836: Welcome, Stephen

Welcome to the Mac Power Users. I'm David Sparks and joined for the first time by Mr. Stephen Robles. Welcome, Stephen. Hello, David. Thanks so much for having me, but now that I'm here. Yeah, I'm so happy. I woke up today very excited about being able to record with you. You and I have been talking now for, I think, over a month, and the day is here. We're, as we said, we're shooting with live ammunition today. I'm super excited. I had you put in the outline, we're going to surprise each other for the More Power Users segment. I have so many things on my desk right now that I'm just ready to surprise you with. Okay, all right. Throughout the episode, we'll do it in and in More Power Users. Yeah, on More Power Users, our segment today is going to be called The Drawer of Shame. We're going to talk about things we bought that we kind of regret in the tech sphere. And so we decided to surprise each other. We got a couple of things. That's going to be fun today for More Power Users. If you'd like to subscribe, go check it out at relay.fm.npu. You can get the ad for extended version. Stephen and I actually are, we're not going to announce it to the general audience yet, but for the MorePowerUsers subscribers, we actually have some big plans for MorePowerUsers. We're going to be expanding it. So stay tuned, and eventually we'll be able to announce publicly what we're doing with that. But we got plans, gang. We got plans. That's right. Well, either way, Stephen, I'm so happy to have you as the co-host. We talked a little bit at the end of the last episode where Stephen got to welcome you in. But, you know, you and I have had a lot of discussions and time together. And I just want to say going in, I'm so happy that you're here. And I think that you and I are going to have a really good time making Mac Power Users. Thank you so much, David. I mean, it was an honor to be asked. I'm my adrenaline is just pumping right now because I'm super excited. I've probably been for a long time, but doing this one, uh, it's really meaningful and, uh, for how long you've had this show going. And now for me to be a part of it, it's a, it's a huge honor. So thank you. Looking forward to years with you. And I think we're going to have a lot of fun. Yeah, let's do it. But a lot of folks in the audience, I found out after we announced are already big Steven Robles fans. There's a lot of audience members. When I went to over the NPU forums or people like, Oh, I've been watching his YouTubes since he started. And so there's a lot of folks that already know you, but there's also a lot of folks that don't. So one of the things we're going to talk about today is a little bit about Stephen. We're going to talk about where he comes from, what brings him to this world, and some of his tech preferences, and just how you and I have become friends. But let's start with your background, Stephen. Tell us a little bit about yourself. So I grew up in upstate New York. The town is actually called Fishkill. It's near Poughkeepsie, if you're familiar with that. Fish kill? Fish kill. Fish like the animal, kill like unalive, yes. Okay, well, yeah. That's the name of the town. Small town. But I went to high school there in Wappingers Falls, which is nearby. And I was huge into musical theater and singing, and I played trumpet. And so this is a picture of me. We'll try to put it as the chapter artwork for audio as well. Oh, my gosh. This is my performance as Cinderella's Prince in Into the Woods. Wow, that's a big role. It was a big role. That was my senior year. Look at you. It was a wonderful experience. I loved musical theater in high school and played trumpet and the jazz band and all of that and discovered we share that love of jazz and instrumentation. And so that was my high school. And then I went to college all the way down in Florida. I went to a small college in Central Florida, but studied music, trumpet performance, and got my degree in trumpet performance, which I use none of for my podcasting and video work now, but I have it. But there I did meet my wife and she plays the flute and we played in the orchestras together. We played in jazz band together. And that's me and my wife in college, um, holding a trumpet as proof that I did, uh, do know how to play still do. And I did music shortly after college as well, but, uh, you've played, I know you play saxophone. Yeah. How long are you playing jazz bands and all of that? Yeah. Yeah, when I was a jazz fan from childhood, somehow, I don't know how, because my dad loved country music. We didn't have a lot of jazz now. But they had one Nat King Cole album. And I heard that, and it changed my life. And then I found myself into big bands as a 10-year-old. I was listening to big bands. But then I found bebop and that stuff around high school. And I was playing saxophone. and I was in a bunch of honor bands. I really thought I was going to become a saxophone. Actually, I've never really gone into this on the show, but I got into the Navy and I auditioned for the West Coast Jazz Band and I auditioned for Berklee, which are two big kind of jazz places to go. But then at the time, I realized I didn't love it enough to make it a career. So I kind of took a left turn, but I still love it and play all the time. yeah and I don't play trumpet very much anymore I'll play bass sometimes I play trumpet in an orchestra right after college did that for a while and I did work in music for a few years but then I transitioned because during that whole time and in college I started teaching myself video editing and audio editing I got my first Mac while I was in college which was the G4 12 inch power book that was my first Mac okay that's a legendary Mac it was a legendary Mac and I didn't know it at the time. I grew up with compact prosarios and Dell tower PCs, but the power book, I saw it on campus with a fellow student. We were in a traveling music ensemble and I was like, I don't even know what that computer is, but I need to have it. I don't know why. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I need it. It was, it was, it was calling to me. And when I got it, I learned iMovie and GarageBand. I started recording my college musical performances for the orchestra and the band, started editing video. And so throughout, even in college and after I started getting more into the media and photography and things like that. And so after a couple of years of music, after college, I did work for a travel company. This is me riding a camel in front of the pyramids, which we'll try to put as a chapter art. And if you're watching on YouTube, showing that, but I did photography, video, and brochure design for a travel company for a number of years. And that's where I really started honing in my skills on Final Cut and learning photography. I never knew how to use a DSLR camera. And the travel company said, well, we'll buy your camera so we can send you around the world and take photos and videos. And I didn't know anything about them, but I asked them for a Nikon D7000. I've never used a DSLR before in my life. And so as it was shipping to me, I had three days. I read the entire manual, which is, as I was thinking about, you know, you asked me to be on the show and the ethos of Mac power users. I always loved reading manuals because I felt like if I read this and I take the time to understand it, I can use the thing as soon as I get it. Yeah. And so that's what I did with that camera. I did that with my G4 power book. I literally downloaded the PDF manual from Apple's website and read it before I got it. And I taught myself how to take pictures and video. And I did that for a number of years. And all of that kind of leads to where I am today, doing video, audio, podcasting, all of that. Yeah, it's a journey, right? And it's funny to me how many musicians are in audio video production, because I think it's a similar set of skills. It is. It's a creativity. And I also did in my career, a lot of live production, worked with LED walls and setting up cameras. And there was a book I read, I actually told you about of one of the first times we spoke, it's called Range by David Epstein. And in that book, he talks about how so often we think you need to be an expert in one thing, and that's how you succeed in life. And I always felt like, man, I have so many interests. I love music. I love tech, video, podcasting. And I thought, well, I should have just focused on one thing. And then I would have been an expert at it and it would have been great. But that book kind of taught me, actually being a jack of all trades is not a bad thing. It actually helps you in troubleshooting. It helps you see problems in a broader picture and creative ways. And so it's okay. It gave me permission to have multiple interests. And that's what I've done over the years. And the interesting thing is, as this AI thing develops, I feel like we're going to have expertise on tap and a general knowledge might serve you better than the specialized knowledge. Exactly. Just being able to think in creative ways and approach problems from different perspectives. And so I did that for many years. And as far as podcasting, I actually started the Apple Insider podcast back in 2015 and did that for a little while, left and came back in 2020. Did that, started my own movie podcast during that time. And then in 2022, four years ago, I started working for Riverside, which we're using right now to record this episode and did videos for Riverside. Started growing my own YouTube channel at the same time, using what I'm learning in both places. and then just this past October went independent and now I'm just an independent content creator, videos, podcasts, and I get to do this with you. And so that's where I am today. Yeah. I mean, we talked about this in the last episode, but you going independent really was one of the reasons I thought, well, this would be great. He has time to do something like this. You know, the back pal users is a big commitment. We've been talking about the last few weeks with Stephen Hackett, but Stephen Robles is right on board for this. And, uh, I'm really looking forward to this, uh, but you've, you've actually been podcasting longer than you've been a YouTuber. I have, like, uh, like I said, I did the Apple insider podcast in 2015, but before that I did solo podcasts and random stuff. I would actually write to the XML feed and text edit on my Mac and would copy and paste the item in closure and change the details. Cause I never wanted to screw it up. And so I've been podcasting for a long time. My, my very first podcast, I don't know if I've revealed this elsewhere. My wife actually helped me come up with the name. I called it the Tech Tailor, Finding Technology That Fits You. And it was just, you know, I thought it was actually a pretty good little tagline. But I talked about the tech news and Apple stuff and helping people understand the latest stuff, you know, phones that are coming out to apps and software. And so I did that many years ago. I still have the original text file somewhere in Dropbox. but speaking of my wife you know we got married in 2008 right after college and we had kids shortly after so we have three kids now there's 16 13 and 9 and they're great they're involved in music and some of them making videos my middle son's streaming video games my daughter's dancing and doing all the things and so married three kids and i'm glad i get to be with them and be home as I'm working on videos and podcasts, and I can help them whenever they need help. So that's my family. And your wife still plays the flute? She does. My wife is a principal flutist of the Lakeland Symphony Orchestra in Lakeland, Florida. And she's been the principal flutist for, I think, four or five years now. It's the same orchestra I played with, but we never played together. I played in there for the seven years while our kids were really little. And then when I left the orchestra. She actually joined right after, but she is an incredible performer and she's on their artistic advisory board and she gets to do some solo work, but, uh, you know, they do great masterworks concerts and pops concerts. And so, yeah, if you're ever in Lakeland, Florida, look up the Lakeland symphony and you'll see my wife playing flute. I may just show up one day, Steven. You should do, you should do not to tease this, but John Williams tribute concert. I think I may just show up. Randomly showing up in Florida is something that you do, uh, which we're going to talk about. So as a concert trumpest, what's your favorite piece to play? Oh, goodness. I played many, many pieces. You know, the Haydn Concerto in E-flat is always a trumpet classic. I love Rolf Smedwig's performance of it, if there's any trumpet heads out there. Personally, I did a rendition of the Carnival of Venice, which I probably didn't do it super justice, but it was really fun to play. And so I enjoyed doing that. Uh, but I enjoyed playing in the jazz band because like we talked, uh, when we met, I've seen Maynard Ferguson live. I saw him years ago, live. I've seen Chris Bode a few times. And so I also love playing a lot of those jazz works. And so I think it's fire fire shaker is the name of the song fire shaker Maynard Ferguson. I, uh, I was just the other day driving down the road and Maynard Ferguson's La Fiesta came on my phone. and I realized I cannot listen to that while I drive or I speed. It does get your blood going. I mean, it's all of his stuff. You know, it's exciting. I love his caravan too. Well, if you like Maynard, Dave Metzger is an occasional guest on Mac Power Users. He started, got to start arranging for Maynard Ferguson, but then went on to do a bunch of stuff with Disney. He did the soundtrack for the Wish movie that came out recently. That's awesome. Yeah, we'll put a link to his Wikipedia in the past episodes in the show notes. But also, we'd be remiss if I didn't show a picture. I showed pictures of myself on a camel, but I should show a picture of my family too. Oh, nice. This was us when we watched Wicked for Good in theaters, which the musical vein is still going strong, hopefully. And we watch like Newsies at home and whatever musicals we can get a hold of. So it's the fam. And my family, watching Hamilton is a full contact sport. That's all I'll say. Yeah, that soundtrack is great. So help them with save and autofill unique passwords. You can autosave credit cards, addresses, and more all with 1Password. I actually keep all my rewards program numbers in 1Password, my travel documents, credit card, and even bank account information. 1Password stores all of that securely. Plus, you can generate those strong passwords and pass keys. And then those pass keys can sync across your 1Password apps from your iPhone, your Mac. Use it on the web, everywhere. Convenient autosave and autofill. You can install the 1Password extension in your browser and have it create new logins or autofill your logins super fast. And you can access that saved information on any device. I use the 1Password app on my Mac, on my iPhone, my iPad. And it's also great if you work in a business, having that team access to passwords, creating different vaults, sharing login credentials across teams. 1Password makes all of that easy. So here's what you do. Go to 1Password.com slash MPU for 20% off. That's the number one password.com slash MPU for 20% off. And that link is also in the show notes. You can sign up there. Our thanks to 1Password for their support of Mac Power users and all of Relay. So, Stephen, let's talk about your gear. What computer are you using? You're still using that Dell? Nope. No, the Dell Tower went away my sophomore year. And so I'm on an M4 Max studio. Okay. It's my main production machine, which I absolutely love. I have an M4 MacBook Air that I use when I travel and when I'm away from the desk. Love that as well. Then I have two Mac Minis because this is a Mac Power user, so I wanted to make sure I had multiple. No, just kidding. I bought them before I started. But I have one Mac Mini in a closet doing server things. I do stuff with Transloader, Downey, Homebridge, all that kind of stuff. And then I have another Mac Mini that is kind of like a family computer. My kids have an account on it. And that's on a KVM switch with my son's gaming PC, which he just got for Christmas. And so they kind of share the monitor and keyboard for that. But that's my Mac setup. And the Mac Studio is just incredible. You know, for the video stuff that I do, never, ever slows down. It's so fast. And especially for things like transcribing my videos, I used an app called Transcriptionist. Super fast for that. I still use Pixelmator Pro for creating thumbnails. and I can do all those things at once and just it never chokes. And I can feel the difference when I try to do that on my MacBook Air, which my typical process will be exporting a video, transcribing the MP3 of that video in the background and then trying to make the thumbnail all at the same time. And the MacBook Air starts chugging and it eventually like freezes and I have to wait a few minutes. But the Mac Studio, I have never experienced that. And so it's the best. I too am a big Mac Studio fan, but mine has two less Ms than yours does. But tell us, what's the configuration of your Mac Studio? Well, I had the M1 Max Mac Studio, and I got that as soon as it came out, and it was a great machine, but I wanted to buy the Mac Studio that ideally I would keep for 10 years, which I know is not going to be true. I'm sure I'll upgrade before that. But I went all out. So I did the M4 Max, 128 gigs of unified memory. How many? the 128 gigs of unified memory. I did the most GPU cores that the max chip would do. And I did get an eight terabyte SSD, which really hurt money wise. But I like never having to think about SSD storage. And if I was going to keep this for a long time, that was going to help. And I still edit all my video footage off of external SSDs. I don't save video footage on my Mac studio because I never want to think about space on it. And so I have 8 terabytes to go for a long time. And it was the first time I was able to download my full iCloud photo library onto a Mac, which it always felt a little dangerous, always having everything in the iCloud, but never on a physical machine. So now I can have my whole photo library on the Mac physically. Well, I can't judge you. I have an 8 terabyte M2 Mac. It really is nice having all the storage. and to tell you the truth, I'm at seven terabytes right now. So it's like, really? Yeah. I just have a lot of data. I mean, we do a lot of video with Max Barkey and I keep all of it on the one machine. But the M4 is a nice machine. You talked about transcription. You know, all my friends that went to M4 tell me that the transcription is a lot faster with that. And it's even faster on the M5 because the one Mac I didn't mention because it's a review unit still. I have the M5 MacBook Pro that Apple sent me. And I did side-by-side tests M4 to M5, and it is significantly better on the M5. And so when the M5 Pro and M5 Max comes out, that's going to be even better. But I'm curious, do you have a portable Mac that you use? Yeah, I have, like you, it's an M3 MacBook Air, and it's great. And I do all my heavy lifting on the Mac Studio. I'm very much kind of a desktop Mac guy. yeah and you know using things like cloud flare and other things i can get back to it very easily and and work off it even when i'm traveling and the you know the macbook air is such a powerful computer i mean the low end i feel like the apple silicon age has really helped the low end like those computers are so useful you can do uh video edits and stuff on them they're not quite as fast they're going to be on your in your beefy machine but they're they're fine my portable setup even when I went to WWDC last year, I had my M4 MacBook Air, my DJI Osmo Pocket 3, and that's what I made a bunch of videos with. Never stuttered. It was always great. What is your monitor, though? I'm curious. What do you use with the Mac Studio? You know, I always turn a little red when I talk about my monitor. It's the Pro Display XDR, isn't it? Let me take you on a journey. Okay, yeah, sure. I have a friend in LA who runs a Mac-based studio, and they um they did not like their pro display xvrs right when they first announced apple silicon i felt like my i had a i had an ipad pro and i was talking to him about it he's like we actually have something that only runs on intel software we could use another one he's like if you're going to buy a new one you want to sell it to me and i said well i'll trade you for one of your pro displays that you always tell me you hate and uh he said he thought about he says okay i'll trade it to you but you've got to give me a thousand bucks for this blanking stand yeah so so i don't know when was that about five six years ago i got a used pro display and uh like i'm always a little embarrassed because it's like a very expensive thing and i probably i think i made a good deal that's a good deal but uh i don't think i would buy one new but now that i say six k's is a lot the case and i like the big screen and uh i hope it lasts a long time oh i am jealous yeah because i can justify a lot of things yeah i just you know i justified buying an iphone air even though i already have a 17 pro max yeah but the pro display xdr was something i just i could not justify it yet and so i'm i'm still on the studio display but things may change you know there's a lot of rumors that the next studio display is coming out as well as a new pro display xdr so So if it's any cheaper than $6,000, I might consider it. But we'll see. I'm sure it will be, and it'll be better because the monitor technology has advanced so much in the last few years. But yeah, that iMac Pro I gave him was no slouch. It was a very nice loaded computer. But I think, I don't like to think about it. I'm just like, okay, I did that thing, and now I have this thing. So I don't go any further than that. But yeah, I'm with you there. No, you probably made the best deal of a Pro Display XDR that anyone has ever had. Because anyone else would have paid thousands more. But there's downsides because, like, you've got to have a camera, you don't have speakers. There's downsides to it. Oh, it doesn't have speakers either? I didn't realize that. No, but it's great, though. I love it. Oh, yeah. This is about your gear, Stephen. Okay, okay. But I do like your M4. I'll tell you, you know, just so you know, going in, I have said openly in the Max Raki Labs, I am super tempted by this M5 when I read all these AI numbers because I'm trying to do more local AI stuff and it looks like it's a real improvement and I know there's going to be a new Mac Studio and it's like, oh boy, I could write a big check this year. I actually have a video on the YouTube channel where I did a lot of direct comparisons, M5 MacBook Pro to M4 MacBook Air. So it's not a precise comparison. I mean, the MacBook Pro is a fan, but for all the local AI tests I could do, which were image generation, transcription, there's a couple apps that have kind of local models it was it was a stark difference and so those m5 pros and maxes are going to be pretty sweet and just think once you get a max or an ultra you know i'm saying hopefully we'll see hopefully we'll see an m5 ultra because we still are only on the m3 ultra yeah i think that my theory is that we'll get that max studio around wwdc okay that's my theory i'm sticking to it all right what about your uh your mobile devices I'm on 17 Pro Max. I use the big phone. It's a one terabyte because I do a lot of video with it. And like I mentioned before, I just bought an iPhone Air. I actually bought it off another YouTuber who was kind of getting rid of it because I have regrets about Apple devices that I have sold and given away in the past. Like that beloved 12 inch G4 PowerBook I sold early on after college and I regret selling it ever since And now in my mind like maybe this is a Stephen Hackett influence Whenever there a new you know style of something Apple releases a new product line I want to hold on to it. I actually have the original Apple watch, like the OG one stainless steel. And so I wanted an iPhone air just to have it, but it'll also be my beta testing device. So that's that. I also have an M5 iPad pro 13 inch. I have the Apple watch ultra two, and I have a vision pro. I don't know if you put that in the mobile device category or computers, but I do have a vision pro and I enjoy it. Yeah. How often do you use it? Well, here's the thing. So I bought the M two vision pro the original with my own money on launch day as a YouTuber. I was very excited that it was, I was going to go viral with apple vision pro videos. I even, this is a little weird. I met the UPS guy at a gas station so I could get it early rather than the time that he would come and have a selfie with the truck but anyway uh that didn't pan out because the vision pro being very expensive is not really like mass appeal yeah so i made some videos on it i every time there's new immersive content i will watch that because i think that's the most compelling thing in vision pro but i did get a review unit of the new m5 apple vision pro okay so i have two vision pros here and i've been doing more testing and while i've never found like a use case that was like an everyday thing I just recently tested out an NDI encoder, which is a little box that can take HDMI in, and then it sends that video signal to your home network. And then you can access it from any device with an app. I use the Vixio app, V-X-I-O. And in Vision Pro, I can actually then see any HDMI video source in my house in Vision Pro whenever I want. So I connected it to my Nintendo Switch 2. and now I can literally just wake up my Switch 2 from a controller in any room of the house and play it in Vision Pro immediately. And it's just always available. And I did a video where I even played it multiplayer. So my son had my old Vision Pro, I was wearing the newer one, and we could do multiplayer Smash Bros in Vision Pro, which was kind of fun. So yeah, I've been using it a little more often since that. Yeah, we'll have to go into that deeper at some point. For sure. No, I'd love to. Vision Pro, I actually use it, but I do like writing and stuff in it, but it doesn't have very many good writing apps, but I like the immersion of it. I wish Apple would do way more immersive environments. They released the Bora Bora environment and then Jupiter came out in Vision OS 26. But if they ever wanted to make more money on services, if they had an immersive environment store where you could buy packs of immersive environments, It's almost one of the coolest things to do is just work on your Mac with the Mac mirroring, virtual display, InVision Pro or Right, like you're saying. That's one of the coolest experiences. Put me in Machu Picchu. There's a lot of places in the world. Underneath the Eiffel Tower, you know, things like that. I agree. Victoria Falls. There's so many places you could do. So anyway, that's what I do. Okay. Apple Watch? I used the Apple Watch Ultra 2 because I actually got the Ultra 3 as a review unit, but my experience was no different than the Ultra 2. I'm not going out on wilderness hikes where I need SOS satellite connectivity. That was the big new feature in the Ultra 2. So I stuck with the Ultra, or that was the Ultra 3. So I stuck with the Ultra 2. It's great. I love the battery life. And it does have cellular connectivity. For the rare instance, I'm out of range. and it still has the blood oxygen sensor that you can actually see the data on the watch, which is all the new models. You have to look at your iPhone for blood oxygen because of that Massimo case. So yeah, I stuck with the Ultra 2. What about you? Lawyers ruin everything. Yeah, I'm using the M3. I upgraded from the M1. I'm sorry, the Ultra 1 to the Ultra 3. And so I've got a recent upgrade, really like it. So this way when you're at Disney, you can SOS satellites to Daisy. Yeah, there we go. I mean, and the move from the one to the three was enough to justify it because there were a lot of features that came in on the two that I didn't get. For sure. This episode of the Mac Power Users is brought to you by Fundera, powered by NerdWallet. Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com slash MPU to find the funding you deserve. 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Go to nerdwallet.com slash MPU to find the funding you deserve. Fundera Inc. NMLS ID number 1240038. And our thanks to Fundera, powered by NerdWallet, for their support of the Mac Power users and all of RelayFM. okay steven you are a successful youtuber and you've got a great little set there and you make really high quality videos let's just talk a little bit about the rest of your gear for sure thank you also it's you know took a little while to get there to figure out what i'm doing because again i taught myself reading manuals of dslrs but i use a sony a7IV mirrorless camera to record recently solved the overheating problem because I make long videos. Sometimes my videos are like hour plus long. And so I actually got this Ulanzi cooler for mirrorless cameras that actually goes onto the back of your camera. It's like spring mounted where the display usually sits and it will cool the camera. And so now I don't run the overheating problem, which is great. Nice. You got a thermal system for your camera. I do and it works great it works great so there is a fan but I run voice isolation on all my videos anyway a little bit just cut out room noise and so it goes away I have an a Sony a6400 as my top down camera it's an old APS-C crop style camera but for top down shots it works fine goes into a Blackmagic ATEM Mini Pro switcher both my cameras and also an Apple TV and my Mac Studio those are my four inputs on the ATEM Mini Pro. So when I'm live streaming, I can switch to the extended display for my Mac Studio. If I'm doing a video on Apple TV tips, I'll literally just switch to that input on the ATEM Mini Pro, go to Riverside and record the Apple TV signal through that. This way there's no, you know, security, DRM, like it blacked out the screen, all that. So all four of those devices connect to the ATEM Mini Pro. And then for audio, I have my Rodecaster Pro 2 audio interface with, this is now the first time, the first episode I'm recording with this microphone. So hopefully everything's going well. This is the Neumann KMS 105 because I've been using, or I had used the Earthworks Ethos microphone for the last six to seven years. And it's a great microphone. I like it. Sometimes my voice can feel a little shaded or veiled as our wonderful editor, Jim, had put it. And so I'm trying this microphone. We'll see how that goes, but that's going into the Rodecaster. And I use the Sennheiser MKH416, the industry standard shotgun microphone for my video. That goes in the Rodecaster. All that goes into the Mac Studio. And I use every port on the Mac Studio for all the things. I have the ATEM and the Rodecaster all plugged in directly. Then I have a CalDigit Element hub for my external SSDs, things like my Stream Deck, which I also have a Stream Deck here on my desk that I love. I run a bunch of shortcuts through that. And I control my ATEM Mini Pro through the Stream Deck. And so as I'm saying all this now, maybe we should do a deep dive on all of this someday and talk about all the arrangements I have there. And then I have a bunch of smart lights. So I have a huge, I'm huge on smart home. And so I have like 150 plus Apple Home devices. I'm all in on Apple Home, no other ecosystem really and so the blue lights behind me you see now are hue lights the sign floor lamp i have a hue bloom and i can change the color at a push of a button and so now i'm purple if you're watching on youtube and i can have any color i want for any set uh you know whenever i start recording a video i'll change it back to blue and so that's thanks to the the hue lights and other smart lights i have smart shades that close when i'm ready to start recording and yeah that's all my smart home stuff. Yeah, we're going to get into that deep because you've gone really heavy into HomeKit. And I think that's something we could definitely cover more on the show. It's always evolving. And two, actually, this is not hardware, but I think it would be interesting because not many people have heard of this tool. But for every video that I make, I use a software called Gling.ai. That's the website. The software is called Gling. And all it does is I give it my A-roll video from after I imported into Final Cut, I dragged a file into Gling and Gling removes bad takes and silences. And the way I make videos, I don't script them. I just usually have an outline and I just talk. And so that means I have a lot of mess ups where I'll start saying something and stop and Gling cuts all of that out. So my A-roll is basically edited for me using that app. And it is really helpful. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. If you do solo content, it really doesn't work very well with multiple people if you're doing like podcast type stuff but for solo content if you're like me and you don't script stuff it is a it is a lifesaver i've run it on every video every short i do and that plus you know ai tools like chat chp and gemini for helping me with titles and descriptions those are some key parts of my workflow on the software side and i edit everything in final cut if anyone's wondering yeah we're gonna do a workflow show on video at some point maybe we'll both do our workflows but you know yeah uh you just for the first time on air cost me money because this gling is something i've been looking for i actually tried to teach chat gpt to do that for me and it was miserable at it but yeah like you and one of the things that attracted to me to you steven is that you don't script your videos because i don't either. I feel like I'll do an outline, but I feel like whenever I read a script, it's very wooden and I like it to be more spontaneous. And sometimes if something goes wrong, you leave it in because it shows people what to do when something goes wrong. And you and I are two of the very few people in our little space that do that. Most people have things heavily scripted. So yeah, this is a service I can use as well. Yeah. And I mean, people talk about my YouTube output, but I think you produce more video content than I do. You just have many of them go to the labs and stuff. But you make hours and hours of video. And so this kind of tool is probably very useful. Yeah, definitely. I'm going to check into this. And what about AI? What's your AI tool of choice these days? So I'm still A-B testing a bunch of things. I'm using Claude more for shortcuts and things like AppleScript and Regex where I don't have a lot of experience in because my trumpet degree, I did not get a class in Apple script, but Claude is helping me with that. And then Gemini and ChatGPT, I'm testing because one of the things I do in my process is I'll transcribe my video because I don't have a script. So I transcribe it. So I have the full content. I give that transcript to both ChatGPT and Gemini, and I have a prompt and I have a custom GPT and a custom Gemini gem where I've trained it on my past videos. I've told it titles and descriptions that have performed well. And I ask it, give me five title ideas, give me a description and give me the tags for YouTube. And it spits out a bunch of stuff. I also ask it for like text that might be good on the thumbnail. And so it'll give me 10 options for that. And I'll look at what Gemini gives me, what Chachapiti gives me. Sometimes Chachapiti is still, still wins that out. I think it gives me better, more unique and, you know, lack of a better word, clickable titles and thumbnails. But sometimes Gemini does better too. And so I'm doing both of them right now, but I am using Gemini as my general search tool, where if I'm just looking for general information or I'm trying to figure out how to do something in an app or something like Circle, I will go to Gemini and ask the question because I do like how it's been giving me those kinds of results over ChatGPT. All right. One last hardware question. What's your network running on? my network is all ubiquity i have all the ubiquity things and three or four years ago now we actually were able to build this house which is how i was able to build this kind of room as a studio and so i ran all the ethernet cable myself i terminated it myself and every time i show it off in a youtube video people are like those terminations are terrible it's like that's fine i did it myself so uh but i i did i ran ethernet everywhere four years later i wish i had ran double the amount of ethernet i did but i ran it all but it's a ubiquity it's a dream machine se is the main one. And then I have some pro switch. I have a bunch of switches around the house with power over ethernet type devices. I have a switch like in my entertainment center area for all the video game stuff for my kids, but it's all ubiquity. I use their wifi seven access point in my main area. I have a wifi six E access point and a couple other wall access points, but everything's ubiquity. And I just got the travel router too, which I was finally excited because it kept selling out. And, uh, the ubiquity travel routers, some I'm going to use in hotels and stuff so i'm all in on ubiquity i love yeah when uh when we asked steven hackett was leaving somebody in the forum said something to the extent of well the new steven uses ubiquity so the balance of the universe is retained or something like that well what are you are you a ubiquity yeah steven hackett got to me like right before he left like the last three months ago i i upgraded to ubiquity and i i'm that guy now it really is great and it it sucks you and i put my name on the list for the travel router i still haven't got uh an email saying i can buy one yet but i will eventually and i was talking to mac power user dave one of our listeners who's a big ubiquity ubiquity guy and now he's got me thinking about cameras i feel like this is a very slippery slope you get on with ubiquity i would again in hindsight i would have ran ethernet everywhere i wanted a camera everywhere i would have thought to ever put a subwoofer like a sonos subwoofer for ethernet I would have ran way more Ethernet. I've not done Ubiquiti cameras yet because I'm all in on HomeKit secure video, which kind of stinks. But Aqara, the G5 camera, is now a HomeKit secure video camera that uses power over Ethernet. And so there is an option now if you want to stay in the HomeKit secure video world and you don't have to pay another subscription for camera recordings, you can do that. But I need to tell you about an automation. ChangeDetection.io. It's a great website. and you can have it watch a product page for you, like the Ubiquiti travel router. Yeah. And then you can set up something in Pushcut, which is a great app on iPhone, and you can set up to get a notification whenever there's a change on that product website. And between that and Casey List texting me to tell me when it was in stock, I finally was able to get it. Yeah, that's great. I'll check that site out. That's very useful. I think that the thing with the Ubiquiti stuff It's just, it's so reliable and you get so much good information. It really is the, like if Apple still made networking stuff, it feels like the Ubiquiti app is so good. It's so well designed. It functions well. And I used all the airport stuff until Apple stopped making them. You know, I was Airport Express, Airport Extreme. Yeah. And Eero is still what I suggest for friends and family who are, you know, they need a wireless network and they need ease and simplicity. I do recommend Euro for them because the ubiquity stuff does take some management and administrative know-how, but for myself, it's, it's all ubiquity. Yeah. I, for cameras, I use UFI and because they're good, they can store it locally, but they're not HomeKit friendly. And you know, there's a lot to it. The HomeKit secure video I like, except for the fact that it downscales all the cameras. Yes. And this is stuff we will talk about on a future episode. I have so many thoughts about the HomeKit Secure video. It's still 1080p. You can't easily download mass recording. So, you know, we need to do a whole episode of that too. Yeah. Okay. I wanted to talk a bit before we get into some more stuff that we're going to do that Steve's on shows. I just wanted to talk about Steven and why he's on the show. We discussed briefly in the last episode how you and I connected when you left your day job and I started sending you emails. and I was just really happy to see another great creator being able to go out on his own and I knew you were going to do great things I think I may have told you at some point you know be careful about saying yes to too many things because that's a very big risk when you go out on your own I did the same thing like I gotta feed these kids so I'm gonna do whatever somebody asked me to do you know and uh and then I asked you to do something that's ironic yes it is it is uh but the reason I want to tell the audience you're going to be a great host number one is you bring so much enthusiasm to the show um i always felt like on mac power users i am the gung-ho one and you know katie and steven both are conservative to a certain degree about things and you and i are both gung-ho and i think this is going to be really fun to have somebody who will just enable me and so this is gonna be so expensive yes it will um the other thing i like about steven is just his willingness to get his hands dirty and knowledge. We're planning a future show at some point about useful AI. I've been spending a lot of time with Claude, but Stephen texted me and said, oh, I set up one too. Yeah, he's ready to go down the rabbit hole with me on crazy stuff. So I really love that about him. And I just think you do a really great job of communicating. And listeners will already know this far into this first episode what a great communicator is. And the last reason is I wanted to find a co-host that I generally liked and enjoyed being with And you are absolutely that too. So you hinted at this earlier. We've not told anybody this, but you and I have done more than just talk on zoom and Riverside. We actually spent a day together. We did. You said, Hey, can I come to Florida? Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Okay. And, uh, yeah. I don't know. Do you want to tell them what we did? I guess. So audience member, just imagine this, like you're thinking about joining a podcast with this crazy guy in California. And he does all these things like makes you, we recorded test shows together. We did all these discussions. You know, I'm so anal about this show. I want it to be so good. I had to get the right guy. And the more I spent time with Stephen, I realized he was the one, but I also realized him and I had never shook hands. And I felt like I don't want to invite him on the show, not having spent time with him. So imagine yourself in Stephen's shoes. And this guy kind of, I guess, it's not really interviewing, but it's just talking to you about coming on the show. And he says, all right, I want to come to your house. I want to come visit you. And what do you say to that, right? And Stephen didn't really have a choice. I said, well, I'm going to be in Orlando next weekend. And so Daisy and I decided, it was around her birthday, so we decided to take a Disney World weekend. We flew out on Saturday and flew back on Monday. Shortest trip I've ever made out there. But we spent all day Sunday and we invited you to join us. Stephen is a big Star Wars fan. In fact, one of our first calls, Stephen said, because you could see in the background, my Millennium Falcon carpet. He said, Hey, is that the Millennium Falcon carpet? Because I have the same one under my chair right now. And so I knew he was a Star Wars fan. So you and I and my wife and your wife and your family and your kids, we all went to Galaxy's Edge together in Florida. that. Yes, it was incredible. And I have to say, first of all, I mean, thank you for your kindness. You helped us get in. It was, I've never brought my kids to Disney. And so when you invited us out there, I was like, okay, well, we'll bring my wife and, you know, we'll do like a double date kind of thing. And I was like, I can't go to Disney. Never having brought my kids. My oldest is 16. I have to do it. And I felt funny asking because I knew you, you know, this was kind of like not an evaluation, but we're trying to figure this out. Is this going to work? I was like, well, let me just ask him and so when i texted you if i could bring the kids you were so kind that you said yeah just just bring them let's let's do it and so we all got to make a day of it and it was it was a blast my kids got to do their first disney trip uh because of you guys and you guys coming out here for that and it was wonderful meeting daisy as well and yeah we spent the whole day together and i want to surprise you with one thing now because we're talking about star wars i went at my mom's house i found the original star wars trilogy on vhs i remember that this was the star wars i grew up on yeah and it's uh not the it's not the widescreen version this is the four by three version which is i think not sure but that was the shape of tv at the time you know and uh still have it still good condition in the box but this is uh the one i grew up watching and uh you know i loved watching it with my dad and he was a big fan and so yeah it was it was a full circle moment of being able to bring my kids there do it and after you know we had dinner And then you and Daisy went off. We did one last activity together as a family in galaxy's edge, which was lightsaber building. Yeah. And so we brought my kids in. I also have another surprise. This is my lightsaber that we built. And, uh, can you, I'm going to ask you, I don't think you know what color this is. I don't think I showed you in the picture. Do you know what color this is? Uh, no, I don't. All right. Take a wild guess. What do you think I'd show? Um, green. Oh yeah, it's green. Nailed it. You nailed it. I chose green for my lightsaber. All right. Good man. Well, it was really fun. We had a great time. He said, my kids have never been as okay if I bring them. I'm like, are you kidding? You have to bring your kids. You can't go to Disneyland without your kids. They've never been there. Hey, mom and dad are going to go to Disneyland, but you guys can stay home and watch the dog or whatever. That's crazy. so uh and actually uh in honesty uh watching you with your kids just reaffirmed the decision to bring on the show because you have such a great relationship with your kids watching you guys laugh together and have a good time together and hanging out with your kids and your wife and your family It just you know it was just solid And we had so much fun. We didn't talk much tech, but we got stuck in line on one ride for like two hours and we got to talk about a bunch of stuff that was fun. We did. Yeah. And you shared a lot of knowledge of work and stuff. And I look forward to learning from you because you've been really doing the stuff that I'm aspiring to do now. And so it was, it was wonderful. Got to try some blue milk, which is less milk-like and more slushy like, but you know, it was fun. It was fun. Yeah. It was a really fun day and totally worth it. And I'm so glad that we did it. And you and I had that, that chance to kind of do that. I'm sure we'll see each other more often, uh, with being married to my wife means that I occasionally end up in Orlando for one reason or another. And, you know, and also maybe we'll meet in California when you come out here for various things with Apple or whatever, but I'm just really happy that we, we did spend the time. So going forward, the show format is staying the same. We're still the Mac power users. We'll have guests. We'll have a really deep dive episodes. We'll have more shallow, wider dive episodes. We still want to do software club where we bring developers in. But Steve and I've been talking, we have some, some new formats we do want to test and play with. But you know, in large part, the show is going to stay the same, but we have some experiments we want. We're definitely going to be improving the value for the more power user subscription. If you're interested in that, this is a great time to get on board. But it's very exciting to have you on the show, Stephen. And I think we got a lot of great stuff to talk about going in. We do. I'm super excited. And thank you again for asking me and for this really tremendous honor to be on the show. Thank you. This episode of Mac Power Users is brought to you by Squarespace. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to be honest. I have been waiting my entire life to read a Squarespace ad. Not just because Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online, but I have personally been using Squarespace for 15 plus years. I have made hundreds of Squarespace on my own. I'm actually listed as a Squarespace expert on their website, and my personal website right now is built entirely on Squarespace. So not only have I used and loved them for years, but I have heard Squarespace ads and podcasts myself for over a decade, and I've always wanted to do one myself. So as my very first one, let me just tell you, Squarespace is the way you should build your website. 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Perfect for online courses, exclusive tutorials, and premium workshops. So head to squarespace.com slash MPU for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code MPU to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash MPU, offer code MPU to get 10% off your first purchase. Wow, I finally did my first Squarespace sponsorship. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay. Okay, we've been toying around it, Stephen, but let's talk a little bit about the stuff you like to dive deep on. You've mentioned shortcuts a bit, but you really go deep with shortcuts. You know, I love to tinker. I've tinkered my whole life, little robotic sets and science kits when I was a kid up until now. And Shortcuts is kind of like the ultimate tinkering tool. And I used the workflow app when that first came out on iPhone and then it became Shortcuts. I followed legends in the Shortcuts field, Matthew Cassinelli, Federico Vatici, and learned so much from them. And I just wanted to share my love for Shortcuts. And so that's what I started making videos on as well as other topics and started making shorts about it. And it really catches on. I love Shortcuts because they're easy to share. the value is pretty evident when you find and build a shortcut that can apply to a lot of people. But then there's an infinite trove of what you can make with shortcuts because everyone has a slightly different use case. And a lot of times I'll just take a very similar shortcut, tailor it a little bit for somebody in my community or on YouTube. And now someone finds all new value in what it can do. Like I just got a request the other day from, I believe it's a farmer and he needs to know the price of beef for heifers and steers every week. And the website that he checks, they put a PDF on the website with the prices. And so it's not easy to pull that information. So I built a shortcut that uses Apple intelligence and getting the content of the websites, parsing that PDF through ChatGPT. And now he can just hit one shortcut and actually he automates it. So he gets a text message every day with the latest prices of beef. And I just think that's so cool that all kinds of walks of life and everyone can use a shortcut to help make their work more easy and automated. So I love shortcuts. I think one of the huge things for shortcuts is Apple intelligence. And, you know, as we record this, we're on the verge of getting the point for beta release, which is supposed to have the Gemini support in it, which would mean hopefully that private cloud compute gets way more powerful. And for a lot of people, shortcuts suddenly is a real option because you can send it to process almost anything and like when you were mentioning regular expressions earlier i mean ai makes that so much easier but i think the need for it will be reduced by the existence of pcc with a good model behind it yeah precisely so i love shortcuts and likewise i love smart home like you mentioned i'm all in on HomeKit. Even in my last house, which was an older home, I wasn't able to use a lot of smart home stuff because I didn't have neutral wires for the light switches. And the house, it was like a 1940s house. And so when we got to build this house four years ago, I went all in. So every light switch is a smart switch. It's all Lutron and Leviton, garage door opener, shades, the Hue lights everywhere, everything. Everything smart home, thermostat. And so yeah, we'll get into that someday are you a big smart home user yeah i am i and like you i lean home kit but i toy with home assistant and some of the other technologies too but but i uh i really because i like to teach this stuff i feel like most of the other platforms aren't really that teachable you've got to be willing to just like go super deep to make them work and i think for most people like i always say on the show it's just they just want to walk in the room and have the lights turn on it's like that's the yeah that's the big test and now that we've got human presence sensors some of that stuff is a lot more possible. But for the longest time, that was the measure of success and they failed at it. But I like to lean HomeKit, to be honest with you. I do too. I've toyed around with HomeBridge, but I eventually get tired of having to update plugins and things breaking eventually. But I will say at CES, I got to visit the Amazon booth and their smart home stuff with Alexa Plus, it is pretty impressive where you can literally just tell it a scene that you want to create and it will do it. So you could say, Hey, dingus, when I say abracadabra, turn on the lights in the living room, the kitchen and this room. And it will literally create that scene from your natural language input. Now I couldn't see how well it was actually creating those scenes. Cause it was just kind of, you know, it was a demo, but that's the promise of it. And Alexa plus is actually now out for everyone here in the United States. And hopefully when Gemini comes to the voice assistant on Apple's devices, hopefully we'll get more of that kind of just natural language, do this when I do this. And I think that'll make it more accessible to more people. Yeah, I sure hope so. But you know, it is good times though, with, like I said, the AI assistant comes in there as well and the sensors are getting better and cheaper. So hopefully it's not just a thing for nuts like us. I think that we're getting better. yeah i also love home theater and audio um you know i have the music degree i love audio whether it's listening to music or watching movies and so i'm a big sonos guy i have a bunch of sonos stuff around the house the arcs and the subs but also built a 7.1 room as we were building the house where i installed the speakers and the in-wall speakers which was terrifying i literally cut the drywall myself and i was like hopefully i'm not screwing up you know but i put the walls in there. And so I love that kind of stuff too. And my explainers on YouTube and all of that. So it's, I have a variety of things that I'm interested in. All right. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, kind of just jump in on some stuff. You like shortcuts. What's your favorite short shortcut in this favorite, simple one that it's easier to run? So I've filmed so much and I film my iPhone so much that I have a shortcut. It's pretty simple, but all it does is it's recording video and it will set the dim setting, go to dark mode, bring me to the settings to set my auto lock to never, and then bring me to the accessibility setting to turn off auto brightness. Yeah. And that's all it does. But then my phone is on a set brightness. It's never going to screens, never going to turn off while I'm filming. And it also sets my filming focus mode in the background. And that shortcut I use pretty much every day. And it's great. You know that because they have a URL scheme to do those settings on your back, but they don't have them on your phone. That makes me nuts. And now Apple script can get you somewhere in shortcuts for opening an app and doing things like that. But the URL schemes on iOS is really nice. And one shortcut I just shared, there's a shortcut where if I, you can run it from the control center or the action button, but it will take you to the settings for the app that is active on screen. So if you're in the messages app, I can literally tap the shortcut and it will bring me to the settings pane. And of course that time it didn't work. The one time I do it anyway, most of the time it takes you to the settings for that app. And so that's a cool thing you can do on iOS. Yeah. It's nice. Um, okay. What's your favorite complex shortcut, Mr. Fancy shortcut guy. My favorite ones are the ones that I use like every week for podcasting and for video one particular. So I create a Safari tab group for every podcast episode of primary technology. and I want to format podcast show notes quickly. And so with a Safari tab group, you can click copy all links, which put all the links for all the tabs in that tab group on your clipboard. And I run a shortcut on my Mac in the menu bar and it formats all the links. If it's an Amazon link, it'll add my affiliate link. If it's this kind of link, it'll, you know, if it's a YouTube link, it'll get the video title. And so I have all the links to that show for that episode in the show notes. It also has the boilerplate style links that I do like to our social media and to membership. And then it does this cool thing where it'll give me a choose from menu and I can select however many articles that we talked about from this list. And it will send those articles to ChatGPT in the shortcut and formulate a title and description for that episode based on those topics. So in a few clicks from all the links in my Safari tab group to my bare notes, I have basically my entire show notes done. I'll massage the title and description a little bit, but it saves me a ton of time and really helps get through that kind of creative hurdle of the blank page. What do I title this episode? That kind of thing. That's good. That's a good one. We're going to talk more shortcuts and like we'll get updates in June. Also, I think this new AI update with the 0.4 update might lead to some shortcuts content as well. Yeah. Rapid fire. Yeah, let's do it. First thing you open on your Mac each morning. I leave so much open on my Mac. So this was a hard question to answer, but unfortunately it's like social media. I have threads, Mastodon, Blue Sky, and X all open on my Mac. And that's kind of the first thing I look at. Notification badges on or off? off for everything except messages you have an ipad we didn't talk about it what ipad do you have it's the m5 ipad pro i you have the magic keyboard and i use it there a lot and i use the apple pencil for editing podcasts specifically using the app ferrite okay so you edit podcasts in ferrite on ipad i do i've edited podcasts there for years um i can add chapter markers chapter art and chapter links all in the ferrite app yeah and i find editing with apple pencil is really fast for me nice and then you probably have the big one right i do i have the 13 inch yeah for for editing you're gonna want the big one yeah what's your browser of choice safari i'm a safari guy yeah what's your default safari too it just integrates so well with everything yeah iCloud tabs, tab groups. Yeah. We're actually planning a future show on AI browsers. So if anybody's interested in that, let us know your questions. But I play with Chrome because some stuff I do needs it. I do play with some of the AI browsers, but I always end up back in Safari for most of my work. New Mac. Okay. You got an M4, so you recently upgraded your Mac. are you a migration assistant guy or are you a new compave guy when it comes to mac i'm a fresh start just on my mac all the time because you know you install apps and utilities over the years and all that stuff gets in your application support folders in your library folder and so when i get a new mac i want to start fresh and so i'll go through the pain of putting in the serial codes and serial numbers for my software for my ios devices i will always transfer from device so mac fresh slate ios and ipad i will transfer what about you uh i am like you but i feel like you and i are unique because we're in this racket right we're always sent software codes and you're trying i try a lot of software that doesn't stick around and you don't know what kind of cruft is left behind right like clean my mac does a pretty good job but it doesn't really get you never know that you get everything right um right right so i do find when i get a new mac that just starting fresh is is usually a good idea if i wasn't someone who was always testing and installing software i actually do like migration assistant for like my family members their upgrades are a lot less frequent and it's more important that they just have a working computer when we're done with the process then you know hit some speed bump or there's something missing so i run migration system for those yeah exactly light mode or dark mode automatic light mode during the day dark mode at night all right that's the way apple wants it is that what you do i generally am light i'm generally like all the whole time yeah because you know i just when i started using computers they were all dark screen with green text and then like it was such a when you first sat at a mac and it had that light screen it felt like jumping into the future i don't know how else to put it but the uh there's a i have a warm spot in my heart for the the light mode because that to me meant a modern computer back in the day and uh it's hard for me to to give that up but do you do have good like nighttime device hygiene like yes are you so you're not on your devices late at night No, I don't. I mean, my phone goes in a drawer at night. I am shut down pretty much by about eight o'clock, and I really try not to be on computers and screens after that. That's probably helpful, because I am not like that. I have bad habits at night, and so dark mode is especially helpful in a dark bedroom as you're trying to read a thread. Makes sense. I keep wanting to get an e-reader, like a Kindle or one of these. They've got a bunch of different brands of them now, but I just hate the things. They just never, they're so slow and frustrating. This needs to be a whole episode too. Cause we actually, in our topic ideas note, I wanted to talk about dumb smart devices, basically those like single purpose ones. Cause I do, I have a bunch as well and I just never find myself being able to use them regularly. I just don't go to them. So anyway, I like their promise. I know there's a lot of listeners that love them. Every time it comes up, people write me to tell me why I'm missing the boat with a, remarkable or something but i just yeah i just can't get it yeah um keyboard is it clicky is it apple something else i love the magic keyboard and i still use it i still have it around for touch id yeah where you know so i can do that randomly but i use the keychron q2 max keyboard by default here at my mac studio and i like a clicky i like the clicky keyboards now took a while to get used to it yeah you know i just i just like my apple keyboard i've tried clicky keyboards and i actually find the apple ones are easier to use for me the travel is so fast on the apple's magic keyboard yeah that that i really like that part and even a clicky keyboard i still sometimes like i think i would be a little faster on the apples you know but yeah uh favorite obscure keyboard shortcut i do have i actually did a whole video on keyboard shortcuts recently and i really like command shift left and right bracket for scrolling through tabs in safari yeah i do that a lot you know and i do paste and match style which is like a four key keystroke by default but that's that's my favorite one just going back and forth between tabs where do you keep your cloud storage icloud dropbox something else icloud drive by default i actually and this is one of the reasons i can do fresh Mac and not do migration assistant. Cause I basically store everything in iCloud drive. Everything is either in the documents folder on my Mac or it's temporary, like audio recordings, like the audio for this episode, I'll record to like the movies folder or whatever. And that's local, not iCloud drive, but everything's iCloud drive. I still pay for a Dropbox account because I have like a decade of files in there and I don't know what to do with them. And my family uses Dropbox so I have it but I use iCloud by default yeah so we should compare our documents folders someday because I have really migrated almost everything in there as well like I used to have one called media that I kept in root iCloud like media where I put like all my fonts all my you know you know audiobooks and and pdf or e-pub books and eventually I just moved it all of documents and they have all got their own folders and like all my sheet music is in a folder there and right yeah it works fine exactly uh email app apple mail apple everywhere okay what about you that's a good question i don't know depends when you ask me today is apple mail yeah i jump around a lot email and me have a troubled relationship and uh and i'm always looking for a way to make it better uh do you name your devices like i have boring names it's like steven's iphone 17 pro max okay but in my defense i name my external ssds fun names all right because i have a lot of them with video footage so i have like arrakis is one elysium is another okay rivendale is one so i do fun names for my ssds yeah what about you i mean do you do you name them something different your devices before i say that i think we could talk lord of the rings that's something on our list now we gotta talk yes but the um yeah i i named them after jazz artists you know my my mac my mac studio is mingus you know so um really that's big you know do you put like like the m4 or anything else in the name no i know what they are you know what they are yeah really yeah so Your iCloud devices are just like Parker Mingus. Yeah. Yeah. Satchmo. Like it's just like. Dizzy. Yeah. All right. Stickers. On your MacBook. Are you a sticker guy? I don't put stickers on anything. Yeah. All right. Do you? I have a Max Sparky sticker on mine, but that's it. That's it. I know Mike Curley. Does Stephen Hackett, he did stickers? Stephen Hackett did stickers, right? I think he did it as like a stunt as part of the St. Jude thing. because I don't think Steven's a huge sticker fan either. No, I don't do stickers. Yeah. All right. Here's a nerdy one. Finder. List view, column view, or icon view? I'm going to need to know yours. I do column view. Yeah. Column view is, I think, the most efficient. It just depends. When I feel nostalgic, I go icon view. Sure. When I need to work on stuff, I go column view. And when I need to really dig down, I go to the detail view, the list view. Sure. I'll do IconView if I need to look at a bunch of images, and I'll drag the slider over and make them bigger, but that's it. Although, IconView is also useful just sorting. If you have a bunch of PDFs, you just make them large, and then you can sort them very quickly. Sure. Although that's quickly becoming old school with the new AI stuff. I just did a thing yesterday where I've been using the new Dev and Think, and they have a thing where you can connect it to your api key for like clod or chat gpt or whatever and it will go through and it will name files for you so you let's say i had like a thousand scans that hadn't been named i just got lazy and i had it use the api icon with clod and it went through and named them all for me with the date and the description and then i had it sort it for me into my existing folder structure and it did that and i got a bill for like 12 of api tokens i'm like that is the best 12 i have ever spent you know i will say that shortcuts with apple intelligence can do something similar i don't know if it will do it as well but it can yeah you know and i'm really looking forward to seeing that work better you know and i think we're on the verge of it so some cool stuff but that used to be a huge problem like i made whole courses talking about tools and ways to like have a text out of a pdf have the computer search it and try and name it based on it and find the source date and it was so brittle because that technology was so hard but now with ai just reads a doc and names it and it's like done that's it instantly it's wild uh what's your desktop wallpaper right now so as a youtuber one of the things i do is to try and like fish for comments and engagement by wallpapers yeah so i try to use wallpapers i think or have like general appeal and that's how i end up just using them and i like wallpapers from basicappleguy.com yeah those are great yeah yeah he does great work he has a lot of free wallpapers and then i can link them and they're they're free to get so i use basic apple guy wallpapers pretty much everywhere what did you have a star wars wallpaper you know i am so boring i generally my main wallpaper is usually dark gray just solid dark gray okay and um the reason is because i like working on stuff i don want the wallpaper to be a distraction to me Sometimes I put one on for when I shoot a video or something But to be honest when I actually in work mode my wallpaper is just dark gray. Okay. Well, if you don't mind, let me ask you a couple other questions. All right. Hit me. So I need to know on your iPhone, do you keep the battery percentage in the status bar on or off? Off. I don't need to know the points. Me too. that's that's as it's as it's intended um on your mac what is your dock position hiding and or magnification i i've got two answers on my on my mac studio i keep it on the right and i usually keep it visible but i toggle it off when i shoot videos um because i don't i think it's distracting but i don't mind having it over on the right there's a lot of extra space as you know i have a big monitor so i got on the laptop uh i noticed recently i put it down at the bottom like the old school day like when you used to first get a mac and it had the big dock on the bottom and i've just been kind of enjoying that i don't know i mean on my um laptop i do a lot of full screen apps because the screen's so small that what's the point so really the the main desktop is kind of more like a launch center than a working space so i don't mind having it big on the bottom i'm doing a putting a future topic idea windowing and our our windowing habits because that when you said full screen on the mac i'm i'm curious because i i use some apps in full screen but well i'll save it that should be a future episode i'm i'm bottom hide hidden auto hide okay i do bottom auto hide for mine also on the dock not me not many people know this is a i'm sure your audience knows, but that this is a preference, but for open apps, you can have the dots visible to show what apps are open, or you can actually hide those dots. So you don't see any. How do you have it? I like the dots. I like that. I like the dots too. Yeah. I like the dots. I want to know what's open. I want to know if Final Cut's like chugging away in the background or something. Downloads. Do they go to your desktop or the downloads folder? Downloads folder sorted by Hazel. See, I use Hazel too. That might be next week's thing, menu bar utilities. I do the same thing, downloads. I was listening back to your Dr. Drang episode, which I was sorry I missed it. Maybe one day we can have him again because I followed his work for a long time. He's great. But I thought you mentioned you use the big icons on iPhone. Is that right? I do. I don't need the names. I've been looking at these apps for years. i get that but does the huge grand canyon space between the bottom row of icons and the dock on your iphone bother you not at all i use it um actually what i do and we're gonna do a show on this too but i turn off the search on the bottom because i think that's stupid i never use the yeah yeah and then what i've done is i've got a series of of home screens where in the bottom i put something kind of inspirational like uh right now um it's got a cuss word on it so i'll just put it on the screen but but this is my max sparky i don't think you can see it even oh i see i see but i put a little you've arranged your icons to make even more space yeah and i put a little icon and then a little saying underneath it that reflects whichever focus mode i'm in because again i have a gray background on my iphone primarily too so like you know Um, that's, that's pretty good. Cause the problem is if, if you fill your iPhone home screen with icons and even with search off, when you do the big icons, there's like a whole row that's just like empty. Yeah. I use that. Yeah. I use that. But you use it via the wallpapers you're using. Yeah. But we, we are going to talk about that soon. So let's just leave it there. I got more on that one. And, uh, what is your setup as you were just trying to have your camera focus? What is what camera are you using um i have the same camera as you sony a7IV and i do okay yeah the um but it's it is on top of my monitor i've been watching you as we've been recording i'm thinking i need to like talk to steven because i look up at the camera when i record and i've got it going through one of those um elgato um capture devices yeah exactly so i can see you know and it's really great for zoom calls and things like this. Um, but maybe I need to put it at eye level. Cause you do it at eye level. You look like such a pro, you know? Oh, well, thank you. Well, I mean, you have a big monitor, so it's, it's way up there, you know? Yeah, exactly. Just ragging on your neck. Exactly. My studio, I actually, so my studio monitors on a VESA mount arm. Yeah. And so I actually move it back when I record video. And so my camera lens is literally like right off the edge of the studio display so like my camera lens is here and then i can look at you right over here okay you know it's a smaller distance yeah to do that and one last fire round question for you fire shake around where does ipad fit in your workflow because you are a mac power user as you do so what do you do on ipad if anything um i use it as a unitasker device mainly like i like to use it for writing whatnot i i am as i'm exploring with like ai integration with stuff all that stuff works best on mac and a lot of my favorite automation works on mac like i love keyboard maestro which isn't obviously on mobile that said i have an 11 inch ipad pro it's not the current one i think it's the last generation one but it has a cellular radio in it and I live with three ladies and they like to go shopping sometimes or want to go off to Disneyland for the day and that little iPad with cellular radio and I can just throw it in my bag it doesn't take much space I've got the keyboard case and I can do so much writing on it or like certain types of work that it's very good at so I just kind of treat it as that it doesn't give me all the power that I get with my Mac. But sometimes if like they want to go shopping for a couple hours, I'll go with them. I can drive them there. I can have lunch with them. Then I can sit in a coffee shop for a couple hours and write some blog posts or a newsletter or something. And I feel like I could spend the day with them but not have to follow them around in shops and actually make some work done. So that's kind of the way it fits for me. I kind of, as I always like to say, I use it like Apple makes the commercials. Like I don't try and go full of a teachy and turn it into a Mac. It's just not, it's just not that. So I am very happy with it as, as it is. I'll just give you one, one little tip here. So I use the iPad for editing podcasts every day, but that's also primarily where I build my shortcuts and I could build them on the Mac, but I find the iPad acts more like the iPhone. And most of the shortcuts I share, people are going to run them on the iPhone. So I like building them there. But even the 13 inch iPad, If I'm trying to build a shortcut, have clawed open and a Safari window, it gets a little cramped. What I've been doing like a crazy person is in vision pro. You can set your Apple vision pro as an airplay receiver. Yeah. And I will airplay mirror my iPad pro into vision pro. Okay. And then I can have my iPad as big as I want. And then also have Safari either in vision OS or in the iPad OS. And I'll literally use the iPad in vision pro. Yeah. That's a really good use. that's cool and i think you're right to build them on ipad because like i did the same thing i teach shortcuts if i engineer the shortcut on the mac not there's a less than zero chance it won't run on mobile because there's some action that doesn't translate over or whatever so if you're going to be sharing them with people you need to build it on a platform they can use it Yeah, exactly. and the Link2 Pro, which is their flagship 4K AI webcam. So gang, these are two products. The Insta360 Wave is a professional speakerphone with AI recording suite built right in. I remember the speakerphones we used to buy in the law firm. They were thousands of dollars, and they weren't nearly as good as this one. It's got a 3D 8-mic array. It can record voices up to 16 feet away. You can even tune the way it listens. So if it's two people with one on either side, it's got a setting for that. Or if you just want to get the whole room, that works as well. It even records stereo or directly to you if you've got it sitting on your desk. It's got built-in noise reduction. If you want, it'll transcribe for you. It really is the speakerphone to end all speakerphones. And it looks really cool on your desk. When you turn it on, the thing kind of elevates. I've always had this problem where I've got this really nice professional podcast mic, but it's on a boom arm. It's a total pain. And when I want to do just a quick video conference with someone or just talk to somebody on Zoom that's not like a presentation, do I drag out all that gear just for that to get my voice good? Well, this thing solves the problem for me. Now I've got a great mic sitting right here that will listen to me anytime when I'm not doing my podcast. And like I said, it's two products. So the second product is the Link 2 Pro, which again is an elevated product. It is a webcam plus so much more. It's got the biggest sensor I've ever seen on a webcam. And it follows me around the room because it's got a gimbal built in. And what really is cool is that these two products together are better than the sum of their parts. The Link 2 Pro snaps right on top of the Insta360 Wave. because of the way the thing elevates it's right at my eye level on my desk which is the perfect view for a webcam no longer do i have to look up over the top of my monitor and i sound great the link 2 pro has a large 1 over 1.3 inch sensor with dual native iso and hdr which basically means you get crisp detailed 4k footage whether in a dim home office or sitting in front of a bright window, and it even creates natural DSLR style bokeh, so you can stand out from the background without looking super artificial. Then there's the audio, and this is where it all really shines. It has a dual microphone system, both omnidirectional and directional, with AI noise cancellation and beamforming. You can switch between four different pickup modes, so if you're in a noisy environment, focus mode isolates your voice. If you're leading a meeting, wide mode clearly captures everyone in the room. It's like having a studio mic built right into your webcam. And the built-in inside AI can transcribe, summarize, and even visualize your meetings in real time. You get a clean transcript and key takeaways instantly, and you can sync everything to tools like Notion with one click. So instead of scrambling to take notes, you can actually focus on the conversation and let the AI handle the rest. This is a serious upgrade for creators, streamers, and professionals who want to level up their setup without adding a bunch of extra gear. If you're looking to elevate your video, audio, and productivity all at once, check out the Insta360 Wave and Link2 Pro at insta360.com. That's I-N-S-T-A-360.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. That'll get you there as well. And thank you, Insta360, for your support of the Mac Power Users and all of Relay. Okay, so I want to ask you a couple hot take questions. Steven, now that you're on the Mac Power Users, what are some topics you're looking forward to exploring on the show? I'm excited to nerd out about things like AppleScript and just seeing how you used Claude right before we started recording and Claude Co-Work, it was blowing my mind. And so I have been a Bear Notes user for a long time, but seeing you use Obsidian and what that can do with Claude, I might upend my entire notes database for this show. So we'll see. But I'm excited to try that, get more into AppleScript and automation and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, well, we'll get there. Yeah. Also, I heard you and Steven talk about your focus mode and notification routines, and I'm a huge focus mode user. I have a lot of them automated, and so I want to talk about that. I think in an episode or two, we're going to talk about our menu bar utilities and the apps that we use that run in the background. I'm excited for that. And just to tinker. I love tinkering with stuff. And if it breaks, then figuring out how to fix it. And so excited for all of that. Yeah. And there's so much fun tinkering ahead of us. What's one Apple product or feature everyone loves that you think is overrated? David, this had me spinning out because this is a diabolical question because I thought, well, I don't want to, I mean, I use all the Apple things and I like a lot of the Apple things. And I was trying to think, well, HomePod is like an easy answer. but I think it's properly rated. I think because most people don't like it or most people think it's not like super great. So it's probably properly rated. Then I thought, well, Apple TV, but I actually love Apple TV. I don't think that's overrated. And so the one that I landed on, which I don't want to make enemies on my first full episode. No, man, they want honesty. Just tell them, let it rip. So if, if you've seen the meme on the internet, that's a bell curve. And at the beginning you have like the nerd and he's using Apple notes. Yeah. And at the big bell curve, you have like Notion and all the apps and Ulysses and everybody's that. And then you have like the Jedi on the other end at the lower part of the bell curve. And they're just using Apple Notes again. I think Apple Notes is a great app. It has come a long way. Apple keeps improving it. But I do think it is overrated. Yeah. I don't think Notes is an entire productivity system in an app. While it is very good and it is really powerful, I think that other apps offer a lot more. Like you were doing Obsidian before. I use Bare Notes. My friend Jason Aiton, podcast co-host, he uses Ulysses for writing. I think depending on the use case and your workflow, there are other apps that can really serve you better and have powerful features. And Notes, while really good, I don't think is like the Jedi note-taking app. Yeah, I think it's really good for some things, you know, and not everything. And I think you're right. That's a good one. I think I like that call. One underrated Apple product feature that deserves more attention. So I, like many, have probably used third-party podcast apps like Pocket Cast and Overcast. But I think Apple Podcasts has come a long way in the last couple years. Transcribing every episode is a huge feature, not only for accessibility, but to be able to search the transcript of any episode and then share a timestamp from an episode using the transcript is huge. Now they have auto-generated chapters, even for podcasts that don't provide them. And I love the design of Apple Podcasts. And so while I love Pocket Cast and used it for many years, I think the podcast app is actually a little underrated and has gotten really good. Yeah, I use it every year after the beta ship. And every year now, it seems like, well, do I really need to go to the fancy app? It's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's getting good. Yeah, I agree. I do like the way it renders bookmarks. And Mac Power Users is a bookmark show. If you didn't know, you can go through and jump through the different chapters. Yeah. How's Apple doing overall? What's your general impression of Apple right now, hardware and software? This is another hot seat question. I was stressing as I was reading this outline. You know, I think Apple hardware is obviously stellar. I think it's one of the best places it could be. The iPad Pro hardware, I don't even know how it could get much better. The Mac Studio, the MacBook Air, Apple Silicon in general, all of it's great. Obviously, the HomePod, you know, some of those devices that have not been upgraded in a while, those leave a little bit to be desired, but the hardware is great. iPhone 17 Pro, while it might be minimal changes year over year, super solid device. Obviously, they just had a record earnings quarter. Clearly, people love the phone. The software side is more mixed. iOS 26, while it did bring up really cool features, I actually did a video of 100 new features in iOS 26. It's still a little buggy for me. macOS, obviously, the liquid glass design is very contentious. Some people love it. Some people hate it. Well, I don't know about some people love it. I think some people like it. A lot of people struggle with it. i've been seeing that in my real life lately because really because i think the most recent update put pushed it to everybody and suddenly now because i people know what i do they're like oh i need i need you to talk to tim cook this is terrible so i'm getting these discussions from like normal people so yeah this is not so popular yeah the rumors are true you have a red bat phone to tim cook in your office is that true he listens to every episode in my head canon okay i didn't see You didn't tell me that when I was signing up. I didn't realize. He listens in the gym. When he does the 5 a.m. gym, he listens to Mac Bowers. He's just on Monday morning. Hey, Tim. Just wanted to let you know about the new guy. Hey, Tim. Glad to be here. So, you know, the reliability, stability is not great. My wife continually complains to me about the keyboard and autocorrect. And I hear from a lot of people that, like, something's weird there. I think the autocorrect has gotten worse in the last year or two. So that's not great. Shortcuts, I still experience a ton of errors. and people ask me about. And I think their developer relations, again, are also a little rough right now. So I'm hopeful with this changeover from Alan Dye to Stephen LeMay in the design side, great designers may be coming back to Apple. Well, not maybe, but Sebastian DeWitt, who was making the Highlight Camera app, he's now back at Apple. I'm hopeful for the kind of next phase of design, software reliability. Hopefully iOS 27, we see stability. I know everyone every year, I feel like, says it, But hopefully it's more of a snow leopard year where we really focus on reliability and stability. So the software still has some ways to go. Yeah. And that whole snow leopard thing is such a bit, like if you look at the history, I'm pretty sure that was all like a marketing ploy. Like because they had done that year, they'd done a bunch of under the hood and you didn't see much on the surface, but they had done a lot of work and they didn't have anything to sell. So they're like, oh, this year is all about bug fixes. And it was like, hooray. And they did announce a new feature. I think it was like Grand Central Terminal and other features came out that year. So like it was still a release year, but that was back when you had to buy it a hundred dollars in a box. Yeah, go in the Apple store, buy the update. Yeah. Also, Stephen, you went to CES recently. Was that your first time there? That was my first CES ever. It was wild. 150,000 people attend that. And it's, you know, it's not a huge Apple event per se, but there's a lot of tangentially related Apple things. So it was, it was crazy. but I was glad I went. It was fun. Yeah. And as a Mac power user, did you bring back any, anything for the audience? What'd you see? You know, I think smart home, as we've kind of alluded to a few times is the big story at CES every year. But as I was there, I'm seeing brands starting to kind of isolate themselves and they make great devices still, but like a car, go V even vacuum companies like dreamy, they're kind of building smart home ecosystems within their own brand. Yeah. And they're still supporting matter, but you'll start seeing features that are proprietary to the brand. So for a car, if you use the, a car, a doorbell camera, thermostat, and a video doorbell, uh, I think it, or, and their smart lock. Then when someone rings your doorbell, you can unlock it from your thermostat. And like, that's a cool feature, but it's not something that is a ecosystem agnostic. That is an, a car only feature. and until Apple Home, Amazon and Google start supporting more of those features, I started seeing more kind of isolation of those smart home ecosystems. So something to watch out for as you're getting smart home devices and building out your system is to keep in mind like, is this matter compatible? Is this universal standard? Can I use this however I want later? So smart home, that was a big thing. Obviously all the, you know, Gemini, Amazon's AI stuff, but also health tech. That was a huge part at CES. You see smart rings, you see lots of health devices. And I think once the Apple watch finally gets some kind of glucose detection sensor, I think it's going to be a whole new era for, you know, health and smart devices that way. So we didn't see anything like that at CES where it was like reliable glucose testing, but it seems like it's close. And so I'm excited for that future. That is the golden ring, right? Everybody's, you know, you get like a one that doesn't require it to poke something into your skin. and that is going to be a very popular product. The thing about Matter is concerning to me because I always thought the beauty of Matter was we're kind of getting past the platform wars, but it sounds to me like there's still some pieces of that left. Well, you know, it's funny. This happened with MagSafe, where Apple created MagSafe, developed the standard, and then they contributed to the Qi 2 standard, which is now becoming ubiquitous among smartphones phones, and even the Pixel 10 can use Qi2, which is basically MagSafe. Matter is actually that as well. Apple contributed some of the standards into the Matter ecosystem, and it has become a standard now. A lot of smart home devices support it, but because Apple is not focusing on the smart home as much as they were, you start seeing the other brands start siloing within their ecosystems. So hopefully Apple steps forward again, that HomePod with a screen, which has been long rumored. Maybe that'll take Apple into the next phase of their smart home journey. I'm hoping they get back in the game a little bit more. Yeah. Well, I feel like we definitely need to get into HomeKit and where that's all going as this stuff develops on the show. For sure. Well, Stephen, you know, we did our first show together. How do you feel? We did it. We did it. I feel good. I was still like adrenaline going, but I'm excited for all the stuff we still have to talk about. I think several episodes just emerged from this one as we were talking. Yeah. But this is super fun. Thank you so much, David. Yeah. And gang at home, Stephen and I have had a lot of conversations. Every time I talk to him, it's the same way. We find ourselves talking longer than we expected. So I think we're having a lot of fun making stuff for you. I forgot to mention, Stephen, you have another podcast. People should check that out as well. Talk about that real quick. I do. Primary Technology, new episodes every Thursday, me and Jason Aiton, who writes at Inc.com. He covers technology there. We talk about the news every week. And so it's a very different show and that's one of the reasons I was quick to jump on this one and loved it because it's a very Mac power users is a very different show from what I do already that one very you know timely news and things like that but Mac power users I think it can be more evergreen like you do you guys talk about topics that are apply for years to come some of it is more methods and productivity and so I'm excited to have this show where we could talk about you know kind of big picture things and then primary tech I talk about kind of the news of the week so that's what I do there. PrimaryTech.fm is the website. All right, buddy, you want to take us out? Let's do it. Well, you can go to Relay.fm slash MPU for feedback and membership. And of course, more power users. This week, we're going to talk about our drawer of shame. I have even more surprises to show David in just a minute. So you can go to Relay.fm slash MPU for that. Thank you to our sponsors, 1Password, NerdWallet, Squarespace, Insta360, and have a great week. Thank you.