Crashing Clockwise #566: ‘That’s My Shredder Sound’
My (not so subtle) attempt to someday be a guest on “the tech podcast where we’re finally reunited and, boy, does it feel so good!”
Mikah Sargent: What is a gadget or other piece of tech that everyone should own?
I’m sure there are many things I could answer for this topic, but I’m going to go with the one that immediately jumped to mind and it’s the one item that’s always in my pocket (other than my phone): AirPods (or other wireless earbuds). For eight years now, a set of AirPods have been in my front right pocket and they’re still one of my favorite purchases of all time. Being free of the cord is so liberating with no snags or tangles, and makes listening to music and podcasts an effortless joy.
Plus, with AirPods, you get the pleasantly smooth-like-a-river-stone case to fidget with as a bonus.
P.S. After Dan’s answer, I’m just a slight arm-twist away from clicking ‘Buy Now’ for a paper shredder on Amazon.
Emily Dreibelbis: What is your tech strategy for planes?
Speaking of wireless earbuds, those are a must for travel. However, I’ll usually try to bring a pair with noise cancelation (either Beats Fit Pro or AirPods Max) to get some peace on the flight. Air travel can be stressful, so my longstanding rule is “No work on the flight”. It’s a nice opportunity to get in some personal entertainment. That means I’ve usually got my YouTube Watch Later queue and other TV/movies downloaded to my iPad, and often my Kobo is loaded with plenty of eBooks. Honestly, it can be hard to choose what to watch or read with so many options.
Another tech strategy of note is having all my documents and itinerary saved to a singular Apple Note for easy offline access. I use the Flighty app for updates about the flight/gate/etc. And my luggage has an AirTag to keep track of it, although I’m not convinced it does much more than add another opportunity to stress when checking to see if the luggage also made it onto the plane.
Dan Moren: What are your first impressions of Apple’s new Distraction Control feature in Safari?
I think it’s great. We’ve had Safari Reader built in for years and years which gets rid of all the elements of the webpage besides the text in one fell swoop, so I don’t think Distraction Control will be detrimental for websites. Plus it’s largely a manual process that appears to be specifically designed not to interfere too much with dynamic ads. I think the web will survive, and I’ll be glad to dissolve away many of those elements that prevent me from reading the actual content on websites. Websites have had years to be better about not covering up content with garbage, and they’ve done the opposite instead. (That animation is pretty cool too.)
Matthew Cassinelli: Are there any apps that you’re looking to control entirely with Siri and use with Apple Intelligence?
I’m all for more apps getting robust Siri and Shortcuts support, of course. But I’m having a hard time thinking of an app that I want to control entirely through those layers of abstraction. I like using different UIs and seeing what developers come up with to make their apps their own. So I’d probably still dive into apps for fun, even if I could do everything with my voice.
That said, I hope we’ll see more robust intents and actions for Apple Music. It’s shocking how long they’ve resisted putting more capable actions for searching and acting upon specific songs and albums from their catalog. I was sure we’d see something like the old Beats “The Sentence” feature show up in an Apple Intelligence demo, but it remains to be seen if I’ll be able to tell Siri to build me a playlist based on an arbitrary feeling like I could a decade ago with Beats Music.
Bonus Topic: Would you rather go to space or the bottom of the ocean?
I’d absolutely want to go to the heights of space over the depths of the ocean. I know the ocean is under-explored, but I’ve held a fascination for space and the cosmos for just as long as I’ve held a general foreboding about the dark depths of the sea. I’d love to experience the weightlessness of zero gravity, knowing that at least once I’d escaped its pull.
Overtime Topic: Do the endless, repeated permission prompts help with security?
I don’t think I’ve seen a single person who thinks the weekly permission prompts for things like screen recording on macOS Sequoia is a good idea. And I’m certainly not the first. I’m with people like Jason Snell, Nick Heer, and John Siracusa who think that a constant barrage of those dialog boxes are a usability nightmare, a “cover your ass” and responsibility-shifting tactic, and are insulting to users’ intelligence and agency. And I think they condition us all to ignore and automatically click through such prompts so that get on with what we’re doing on our computers. In other words, they eventually have the opposite intended effect.
Matt Birchler suggests a reasonable compromise in that the prompt is repeated with an option to allow forever, or repeats monthly. Weekly is way overkill.
Until next time, watch what you say, and keep watching the clock!
This is post #8/31 for Blaugust 2024.