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110: It’s Such a Good Truck! · Hemispheric Views

• Can I just do an apology at the top here? I just said apology for whatever it is I sound like right now. My voice has been gone for two days. I just got it back this morning. So that is why this sounds like what it sounds like. So sorry slash you're welcome. - And it's my fault because I brought recording forward by one day. So you've had less time to recover. (laughing) All right, I apologize for that. (coughing) - As he quietly dies in the corner. - I'm gonna call this episode hack up a lung. - Yeah, it's all right. Brought to you by cough medicine. I drank like a gallon of cough medicine before this. So hopefully that'll help. - Wow. - That is not medical advice on the show. - No, no, it is not. (upbeat music) - So this has been on the notes for a while. And I don't want this to be a negative thing. 'Cause you know, sometimes it's just too easy to go down the whole negative rabbit hole with some sort of, "Oh, back in the day when it was like this with Apple or something." This is more of a, "Hmm, wouldn't it be great if they brought that back?" Or, "It's not so bad, but it could be improved if something were returned." That's the kind of positive spin that I wanna put on this, right? So there was a Mastodon post, which I picked up a little while ago. And it was just talking about, let's bring it up here. The fact that the iMac G4 was a masterpiece of computer design. It'll be linked in the notes and it's got these nice profile shots of this great computer. I love it. I've got an old one sitting up on my bookshelf. And I was thinking, taking inspiration from this post, is there any kind of overall design or very specific feature of any Apple product? And it doesn't have to be physical. It could be in software or operating system, whatever. Something from the past that you think was maybe better than what we have today that you would like to see come back. I don't know if you've thought about this already, but I'm happy to kick us off. - Please. - Okay. - I'm gonna go super specific, really specific, as has kind of become my brand, SidePoint. There's something that I remember as a kid, right? Using Mac OS X, which I feel is such a wonderful thing. - As a kid? - Yeah. - Using Mac OS X? - Yes. - Okay, okay. - I started on, we've been through this before, haven't we? I started on Mac OS X in the late nineties and then moved to Mac. - You know he's negative 13 years old. You know this already. - He just never fails to remind me how old I am. It's really not fair. - Yeah, not all of us started on Next, like some of us, Andrew. - Sorry, Martin, carry on. - It's okay. I remember family computer was bought three months before potential bankruptcy. So I got a taste of the old and the new. So the thing that I remember very fondly and seems to have disappeared from, and I'm happy to be proven wrong, seems to have disappeared from all design in Apple software and even stuff that you see on the web or other operating systems. Do you remember when there was a progress bar in any kind of dialogue box or window that came up, maybe you were burning a CD or waiting for something to happen on your computer, there was the barber pole style progress bar. Do you remember this? - I do. - Maybe people don't know about this, maybe younger listeners or something, but when you had a progress bar, not only did it move from left to right to indicate progress, as is the name, but it had a spinning, not pinstripe like the rest of the operating system, but a kind of diagonal rotating barber pole. And that super important thing told you the thing that you are waiting for is still running. And the moment that it stopped, you went, the process has stopped or something is wrong. Now, throughout the entire operating system, it doesn't matter if it's like recovery mode or startup or any kind of update across devices, all we have now is this super minimalist line that goes across. And sometimes you get progress bars that just keep randomly popping up with zero indication of what they actually are. So yeah, that's an annoying thing. And maybe I sound negative, but I feel like we have the minimum progress bar these days. Could we maybe see a return to actual design that positively shows us that the entire computer hasn't died in the process of waiting for something? - Yeah, I would just add that it blows my mind that with everything that a computer can do in the year 2024, it has no effing clue when the hell it's gonna be done with a task that it designed to begin with. How do you have no idea? You know everything about the system, you know everything about the thing that you built to put on the system, but you don't know how long it's gonna take? How? That doesn't make any sense to me. - Yeah, and it is confusing 'cause we're so lucky to have all these super powerful devices. Like I remember how long I used to have to wait for something like iDVD to finish with a disc image, you know, like doing DVDs of like old family videos and stuff. And it's like, there's so much positive stuff. There's so much progress here. Why can't we just have that extra nice layer back? - It's a good start, man. - Thank you. - I've got two, I've got a software and a hardware. So, and I'm cautious that this may be delving into negativity again. From a software side, I just want like widescreen dialogue boxes on Mac OS again. Is that too much to ask? Like, you know, now they've adopted the iOS style portrait mode dialogue boxes. And I just want the wide ones back again. It's just a preference. So that's all. - Even if purely for legibility, I know what you mean. 'Cause your eyes kind of run across in paragraphs, but you've got this kind of centered thing happening. - Exactly. And iPhone, I understand. You hold an iPhone predominantly portrait orientation. So it would make sense that any dialogue box is a portrait. Macs, they're widescreen devices. So the dialogue box should be widescreen to match. - Yeah, it's almost like we have more consistent devices, but it leads to little paper cuts in other places. - So that's my software, from a hardware one. Okay, so, and this is more riffing on the fact that that iMac was perfection. That's probably, that G4 with the arm, that's probably what really got me into Macs in a big way. I didn't buy one of those, I wanted one, but I remember just going into shops and just moving the screen around. 'Cause it moves so softly and accurately, but it never sagged. Like you would expect that it would droop over time. And it never did. You could just lever it to the height that you wanted, or the angle, and it would just stick. It was incredible. So another thing that I think is incredible that I miss and I wish they could bring it back in some way, shape or form, the good old click wheel. The click wheel is still a really cool interface. And I find it's, I think sometimes, even when you're using touchscreen, the idea of having a click wheel would be more effective. It's a beautiful thing, especially the one, I liked it when they became capacitive touch. So they didn't actually spin, it would just, you just moved your finger and it detected the spin. And I can see the generational development and then you move into touchscreens and I understand why they've gotten rid of it. But there's still a part of me that longs for, maybe if they could create a desktop accessory or something that was a spinner. Yeah, sometimes you have volume knobs that you can buy third party, those volume knobs. It just seems like there must be some way that we could get the good old click wheel back. I love it. It's a thing of beauty. - I agree with you. And you can see the kind of positive effect of the click wheel head across even Mac OS with things like front row or the way that iTunes worked and those hierarchical lists, so easy to find information. Not so much the case now, like if you browse the Apple TV app, it's like, yeah, it's not exactly designed the same way. - I think a wonderful extra accessory device would be three of them combined. Something like the touch bar with a click wheel with a touch ID in the middle, like a Stream Deck style kind of thing would be amazing. It would be $700 and it would be stupid. It would be carved out of a block of aluminum or whatever the hell. But I could see a touch bar style thing with a click wheel for, when you're in photos, it goes through your photos. When you're in music, it's volume, like that kind of thing. And then the middle is just the touch ID or whatever. That could be just a glorious little accessory device. - You could have the DJ discs. - Yeah, like it just, it morphs. Like the touch bar was always meant to be like this thing that morphs to whatever you're doing. Having a click wheel merged with that that could morph to whatever app you're in. You know, you're in Final Cut. Now you're scrolling through your timeline with it or it just, it morphs to whatever you're doing would be so cool. And I totally agree, the click wheel is awesome. - This would never happen, but imagine, and I'm holding up for listeners who can't see, I'm holding up just the magic track pad, right? That I use on the desktop. Imagine if it were actually an E Ink display, right? Which turned into the different interfaces, touch bar style that you wanted. So going to click wheel mode, as you said, Andrew, that illuminates. And given that you can click anywhere on this device with that kind of haptic feedback, it's not really a physical lever anymore. This entire track pad could become a display quick wheel, depending on what you want. - That would be cool. Wow. - We're just giving away ideas at this point. - Like you were just holding it up. So instead of it being sort of on the desk, if you can even just hold it like a phone or an iPod. - Like why not make the track pad a kind of display that isn't an LCD and then it can morph to what you want. - I still think the iPod could be a standalone thing at this point and not the stupid iPod touch, like an iPod iPod. I think that could still legit be a tangible thing that people would want. Enough people, well, that's the thing with all this, like with all these stupidly large companies now, like if it's not billion dollar vertical, it doesn't count anymore. But I think there's room for something that is an iPod standalone. If it has a headphone jack or not, I don't care, but like it doesn't have, I just think that standalone device is still meaningful to a lot of people. - Sony should make a really good one. They do, they make some, like their Walkmans are pretty, have you looked at their Walkmans? They look really cool. - Do they? - They're luxurious. - Yeah, they're real nice. They have some really cool, like standalone dedicated audio players that like, yeah, they look pretty sweet. I haven't used one, but. - And I don't wanna stray too far into like photography or camera corner here, but if you look at something like Fujifilm's X106, replacing the X105, that dedicated 35 millimeter equivalent APS-C camera, the pre-orders for that, like nuts, like every model, no one can get one, you're waiting for years. - They're selling on eBay for like two to three X. - Yeah, yeah, and so there's evidence that doing something a bit weird or retro or rethought outside of the absolute mainstream can still make you a truckload of money. Of course, we all know that Apple doesn't necessarily wanna get into businesses that aren't the absolute massive, but worth exploring. A truckload of money is not enough for these companies anymore. Like it has to be a metric truck ton at this point, which is just disgusting. Anyway, I'm gonna keep it positive and go with your original question. You said one thing, I'm gonna go with three things. - Sure. - The first two are semi-related. So the first two are both LED related. So the first one is the breathing sleep light on the MacBooks. - Oh, yeah. - When it was sleeping and it just did that nice little like soft breathing pulse that like let you know, "Hey, I'm still here, I'm still ready to go, but I'm just, you know, taking a nap." And I could just imagine that on like my MacBook Pro now that has instant on, where back then you'd open the lid and then be like, "Well, let's wait a while for this to come back to life." Now they're just like open the lid and the screen is already on before you can even see it. I still think that little breathing light would just give some like, I don't know, some humanity to it and make it a little less robotic. - It's like the progress bars, it's just reassurance. - Yeah. - It's giving you a hint. - The second one also LED related is on the older notebook computers, when they had the batteries that were removable, they always had a little button on them that you could push and it would be like one to five LEDs, I think it was, maybe it was six, something like that. But it would give you the charge level. So you could kind of just like give it a quick poke and be like, "Oh shoot, this is dead, I better charge it." Or, "Oh no, I've got like four out of five, I'm probably good." Which back then battery life was atrocious. But now if I poked it in the, you know, I only had two or three, I'd still be like, "Oh, I still have like five hours, so I'm fine." But just having that little quick like, "Boop, oh, okay, yep, I'm good." Or, "Oh shoot, I should probably plug it in." Would be, I think it would be nice. I don't think that would be a bad thing. And then the third one is the dashboard. Frankly, I'm gonna try so hard to remain positive here, but widgets on every platform, they're just bad. There's nothing else I can say. They don't work. I'm looking at my desktop right now. Two of them are just gone for some reason. I don't know where they went, they just disappeared. That happens all the time. They don't load most of the time. There's a weird thing where like, it'll be like, "Do you want the iPhone one or the Mac one?" And it's like, "I'm on a Mac, probably the Mac one." But if you pick the wrong one, then it's like, "Open this on your iPhone." It's like, "Well, you know I'm not on an iPhone, "so like, what are you doing?" Anyway, the dashboard always worked really well. It was one swipe away, I could get a quick glance, swipe back and be done. Now the widgets are on my desktop, which is fine, but I don't really need them there all the time. There's that other thing on the other side, the whatever that thing is that comes out from the right side. - Notification center with widgets. - Yeah, so there's widgets over there, there's widgets on the desktop. None of them really work all that great. The widgets themselves are mostly fine. It just seems to be like the system trying to display them. Like it just can't, they don't update. I don't know. The dashboard was great. It had so many cool features. It had all these widgets, it had that thing where you could be like, "Show me this little piece of a webpage." Like that was cool, I don't know. Dashboard was just really, really nice and really useful. And for me today with Mac OS, whatever we have, I would love to just be able to swipe to the left side and have dashboard there instead of what we have now. So there you go, dashboard. Things have improved so much in terms of their speed, their interoperability, their connection, all of this stuff, right? So we have much better and more powerful devices, but as we've got more devices, there's been this overarching design thought of let's make them all work more similarly or together. And so we've got this greater complexity that's been funneled through this good intention of trying to make everything consistent. But then you kind of forget that original thing, which was the Mac was designed to be the Mac, the iPhone was designed to be the iPhone and the iPad's the iPad. They're all different affordances, they're all different media technically. And so they shouldn't all necessarily work the same way 'cause we use them all differently. So you try to make them all similar, you lose a bit of the essence of each of those things. So we have better devices, which have been kind of, not ruined, but made too consistent in some ways. - Yeah, I think I'm the curmudgeon for sure, but like, I just want my Mac to be the truck. Like just let it be the truck. I don't need it to be anything other than the truck. It's a really good truck. It's the best truck that's ever been built. Just let it be a truck. Like, I don't know, I just, I don't-- - They keep trying to turn it into a cyber truck. - I don't want it to be the (beep) ugly cyber truck. I just want it to be like the nice truck that does truck things. It's such a good truck. - Can I ask you guys, can you think off the top of your head of the last, gosh, five or six releases of Mac OS, is there anything new that has been added that you use all the time and think, oh, this is brilliant. This has been a great addition to the operating system. - I feel like there's probably a lot of things, but I'm not thinking of them because it's been so long. Like I've just been using them for so long that they're not, like we didn't just make the transition like two months ago to like old to new. So I feel like whatever those new things are, I'm not readily thinking of them. - 'Cause I think about it, I'm like, I don't really use continuity, which was a big thing. I don't use, maybe AirDrop I use a teensy bit. I don't really use widgets. I have some, but I could live without them entirely. - Continuity is, I use that a lot. I really like continuity. - Okay. - Yeah. - Like where you drag your mouse to your iPad. Is that the continuity you're referring to? - Universal control is that one. Continuity is the thing where you're like doing a thing on your phone and then it pops up in your dock and you click it and it like transfers over. - I never use that either. - Oh, I like that one. - That's great. That to me is a positive example of, we understand how these things are supposed to connect to each other. And when you use it, it's like, yes, perfect. Yeah, so I use that. - I'm still trying to figure out save as versus duplicate. Jeez. - Oh God, here we go with your, what are those little stupid folders that you like? - Proxy icons. - Yeah, that bullshit. (laughing) - Actually, do you know what I love? Here's a positive thing. I love that they added, and I know that other apps, like I think what, Unite did this for years anyway. The fact that you can now just create apps like on your desktop from websites, absolutely love it. Great example of Apple just finally doing something that maybe should be default. I have that for YouTube. So I have a little YouTube app on my dock. I do that for Discord 'cause now I don't have to sit down and wait for six ridiculous updates to happen, even though it's the most updated version of the app. And it takes only a few megabytes up. So Discord as a web app saved on the dock far exceeds the usability of the normal one to me anyway. So. - It's good for YNAB. (laughing) - Perfect. Yeah, I just really like the settings app, but anyway, let's move on to the next. What's next? Oh yeah, this is like media corner. Are you all ready for media corner? - Media corner. - Hit that sweet intro. (upbeat music) - Media corner. - There it is, yeah. I was just thinking the other day, if I asked you which I'm about to, so this is foreshadowing. Pick in your mind a perfect album. And I think it's mostly open to interpretation, but I'm kind of thinking an album that you would say, you could just start from beginning, let it run all the way through without skipping songs, without moving around, just front to back, and just sit there and do nothing else and just listen to that whole album. What would that album be in your mind? - I'm glad you defined it that way 'cause I thought unskippable. Like you might like certain songs more than others, but. - Yeah, it's not like this album is like, nine out of the 10 songs are really good, but like, no, it's like, you could just put it on, sit back in your leather lounger and put on your big fancy headphones, plugged into your iPod, into the headphone jack. What would that be? - I'm gonna be a little bit more sensational than what you've asked. I'm gonna say a perfect artist. - Oh, so you're gonna pick the U2 album that's still stuck on your iPod? - That's basically the soundtrack to my life. You can't hear it, I've canceled that with Zoom right now. It's running in the background. - What was that called again? - Songs of Innocence. - There it is, yeah. I figured you'd pick that one, okay. - And it was anything but, it was anything but innocent. Let's put it that way. Oh yeah, let's touch fingers, Jason. - Wait, here we go. - Launching with the finger touch. - Here we go. - All right, yeah. Wait. - Oh, look, I would say for me, sorry, I'm cutting in Andrew, I'm just gonna say, for me, basically any album by the Cat Empire, I don't skip songs. - I don't know that one. - What kind of reaction was that, Andrew? What was that? - That was not a good reaction, by the way. - Don't really love, don't really love them. - Wow. - Well, I'm not like hard out on them 'cause I don't know them well enough, but okay, okay. I'll give it a try. - Is that an Australian group or what's the, where are they from? - Yeah, so the Cat Empire has been around since, I think their first album was 2003. Anyway, I started following them shortly after that when we heard them through family friends years ago. You would probably define them as a ska band, but there's pop elements, there's lots of jazz elements, huge kind of like party Latin vibe stuff as well. They actually had a huge lineup shakeup recently when certain members said, "We've had our time, we wanna move on." So they've actually refreshed the band and three of the original members are still in it, but I love their music. They're from Melbourne, kind of grown up with them. They have just the most fun sound and there are so many different world elements involved, but it's not like inaccessible. They take brass world instruments, like DJ deck kind of scratches and stuff and just funnel it into this super fun party sound. Some of their albums are more, I suppose, subdued than others. They have one called Cinema, which is a bit more kind of cool and funky, but basically if you go to any of their shows, no one stays sitting down. You know, when you kind of go to a show and everyone's like, "Get up and stand and clap." And you see about 50,000 very white people who just wanna sit down. And I can say that as a white person, 'cause I do this. And you have to be like encouraged to stand up and clap and then everyone eventually goes, "I'm tired of clapping." And then they just sit down again. That doesn't happen at these shows. And they've been internationally recognised. They actually, they tour globally and I know they're particularly popular in Europe, which I suppose is an endorsement because they take a lot of cues from certain European sounds. Like some of their songs have basically what sounds like Balkan folk music in it. And people might be listening going, if you haven't heard of it, I'm not so sure about that, but give the Cat Empire a go. It's just the best. - Okay. - All right. - I don't skip their songs. - There you go. Andrew? - I have three, I'll be quick. (laughing) - That's my move. So the first one I would say is, is leans towards probably one of my favourite albums. So it's an inherent bias. I do feel like I can sit down and listen to this album, but it may be excluded because of Martin's parameters where you have to sit down and listen to the whole thing end to end and appreciate every track. This album has one-- - Well, Jason said that, you can ignore it. - Oh, did he? - No, it doesn't have to be yours. - So this-- - Oh, now you can ignore it. Oh, if it's the foot putting down the rule, then you have to acknowledge, but if it's me-- - Well, this is an interesting one because I think the foot would appreciate the very track that I am excluding. So whenever I listen to this album, I'll listen to the whole thing, but I've got to skip this one track. But to me, I think Martin might appreciate this track the very most. The album is "Okay Computer" by Radiohead. - I love it, yep. - The track in question is number seven, "Fitter Happier". I think we've spoken about this album before on this show. It's the one that has the Fred voice. - I think so, yeah. - From Mac OS, which is why I think Martin might appreciate that track so much, but it drives me absolutely bonkers. Apart from that, brilliant album. That's my first one. - I have a very quick follow-up thought given that you've specified the foot here. I love that album. I would actually pick that as a perfect album, but I made my band decision, so there you go. I don't skip that song when I play the album. I let it run through because I feel like it's an important kind of segue or thematic part of the whole thing, but I agree with you that if it were just to come up, if I'm just shuffling stuff in my library, I would skip it because it's particularly weird and random to just come out of the blue. In the flow of the album, yes. Randomly, no. - Okay, my second one. This is possibly the winner. It's a classic. You can listen to this beginning to end and you don't even realize you've done it, particularly 'cause the way it's been mastered, it basically is built as one entire song, or maybe two because you had to flip the LP, but it is "The Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. - Oh, okay. - You could just listen to that so easily and you just go with it. - Especially when you're watching "Wizard of Oz." - Oh, that is the best. - There you go. - If you've never done that, listeners, get on it. I think there's one you could probably find in the back of a truck where the syncing work has already been done for you. If not, get a copy of "The Wizard of Oz," turn the volume down, play. You gotta line up when the lion roars or something at the MGM or something like that. - Yeah, just look on the back of a pirate ship. You'll find the whole thing. - Yeah, yeah, it's incredible. So yeah, great album. My third one, and I'm throwing this in for all the young people out there that are like, "She's just so old, picking 90s music "and Pink Floyd's from the bloody dinosaur era." Okay, okay. You wanna be like that? I am gonna hit you with something. - I like how he's presuming what everyone's already saying from an audience perspective. - I really hope I pick the right one here, but I think, 'cause it's some consternation from this artist, which is the particular album to choose. All right, but I'm gonna go with "Currents" by Taemin Pala. There you go. - I don't know that one. - I think that's the right one. Never heard of Taemin Pala, Jason? - No. - Australian, from Perth, I think. - I think you've hit an appropriate, well, actually, that's an interesting question because they are, as I'm quoting and unquoting here, young person's music, but they've been around for a while. So I reckon there'd be a lot of young people now who are even younger who wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about. - Damn it. - Not necessarily listeners of this show. Now, you know what I mean? Like I'm talking about younger than Gen Z who are probably just living entirely on TikTok and would go, "I don't even know what a podcast is "with these three white guys." So I have no idea. - What even is music? - I don't know what music is. They know like 15 second clips of people dancing. - Music is supposed to start immediately with lyrics that it can be put into a vertical video, Jason. That's what music is now. - Obviously, yeah. And can be monetized. - So there you go. Three perfect albums distributed across a timeline from ancient to semi-recent, if 97 is semi-recent. (laughing) - Thank you for overachieving on the ask for today. - If modern day is nine years ago. - Close enough. I mean, the last 10 years is a blur anyway. Let's be honest. Wow, okay. Well, I've got some homework to do now. So thank you for that. I am gonna just pick one, surprisingly. I have one answer. - Wow. - I think I was thinking about this a lot recently as I was trying to migrate all of my music from old MP3s that are, I guess, in Apple Music or iTunes, I don't know where they are, over to something that's not Apple Music because it's been upsetting me a lot lately. And so I've been going through a lot of older music and thinking just, as I'm listening to old stuff and over the years of my life, different, every year I probably would pick a different album that was quote unquote perfect 'cause obviously that's what music is. It's art. It reflects on a time in your life, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the one I came up with that made me think of this whole thing was from 2013, Daft Punk, "Random Access Memories." - Great pick. - And it's just, this album, it feels like it's one song. It's just one, it feels like a movie without visuals where you could just sit there with your eyes closed and listen to this thing, track one through the end and just see things even though there's nothing to see. So yeah, it's an hour and 15 minutes of just awesome. I just love it front to back. So yeah, Daft Punk, "Random Access Memories." - I want my choice again. I wanna choose that. (both laughing) - It's just really good. Like it's got so many different emotions and feelings and like, ah, it's just got like a lot of cool stuff. So here you go. That's "Media Corner." ♪ Media Corner ♪ (coughing) (upbeat music) - Yeah, just real quick recognition of the feedback we received from Leon Mika. - Oh yeah, that was great. - He did his feedback in the form of a blog post using sort of quotes of what we said and then responding to that. And I just thought it was a fantastic way of feeding back using, I mean, we love to get audio messages as well, don't get me wrong, but we've only got 45 minutes. - Type 45. - Getting a blog post response was just excellent. And he was really well considered. So thank you for doing that, Leon. And I know we've got a few other people who are chiming in on the Discord as well. And that's always good in our Show Talk channel. I always enthusiastically look in Show Talk after we release a new show 'cause I'm curious to know what people are saying. So that's another good way of responding back. - I love to know what we got wrong and what upset everyone. - Yeah, and people get so, oh, that's right. Sorry, just following up on the feedback. Macca's, of course. - Yeah, if you go to McDonald's, you go to Macca's. - That's on you guys. - Man, just totally dropped the ball on that one. - Remember when you both said McDonald's over and over? Oh, that was just a tragedy. - It's Macca's. Can I stop in at Macca's? - Massively embarrassing. I may as well start saying things like, you know, sidewalk and gas station and stuff. - Aluminum. - Jeez. - Yeah, I probably draw the line. - Martin, you have to say it. Martin, you gotta say it too. Don't just say McDonald's, say the word. - Macca's. - There we go. Keep people happy. - Thank God. - Okay. - I'm loving it. - The listenership is back. Thank goodness. - You said you're gonna buy something or whatever, or you're on the verge of buying something. I was curious to hear it. - Oh yeah, well, I bought something and I'm buying something, I guess. Maybe that's what it was. Oh yeah, 'cause I had the fingers crossed 'cause I was wondering if it was gonna get delivered. Yeah, I got one of my weird cameras. I got the Sigma SD Quattro H, weird monstrosity of a camera. It's very strange. - Big name, big camera. - Big name, big camera. It's old, it's really old. It's 10 years old. It's a digital camera that's 10 years old. - Ooh, ooh. Wow. Did you put a floppy disk in the back of it? - Yeah, it's like the old Sony Mavica where you stick a three and a quarter on the side, basically. Oh God. Excuse me, cough medicine's wearing off. Yeah, it's an old, the reason I got it is that it's a, so you know VHS and beta, that was a whole thing, remember that? And then there was Blu-ray, HD, DVD. That was a whole thing. Well, Sigma did something similar in the sense of sensors. So there's your old Bayer sensor with the filters and all that crap that every camera basically uses today, CMOS sensor. Sigma did something a little different. It created the Fovion sensor back in the day, which was a, I would say a competitor to kind of your standard sensor technology. It didn't win out for various reasons, but it's still, I still think it's like a pretty valid technology, even all these years later. So that's why I bought it. And yeah, it's neat. I don't, it's the kind of product where I absolutely love it, and yet I would recommend it to literally no one. I would never go out and say, you should absolutely buy this. No, I would actually actively tell everyone not to buy this. I think it is the wrong product for basically everyone, which means it's the perfect product for me. So that's a good selling point, I think. - But how would you, like, if you had to sum up what it is about that sensor or what it is about this camera or line of cameras, 'cause you've really gone in all Sigma now, it's your new life. I've appreciated this now. Like, what is it about this camera that makes you go? It's the one for you. - Yeah, the thing I love about the Fovion sensor is it's, I don't wanna get like super into it here, but it's a stacked sensor. So it's effectively has a entire sensor plane for every color. So the level of detail that you can get from an image is unparalleled compared to a regular sensor. You're basically getting like 1/3 of the light for each pixel. For this, you're getting full light for every pixel in the stack. So it's a different way of capturing light across three planes versus the single plane with the split up of filters to filter out red, green, and blue. I would describe the camera at, because it's older as like, it's almost like a film camera that's digital. It's slower. You kind of have to be there in the moment. Like you're not going super high ISO 'cause you're gonna get a ton of noise. So there's definitely problems with it, which is why I would say I wouldn't recommend it to literally anyone. But if you know what you're getting into and you wanna like just have that more experiential kind of existence with the camera, that's really, I think, what I'm going for with it. So yeah, that sounds absolutely insane. But yeah, that's where we're at. SD Quattro H, which is an APS-H size sensor, which is also very weird 'cause no one really does that. There you go, camera corner. - So you have three Sigma cameras now? Is that three? - I will, as of tomorrow. - Right. - Tomorrow, I'm driving to meet a strange man to pick up another one. - Oh gosh, wow. Good luck. - Yeah, yep. - Wow. - There you go, camera corner. Welcome to my weird family. (upbeat music) - Following on from our hugely successful marketing campaign for the Johnny Decimal Workshop. You may recall a few episodes ago. - Yeah. - Incredible sales pitch for the Johnny Decimal system. - Second to none. If they gave awards for commercials, I assume they probably do, don't they? Probably. - Probably. - This was first place, easily. - Wow. That was planting the seed. And now it's time to harvest the crop. Because we have for you a Johnny Decimal Workshop discount code. - Yes, we do. - You know what that means? That means saving the dollars. That's canyon.blog/save written all over it. (laughing) So if you wanna get in on the Johnny Decimal Workshop, you wanna organize your filing system, whether it be your technology stack at home, whether it be your systems at work, you got crap everywhere and you wanna organize it, but you don't know how, the workshop is for you. - Yeah. - That's right. And you can get this discount by simply entering the discount code of hemispheric at the checkout as you purchase access to the Johnny Decimal Workshop. The workshop can be completed, watched, enjoyed at your own leisure. It is not necessarily required that you turn up at a time and a place. There is a release date, but you don't have to be there bang on to participate, but it is a collective. You can engage with other participants in the workshop, talk to each other, really get around it. I've signed up. Why wouldn't you? Johnny Decimal. So you can find out more. Where's the website that you can find out more? - Yeah. (laughing) - Johnny. Johnny Decimal. You don't know how to spell it, do you? Link will be in the show notes. - Is that 'cause it's a decimal? Americans are like, "Oh, metric, it's a bit bleh." - Oh yeah. Johnnyfahrenheit.com. (laughing) - Johnny yard. Johnny feet. Wait, no, that's too close to me. - If you go to courses.johnnydecimal.com, it will give you the workshop where you can sign up and use code hemispheric. - There we go, see? (upbeat music) Yeah, okay, so you will know that I am a big user of certain task manager called OmniFocus. - Four. - It's better than things. - Wow. - OmniFocus four, yeah. It's just like three, except Swifter. I was using it the other day and found- - It sounds like you're a pitch man for them now. (laughing) It's like three, but Swifter is a good one. - That's right. I was using, and I was wanting to right click on a project name and copy the item link. It gives a little URL, creates a URL for the project and then you can paste that project link somewhere else. - Is that like a deep link to like, like you could put that in like an email or something? - Yeah. - Or I guess not an email, but, or. - Yeah, yeah, anything. Yeah, I mean, you could, but it wouldn't- - So you could get back to that project. - Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I was creating a link and I right clicked and then I went to paste it into a note in another project of OmniFocus that I had in the main panel. But I realized that when I right clicked in the sidebar to bring up the context menu and say, copy item link, it was changing the focus in my main panel to that project as if I'd left clicked it. Now to me, correct me if I'm wrong, fellow Mac users, if I right click something that's not in focus, it shouldn't adopt focus in the main view. - I just did that on the desktop with our Zoom window as the focus and it did not shift focus, you are correct. - So. - Oh, real-time follow-up. - Yes. Oh, that was Martin's real-time follow-up. - Yes. - Oh, I thought you had real-time follow-up. - I was just commenting on the real-time follow-up. I was the announcer in the movie of "You Two Are The Characters" and I was being the voice of, yeah. - Yep, yep. So I tried it a couple of times, did it every time. I'm like, okay, reproducible. I'm filing a bug. So I filed a bug with the OmniFocus crew. They got back to me and said, thank you. We do indeed note this behavior and we will file it as a feature request in the next development of OmniFocus. And I'm, because other people might find this useful. And I think, yes, damn right, they'll find it useful. But also I'm excited that I may have a feature request within the OmniFocus code at some point in the future. But I'm also a little concerned that it was deemed a feature and not a bug. - Yeah, that's curious. - So OmniGroup and Ken Case, maybe I should tag him in on a Mastodon post or something. CEO of the great OmniGroup. - Well, we don't call you the business for nothing. You're a mover and shaker, clearly. - Mover and shaker. - If and when it does get fixed or featured, if you could just get a little shout out to @canyon@social.lol, maybe, or. - I would think that right in the about box, it would just say canyon.blog/save at this point. Don't you think? - Just a hyperlink to my coupon code. - That seems like the least, yeah, the least they could do. - I'm gonna put a feature request in that every time you open OmniFocus, it comes up with a promotional dialogue box that points you to /save. - Yeah, it's like a default project is to go to that website. - People would love that. Every Safari window, like the homepage on every shipped Mac, that should be the homepage. - Good idea. - It really should be. Except for the fact that it's down a lot. Other than that. - Hey, hey, I didn't know it was down until you started monitoring it. (laughing) - I do, I literally monitor it now, like real time. Just so I can say, why is this not up? - It's still got more nines than hemisphericviews.com. That's all I'm saying. - I know, oh my God. The downtime of that is atrocious. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. - So we better shut up so Martin can edit this down to a type 45. - Type 45. - That's right. - Yeah. - One question, and you can only answer with one word yes or no. Andrew, are you still using Bear? - Yes. - Wow, shocking. - Shock horror. - I'm glad you didn't ask about Firefox. (laughing) - That's for another time. (laughing) (upbeat music) (laughing) [coughing]