Crashing Clockwise #568: ‘The Canonical Answer is Dan’s TV’
My (not so subtle) attempt to someday guest on “the tech podcast where Dan has abandoned us once again.”
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Mikah Sargent: What is a third-party app that you think everyone should have on their phone?
This was a hard one to answer because the hosts and guests picked such good ones already (I also use CARROT Weather, Libby, and Annotable — they’re great).
So instead I’m going to choose an app that I only just found out about a few hours ago, but I’m convinced that everyone should use, and that’s Unwatched. I discovered this from the boys on Connected, and it’s a completely free app for keeping up with your YouTube subscriptions, with a rockin’ interface. Give it a list of channels you want to follow, and it’ll present an RSS-like list of all their latest videos, ready for you to swipe into a queue or dismiss. There are lots of niceties like per-channel speed settings, a sleep timer, a shortcut for saving ad-hoc videos, bookmarks, and more.
For years, I’ve been using Play to save videos for later (and have currently amassed nearly 900 unwatched videos), but I think (hope) that Unwatched queue system will encourage me to actually watch more of them. The interface is that good. And maybe I can move out all the YouTube RSS feeds I have in my RSS app.
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Kathy Campbell: What is the app you open when you wake up in the morning?
It kind of depends on if I received any notable notifications overnight, but in general, I hope my email client, Spark, first thing. The slower, asynchronous nature of email is one thing that I like best about it, but I also like to be prepared for my day and get back promptly to people if I can or need to. So I’ll look through my latest emails and do a quick triage first thing.
My next-up apps, in no particular order, are Reeder to check news and blog posts that published overnight, Micro.blog for a quick scroll through latest posts from friends, Overcast to start my morning podcasts, and (if I’m vulnerable or susceptible) Instagram where I’ll waste a bunch of time watching Reels.
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Jason Snell: What’s a bit of tech in your life that is getting a little old or faltering and probably could use a refresh?
Well, I’m currently in phase two of replacing a bunch of light switches around our house with Lutron Casseta smart switches, but the current ones aren’t faltering — they’re just not smart. So instead, I’ll say that I’d like to replace our water heater with an instant-hot tankless propane heater. We had one in our last rental home, and the immediate never-ending hot water was glorious. Our current water heater isn’t necessarily on its last legs (although, I think it has exceeded its expected life span), but it also doesn’t always keep up with our needs — even with just my wife and my usage.
But that seems like a whole thing to replace, so we probably won’t jump on it until the current water heater is truly dying.
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Jeremy Burge: Which tech product or concept were you wrong about?
Excellent question! I think I’m going to have to go with the Meta Quest/AR devices. For years I thought the whole AR/VR craze was just a fad. And to some degree, it has been cyclical — right now the world seems to be cooling off on them again — but in my brief time using my wife’s, I was impressed. Gaming is surprisingly fun, and the interface offers a glimpse into the future.
I was enamored by the Apple Vision Pro from the get-go, so I can’t say that. But another similar device that my opinion has changed drastically on, also from Meta, is the Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. I thought the Snapchat Spectacles looked silly, and the Ray-Ban Stories were also not that great. But the feature set grew enticing enough with the Meta Ray-Bans that I really wanted to give them a go, and they’re indeed awesome for outdoor activities.
A couple of Meta products that I’ve had to eat my words about — who knew!?
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Bonus Topic: What is the best thing you’ve ever eaten while on vacation or traveling?
My wife and I sure had some incredible meals while on our honeymoon to Ireland and Austria, but I couldn’t describe them to you now. What I can recall with absolute clarity is the Big Mac meal I had in Aspen, Colorado after a massively draining hike on a two-week road trip out west. My wife had suffered from altitude sickness, and I carried her pack on my front while wearing my pack on my back during the 9-mile and many thousands of feet descent.
Not only was the beef quality better in Aspen, but my ravenous hunger contributed to that being the best McDonald’s meal I’ve ever had, by far.
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Overtime Topic: What is a hardware or software feature that you can remember enjoying in the past that has now been taken away and that you wish would return?
Great answers again from the guests and hosts. I likewise miss 3D Touch on my iPhone so much. I only used Nuzzle briefly before it was shut down, but that app was super cool too. And I loved the breathing animation on Macs and miss that as well, although I’ve noticed that the LED on the Apple Vision Pro does a similar breath-like pattern while charging, which is nice.
But my true answer is Dashboard on macOS. Dashboard was a feature on the Mac that you could access with a swipe or keyboard button that brought you to a full-screen view of all your widgets. This is before the massive expansion of app widgets thanks to iOS, mind you. My favorite widget was the Web Clipper, where you could “clip” a bit of any webpage and save it as a widget, and then that small web view would stay up-to-date over time. So if the website updated, so did your clipped widget.
All the widgets back then oozed personality, and I loved the hodgepodge of skeuomorphic designs all in that one view. You’d think with all the widgets coming with apps nowadays that it would be the perfect time to bring back that Dashboard view instead of today’s desktop widgets being hidden beneath all your windows.
I hold out hope.
Until next time, watch what you say, and keep watching the clock. Bye everybody!
This is post #19/31 for Blaugust 2024.