Crashing Clockwise #536: ‘Spay and Neuter Your Pets’
This week’s conversation was quite lively! I loved the bonus theme effects!
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Mikah Sargent: Tell me about the screens that you regularly use to watch content.
If we’re talking TV or movies, most of it happens on our main television in the living room. It’s a reasonably large (can’t remember the size) OLED screen from LG that my wife and I picked up in 2020, I think. We’ve loved it. It’s so much better than the old hand-me-down TV that we had before and that now serves as a workout screen for TV+ mostly.
But I do just as much, if not more, watching of YouTube videos, Instagram Reels, and occasional long-form content on my phone or iPad. It’s probably pretty even between the two. I tend to save up the good stuff to watch on our big TV, but Vision Pro might change all that soon.
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Zac Hall: It seems like this year is the year of bespoke AI hardware like the Humane Ai Pin, Rewind Pendant, and Rabbit R1. Is there an app on your phone that you’d actually carry around bespoke hardware for instead of using the app?
The Rabbit R1 is the most compelling AI hardware that I’ve seen so far. I think their ‘Large Action Model’ idea is huge and could inform the next set of big AI leaps. But I’d find it infinitely more compelling if it were built into the OS of the phone I already carry and that already has all my apps and info. So, conversely, I’d rather carry around the R1 as an app, rather than more apps as hardware.
But, in the spirit of the question, I think I’d too go back to a physical manifestation of the Music app, like an iPod nano that works with my Apple Music library.
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Dan Moren: Have you seen anything announced at this year’s CES that you’re genuinely interested in?
In short, no. But that’s not because they’re all stinkers this year. I just haven’t had the time to follow the coverage, so I don’t know much about the gizmos and gadgets introduced at this year’s show. The Rabbit R1 might be the only thing that I could identify as introduced last week and that sounded at least up my alley.
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Jason Howell: What is the absolute best way to point at things on a screen, and why do you feel that way?
In the debate between trackpad and mouse, I’ve been Team Mouse for many years. Trackpads are great on laptops or for the iPad’s Magic Keyboard, but given the opportunity to use a bigger screen, I’ll always go for the mouse. And which mouse, do you ask? The Magic Mouse is the best one I’ve ever used. People say it’s unergonomic, but my recent attempts to make it more ergonomic with a bigger profile have only led, ironically, to more pain in my wrist and forearm. I love its small and light form factor and its gestures so very much.
I do still have a trackpad sitting on the other side of my keyboard, but it rarely gets used, and only then just for broad gestures.
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Bonus Topic: When you were young and you stayed home sick from school, which show do you remember watching on TV?
I think I watched most of How I Met Your Mother during sick days at home. Or at least that’s how I remember getting into the show. Price Is Right certainly was in the mix, but HIMYM was my go-to.
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Overtime Topic: What app are you forced to use, even though you dislike it, and why do you have to use it?
I’m going to choose to include web apps in the pool because there is no app that I dislike using more than Constant Contact.
<rant>I have to use it at work to send out our local shop’s email newsletter every week or so, and I hate every minute of it. The WYSIWYG tools feel like they haven’t been updated since about 2007, it’s slow, buggy, and very difficult to create anything that looks remotely good with it.
I’d much prefer to write everything in Markdown with a very simple layout, but that’s not an option. It takes me hours, and I hate it.</rant>
Can’t wait for next week, which, because of my delay in getting to last week’s show, is only a couple of days away!