CrowdStrike, Apple's Public Betas, and More with Adam Jones

Join us in this episode as we welcome Adam Jones, the innovative Founder and CEO of SkyBound Education. Our discussion kicks off with the global IT outage caused by a faulty update from CrowdStrike.

We explore Adam’s company, SkyBound Education, and highlight its exceptional work with school systems in Indiana.

Adam shares his thoughts on his tech stack, including his experiences with the rabbit r1 pocket AI device and its progress since its rocky debut. We also discuss the Clicks Keyboard for iPhone, comparing Adam’s and Tom’s experiences. Lastly, Adam provides insights into the newly released Apple Public Betas.

Links from the show

SkyBound Education
Adam Jones Website
Adam Jones Guest Page
Chaos and Confusion: Tech Outage Causes Disruptions Worldwide
rabbit r1 Prompts and Memory Recall Use Cases - June 2024
The Clicks Keyboard for iPhone - First Impressions

We’d be honored if you'd drop a 5-star rating for us on Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify!

Contact Us

• Drop us a line at feedback@basicafshow.com
• You’ll find Jeff at @reyespoint on Threads and @reyespoint@mastodon.sdf.org on Mastodon
• Find Tom at @tomfanderson on Twitter, and @tomanderson on Threads
• Join Tom’s newsletter, Apple Talk, for more Apple coverage and tips & tricks.
• Show artwork by the great Randall Martin Design

Enjoy Basic AF? Leave a review or rating!

• Review on Apple Podcasts
• Rate on Spotify
• Recommend in Overcast

Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen

• Apple Music
• Spotify

Show transcripts and episode artwork are AI generated and likely contain errors and general silliness.

Transcript

Intro

Adam Jones (0s)

When I see someone's phone and it has the red 10,058 notifications, it stresses me out to no end.

Tom Anderson (0s)

Hello everyone, and welcome back.

Adam Jones (5s)

I can't handle it.

Tom Anderson (6s)

I won't show you then.

Adam Jones (8s)

OK.

Tom Anderson (18s)

It is Basic AF, another show with Tom Anderson and Jeff Battersby.

Tom Anderson (22s)

Hello, Jeff, good to see you as always.

Jeff Battersby (24s)

CrowdStrike, oh, sorry, how are you Tom, good to see you this morning.

Tom Anderson (26s)

Oh, Lord. (laughs)

Tom Anderson (30s)

Good. (laughs)

Tom Anderson (32s)

Very good, yeah, we'll talk about that here in a second.

Jeff Battersby (35s)

Oh, yes, we will.

Tom Anderson (35s)

This is episode 40, the big four-oh.

Jeff Battersby (38s)

Almost as old as I am.

Tom Anderson (38s)

So look at us, we've got it to four.

Tom Anderson (41s)

Well, almost. (laughs)

Tom Anderson (45s)

Little liberty with almost there, but that's okay.

Jeff Battersby (46s)

Yeah, almost doing a lot of work.

Tom Anderson (49s)

Yes, and show notes for this episode will be at basicafshow.com/40

Jeff Battersby (55s)

Look at us, we're super fancy now.

Tom Anderson (58s)

We are, and we're gonna talk about that

Jeff Battersby (1m)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (1m)

in a second, but Jeff, we are, but Jeff,

Tom Anderson (1m 4s)

we are fortunate today to have a guest.

Tom Anderson (1m 6s)

Welcome to the show, Adam Jones.

Hello,Adam Jones!

Adam Jones (1m 9s)

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Adam Jones (1m 10s)

Yes, glad to be here.

Jeff Battersby (1m 12s)

I'm glad to have you and we'll uh kind of roll into this uh pretty quickly um so Adam

Jeff Battersby (1m 20s)

you came in contact with uh Tom via some aspect of social media it might have been now that I think about it because you're using the uh the Klix keyboard for iPhone maybe you uh

Jeff Battersby (1m 30s)

crossed paths on the Klix keyboard Klix Klix there you go look at that holding it up

Tom Anderson (1m 34s)

The click click.

Adam Jones (1m 34s)

I think that's probably what it was. I think that's right.

Jeff Battersby (1m 37s)

Look at me. I have no Klix keyboard and yet I know what brought you here.

Jeff Battersby (1m 43s)

So, um, but Adam, you're the, uh, the founder and C C E O of a company called skybound education. So we want to hear more about that. We want to hear more about you. And, uh, but before we do that, we do need to have a little conversation around, uh, the old crowd strike situation that, uh, that took place for us yesterday. We're recording this on a Saturday. Uh, yesterday the world went south and one of the jokes Tom that you made to me

CrowdStrike!

Jeff Battersby (2m 12s)

shortly after that is it's it's never the malware that's a problem it's the malware protection software that usually jacks you up so kind of a hot mess I have a friend of mine who works in a local court system and she contacted me actually early yesterday morning so that they were completely down and of course they're overseen by the state state of New York where I live so they had to Wait for those tech guys to be able to take over.

Jeff Battersby (2m 42s)

take care of something, she will tell you that the local tech that usually comes in was fishing, so he was unavailable to be able to take care of her, but yeah, not pH, right?

Tom Anderson (2m 54s)

fishing with an F by the way, just to clarify, not, not the pH type.

Jeff Battersby (3m 1s)

So yeah, he was out fishing and so anyway, they were down for most of the day.

Jeff Battersby (3m 8s)

I sent her some instructions on, you know, what needed to happen.

Jeff Battersby (3m 12s)

And then finally she was able to get through it and had, you know, whatever update CrowdStrike pushed out, there was a file that needed to be deleted.

Jeff Battersby (3m 22s)

You had to boot into safe mode on a PC and take care of that.

Jeff Battersby (3m 29s)

Delete that file and start it back up.

Jeff Battersby (3m 30s)

A little more complicated in her environment because all their hard drives are encrypted using, I can't even remember what one it was right now, but some bit something.

Tom Anderson (3m 39s)

BitLocker, bit, BitLocker, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (3m 39s)

What is it?

Jeff Battersby (3m 40s)

BitLocker!

Tom Anderson (3m 42s)

BitLocker, bit, BitLocker, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (3m 43s)

There's too many bits.

Jeff Battersby (3m 44s)

BitCoin.

Jeff Battersby (3m 45s)

BitDefender.

Jeff Battersby (3m 46s)

BitMyTongue.

Jeff Battersby (3m 47s)

I don't know.

Jeff Battersby (3m 49s)

So she was able to actually, once she figured it out, was able to take care of it.

Jeff Battersby (3m 56s)

But they had to put in the decryption key before they could go and delete the file that was causing trouble.

Jeff Battersby (4m 2s)

So knocked a lot of things down.

Tom Anderson (4m 3s)

Good thing they had that, yeah?

Jeff Battersby (4m 6s)

Hot mess.

Jeff Battersby (4m 7s)

I think five U.S. airlines shut down.

Tom Anderson (4m 12s)

banks, retail, ticketing systems, all sorts of things.

Jeff Battersby (4m 12s)

Which is deadly.

Jeff Battersby (4m 13s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (4m 16s)

Adam, were any of the systems or things that you use impacted by that at all?

Adam Jones (4m 22s)

You know fortunately I wasn't hit at all with any of the tools I use, but you know it left me wondering is too much of the internet in the hands of a handful of providers and service providers and it's it's just really alarming.

Jeff Battersby (4m 33s)

Absolutely

Jeff Battersby (4m 36s)

Well one company can take the whole world down that's you know one one

Jeff Battersby (4m 41s)

One dumb push of of an update and you take the whole world down That's really problematic and it also shows how how you know it to your point Adam

Jeff Battersby (4m 52s)

how dangerous it is to have

Jeff Battersby (4m 55s)

everything in the hands of

Jeff Battersby (4m 57s)

You know one or two companies. It's it's problematic and one of the things I was reading The New York Times this morning

Jeff Battersby (5m 3s)

And in an article about this and one of the issues that's really kind of problematic is that there are

Jeff Battersby (5m 10s)

Very few things that happen to companies when stuff like this happens like there. There are no fines There are no there's nothing if they do get fined You know it's a teeny tiny bit of you know the overall income of that company So it doesn't technically cost them anything. I mean you could say

Jeff Battersby (5m 29s)

That CrowdStrike, you know is paying a little bit because their stock dropped

Jeff Battersby (5m 33s)

11% but you know for my money stock markets not really a good measure of anything you know it's not while we use it to measure a ton that's not really something that I think is valuable so this is it is problematic and and we do need that you know they they should be punished for not doing better testing before pushing something out that it probably cost hundreds of millions if

Jeff Battersby (6m 3s)

yesterday that's that's a lot of money

Tom Anderson (6m 4s)

Right. Did the Times article you looked at say anything about the, they probably won't release it, but like the footprint of the update, right? Because typically with those big updates, those get stages as they're rolled out. And so like it impacted a lot of things,

Tom Anderson (6m 24s)

but I haven't seen anything yet that said, well, it was, you know, estimated 10% of their footprint or it was 50% or 100% because

Jeff Battersby (6m 33s)

I didn't see anything like that.

Tom Anderson (6m 34s)

just feels like it it was a lot obviously because it took down a lot of things but I'm just wondering like what the if there was any any talk around that but

Jeff Battersby (6m 44s)

I didn't see anything like that.

Jeff Battersby (6m 45s)

And this was a teeny tiny little file that made some backend changes.

Jeff Battersby (6m 50s)

You know, it was, it was, you know, the file that you had to delete was basically a little text file.

Tom Anderson (6m 52s)

Yep, bad file.

Tom Anderson (6m 55s)

Well, part of the problem is with those types of applications, they need to have, I'll put need in quotes. Yeah, it's such a low level that I mean,

Jeff Battersby (6m 56s)

Um, full access.

Jeff Battersby (7m 2s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (7m 5s)

they're effectively spyware, but it's from the good guys. And because they monitor everything that happens on the system, because you know, and they're using heuristics and AI and all these other things to try to anticipate, oh, somebody, you know, there's a there's an intrusion, or there's or some type of thing going on.

Jeff Battersby (7m 8s)

Supposedly from the good guys.

Tom Anderson (7m 22s)

And so that's what got them.

Tom Anderson (7m 24s)

It was a file that just caused a kernel panic, basically.

Tom Anderson (7m 29s)

And it was nasty.

Jeff Battersby (7m 29s)

Yeah, yeah, big time.

Tom Anderson (7m 30s)

But, so.

Jeff Battersby (7m 33s)

And we'll put, I'll put a gift link from the Times article.

Jeff Battersby (7m 36s)

We'll put it in the show notes just so you can read it, but it's, you know,

Jeff Battersby (7m 39s)

it's problematic.

Jeff Battersby (7m 40s)

It's something to be aware of and we're kind of at the mercy, you know,

Jeff Battersby (7m 44s)

whether it's Apple or Microsoft or, you know,

Jeff Battersby (7m 46s)

whoever it is that we're dealing with, or in this case, CrowdStrike, um, you know, you're at the mercy of somebody doing something simple and stupid that

Jeff Battersby (7m 58s)

It costs everything.

Jeff Battersby (7m 59s)

It also points out that if some actual bad actor had an intention to do something pretty horrible, you could disrupt the whole universe as far as we know it, you know, with a.

Adam Jones (8m 14s)

You know, that's what I was thinking about too, because this was a simple mistake, more than likely, and those things happen, but what if it wasn't?

Adam Jones (8m 20s)

What if it was on purpose by a malicious actor?

Jeff Battersby (8m 22s)

Yeah, yep, we'd be cooked because there's so much of what we're doing is is tied to this

Tom Anderson (8m 29s)

everything's connected these days. Yeah, so big cheers and respect to all the IT staff that have been working crazy hours and stressed out and to get this resolved. It's not been good. A lot of social posts, a lot of gleeful Mac users. A lot of those posts, though, uninformed because it's not,

Jeff Battersby (8m 31s)

Yeah, so

Jeff Battersby (8m 38s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (8m 47s)

laughs What?

Tom Anderson (8m 51s)

you know, "Oh, it's Windows. Glad I have a Mac." Well, it really wasn't Windows per se. It was a bad update that caused that. And if you had a home piece...

Tom Anderson (9m)

this software, you weren't impacted at all. Other than if you had services that you relied on,

Tom Anderson (9m 5s)

of course. But yeah, so don't get too gleeful. The shoe could always drop and go the other way at some point. I mean, we're dealing with a minor thing at work related to an endpoint security product that's keeping people from copying files and deleting files on a Mac, by the way.

Tom Anderson (9m 22s)

So they're not impervious to these types of things. So, all right, enough doom and gloom.

Jeff Battersby (9m 24s)

No, absolutely not, absolutely not.

Tom Anderson (9m 29s)

So, Adam.

Jeff Battersby (9m 30s)

Yes.

Jeff Battersby (9m 31s)

All right, Adam, why don't you tell us,

Jeff Battersby (9m 33s)

talk to us about, first of all, who you are,

Jeff Battersby (9m 36s)

and then into Skybound,

Adam’s Intro

Jeff Battersby (9m 39s)

and then we'll talk about your tech stack.

Adam Jones (9m 41s)

Amazing, yeah, thanks for having me again.

Adam Jones (9m 43s)

My name's Adam Jones.

Adam Jones (9m 45s)

I'm a former high school English teacher and administrator,

Adam Jones (9m 48s)

but I've always just had this passion as well for technology.

Adam Jones (9m 51s)

And three years ago,

Adam Jones (9m 53s)

I started a company called Skybound Education.

Adam Jones (9m 56s)

I have three full-time colleagues,

Adam Jones (9m 58s)

so we're a small but mighty team of four.

Adam Jones (10m)

And we work with several school districts in Indiana,

Adam Jones (10m 3s)

where I work and live.

Adam Jones (10m 6s)

And it's a lot of fun.

Adam Jones (10m 7s)

We help schools plan strategic projects and initiatives aimed at--

Adam Jones (10m 11s)

that accelerating student learning.

Adam Jones (10m 13s)

Technology ends up being a part of that,

Adam Jones (10m 15s)

especially with AI tools.

Adam Jones (10m 17s)

And maybe we'll have the chance to talk about some of that.

Adam Jones (10m 20s)

But yeah, it's a pleasure to be here with you.

Adam Jones (10m 23s)

And it's great to scratch that itch of talking about tech

Jeff Battersby (10m 27s)

Yeah. So tell, what exactly does Skybound Education do? So you, I note, you put in our notes that, you know, you do strategic planning, it looks like grant writing or grant implementation.

Jeff Battersby (10m 41s)

So why don't you give us a little more detail and what kind of benefits you bring to the

Jeff Battersby (10m 46s)

school districts that you're working with?

Adam Jones (10m 49s)  

• Sure.

Adam Jones (10m 50s)

I think there's a few different categories of work we do.

SkyBound Education

Adam Jones (10m 53s)

You know, after the pandemic,

Adam Jones (10m 55s)

well, throughout the pandemic, really,

Adam Jones (10m 57s)

students were hit really, really hard going to that virtual instruction component.

Adam Jones (11m 1s)

And there's all sorts of studies at the national level and here in our state, in Indiana,

Adam Jones (11m 6s)

that say the academic impacts were quite dire.

Adam Jones (11m 11s)

Reading achievement fell, math achievement fell as well.

Adam Jones (11m 15s)

And so schools, when they opened back up,

Adam Jones (11m 17s)

brought students back into the classroom.

Adam Jones (11m 19s)

We're really grappling with how do we catch up, and that includes things that of course relate to literacy and numeracy and the content areas, but also just social, emotional health and well-being because that sense of isolation was not great for mental health either.

Adam Jones (11m 38s)

So Skybound was able to get off the ground because our state put together a grant opportunity for schools, to come together and work in a consortium model to talk.

Adam Jones (11m 50s)

are we going to get out of this? What sort of strategic plans do we need to put in place?

Adam Jones (11m 54s)

What projects and initiatives in terms of curriculum and instruction and allocation of financial resources will make the most of this unprecedented amount of federal money?

Adam Jones (12m 5s)

If you remember, there were multiple aid packages passed by Congress to try to get schools caught back up. And so Skybound came along six districts at that time to help think about how do we Make the most of these dollars so that they really have an impact

Adam Jones (12m 19s)

and that the work is sustained over time. And so we help schools develop strategic plans that got down into not just personnel they might hire and roles and responsibilities,

Adam Jones (12m 30s)

but what are the curricular tools you're going to use? What tech are you going to leverage to personalize learning? How are we going to communicate that with families and the community and create a sense of urgency around, "Hey, students were really hit hard by the pandemic and we've got to surround them and come together to get better." So that's a big part of our work.

Adam Jones (12m 47s)

And another part is...

Adam Jones (12m 49s)

Every year, the federal government allocates a lot of money through something called Title I.

Adam Jones (12m 57s)

And Title I funds a lot of things. I won't go into the weeds.

Adam Jones (13m 1s)

But one of the things it funds is supports for schools that are struggling, have struggled for multiple years.

Adam Jones (13m 7s)

And they're eligible for something called School Improvement Grants.

Adam Jones (13m 11s)

And Skybound's been fortunate to work with schools in Muncie, Indiana, Newcastle, Indiana,

Adam Jones (13m 17s)

a couple schools in Indianapolis.

Adam Jones (13m 20s)

to secure those funds and this is millions of dollars in funding that go to these schools.

Adam Jones (13m 26s)

And so we help come alongside them and say,

Adam Jones (13m 28s)

what are you gonna do different with your educational model now that you've been given millions of dollars to get a proof point for how you can accelerate learning,

Adam Jones (13m 38s)

how you can use these funds to have higher community engagement in your schools and really get better outcomes for students.

Jeff Battersby (13m 47s)

Awesome. So let me ask then, what does this look like for students? So when you come in and create a strategic plan, you know, get the money to be able to come in to do whatever it is you're doing,

Jeff Battersby (13m 58s)

whether it's hiring teachers or changing your programs, what does it actually look like for

Adam Jones (14m 4s)

Yeah, I'll give you two concrete examples. So in Muncie, Indiana, they have

Adam Jones (14m 9s)

They received a grant to support three of their lowest performing elementary schools And we help them review and select a brand new core reading

Adam Jones (14m 18s)

Curriculum that was aligned to something called the science of reading basically this just wealth of research saying

Adam Jones (14m 23s)

Here's how students learn to read we need to adhere to these practices and use these types of materials to move the needle and so we help walk their staff through that selection and then we help them

Adam Jones (14m 34s)

a consultant to go in and provide job embedded support as they were using that throughout their first year of implementation and we've already seen huge academic gains just in one year and they're we're going to continue to support them for the next two years this is a four-year grant cycle so that's a that's an example of you know starting at the high level of selecting a new tool but then getting into the weeds of here's what it looks like for a fourth grade teacher a second grade teacher to use these materials to track the data effectively and provide...

Adam Jones (15m 5s)

you know, personalized supports.

Adam Jones (15m 7s)

Then at the latter end of the K-12 continuum,

Adam Jones (15m 11s)

we've done some work in Newcastle, Indiana,

Adam Jones (15m 14s)

where we've -- and I'm really, really proud of this --

Adam Jones (15m 16s)

we've met with over 100 employers and community stakeholders to talk about what sorts of work-based learning experiences and career exploration experiences should students in middle school and high school have so that they are more focused in their high school career and they know what they're doing.

Adam Jones (15m 34s)

So we've helped that school, for example, create something called graduation pathways,

Adam Jones (15m 46s)

14 additional ones to the ones they already had.

Adam Jones (15m 49s)

We've helped them launch academies within their high school.

Adam Jones (15m 52s)

One's called an early college academy and students can earn what's called an Indiana college core.

Adam Jones (15m 58s)

They get 30 college credits while they're in school and a handful of students can earn their associates while they're in high school.

Adam Jones (16m 4s)

And we're also launching an agricultural academy because that's important in that community and a technology based academy.

Adam Jones (16m 11s)

So it's creating experiences and structures and systems that try to reimagine what school can be.

Jeff Battersby (16m 17s)

Awesome.

Jeff Battersby (16m 18s)

I like that.

Jeff Battersby (16m 19s)

I like that a lot.

Jeff Battersby (16m 20s)

I'm curious, is it, you know, one of the things that I've noticed in the many years since I graduated from high school, you know, we used to have a lot more technical things going on at school and, you know, that was right at the beginning of the computer era.

Jeff Battersby (16m 37s)

But what we really had was we had like construction classes that you could take and auto mechanics classes and a lot of those things seem to be missing.

Jeff Battersby (16m 46s)

Is there anything like that?

Jeff Battersby (16m 47s)

Um, coming into place with what you're talking about.

Adam Jones (16m 51s)

This is such a great question. You told me this was only going to be a 30 or 45 minute podcast.

Adam Jones (16m 55s)

How long do we have? So I think the pendulum has really shifted. So when I was coming through school, it was the late '90s, early 2000s. It was all about college, college, college. Neither of my parents went to college. They grew up rather low income, and they viewed that as the surest vehicle for my brother and I to have upward economic mobility. And I was really blessed.

Adam Jones (17m 19s)

They sent me to a great public school.

Adam Jones (17m 21s)

And I was on that college prep track and went to Indiana University had a great experience and to your point Jeff like

Adam Jones (17m 27s)

Career and technical education was sort of had a stigma almost that vocational piece

Adam Jones (17m 32s)

That's really shifted really shifted at least in our state. Now. There's a lot of talk and emphasis and funding for

Adam Jones (17m 40s)

hey, if there's a Certification you can earn in high school that gets you an awesome job the day after you graduate

Adam Jones (17m 46s)

Let's celebrate that and maybe it doesn't end you that education doesn't end

Adam Jones (17m 51s)

The day of graduation. Maybe there's a one-year certificate afterwards or an 18-month program or an apprenticeship that you step into

Adam Jones (17m 58s)

but there is much more respect and

Adam Jones (18m 2s)

promotion of those opportunities Like welding for example is a really high demand and weight where we are career rather that that also has a great wage where?

Adam Jones (18m 10s)

We live so the pendulums come back to a more balanced place I think where we're saying there's more many many pathways to success and we need to

Adam Jones (18m 19s)

Celebrate and honor people that

Adam Jones (18m 21s)

want to work with their hands and do more technical things too.

Jeff Battersby (18m 25s)

I really like that. That's that's

Tom Anderson (18m 26s)

Yeah, it's good. I like it.

Jeff Battersby (18m 27s)

Great to hear. Yeah, awesome. All right. Very cool. Adam. Thanks so much. Yeah, we'll try to keep it to 45

Jeff Battersby (18m 34s)

We have guests not always that easy

Tom Anderson (18m 35s)

We're not hitting 30, there's no chance.

Jeff Battersby (18m 37s)

Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at the clock already and it's like, okay keep on going cool

Adam Jones (18m 42s)

Hey, I'm here as long as you need me, I'm grateful.

Jeff Battersby (18m 44s)

Yeah, we want to keep everybody listening

Adam Jones (18m 48s)

Yeah, I understood.

Jeff Battersby (18m 50s)

That's the that's the bigger issue

Tom Anderson (18m 52s)

We could always split it into three parts if we had to.

Jeff Battersby (18m 55s)

We can continue this next week

Jeff Battersby (18m 58s)

Anyway, all right, that's very cool. So

Jeff Battersby (19m 1s)

You are clearly a tech aficionado

Jeff Battersby (19m 5s)

you know someone who

Jeff Battersby (19m 8s)

Looks like has a few toys outside of strictly speaking the Apple realm. Why don't you tell us a little bit about?

Jeff Battersby (19m 14s)

About your tech stack and what it is that you use and why?

Adam’s Tech Stack

Adam Jones (19m 21s)

Yeah, so, you know when I worked in schools, it was pretty much all PCs and certainly Google and their Google Workspace

Adam Jones (19m 28s)

ecosystem at least in schools is

Adam Jones (19m 31s)

Really really important and prominent, but I've always been drawn to the Apple hardware and I think their ecosystem continues to get better and better

Adam Jones (19m 39s)

With the iCloud updates and and the way everything talks and works together so, you know on an everyday basis, I've been using the iPhone 15 Pro, I think the

Adam Jones (19m 51s)

Wonderful, I love the camera on it the video. I'm really surprised with the 4k 60 and how good that video quality looks I'm using that as my webcam right now I know this is an audio but it's pretty neat to be able to throw that on top of your MacBook and and get a High-quality image. Are you doing that too Jeff?

Jeff Battersby (20m 6s)  

• Yeah, exactly.

Adam Jones (20m 6s)

Yeah. Yeah, I love that and just bought a relatively affordable

Adam Jones (20m 10s)

I don't even know what to call it, but it's something that sits on top of your screen and holds the phone magnetically

Adam Jones (20m 16s)

so yeah, and I use a MacBook Pro and I

Adam Jones (20m 21s)

The m3 which is really really nice. I'm it's blazing fast for everything. I need it for I do some YouTube

Adam Jones (20m 28s)

Recording and uploading and it's it's amazingly fast compared to the Intel MacBook Pro. I had a few years ago

Adam Jones (20m 36s)

I could keep going. I'll pause there though

Jeff Battersby (20m 39s)

No, no, no, well, the Apple Watch.

Adam Jones (20m 41s)

Yeah, yeah, I've got the series 9 I upgraded I had a series 4 and I really wanted the always-on display I just think that is really sharp and it's also my much snappier than the Series 4 as I'm sure you can imagine.

Jeff Battersby (20m 54s)

Yeah, I had the original one, and I still have it, but obviously I don't use it for anything because it's kind of worthless.

Jeff Battersby (21m 1s)

I'm on an Ultra, the original Ultra, which I like quite a bit.

Jeff Battersby (21m 6s)

It's good.

Jeff Battersby (21m 7s)

Although I have said, and I'll say it again, if Apple just did a fitness device that maybe could play music and podcasts.

Adam Jones (21m 15s)  

• I heard you mention that and I thought,

Adam Jones (21m 17s)

man, that's a good idea.

Adam Jones (21m 18s)

You think they would ever do a ring like Samsung has just done?

Jeff Battersby (21m 20s)

I don't know Tom. What do you think? I mean, I'd be down with that too, but that's that's

Tom Anderson (21m 27s)

It's the only look I have.

Jeff Battersby (21m 28s)

I'm giving it the ugly look

Jeff Battersby (21m 34s)

No

Tom Anderson (21m 37s)

I think it just depends.

Tom Anderson (21m 39s)

I could see them doing it because if you think back to the 2000s, when the iPod was out,

Tom Anderson (21m 45s)

they had such a wide range of players.

Tom Anderson (21m 48s)

Remember they had the shuffle, the one that looked like the little gumpack for a while that was just like a stick.

Tom Anderson (21m 53s)

And then they had the Nano and everything like that.

Tom Anderson (21m 57s)

I could see at some point that they would do that.

Tom Anderson (22m)

Maybe it would come in a little lower, but Apple doesn't usually like to go too low.

Tom Anderson (22m 6s)

And so I think that's probably the thing is how much, how can they make it and maintain those 35, 40% markets.

Jeff Battersby (22m 15s)

I could definitely use one of those.

Jeff Battersby (22m 17s)

I'm happy with my watch,

Jeff Battersby (22m 18s)

but that would be a game changer for me,

Jeff Battersby (22m 22s)

for reasons that I've stated previously.

Jeff Battersby (22m 24s)

And as far as software, what are you using, Adam?

Jeff Battersby (22m 27s)

Like to keep track of your life,

Jeff Battersby (22m 28s)

to keep track of your business.

Adam Jones (22m 31s)

Yeah, so my business, like I said, schools, in Indiana at least, are all about the Google apps.

Adam Jones (22m 38s)

The vast majority of schools use Google Docs and Drive slides and sheets to do their day-to-day work.

Adam Jones (22m 45s)

So my company works out of that, but I am really passionate about one particular piece of software, and I'm just a huge evangelist for it, and that's Hey Email.

Adam Jones (22m 55s)

Have either of you used that?

Jeff Battersby (22m 56s)

Have not. I was checking it out. So tell us why.

Adam Jones (23m 3s)

So it's developed by 37 Signals.

Adam Jones (23m 4s)

They make some other great software tools like Basecamp,

Adam Jones (23m 7s)

which has a project management platform.

Adam Jones (23m 11s)

But hey, I just agree with the philosophy and the way the user experience is designed.

Adam Jones (23m 17s)

For going back years, I've been a huge,

Adam Jones (23m 19s)

huge fan of Inbox Zero.

Adam Jones (23m 22s)

And I know that some people think that's going too far,

Adam Jones (23m 26s)

trying to clear out your inbox.

Jeff Battersby (23m 27s)

Just ask Tom, he's an Inbox 10,000 guy.

Adam Jones (23m 29s)

Are you an Inbox Zero guy, Tom?

Tom Anderson (23m 31s)

Mm, no.

Adam Jones (23m 33s)

Okay.

Adam Jones (23m 35s)

Okay.

Adam Jones (23m 36s)

When I see someone's phone and it has the red 10,058 notifications,

Adam Jones (23m 40s)

it stresses me out to no end.

Adam Jones (23m 42s)

I can't handle it.

Tom Anderson (23m 42s)

I won't show you it then it's not that bad but it's creepy well it was pretty low and then because I actually did go through and just marked all that stuff right it was mainly my cloud account that had it all and I actually had it fairly managed but then yesterday when the CrowdStrike stuff hit we started getting all of these notifications in my work email and I was beautiful timing on My part, I was off yesterday and I'm not going in.

Adam Jones (23m 44s)

Okay.

Adam Jones (24m 12s)

What a great day to be out of the office that's perfect.

Tom Anderson (24m 13s)

back to work on Monday.

Tom Anderson (24m 14s)

So right now it's, it's a little elevated, but anyway, do continue.

Tom Anderson (24m 19s)

Yeah, thankfully we're, we're not a CrowdStrike customer and we're also very heavily Apple there.

Tom Anderson (24m 25s)

We're like 95%, um, Apple.

Tom Anderson (24m 28s)

And so that was, we weren't, our teams anyway, weren't as negatively impacted as a bunch of others, but we did have a lot of services now.

Tom Anderson (24m 36s)

So, but anyway.

Adam Jones (24m 38s)

So, I'll give you a really quick reason why I love Hey, I could talk about this for 30 minutes on its own.

Adam Jones (24m 43s)

I might have a YouTube video at some point.

Adam Jones (24m 44s)

So, anyone that ever emails you hits what they call the screener.

Adam Jones (24m 48s)

You have to let them into what they call your inbox, I-M-B-O-X, your important box.

Adam Jones (24m 54s)

And so, if you get certainly spam, but also just like those vendor emails, Tom, I imagine you get a lot as an IT guy, and you're like, "I don't want to hear from this person again."

Adam Jones (25m 4s)

You don't have to market a spam.

Adam Jones (25m 5s)

You don't have to send it to the junk folder.

Adam Jones (25m 8s)

I don't want to hear from that person, and it doesn't hit your inbox.

Adam Jones (25m 11s)

I like that a lot.

Adam Jones (25m 13s)

And then, for those newsletters you do want, so I read like James Clear's Atomic Habits 321 newsletter.

Adam Jones (25m 19s)

Yeah, it's a great one.

Adam Jones (25m 21s)

Several others.

Adam Jones (25m 22s)

You say, "Hey, I want to get that every week," or whatever the cadence is, "but I want it to go to my feed."

Adam Jones (25m 29s)

And it's a separate part of your email experience, and it scrolls through more like social media.

Adam Jones (25m 34s)

And so, you can get to it when you need to.

Adam Jones (25m 36s)

It's not something that urgently.

Adam Jones (25m 38s)

It requires your attention.

Adam Jones (25m 39s)

So basically, you can set it up so your inbox, you're really only hearing from people that you need to hear from or a message you need to take action on.

Adam Jones (25m 46s)

And then for those things you need to save or get to later, you can set them aside.

Adam Jones (25m 52s)

And that's what they call it, your set aside board.

Adam Jones (25m 54s)

They also have a mass reply all feature.

Adam Jones (25m 56s)

So if you get a lot of comments or questions around the same thing, you could say I'm going to reply all with the same response.

Adam Jones (26m 5s)

I haven't used that a ton, but I could see that being helpful if you communicate.

Adam Jones (26m 8s)

I think the app is super well designed, so I think they would say they're actually not an Inbox Zero designed app, but that's how I see it.

Tom Anderson (26m 21s)  

• Okay, yeah, that sounds good.

Tom Anderson (26m 23s)

I looked at it briefly, but I can't remember if I did the trial or not.

Tom Anderson (26m 26s)

Maybe they didn't have a trial, I don't remember.

Tom Anderson (26m 28s)

But what mail providers does that support at this point?

Tom Anderson (26m 32s)

Is it Gmail, I'm sure, and some others?

Adam Jones (26m 36s)

Super great question. So when you sign up for Hey, and it's $99 a year per person,

Adam Jones (26m 40s)

they did just release within the last few weeks, a family plan. So you can have up to,

Adam Jones (26m 44s)

I believe it's six total people on a family plan, which is $179 a year.

Adam Jones (26m 51s)

You get a Hey email address, but you can also bring in your Google accounts. I believe it's SportsMicrosoft365. And I've set up my, I use iCloud custom domain for my website, Adam.

Tom Anderson (27m 6s)  

• Mm-hmm.

Adam Jones (27m 6s)

INK, little plug there. And so my, I use Apple's custom domain through Hey as well.

Tom Anderson (27m 7s)

Yep.

Tom Anderson (27m 15s)

Nice. So it kind of captures everything there.

Jeff Battersby (27m 16s)

Nice. Yeah, it it definitely looks interesting. And they have standalone apps. Okay. Okay.

Adam Jones (27m 19s)

Yes. They do. Yes. Apple and Android. And the Mac OS app is really great too. And I love,

Adam Jones (27m 31s)

I'm a huge fan of shortcuts, using my keyboard to navigate things, and I think

Adam Jones (27m 36s)

the shortcuts are really well thought out.

Jeff Battersby (27m 39s)

And it also has a calendar.

Adam Jones (27m 44s)

They do, they released that a few months ago.

Adam Jones (27m 47s)

It does not sync your Google Calendar events,

Adam Jones (27m 50s)

and I live in my Google Calendar.

Adam Jones (27m 53s)

And so for that reason,

Adam Jones (27m 54s)

I've actually not adopted the calendar portion.

Adam Jones (27m 56s)

I wish that I could, I would really give it a try.

Adam Jones (27m 58s)

It looks beautiful.

Adam Jones (28m)

It's got all sorts of nice UI elements.

Adam Jones (28m 4s)

But for me, until it can work with the Google Calendar,

Adam Jones (28m 7s)

it's just not practical for me.

Tom Anderson (28m 9s)

Yeah, I wonder, have they said anything publicly as they're working on that?

Adam Jones (28m 14s)

Anyway, I've emailed them and say,

Adam Jones (28m 16s)

I'm a huge fan of your company.

Adam Jones (28m 17s)

You know, is any chance this feature's coming?

Adam Jones (28m 19s)

And you know, I understand their reluctance to commit to any timeline.

Tom Anderson (28m 22s)

Yeah, yeah, it seems like that's something they would add because having to change your calendar platform is a huge ask of potential customers. Like that seems like to be a big obstacle. I wouldn't do that. Like just switch calendar providers, but okay. So hey, for that, um,

Adam Jones (28m 33s)

Yeah, absolutely.

Tom Anderson (28m 39s)

anything that you saw at, uh, WWDC for the improvements to mail, right? So they announced those improvements coming to mail, like they'll put the, the usual AI stuff on it, but then the

Tom Anderson (28m 52s)

and things like that, that it's kind of Gmail, like, um, anything there that you think would

Tom Anderson (28m 58s)

sway you back to maybe the mail app or hey, that far ahead that you think.

Adam Jones (29m 3s)

So I'm willing to try it. I've tried going Apple mail both on Mac OS and iOS and

Adam Jones (29m 8s)

It's for me. It's just not been as good of an experience as hey

Adam Jones (29m 12s)

But with the categories you're mentioning I did watch all of WWDC listen to your podcast

Adam Jones (29m 18s)

Summarizing what was announced. That was a great one. I'm gonna give it a shot. I want to see about the categories I want to see how easily you can direct certain emails to different categories because I've grown really really

Adam Jones (29m 29s)

Grateful for like being able to send things to that feed and

Adam Jones (29m 33s)

scroll it a couple times a day whenever I feel like it and not worry about missing something important.

Tom Anderson (29m 35s)

Mm-hmm

Tom Anderson (29m 37s)

Right, yeah, that that does sound a dream. Maybe I'll have to check that out great. Just what I need another subscription

Adam Jones (29m 41s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (29m 41s)

Yeah, another hundred bucks a year, you know, pretty soon the bank account is empty.

Adam Jones (29m 45s)

Yeah, exactly.

Tom Anderson (29m 49s)

Dad you know tip money

Adam Jones (29m 49s)

Right.

Jeff Battersby (29m 56s)

You also, and I'm not really, I've heard of it,

Jeff Battersby (30m)

but I'm not familiar with this, the Rabbit R1. Talk to us.

rabbit r1

Adam Jones (30m 4s)

Yeah, I've got this bright orange box. I know again this is audio, but I'm holding up the Rabbit R1.

Adam Jones (30m 10s)

So there were there were two things announced at CES, Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas,

Adam Jones (30m 14s)

this year that really caught my eye, and one was the Kliks keyboard and one was the Rabbit R1.

Adam Jones (30m 20s)

It's an AI-first device that can use a proprietary set of large language model or

Adam Jones (30m 30s)

AI reasoning as well as perplexity and Wolfram Alpha.

Adam Jones (30m 34s)

And it was pitched at CES as something that you could teach using the web app to do various tasks for you. Now, to be clear, that functionality is really not there yet. That's supposed to be coming later this year, but right now this is, I think, a really fun device to take pictures of plants and animals and things out in the world and ask what you're seeing. I also love to hand it to my kids. I've got a nine-year-old and a six-year-old. I'd rather hand them this than my phone which has...

Adam Jones (31m 4s)

you know, my banking apps on it, Amazon, who knows what they might want to buy, and they can ask it anything. So right now they're trying to persuade my wife and I to get a puppy, and

Adam Jones (31m 17s)

they've been researching what kind of dog breeds would be best, and asking all these factual questions, and you know, I don't know if you all have kids or what age they might be, but it's really nice to offload a couple thousand of those a week to this little device.

Adam Jones (31m 34s)

So I've got lots of YouTube videos on there. There are some cool things you can do with it in terms of it also does voice recording, and then you can query your recordings with just your voice.

Adam Jones (31m 43s)

So I've used it a little bit driving back from a meeting, for example, and I'll just summarize the meeting for myself, and then there's both a transcript and the ability to ask later what happened during that meeting.

Jeff Battersby (31m 53s)

Nice. - How much storage does--

Adam Jones (31m 55s)

It's 128 gigs. What's really not optimal right now, and I'm really involved in the the rabbit community. In fact, I was just in.

Tom Anderson (32m 5s)

Saw that. Yeah, that was cool.

Adam Jones (32m 5s)

Yeah, but I would tell them this and they're they need offline functionality because there is 128 gigs on here, but right now everything is going to the cloud and coming back to the device because it would storage quite a few voice recordings and photos and notes.

Tom Anderson (32m 22s)

Yeah, and I remember when that came out, MKBHD, you kind of cooked it.

Adam Jones (32m 27s)

Oh yeah if you Google this device a lot of it I would say almost all the initial reviews are incredibly critical incredibly critical but you know it's $199 and I know that's a luxury item for you know to have $200 to kind of be in a beta hardware space but I enjoy being on the journey they've they've released updates every week since this thing's come out and so it's kind of like a little gift you you open it up and see what new surprises gonna be every week in terms of functionality.

Tom Anderson (32m 56s)

Yeah, and I was, I watched the, I guess, I can't remember if it was the video you just did or the, the first one, but it was the one where you were talking about the, the shopping list.

Tom Anderson (33m 6s)

So like the grocery list and what I thought was pretty good is in the video you were telling it, you know, add these items to my groceries list and I think it was, what was this steak and mushrooms and something else.

Tom Anderson (33m 20s)

I can't remember what it was.

Tom Anderson (33m 21s)

It wasn't like a good dinner, but, but what I thought was.

Jeff Battersby (33m 24s)

We'll be over shortly.

Tom Anderson (33m 27s)

What I thought was good and it sounds like to go back to those reviews for a second,

Tom Anderson (33m 31s)

I think, I don't know if it was released prematurely or not, but it was released in a very rough state.

Tom Anderson (33m 37s)

It sounds like.

Tom Anderson (33m 38s)

Um, but one thing I noticed though, and I did have, I was kind of looking at this thing when it came now because it looked really intriguing because it was, like you said,

Tom Anderson (33m 45s)

it was 200 bucks.

Tom Anderson (33m 46s)

So it's not unreasonable, like vision pro, um, but I don't want to get into that.

Jeff Battersby (33m 49s)

Not that Tom would have any experience with that.

Tom Anderson (33m 55s)

No.

Tom Anderson (33m 56s)

No.

Tom Anderson (33m 57s)

But you said something there, so you were like, you went through and you just kind of talked those things through, and then at the end you were like, "Oh, I think it was broccoli or something."

Tom Anderson (34m 7s)

And you were like, "So my wife knows that I eat vegetables," you know?

Tom Anderson (34m 12s)

But what I thought was pretty good was that it handled all of that extra conversation without really any issues.

Tom Anderson (34m 19s)

Like Siri would have fallen apart and been like, "I don't know."

Tom Anderson (34m 26s)

And that natural conversation, but in the video you said, "Okay, so what's on my shopping list?"

Tom Anderson (34m 31s)

And it was like, "Oh, steak, mushrooms, broccoli," and it parsed out all of that extra talk without really having any issues.

Tom Anderson (34m 37s)

So I thought that was pretty impressive.

Adam Jones (34m 40s)

Yeah, it really is. And again, it's in, I would say it's kind of, it's in development.

Adam Jones (34m 46s)

There's no question, but some of that stuff, you know, and I had a comment on one of the recent videos I posted and it said, you know, Hey, Siri can do this and respectfully, and I love Apple and I cannot wait to see what Apple intelligence does. Siri cannot do some of that today. It just, it's, it's not a great product. Um, so, right. It's really good at

Tom Anderson (35m 2s)

Right. No. (laughs)

Jeff Battersby (35m 5s)

Suri can barely play music.

Adam Jones (35m 10s)

music through Apple music, a hundred percent. Oh, right. So I'm hoping Siri 2.0, or, you know, if it's even going to be rebranded, I I'm hoping it is a lot more capable.

Jeff Battersby (35m 12s)

Not sometimes.

Jeff Battersby (35m 13s)

I'll ask it to play something and it's like, "Oh, you wanted to hear this country music."

Jeff Battersby (35m 17s)

"No, I never want to hear country music."

Tom Anderson (35m 27s)

Yeah, because that's one of the things I use the watch for frequently is to put things on the groceries list.

Tom Anderson (35m 32s)

And it's just a reminders list that I share with my wife and I use the watch for it.

Tom Anderson (35m 37s)

And you can do multiple things, but it's kind of picky and how you put it there because it'll, you'll say, you know, add steak and mushrooms to the groceries list.

Tom Anderson (35m 47s)

And it sometimes will do steak and mushrooms as separate items.

Tom Anderson (35m 51s)

And then sometimes it'll just do steak and mushrooms.

Tom Anderson (35m 53s)

It's one item.

Tom Anderson (35m 54s)

No, that still works, I still see it but it's not the same.

Tom Anderson (35m 58s)

So I thought that was interesting.

Tom Anderson (36m)

And we talked a little bit about the Kliks keyboard,

Clicks Keyboard

Tom Anderson (36m 5s)

which you've got there.

Tom Anderson (36m 6s)

That's the, is that the London,

Tom Anderson (36m 7s)

what do they call that color?

Adam Jones (36m 8s)

Yeah, this is London gray, I believe. Is it London fog? I should know that. Anyway, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (36m 9s)

London fog

Jeff Battersby (36m 11s)

Gray I think it might be

Jeff Battersby (36m 17s)

Don't you hate don't you hate that I can never remember the name of anything

Adam Jones (36m 19s)

I hate that. And it comes in four colors. And Tom, did you get the bumblebee yellow?

Adam Jones (36m 27s)

Yeah. So I'm a little jealous of you, Tom, because

Adam Jones (36m 31s)

I wish I'd gotten that yellow. And I looked it up. It's called London Sky. London Sky.

Tom Anderson (36m 33s)

I there you go.

Tom Anderson (36m 37s)

It looks appropriate.

Adam Jones (36m 39s)

I've kind of grown to this place.

Adam Jones (36m 41s)

I like the minimalism of Apple's products, and I like the titanium look.

Adam Jones (36m 46s)

I have the natural titanium iPhone 15 Pro, and I think that looks really professional.

Adam Jones (36m 51s)

But for whatever reason, I'm kind of craving more brightly colored,

Adam Jones (36m 54s)

more interesting personality in my tech devices.

Tom Anderson (36m 58s)

Yep. Yeah, that yellow one is sometimes I use it just because I like the way it looks and I mean it's a vibrant yellow looks really great. How's the typing for you on that?

Adam Jones (37m 11s)

So, I love typing on it.

Adam Jones (37m 12s)

I definitely type faster on screen than with the clicks.

Adam Jones (37m 15s)

So, for me, it's almost like a psychological thing.

Adam Jones (37m 19s)

When I slide it on, I'm more in a thoughtful mood.

Adam Jones (37m 23s)

I'm not trying to reply to messages or write emails as fast as possible.

Adam Jones (37m 28s)

I really like kind of how it feels and scrolling with the key.

Adam Jones (37m 31s)

If you hit spacebar, it scrolls down like a webpage or a news article.

Adam Jones (37m 35s)

I really, really enjoy that.

Tom Anderson (37m 38s)  

• Yeah, pretty much like you, I just found it's impossible.

Tom Anderson (37m 42s)

I cannot type quickly on it.

Adam Jones (37m 43s)

Oh really?

Tom Anderson (37m 45s)

But it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Tom Anderson (37m 47s)

It's just I have to slow down and be more deliberate.

Tom Anderson (37m 50s)

I tend to go back and forth between the clicks and my normal Apple case,

Tom Anderson (37m 54s)

and I think that is detrimental to some degree because I'd never do enough typing on the clicks keyboard to really become super proficient with it.

Tom Anderson (38m 4s)

And because, like, the letters are fine.

Tom Anderson (38m 8s)

When I'm typing, you know, hey, what did you think about that's all great where I tend to really have to stop and look or for the special symbols because I don't use it frequently enough to have those mapped out because it's like a shift key almost you have to hit to get, you know, the apostrophe or the comma or the exclamation point, things like that.

Tom Anderson (38m 26s)

I do like that.

Tom Anderson (38m 27s)

It frees up the entire display.

Tom Anderson (38m 30s)

So if you're typing a note, you get the full page note on the iPhone display versus the soft keyboard taking up half of it.

Tom Anderson (38m 38s)

But yeah, I go back and forth a good bit.

Adam Jones (38m 41s)

Yeah, and to be to be transparent I go back and forth - I do not have it on all the time

Adam Jones (38m 46s)

But I I will genuinely say I love typing on it

Adam Jones (38m 50s)

And I get what you're saying. It's it's

Adam Jones (38m 53s)

Not as intuitive as that on-screen keyboard and certainly not as fast I don't know if either of you swipe to type using the Apple keyboard

Tom Anderson (38m 59s)

Yep. Yeah, sometimes. That's another thing. Not a lot, but it works surprisingly well.

Tom Anderson (39m 5s)

Sometimes better than when I type.

Adam Jones (39m 6s)

Yeah, it works so well for me, and it's just like I haven't timed it, but I can crank out some messages pretty quickly swiping

Jeff Battersby (39m 14s)

Nice. So last stop on this little train. Tom asked both of us if we were using betas and you said you were. Tom, you didn't say whether or not you were that I saw. Are you on any betas? Okay. So Adam, you're our guinea pig. Tell us your beta journey so far.

Tom Anderson (39m 30s)

I have not yet.

Adam Jones (39m 39s)

Yeah, I've been downloading them as soon as possible on all my devices.

Apple Public Betas

Adam Jones (39m 43s)

I don't know if I'll do that next time.

Tom Anderson (39m 45s)

We appreciate the honesty.

Adam Jones (39m 49s)

Yeah, you know, the main reason is,

Adam Jones (39m 52s)

and I posted about this, I think on threads,

Adam Jones (39m 54s)

and then some people rightfully criticized me,

Adam Jones (39m 56s)

and I stepped in it, and I wanna own that in case anyone's listening.

Adam Jones (40m)

I was like, hey, this is really hurting my iPhone battery life, and they're like,

Adam Jones (40m 4s)

that's why it's a developer beta.

Adam Jones (40m 5s)

And I was like, yep, that's totally fair.

Adam Jones (40m 9s)

That's on me. So, but the public beta that just came out seems really quite stable. It's been good

Adam Jones (40m 15s)

I love how the dark icons look in dark mode And I think the Apple icons look great and a lot of the third-party icons look quite good I could go on and on but that's that's one of the things that I've noticed right away

Tom Anderson (40m 30s)

Nice. Jeff, are you going to do that? You usually get in though, right? More towards August or so?

Jeff Battersby (40m 30s)

Yeah, I usually wait a couple cycles

Tom Anderson (40m 36s)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (40m 36s)

Me yeah, that's and I and I probably well I like to let at least one public beta cycle go before I go too crazy, and I won't do the studio computer

Tom Anderson (40m 45s)

Yeah, I might do the phone today.

Tom Anderson (40m 47s)

Maybe, maybe I'll, Adam's inspired me.

Jeff Battersby (40m 47s)

You might do the phone today Tommy

Tom Anderson (40m 49s)

Maybe I'll do the phone today.

Jeff Battersby (40m 51s)

Whoo-hoo yeah, I

Tom Anderson (40m 52s)

So I'd like to do a Mac, but like the,

Tom Anderson (40m 55s)

we record on my MacBook Pro.

Tom Anderson (40m 57s)

So I don't want to mess with it because the Rodecaster runs into it.

Tom Anderson (41m 1s)

And I'm like, that's going to be a disaster.

Jeff Battersby (41m 4s)

Yeah, if that

Tom Anderson (41m 4s)

I just don't want to do that.

Tom Anderson (41m 7s)

iPad, I edit on.

Tom Anderson (41m 9s)

So I don't want to mess with that because I've gotten so adept to using the.

Tom Anderson (41m 15s)

pencil to edit with ferrite that I just do not want to go back to mouse and use garage band or something that just would drive me nuts.

Tom Anderson (41m 23s)

So I'm hesitant to do that.

Tom Anderson (41m 25s)

My Mac mini is kind of like the central repository of the photos library and all the backups and everything.

Tom Anderson (41m 33s)

So I don't really want to mess with that.

Tom Anderson (41m 35s)

So that really just leaves the work laptop, so I'm going to do it.

Adam Jones (41m 37s)

Have you seen the new way that photos is displayed?

Jeff Battersby (41m 37s)

And there you go only in the videos, yeah

Adam Jones (41m 42s)

Photos are displayed.

Tom Anderson (41m 42s)

Only in the, yeah, only in the keynote.

Adam Jones (41m 46s)

I'll tell you for me, that took some getting used to.

Adam Jones (41m 48s)

I would love your thoughts and feedback on that.

Adam Jones (41m 50s)

It's been getting some heat online of perhaps being a little over-designed.

Tom Anderson (41m 55s)

Yeah, I did see some of that that feedback too.

Tom Anderson (41m 59s)

Yes, I'm interested to try that. What, where's it caused you the most friction?

Adam Jones (42m 4s)

I've got a couple apps, and I won't name them here,

Adam Jones (42m 6s)

but that weren't optimized for the beta,

Adam Jones (42m 8s)

and that's okay, that's on me for going in and being a first adopter, early adopter rather.

Adam Jones (42m 13s)

But I think overall it's been a really good experience.

Adam Jones (42m 16s)

I like iPhone mirroring on the macOS beta.

Adam Jones (42m 21s)

That's really cool.

Adam Jones (42m 23s)

It's nice to pull up a couple apps that don't have a good experience on the Mac and just see it right there on your screen.

Tom Anderson (42m 30s)

Are you a journaler? Do you use the journaling app?

Adam Jones (42m 33s)

Oh, that's a great use case.

Adam Jones (42m 34s)

So I, I, I hate that there's no journal app on Mac OS.

Adam Jones (42m 39s)

So now I can type with my keyboard using iPhone mirroring.

Adam Jones (42m 42s)

So yes, that's, that's wonderful.

Tom Anderson (42m 45s)

Yeah, and that might be enough to get me to try it again, because I just did not want to have to sit and just use it on the phone.

Tom Anderson (42m 49s)

I like the phone that it's on the phone, because like when I first tried it, I'd set up the notification.

Tom Anderson (42m 55s)

And so I was like, hey, it's time to write.

Tom Anderson (42m 57s)

And then it does the recommendations based off of it.

Tom Anderson (42m 59s)

And I like those, you know, so I like what the phone can provide, like with the contextual awareness stuff.

Tom Anderson (43m 4s)

But I just didn't want to do it on the phone all the time.

Tom Anderson (43m 5s)

So, yeah, let me dip into that.

Adam Jones (43m 8s)

If I could plug one more free app, this one's totally free.

Adam Jones (43m 11s)

So one of the updates with Mac OS Sequoia is Windows Tiling,

Adam Jones (43m 16s)

where it's going to snap to--

Tom Anderson (43m 16s)

Yep.

Jeff Battersby (43m 17s)

Yes.

Jeff Battersby (43m 18s)

Right.

Adam Jones (43m 18s)

which Windows users are probably like,

Jeff Battersby (43m 19s)

What?

Jeff Battersby (43m 20s)

Uh, no.

Adam Jones (43m 20s)

we've had that for decades or however long.

Jeff Battersby (43m 21s)

I'm familiar with that.

Adam Jones (43m 23s)

But there's a free app called Rectangle.

Adam Jones (43m 25s)

Do either of you use that?

Tom Anderson (43m 28s)

Now I've heard about it. Yeah.

Adam Jones (43m 30s)

And it's been wonderful.

Adam Jones (43m 31s)

I've used that for a couple of years.

Adam Jones (43m 33s)

And you can set up hotkeys.

Adam Jones (43m 34s)

And so I almost always have like my browser

Adam Jones (43m 38s)

Left of my screen and then the right third is like Apple notes or my email

Tom Anderson (43m 43s)

Mm-hmm

Adam Jones (43m 43s)

And you can just set up hotkeys to just click those windows to those spots and that's really really nice

Tom Anderson (43m 48s)

Yeah, that is nice I use magnet and very similar but

Adam Jones (43m 51s)

Yep

Tom Anderson (43m 52s)

Yeah, no, that's good. And it is nice to see Apple still working on the the window management thing. I think we talked about that in

Jeff Battersby (43m 59s)

[Chuckles] Right.

Tom Anderson (43m 59s)

Probably three episodes just different things talking about apps we use and stuff like that, but

Tom Anderson (44m 5s)

And as far as you're like your productivity

Tom Anderson (44m 9s)

Are you pretty locked in with reminders, notes?

Tom Anderson (44m 14s)

Do you use any third-party apps there?

Adam Jones (44m 16s)

Yeah, great question. I've

Adam Jones (44m 18s)

Had a journey. I feel like that meme where you know, there's the bell curve where you you're

Tom Anderson (44m 24s)

laughs Yep.

Adam Jones (44m 24s)

Starting out novice and then you try all these things in the middle and then you end up back where you started

Adam Jones (44m 30s)

So I use Apple Notes for all my note-taking I used to love and I still love how it looks bare And I think you use that Tom

Tom Anderson (44m 38s)

Yeah. Yeah. You and I talked about that a little bit on Threads when we first connected there a while back.

Adam Jones (44m 39s)

Yeah

Adam Jones (44m 42s)

Bear is so beautiful like the design is just

Adam Jones (44m 46s)

So great, but it doesn't do handwriting recognition yet that I know of and I take a lot of handwritten notes and meetings It makes me feel more present than typing my notes and as a result, you know You can query your handwriting in Apple Notes, which I think

Tom Anderson (44m 55s)

Yep.

Tom Anderson (45m 1s)

Yeah, yeah, Bear does the handwriting,

Tom Anderson (45m 3s)

but it doesn't search it.

Tom Anderson (45m 5s)

So that's, yeah, that's a gap there.

Tom Anderson (45m 7s)

I don't know if they'll address that or not,

Tom Anderson (45m 9s)

but no, no, it's a solid.

Tom Anderson (45m 10s)

And then reminders for your task, I think it said,

Tom Anderson (45m 13s)

you even use that with your team there, right?

Adam Jones (45m 15s)  

• Yeah, that's exactly right.

Adam Jones (45m 16s)

So I've tried Monday, I've tried Basecamp,

Adam Jones (45m 19s)

which again is the same group of people that makes hay.

Adam Jones (45m 21s)

So I think really, really highly of them.

Adam Jones (45m 23s)

Both those tools are just more than my small team of four needed.

Adam Jones (45m 27s)

And so with reminders, we each have a list where we can see what each other is working on.

Adam Jones (45m 33s)

And then if there's any task we don't wanna share out like necessarily publicly,

Adam Jones (45m 36s)

we could have our own list as well.

Adam Jones (45m 37s)

And I do a grocery list with my wife

Adam Jones (45m 40s)

and then some YouTube and like blogging production stuff as a list.

Tom Anderson (45m 44s)

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Adam Jones (45m 45s)

I love the view as columns layout,

Adam Jones (45m 47s)

which I think that came out in iOS 17 and yeah.

Adam Jones (45m 51s)

I really like that being able to drag and drop between columns.

Adam Jones (45m 55s)

I kind of do a now column.

Adam Jones (45m 58s)

I need to be working on this right now.

Adam Jones (45m 59s)

A soon, that's kind of like the next week or two.

Adam Jones (46m 1s)

And then a later, I wanna make sure that it's off my mind and I'm gonna do it eventually, but it's not super urgent.

Tom Anderson (46m 8s)

Nice. Yeah, I like all that. It's good.

Jeff Battersby (46m 9s)

Yeah, so cool

Tom Anderson (46m 11s)

We'll have to have you come back on when we do a big super productivity tip show.

Tom Anderson (46m 15s)

Sounds like you're dialed in on that stuff. Yeah, that'd be fun.

Jeff Battersby (46m 18s)

All righty.

Tom Anderson (46m 18s)

Okay, so where can people find you on the socials?

Tom Anderson (46m 24s)

We talked about Skybound, but I know you do YouTube and everything too, so where should people go?

Find Adam!

Adam Jones (46m 30s)

Yeah, I would love to connect with people. My name is the same across everything.

Adam Jones (46m 34s)

I have this super, super common name, Adam Jones. So I added "ink" at the end because dot com and dot net were taken. So my website is adamjones.ink and my social handle everywhere, including YouTube and X and threads and Instagram is adamjonesinc.

Tom Anderson (46m 53s)

Yeah, that's funny. I looked you up on YouTube and it brought up the guitar player for Tool.

Jeff Battersby (46m 53s)

Very cool

Adam Jones (46m 57s)

Oh, for tool? Yes.

Tom Anderson (46m 58s)

Yeah, it's like well, that's not the one.

Adam Jones (47m)

Yeah, no. No, I'm not. I'm not that good a guitar for sure.

Jeff Battersby (47m 2s)

Or maybe it is and he's just being sneaky

Jeff Battersby (47m 10s)

All right, so that leads us to the end of the show

Close

Jeff Battersby (47m 15s)

In Adam, we really appreciate you coming on a lot of really good information I want to encourage everyone to go out and see Skybound Education and check it out.

Jeff Battersby (47m 24s)

As a reminder, we take email at feedback@basicafshow.com.

Jeff Battersby (47m 33s)

You can send us a direct message in whatever your current podcast listening app is.

Jeff Battersby (47m 40s)

So if you go to the show notes, there's an option for you, or yeah, the show notes or the details on the show.

Jeff Battersby (47m 45s)

There's the option for you to be able to send us a direct message.

Jeff Battersby (47m 48s)

If you want us to respond back to you, all you have to do is put an email in there.

Jeff Battersby (47m 53s)

We're happy to do that.

Tom Anderson (47m 54s)

and and we have a new website

Jeff Battersby (47m 57s)

And say it, Tom, we do have a new website.

Tom Anderson (48m 1s)

we do it's got a great guests page so you'll see adam up there so if you want to see

Tom Anderson (48m 6s)

his links and everything we'll have that there and also on every page there is a little microphone down in the bottom right if you click or tap on that you can send us a voicemail so if you've got a comment or any question you want to ask about any of this stuff you can send us a voicemail We'll play it on the show

Tom Anderson (48m 24s)

As long as you don't curse us out.

Jeff Battersby (48m 25s)

Absolutely, we'll do that.

Tom Anderson (48m 26s)

And if you curse us out with good technique, we might still play it.

Jeff Battersby (48m 27s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (48m 29s)

Yeah, actually, we like that.

Jeff Battersby (48m 32s)

We're gluttons for punishment.

Tom Anderson (48m 32s)

So do check that out too.

Tom Anderson (48m 34s)

We are.

Tom Anderson (48m 35s)

Yeah, but Adam, thank you so much for coming on.

Tom Anderson (48m 38s)

This has been a lot of fun and hopefully we'll have you back.

Tom Anderson (48m 41s)

We'd like to do that at some point.

Adam Jones (48m 43s)

Thank you, thank you both, it's been a joy.

Jeff Battersby (48m 45s)

No, thank you.

Jeff Battersby (48m 47s)

Reminder, show music, Psychokinetics, Celsius 7,

Jeff Battersby (48m 50s)

check them out on whatever platform you're listening to.

Jeff Battersby (48m 55s)

And then we've got Randall Martin Design,

Jeff Battersby (48m 57s)

who's done those geeky and his Adam Canassi pretty accurate robot heads.

Jeff Battersby (49m 7s)

And Randall does great work.

Jeff Battersby (49m 8s)

We highly recommend you check Randall out if you have any, any candidate.

Tom Anderson (49m 16s)

Okay, we do. All right. Well, thanks for being here everyone Adam. Thank you again and

Tom Anderson (49m 20s)

Until we get together for the next show. Have a great rest of your day rest of your night, and we'll see you then

Jeff Battersby (49m 26s)

See ya!