it’s also really nice looking phone, this is this is a phone that I would buy. And I would have as you know, I have two phones one for work one for personal. And and while I use my personal one a lot for work, I do like having that individual phone that I can kind of shut off. And and know that it’s turned off during that timeframe. It also gives me context switching, because phone calls don’t come through my personal phone for work, they only come through that work one. And so it just helps me have that bifurcation when I when I needed to. I think the razor plus would be really nice. You know, it kind of it reminds me the Samsung Z fold, right? The Z fold is that no, that is the flip the Z the Z flip the flip. And and so it kind of gives me that that feeling to it. I’d be worried about not having pure Android on the device, I think that I would probably go with the Z flip just for the for that purpose. But it looks like a beautiful phone. And if it came to the United States, I would definitely want to play with it to kind of see what it’s all about. And to give it some give it some love in that sense. So I’m curious if anybody out there who’s not in the in the states who might have that app, that phone to kind of let us know what what that’s all about. And kind of go from that

Augusto Pinaud 32:04
one. The other one that racer and the start tech startup was my fave. I regret eventually to the razor, but I hold as long as I could. I love that one.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:17
All right. So with that we have covered our productivity technology articles for this week. And that means onward to new tools of the week. Each week, Gustavo and I scour the web for all the various productivity and technology articles that you of course, hear us talking about. But But in that process, we come across many personal development time tasks, project management applications, and services. So in new tools of the week, we bring you each a tool we think you might like. And so my tool this week is a tool called the greatness app. And this is an interesting app to me, because what it is, it’s about building a personalized plan for investing in behaviors that bring you toward your life goals, is all supposedly backed by behavioral science. And so it’s really interesting to me in one particular way. So you can go ahead and go to greatness app.com, you fill out this quiz, and then it presents you with a set of things it thinks you might want to do. Now, the fact that the website has, you know, drinking water, right as the first primary thing, don’t get turned off by that. But it has like physical health, mental health, it has other kinds of goals that you can go ahead and put it in. But the idea here is that it’s it’s it focuses on routine, which is something that I am consistently trying to help people understand that habits are not the the goal here. Great routines are surfacing your routines to awareness. And then and then facilitating habitual behaviors, just basically behavioral interventions within your routine is how you make those kinds of long lasting changes. And so this is one of the few applications that I’ve seen doing it in such a way that I think could be really useful. So that’s the greatness app. I recommend you check it out and see if it’s something that can work for you. I like the little bit of machine learning that they’ve built into it to kind of facilitate a personalized plan for you and then help you achieve those goals throughout your weeks and months. Go. So what’s your tool this week?

Augusto Pinaud 34:21
Well, the tool this week is not only a tool is day one is a journal app. And the reason I bring it back and then we talked about this app before the reason I bring it back is because when Apple announced that they are going to be releasing a journal app for iOS. People was wondering, that was a good idea. Why have not thought about this before? Where can I go and they want I’ve been using it. I don’t know for a very long time. I can tell you that according to this. I have right into this more than 3271 Time Okay, so it’s been used. But he’s It is a fantastic application. And I don’t know, I don’t know what Apple is going to release or not. But if you don’t want to wait until iOS is out until the app is out, etc, that is a great app to check on. Maybe use.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:23
Right? So there’s an iOS version, there’s a Mac version, and there is an android version of the of the day one application, basic is free, that gives you one journal, one device, and one photo per entry. But then you can upgrade to the premium, which is about $3, just shy of $3 per month, or $35 per year. So it’s very nominal in terms of cost. And for all of the times I have heard you have Cousteau, talk about the value and the kind of the, the way in which you can customize and flexibly journal within day one. It sounds like a really, really great app. And so I have I have used many different apps over the over time. But I’ve I’ve consistently here heard you talk about how wonderful day one is. And so it’s a good reminder for everybody that there are solid apps out there like day one that have been around doing their thing, you know, consistently updating and doing the good work that is out there in the world. All right. With that we are on to our featured story this week. Let’s talk about WWDC 2023

Augusto Pinaud 36:26
Well, let’s notice star was the elephant less a star with a Mac. And you know, it was very interesting, because they announced the MacBook Air 15 inch that I know you will look into replaced the laptop I thought about you. They put an m two they did very well. But what was very interesting for me is how targeted that machine was, or at least on the marketing and announcements to the PC user. That was not a machine directed marketed to Apple users. It was really towards a PC market. That’s fine, he was completely fine. But that was very, very interesting for me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:13
Yeah, the MacBook Air 15 inch, the m two just sounds like the perfect Mac for me, you know, an MBA is the type of of tool that I can use in lots of different environments, it fits kind of my Chromebook need, right? The only lacking in this new MacBook Air, which we can argue to the cows come home is the lack of a touchscreen, you know, and it lacking that touchscreen is really, really a drawback. But it’s something it’s a device that I will probably get. It’s something that I can I can just slip in a bag and go. And it’s a large enough screen that I know that you like a smaller screen size than then 15 inches. But you know I’m sitting with talking to you right now on a 15 inch screen and I have a foldable monitor that travels with me that’s another 15.6 inches. So I love having that really nice widescreen. And to just have the idea of taking my MacBook Air having a 15 inch screen on it and taking my portable monitor plugging into the USBC and having, you know, basically 30 inches wide on in terms of view that just really appeals to me, just for the way in which I like to work right I like to be able to have those things, I’d love to have it stacked, I’d love to be able to take that monitor and put it on top of one another. But that will work so well in a cafe.

Augusto Pinaud 38:35
That doesn’t work well in a cafe even though I have seen pictures of people bringing their dekstop machine to the cafe. So you can do that and we can take pictures of you and make fun of you forever.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:46
I have witnessed someone carry a an iMac into the cafe, sit at a desk and work on it. And I thought to myself, why why would you why would you take you to like I would just be worried about you know, destroying the thing dropping it, you know, being knocked down those kinds of things in a public environment like that. But anyway, all right from the MacBook Air 15 inches from

Augusto Pinaud 39:10
the Metal Gear then they announced their new micro studio and they announced a monster I understand this is so they can show and they can brag what they can do. And is the m two ultra chips. Basically it’s a two m two chip put together so you can accomplish, you know, something outstanding, I’m going to assume because it’s I don’t I don’t unless you do video editing you know, they announced a MacBook Pro that now you can put it vertical horizontally. So they really went all in in to show that since they decide to do their own silica. They can really push very, very far from where the market is.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:57
Well, this is this is the MTL First chip is three times faster than the previous Mac Studio. I mean, like, this is a beast. And so if you’re processing a high level of video or doing huge amounts of of, basically, LLM processing, large language model processing, if you’re doing that kind of heavy duty database, you know, intensive work, this is the kind of chip you want to be able to utilize. Of course, it comes with a hefty price tag, you know, just starting at four grand USD. So, you know, if you want that ultra chip, you’re going to be starting out the gate at a pretty high price point, if you just want the m two Max chip, that’s roughly about 2000. But you want to get to the Ultra, and it starts at 4000 USD. But again, it’s this is a very, very powerful tool that’s capable of just displaying very rich visuals, and being able to process data very, very quickly. So for you know, there, there probably not that many people out there who need this, but for those folks who do, this is a great tool for it.

Augusto Pinaud 41:03
So then they let’s move to iOS 17 iPad, os 17, they announce, you know, Journal series improved, you know, they even said, now you will be able to stop docking people and using the appropriate word, okay, and they announce for the phone, the standby mode. So basically, you put on the charger and horizontal and they will show like a clock of the 1980s. And since God they’re going to allow you to modify that. upload some phones and stuff. That’s when they announced their standard, sorry, the journal app. The one thing that was very exciting for me was the sharing of the earth x and the earth X has been a great example the industry how much Google and Apple and others have been working together into just creating a product that is very nice, but also sharing together, you know, the security that comes with that technology. So it doesn’t cause trouble but really helps the fact that now I can share those are texts with people we have a couple in the house. And they are sent to my phone. So when when we are my wife and I together and the things that was up, then she started getting notifications you often earthtech following you Well, yes, we know it will be very nice to share with her so she don’t get those or for her to take those those things and don’t get the notification and don’t need to text me where is the thing because I can find it. So I’m very excited about that. Then they announce Mac OS, the new one. It was not Rancho Cucamonga. It’s been the joke for the last two or three years. But of course they did Sonoma. And the jokes were also came in for Sonoma. So apparently if you install a certain operating system, you will be able to accomplish on your Mac to have Sonoma and Gomorrah. So that was a joke and I don’t think Apple intended but we are going to be listening to that for many years to come. They announced watch os 10 TV OS and then they went into the show of the night that was the apple vision Pro. It’s not a cheap toy. It’s a $3,400 toy. But I was very excited about it. One because it remind me that the technology that it has is incredible. Okay, let’s say you put this on now you have an unlimited set of screens. That is incredible. Second, the Apple when to the business market, not the gaming market and the VR and headsets they have there they are in the business they’re very cool. But they have not really hit very very hard hitting the business market that may be very interesting you have a bunch of screens here in my office. And really if I need to upgrade all this gear, I will be very close to that number. So it makes sense to me to get rid of everything sell it and see so you start you watch Anything But Idle in the video and not only the audio, if when this product see you see different that’s because now we’re using the algorithm for this one. And it may happen but the other thing that is interesting is since like Apple found now a recipe that they start with the iPad, follow with the Apple Watch and now they’re bringing division Pro to this we remember those products the first iPad didn’t have a lot was expensive, expensive Earth and and it was by the third iPad regeneration, when that thing really was a very interesting, powerful thing before that, it was not. So if you look into the Apple Watch, it is the same thing. The first and second version of the Apple Watch, were not as powerful they were testing that was during that process that they discover, oh, the health part is what it’s getting people more interested. And then they push on that direction, making the third generation really now mass adopted or very close to, you know, or at least a mass level device. So they seem to be taking the same approach they seem to be taking, let’s test, let’s figure it out. Let’s go into business. Let’s give this to business people, I don’t travel anymore, or at least my travels are legible these days. But I’m thinking when the iPad came out many years back, that was so important for me, as a person who was a heavy traveler, this thing is no a no brainer for me if you travel any, because not only not now you can sit forget about how much space you have on that set, you will have all the screens, large screens, privacy, you don’t need to worry or put this the protector so the neighbor is seen what you seen or not seen. So I honestly think that there are two important things with this device. One is Apple, it’s really going to develop a new line of products. Okay, this, what we have seen from the business perspective. Yeah, I can put them on watch a movie, I can put them. But it’s nothing close to really be a tool where I can say, look, I will replace my iPad with this. Until now. Now I have a thing that I can think I can replace multiple iPads, as you said, when I’m here in my office, yeah, the monitors are all the stack. Also, when I’m out and about, that doesn’t happen. So if I can take now and say, I’m going to the cafe, and instead of bringing, you know, your multiple stack monitors or your dekstop, as we said at the beginning, I can take that thing, and have now two massive monitors to work sitting on the couch. I’m interested in hearing more about it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:38
Yeah, I’m going to reserve judgment until I see what they do with this device. I am, I’m interested in it as a consumption device, I think this is going to be something that I can sit down and watch, you know, a pretty large sized IMAX type movie and potentially even doing it in 3d, if you can, you know, if you could put prescription kind of, you know, filters in between, presumably you can also put in a 3d kind of rendering, you know, you know, where they have the different colors in each of the eyes. So you can you can see in 3d, I would love to be able to see that kind of large scale entertainment, right like think this this new avatar movie, being able to watch avatar to, you know, in that kind of IMAX experience. And you know, you put your earbuds in and you just have this immersive experience. I had that already with the with the Google Daydream VR headset, and I’m really sad that you will got rid deprecated and got rid of that program. Beyond that, what you’re talking about a Gousto in terms of of having a productivity tool that you are putting on your face, and and operating. It’s still science fiction, to me, I’m not gonna lie, I still don’t see this as being practical. For the vast majority of people, this isn’t practical. But for you and I, I can see us both wearing our VR headsets, and working very comfortably in that environment. On occasion, right, this is not going to be this is not going to be an everyday wear kind of thing. But there’s going to be opportunities where this would be really, really helpful to be able to do that kind of work. I can see in hosting our conferences, I can see in a lot of different environments where that might be very, very useful and practical. But it’s a limited set right now. They need to make this, you know, device at this price point so that it stays in developer’s hands and can can be built and so on so forth. I get that. The Apple vision Pro is currently as you said 3500 USD, and it’s going to not launch until early 2024. So developers not even gonna get their hands on this until early 2024. And at which point they’re going to start looking at how they can ideate right now their ideating how they’re going to be able to utilize this you know, they’re going to probably get the SDKs and start playing around and seeing how this tool can be utilized and what functions, what sensors are in and how this how this can really be workable with its limitations. Again, as you said, think about the first Apple Watch, think about the first air pods. Think about the comparison between them and today lightened day, you know, night and day. So he’s very good at that. Yes, yeah, absolutely. And again, you know, they’re not, they’re not inventing anything, they’re taking what exists in terms of have a vision for what a product can a product category can be. And they’re thinking about what services they can have people use on their platform, and Apple users are very loyal, right. So they’re going to be able to get that headset, and they’re going to be able to run an app ecosystem, Apple, TV, Apple, everything that they do in terms of Apple services within that, that that environment, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m going to hold as I said, I’m gonna hold reservation, or I’m gonna keep reservation to all of this, I’m gonna hold opinion about it until I see probably the the first consumer version, right, this is this is a developer version, I’m going to wait till the consumer version comes out, and they’ve solved the battery power issue, they solve some of these, some of these vision problem issues, you know, because a lot of people who put on VR or even AR glasses, will sometimes get nauseated from wearing them. There are all kinds of issues related to putting something that shielding your entire face. And so we’ll we’ll see how that how that makes us way forward. But Apple is one of the richest companies in the world, they have more cash than many, many, many, many countries in the world, just sitting on piles and piles of cash, they have the ability to invest in this technology and see it forward, I would like to actually see them make more inroads in artificial intelligence, to be quite honest, I’d like to see them doing more in that space. I know they have and they’ve got some some of that going on. But they are not like Google or Microsoft, or open AI and kind of proffering themselves as as doing AI. And I’d be interested to see what they’re doing thoughtfully in that space. Because I think it would be really useful for the industry to see a privacy focused company, at least in in, in all regards, we’ve seen Apple take a very strong stance in terms of privacy. And so taking this kind of approach with AI would be interesting. And utilizing that in this VR environment. In this kind of vision pro product, I think those two combined together, it’d be great to like have an assistant inside of your vision Pro, right. And now kind of all as Jarvis, you can now have this kind of ongoing fluid, you know, Apple Assistant, I’m not saying her name, but you know, the madam s so that you’re able to go ahead and have this kind of fluid conversation, because right now, you know, Madam s is not the brightest bulb, you know, it’s okay. It does the does the job most of the time. But it could be better, you know, I definitely use Amazon and Google to greater effect as voice assistants. And it would be great to have that facilitated in a much more thoughtful perspective, with the visuals associated with it, right, have audio and visual says, I feel like that’s the thing that is the combination of all those pieces, and it needs to fluidly work across all of your Apple devices. That’s where I think the key is, is because the the vision Pro is not going to be appropriate for everyday wear. And so once I take them off, I need to be able to have that same level of artificial intelligence and seamless experience transfer to my iPad screen transfer to my iPhone screen transferred to my watch OS, my my TV, os screen, and so on and so forth. Very, very thoughtfully.

Augusto Pinaud 53:44
Yeah. And I think that’s something where Apple has a very distant shut, because they control so much of the experience, that it is something that Google or Microsoft will have a much harder time developing not not for any than that. The options on hardware and software vary so much. That is an extra challenge to an already difficult one.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:13
Absolutely. All right. We’ve got an announcement and then we’re gonna close out.

Augusto Pinaud 54:16
So we have one announcement on Learn Omnifocus for with Tim stringer turns nine years, a couple of weeks ago, so congratulations, Tim. And if you’re OmniFocus user, this is an incredible place to find about OmniFocus and interviews and everything else.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:40
Fantastic. Congratulations again to Tim stringer from learn OmniFocus turning nine years old. And with that, okay, so we’ve covered the productivity and related technology news yet for another week. Thanks again. Augusto for all your help and work. Okay, everybody. Fantastic, okay on anything but idle.com homme, you can find our show notes those contain the links to all the stories tools of the week, extra stories that we don’t cover in the episode. And as well, we include a text transcript, both that you can read on the screen there, just click that little more button, or you can go ahead and download it off as a PDF and read it side by side as you’re listening to the episode. If for some reason you’re missing something from the show notes, we missed a story it’s gonna happen. Go ahead and feel free to join us inside of personal productivity club. If you go to anything but idle.com forward slash community, you will be taken to a sign up page. That is for personal productivity club, it’s free to join, go ahead and join it and then it’ll direct you into the Anything But Idle group. And then you can go ahead and interact with us you can comment on our various episodes, you can post stories that you think might be interesting for us to cover in a future episode, all of that fun stuff. Feel free. If you’re listening to this for the first time. Feel free to subscribe. Sometimes it’s called subscribe or follow inside of your podcast app of choice, but go ahead and subscribe and then you’ll be notified when we get our episodes released each week. And with that, we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s to your productive life.

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