Anything But Idle
Apple DIY repair service is now available in the US
Apple DIY repair service is now available in the US and the Productivity News This Week
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In this Cast | Apple DIY repair service is now available in the US
Headlines & Show Notes | Apple DIY repair service is now available in the US
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
The P.A.R.A. system and the importance of folders
It’s official. Remote work has zero negative impact on your productivity
3 Strategies for Dealing with Procrastination –
Zoom PWA gets proper blurred and virtual backgrounds, Sharing audio from a Chrome tab
Workspace: Storage management tools rolling out for Admins
Pixel Watch is now the official name of the Pixel Watch
The latest version of color E Ink brings us closer to the perfect tablet
New tempered glass offers e-paper experience on the iPad Mini
An update about Send to Kindle
Business & Finance Segment
Industry 4.0 by 2050 – MarketScale –
Opinion: iPad sees year-over-year sales decline – I blame iPadOS for that
Productivity Resource of the Week
Featured Story of the Week
Apples DIY repair service is now available in the US
Announcements
The Happier App Won the Prestigious Webby Award!
Subscriptions on a budget: How much to pay for Adobe, Notion – Protocol –
Other News
Google Workspace gets new Dynamic Groups capability
New options for removing your personally-identifiable information from Search –
Google Chrome 101 arrives with password notes feature in tow
Boox OS update introduces these new features and functionalities
Use the Microsoft Edge Secure Network to protect your browsing
Google Docs receives dropdown chips and table templates making Smart Canvas even smarter
Kobo has made improvements to Store Apps and Web Reader
Your Google Nest Hub will soon show your Fitbit step count calories burned and more
1Password 8 for Mac comes with Universal Autofill and a big redesign – The Verge –
Google warns Chrome users browser has been hacked
Clever Stabilized Web Browser Makes Reading on iPads Easier for Users Dealing With Hand Tremors
Google Calendar appointment scheduling with booking page coming to more Workspace tiers
Our 100th version of Firefox is here
How a Migraine-Friendly Workplace Can Lead to More Productivity – Health News Hub –
Clay Wins Two Webby Awards for App to Strengthen Personal and Professional Relationships –
Worker output fell 7.5% in the first quarter, the biggest decline since 1947 –
Google Tasks finally supports recurring tasks natively, like a proper to-do list app
Microsofts new One Outlook email client for Windows is starting to leak out
Amazon Kindle Book Purchases Are the Next Google Play Billing Casualty
Raw Text Transcript | Apple DIY repair service is now available in the US
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:03
Hello, personal productivity enthusiast, and community Welcome to Anything But Idle, the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 105. And it’s May 10 2022. Apple is selling DIY repair kits of all things, and the productivity and related technology news this week. So of course, each week, Gustavo and I read and review, listen, watch, whatever all of the productivity and technology news of the week, and we reduce that down into the headlines of the week to share with you. And so first we start off with kind of the blogosphere and audio sphere content that’s out there. And so Gousto what is our first personal productivity article this week? Oh, the
Augusto Pinaud 0:54
first article that we are going to have come from the Rescue Time blocked, and they call the PA are a systems and the importance of folders. And now, last week, we were discussing in cross platform with our networks, about this about the nodes. And this article came, you know, talking about a system that really applied doesn’t matter if you are paper, or digital or even a combination of it. The BA ra stands for projects, areas resources on archive. And basically, the article goes into saying, Well, this is probably an approach that may be one of those exceptions to one size fits all, and they explain how to apply it, you know, the projects dependent areas of interest, what is that research material and their archives? And what he was interested in is that yes, must will fit into those categories. But as your life gets digital, what you are going to find is different implementations of or applications for where this is contained, I don’t have a big file cabinet. So my file cabinet was never that big. But I may say but I was thinking about that. But but in digital, it has evolved over the years for the apps that I use and for the research material and where they leave and and all this. So again, was that a way an interesting way to explain a simple solution for this and how not to lose all that information. So you can recall the information?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:46
Yes, this is a very for me very digital focused kind of methodology. This was developed by Thiago forte, many of you may know Chiado. He’s also the author of the book, building a second brain, but he has that whole building the second brain course that he runs, and Potter is a part of that whole, you know, Apera is a part of that whole, you know, course platform that he teaches. You know, I think that for those who are dealing in a purely digital sense, I think this makes a lot of sense. And, you know, there are a lot of different tools like notion and obsidian and otherwise that work really well with this kind of concept. It’s kind of a, you know, an adaptation, so to speak of maybe what we would consider a zettelkasten type system. So all good, I think it’s really good to kind of read through and see how some of these pieces may actually work for you and your own system and kind of go from there. All right on to our next article. This week.
Augusto Pinaud 3:46
I’ll do it from life science and how to improve your memory. And its memory is one of those interesting things, you know, they talk about jump focus on a healthy diet, meditation, drinking water, get moving, you know, get a good night of asleep, and how these things are going to help you or can help or play a role into the memory. You know, I say read and all that I may agree with a healthy diet and the water. You know, the meditation gets to get moving was the part that i Okay. i And maybe it’s because I don’t move. That may be the reason I’m against that article, as my co host laughed significantly in the side of the screen. But
Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:36
yeah, no, I think I think it was a really good article. And it also brings up the importance of having a sense of skepticism relating to things like memory exercises, you know, brain exercising can be really good for very, very specific use cases. But you know, there are lots of different types of brain training applications and so on and so forth, that you just can’t trust They’re all going to do what you think they’re going to do, you need to be very skeptical about those things. So, you know, there are lots of, of good things that come from. It’s not exercising your brain necessarily, but it is it is, the concept of utilizing all the skills your brain has, you have very different types of, of skill sets that the brain has, and utilizing those skill sets are really important. So of course, meditation for me in a productivity context is of course, being able to attend to the right things at the right time. That is about focus. It’s about attention, not necessarily about anything else. And so you can you can train that aspect of your of your mind, and, and just do present mindedness. Right, that’s, aside from all of the other types of meditation. Present mindedness is just one, you know, very first step in being able to exercise the brain, and therefore, you know, combat things like memory loss along the way. All right, moving right along to our next story this week.
Augusto Pinaud 6:00
Oh, the last story we have on the segment is from interesting engineer, and it comes it’s official, remote work has zero negative impact in productivity. So if you want to read good news, you can, it was done based on a study in Texas by the University of Texas a&m, and was done during Hurricane Harvey, and how, you know, even in those times, you know, there was really no, no negative impact in your productivity on your productivity for working remotely. And, you know, as we seen people coming back, what we are seeing is fear and seeing a lot of coming back to something that is not anymore. But according to at least this study, it has zero negative impact.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:53
Yeah, I think again, I’m a skeptic for all of the all or nothing, you know, kind of statements in the world. So zero negative impact is probably a, you know, an overstatement. But the idea that somehow it is it has dramatic negative impact coming out of any, you know, of the executives who are, you know, out there basically working and then telling their employees that they can’t remote work is is a form of hypocrisy that is kind of interesting to watch. But, you know, I hope that over time, we get to see more and more research and and show for everyone the nuances based on industry based on job roles, and whether or not they actually do affect, you know, remote work and or just, you know, productivity overall in any particular regional labor force or industry, industry, focus, labor force and seeing what those impacts are. Alright, it looks like we have another article three strategies for dealing with procrastination here or are we removing that from remove that one? Got it? Okay. All right. With that, we are going to pause for a word from our sponsor this week, co working space by personal productivity club. When we get back we will head into the technology articles this week, and so we will see you after the break.
Sponsor Voice Over 8:11
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:22
Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith joined with acoustic finale for the second half of Anything But Idle to talk about the technology and news headlines of the week. A Gousto. What’s our first tech headline this week?
Augusto Pinaud 9:37
Oh soon PWA gets proper blurred and vertical backgrounds sharing audio on a Chrome tab. And you know when zoom came and decided to eliminate the Android and Chromebook application in favor of the PWA there was a little a lot of is now was at the beginning, you know, and, but he’s getting better and better. And now finally you can have a proper bird or beautiful background, it used to be like a circle upgrade. Now it’s working well and back into working well.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:15
Yeah, I think I think it’s really interesting to watch. So, Zoom went to PWA. Now Microsoft with the Office Doc, I don’t know when they did this, but it’s gotta be a while back now. But I’ve been hearing that, and I just really haven’t paid attention. And I should be, but I haven’t been, and which is that Microsoft removed their Office app from Android on Chromebooks. So you’re really, you’re really forced to use the PW A’s or just the browser tabs in order to access Microsoft Word Online, Microsoft Excel Online, and otherwise, when you’re on a Chromebook. And so I’m not sure whether or not they actually have full fledged PW A’s for the Chromebook either. But Microsoft is taking kind of a risk here in removing the Android apps from the Chromebook ecosystem hoping that the web browser versions are sufficient enough. And I’ll just note that for anybody who feels like, you know, weird about it, there is a button right on your, on your Chromebook, you know, has the little double arrow icon, if you click on that, it pops it into a full screen view, and you get the full experience of that particular browser. And it’s, it just has a really nice feel to it. And I use it all the time. And you know, it’s a, it’s like, it looks like a little rectangle with two little arrows in the corner. If you just click on that, it’ll just pop it into full screen mode. And the, it feels like a full application. So you know, I’ll be interested. And just interested to see, as more and more applications go this route on Chrome, whether or not that bleeds into Windows and Mac as well. Because why have extra surfaces that you have to develop for when you can put all of your your programming resources into one to one. So, you know, it’s just, it’s just the way the web is going, I think it’s the way that a lot of application development is going is, you know, putting it all into JavaScript and hoping that the world continues to but you see,
Augusto Pinaud 12:15
it’s very interesting, because as as you can see that now one, as you said, for developers, you know, allows him to be better, because now you can offer really a universal solution. As far as your device can do PW A’s, you’re good. And second, it gives the users the same experience. Regardless, the device a grab, you grab the computer from home, great, you grabbed your work computer, great, that tablet, same experience. And I think that’s something wonderful.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:49
Yeah, the only balance out there, though, you know, and I hear the criticism, which is that, you know, if your PWA is, is less featured, than the desktop application, a native application, so to speak, then that’s on you to bring the PDF PWA up to speed so that it has the same feature set as your normal applications. Presumably, if you have fewer applications to develop for natively, then you should be able to put more resources into making sure that PWA is working spectacularly on that system and making it feel like a native application, even though it’s not. I see a lot of opportunity here. But they’ve got to make the experience good for users. Otherwise, they’re going to be people who push back and rightfully so. All right, onto our next story, a little bit of workspace, news,
Augusto Pinaud 13:34
workspace, Storage Manager Tools are rolling out for admins. And I’m going to let you talk really about this because this is more into the areas that you manage than I manage.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:45
Yeah, so this is explicitly for Google workspace, admin administrators. And so what they’re doing now is giving you basically a workspace, a Storage Dashboard, and a bunch of tools to basically manage the amount of storage and space people are using within your Google workspace account. So this is for those of you who are managing teams within Google workspace. And so you can see each individual how much data they’re using, what applications and the types of data that are being utilized within Google workspace, and then being able to deal with those things. So you can say, Okay, well, I need to, you know, get access to these things, I need to either expand, you know, the storage available to this user or whatnot, and kind of deal with all those particular pieces within the Google workspace environment. And it’s, I think it’s really, really useful, I think it’s very, very helpful to be able to see, like who’s hogging up all the all the space in one particular user account, and also who’s producing all of the content in the organization. You know, you might have one or two users who’s just producing a lot more content. And you as the admin can see that just by virtue of looking at the storage, sometimes in the system. So there’s some interesting things that you can do there. You can also see some storage limit worn meetings so that when people do get to a particular storage amount, you kind of triggered so that you know what to do about those things. So it’s just helpful all around to be able to know how much space is in there, especially if you’re effectively backing up. And also, when someone leaves or someone is terminated from a role, you’re capable of doing better storage management by having this data kind of at your fingertips, and in terms of what needs to happen when those things happen. All right, on to our next story this week,
Augusto Pinaud 15:28
or next story this week is something that should get you excited. So we are going to put a time limit for you here. Pixel watch, go.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:38
You know, I mean, all it is, is that the pixel watch is coming, right? We know that it’s probably going to be announced at Google IO. And there’s also a rumor that the Google Pixel buds pro may be announced at Google IO. But knowing that the pixel watch is like imminently coming out, and that it’s called pixel watch is you know, kind of kind of knew that already. I am incredibly excited about it. I mean, I will I will be tossing this Samsung Galaxy watch for right on, you know, eBay, the moment the pixel watch goes on sale, and I will be purchasing a pixel watch, you know, purely because I’ve got a pixel line of phones in the house. Like we have a we have several Google Pixel phones in the house. And I’m currently my daily driver is a pixel five. And I actually really liked it, I know that there are a lot of improvements in the pixel six and six Pro, but the six Pro, I’m not particularly you know, excited about the six Pro, I may be excited come later this year with the Google Pixel seven, and the seven Pro and seeing whether or not I’ll upgrade from the five to the to the seven pro when it does come out. But having the pixel watch just tightly pair with your phone is so important. And I think most Apple users already know that with the Apple iOS and Apple Watch OS experience. I want that. And since I’m not a Samsung phone user, I don’t have that experience with Samsung, and no offense, you know to Big B, but I have no interest in that assistant from Samsung being any anywhere near or around me in terms of help. So it’s just not that helpful of an assistant. And that’s a problem. So I’m really excited about the pixel watch. I’m hoping that it lives up to the length of time they took to get it out the door. So it’s I’m really hoping that pixel watch you know is is not underwhelming in terms of expectation because I expect it to be really really damn good. smartwatch.
Augusto Pinaud 17:40
That’s exactly what is exciting for me about this that I’m getting a pixel watch now. But I really hope one of the problems I see currently with the Apple Watch is that who is a competitor Sorry, there is no competitor and be no competitor in the market. Apple has no push. Okay, it is the same issue Apple is having with the Macs and one. Okay, we have the event coming WWDC. Are we expecting great things? No. I’m expecting that the 2022 WWDC is going to be the most boring WWDC ever, why? There is no innovation needed from Apple, okay, if they do nothing, and they come and say we decided not to release anything, they will still be ahead. 12 months. So why? So what I’m excited about this is if Google really push the line, as I hope they do, because if they have shown at least until now, every time they put the pixel brand next to it, they really push it. So I’m hoping that’s what happened with the watch. And that means that the next year Apple Watch, it’s going to push the line, even maybe with this year, but I doubt it.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:02
Yeah, let’s hope let’s hope Yeah, I’m just I’m hoping this pixel watch makes my life more productive. You know, I just really, I feel like I use a Huawei Watch prior to this. And I feel like I used that watch every day, all day, all the time. It was for as old as it was when when I finally replaced it with the Samsung Galaxy watch for it was a powerhouse. I mean, really, the only issue was that it stopped receiving updates. And but it paired with my phone. It worked like a charm. The when I called Big G it answered, like it was just a really solid device. And the you know, the Samsung watch is great. I mean, there’s no there’s really no, nothing wrong with it except for the fact that it lacks google assistant. And so it becomes that much less useful to me when I expect it to be so tightly. Like I expect Google Fit. I expect the assistant I expect all of those pieces to just be working Since it’s sitting on my wrist, and while it’s collecting all that data and putting into the Samsung health, it’s not synchronizing most of that data to Google Fit. And it’s just problematic for me, I just don’t feel like I’m getting as much out of the phone. And watch combination, as I really should be. Onward to our next story this week, please do.
Augusto Pinaud 20:19
Our next story this week is about ink. You know, and I know we have talked about ink before. And we have talked about the colors and the colors are coming and are getting better. And, you know, every time I see this news, I get excited. And it is like, Okay, what’s going to get what, are we really getting this devices now? And are we going to see them in the future. And I think that makes or the getting closer between the screens that we see now on the screens on eating, and the future are getting closer and closer. And for a person who looks at the screen day in and day out? That is very exciting for me.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:07
Yeah, I mean, the the possibilities of eating are just innumerable think of having an E Ink wrap your vehicle, or being able to take an E Ink book where it’s physical paper that you are turning, and for the display pages to just have innumerable content within it. So it just it takes the Kindle concept to kind of another level. Plus, you can, you can wrap devices that otherwise would be oddly contoured. And you could put text inside of those things that can be dynamic, there are all kinds of of ways in which E Ink I think will solve a lot of problems in the world. And we’re getting richer color are getting more colors. And they’re becoming faster in the way in which they display consistently. And of course, you know, there’s an energy savings. So we’ve talked about this at nauseam on the show. But this most recent one, the E gallery, three, you know, just being able to display 50,000 colors, and do that in an E Ink display just means a super cost savings in terms of battery impact, which means you get this much longer usage out of the same set of devices. So really looking forward to seeing how they deal with actuators, how they deal with touchscreen, how they deal with all of those other pieces in the devices to be able to reduce power consumption. But if they could do that, and they could do this in devices at scale, that’s a big impact for a lot of the world. So we will keep watching the E Ink world for what they’re doing.
Augusto Pinaud 22:37
Yeah, on our next news is on new tempered glass offers an E paper experience on the iPad Mini. And basically, it’s a screen that we’re glad that you’re going to be able to put in top of the iPad Mini. That is a test they’re showing and will give you a similar experience to what a Kindle is. And that’s what they’re comparing it to. So it’s very interesting to see that come in.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:14
Yeah, I’m very curious whether or not this has a space in the market. There are other paper covers, like the paper like that, you know, their their screen protectors that give that paper feeling to it. I’m wondering if this kind of tempered glass, you know, protector also is going to have that same feel like the Paperwhite. Like when you take your, say Apple Pencil across it. This is for the iPad Mini you said, I’m not sure which iPad Mini and whether or not that provides support for the Apple Pencil or which Apple pencil that provides support for but I’d be curious what the what the feeling is like when you’re utilizing it with the pencil as opposed to otherwise, like the paper like gives that that feeling of writing on paper with the Apple Pencil.
Augusto Pinaud 24:04
Right? That will be very, very interesting, you know?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:07
Yeah, yeah, I think I think the paper like is is probably the thing I would go with before I would run to something like this giving this kind of matte finish to it. I don’t particularly find myself intrigued by the the E paper looking experience on an iPad Mini, although I know that you’ve done work to make your iPad emulate an E Ink Type screen for concentration purposes and focus purposes. So I can see this kind of matte finish maybe helping to emulate that kind of Kindle feel to it and therefore you know, give you that same experience. I just don’t have that. I don’t have that need. And I really do like the paper like screen protectors for the writing surface feel that you get when you’re using good notes or Notability.
Augusto Pinaud 24:53
Yeah, on the iPad. I have explained it here in the show but on the iPad, you can go to Settings accessibility and filter colors. So it basically take all this screen color and make it basically tunneled tons of great very close to ink. So I use it consistently, I even have a button that if I click three times, or a shortcut, so if I click three times the central bottom, it will turn automatically integrate colors. But it’s great because I, for example, take my iPad to bed. But instead of redeeming colors and have all those negative influence that they say, I go, and do it in, in a basically, I’m something similar to eating that at the end of the day, then I take my glasses, you know, I can, mostly is reading what I’m doing. But it allows me to do that without the colors and all that in. At the end of the day, my eyes are very tired. It’s very, very good for that.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:52
Fantastic onto our next story.
Augusto Pinaud 25:57
Our next story, and this is the last story we’re going to do on ebooks. But he sent to Kindle, sorry, this was the week of the ebooks, apparently, but it sent to Kindle, it’s getting an upgrade. So you will able or used to be able to send Mabi books and PDFs with the Send to Kindle. And now they are upgrading. So you can start sending ePub file, finally, because up to now and it’s not fully updated sometime at the end of this year. But up to now, if you wanted to send a file, you needed to do a movie. So as an author, you needed to have the model file for the Kindle people and the ePub file for the rest of the world. And those kinds of things. Now you will be able to create an ePub file and share with everybody that is very exciting. I get a lot of things that I convert into a book because it’s faster for me to annotate and all that now I will be able to have them in the Kindle and access on any device. Very, very excited about it.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:05
Yeah, I’m really pleased. I think that it’s a little bit unfortunate that Kindle, Amazon took this long to support EPUB. And then of course, you know, they purchased I forget who they purchased to get the Mobi format. And now they’re sunsetting the Mobi format. And, and as well as the ACW, the original, you know, Amazon file format. And that’s all, it’s all right. I mean, like, you know, again, they just don’t they, they’re telling you that you’ll be able to still send it, but it just basically won’t support the latest features on Kindles, I totally get it, they need to. I mean, we don’t have that problem with Apple, Apple says, Oh, by the way, we got rid of, you know, flash, and we’re not supporting it anymore. And it was way before anybody else gave up support for flash. And they were just like we’re getting rid of it. And they didn’t have a problem with kind of cutting off old technologies in order to be able to push the envelope. A lot of other companies really have a concern for legacy support. And I’m on that side, I think that legacy support is really important for a lot of technologies until it becomes detrimental, usually from a cybersecurity perspective. And so I don’t really fault Amazon here, except that there’s really only a business interest in making this change change. Right, they can, they could have reverse engineered and made the legacy mobi format still support their latest features, they just chose not to put in the programming and development resources to make that happen. But I with you, I think it was great for them to add ePub support, finally, but they already knew that they had crushed ePub in and created dominance in the Amazon Kindle world. And now they’re just doing this because it’s a nice thing to do, and to say to people along the way. So I would just note to everybody that there is a free Kindle email address associated with your accounts. So just remember that it’s your username or the device’s name@free.kindle.com. And so it you need to send those documents to that email address, and it will, it will send it over their free network, which has some limitations, but for the most part should work for you. That’s my that’s my way of just
Augusto Pinaud 29:14
Yeah, I don’t know an Android, I don’t know an Android. But if you have the document in Dropbox or Google, and he said compatible file, you can go and click the square with up arrow, the action and then send directly to Kindle. From there. I have no clue how that works or not work on Android.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:34
Yeah, so it works pretty similar on the Android platform for those just clicking on the share button and then sharing to the Amazon Kindle on those mobile devices. But many times I get ebooks, people send me their review books people send me documents, clients send me documents and I want to be able to read those in long form on the on or in the Kindle format. And be this is a nicer reading experience for me and or I’m sending it to good notes to be able to annotate but most of have the time, if it’s a long read, and I just want to read it and not actually do much annotation, I want to, I’m going to send it to the Kindle. And it’s usually easier just to shoot it off by email. Although I have noted that, saving it to Dropbox, I have a, it’s either an IFFT applet or a Zapier zap, that grabs anything I put into that Dropbox folder, and then places it into Amazon Kindle as well, as long as it’s in the right format, it does kind of the same thing as sending to kindle via the email address. So you have multiple ways of getting things into Kindles, just knowing the right way for you, and then following that method is going to be important for you, generally, all right, we have reached the top of our technology stories. And that brings us of course, to our business and finance segment, we got a couple announcements there, go for it.
Augusto Pinaud 30:49
So the first one we have is industry 4.0 by 2015, the article goes into, you know, defining industry 1.0, the beginning of the factories, you know 2.0, the major evolution, you know, railroads telegraph and the addition of that industry. 3.0 is, you know, the upgrade the addition of the computers to provide better communication tool. And now we are adding, you know, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence 3d, by 2050. seems foreign to me, but it is, you know, you can read a little bit of about how this or this teammate is going to think, but I don’t know, if Internet of Things are such we’ll wait to 5050 I think that revolution is already behind us a revolution I’m talking about.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:42
Yeah, so there’s an eight minute video on the page, I highly recommend you watch the minutes, you can watch it into x speed if you need to. And the you know, the reality is, is that when we think about the way in which we move forward in the world, we have a tendency to forget that our children today need to be prepared for the future. And if we do not, and cannot forecast, at least with some general broad strokes, what the future is going to look like we are going to be behind. And so 2050 is really like, if I have a child today, you know, there’ll be 2527, whatever, by the time 2050 rolls around. And that means that the education system, the professional development system, you know, the vocational education and technical education world, all of those need to, you know, be supported by government in changing so that we can be prepared for that future. And we already know the technology, the future is more technology, the future is more hybrid and remote work. And the future is more knowledge work in those spaces. And so how do we get behind the right resources so that we can have industry supporting our future? Jobs? Like how do we how do we have good jobs. Now I say even great jobs, for our children and our children’s children, so that we are capable of having that kind of economic benefit, that when you know, I’m more gray haired and sitting, sitting in my nursing home, you know, knowing that the future is going to be brighter for them than it was for me. And I think that we always want that to be the case, we want a verdant environment, a green flush environment for the future generations. We need to think about that today. And so I know that it seems like a far way off. But I really urge everybody to watch this and think about what do we need to do today to make sure that the future generations I’ll be I’ll potentially be long dead by the time 2075 comes along. But I want to know that what we’re doing today is helping make sure that, you know, the future generations have a chance at a better life and a better future than we did. And so I think it’s a really important piece there. All right, our next story.
Augusto Pinaud 34:03
Next story is a story from nine to five. And it’s an opinion it’s titled opinion, okay, iPad sees year over year sales decline, and I blame iPad OS for that. And, you know, we’re talking about a 2.2 year over year decline, you know, for Ahmadi seven point 65 Billions of revenue. So I don’t think Apple is crying over that. 2.2%. But, you know, as the article goes into there and blames iOS, you know, I respectfully disagree. There is two things that has happened in the last year one is the M one chip and the M one chip make really very exciting to buy a MacBook. Okay, that, you know, it’s ridiculously powerful. Not only that, Apple released four or five chipsets, you know one more powerful Hold on the other one. Okay, the one that it was already ridiculously powerful, okay, ended up being the slowest one of the family of chipsets. And even that the Mac, or I’m sorry, the iPad, got the M one. There 2021 iPad is like many things I put Apple ahead of the game. Okay, and Apple has done these years over years over years, especially when they do massive changes like this. Okay, that the first generation is lagging behind, and then they come and catch it up. So the 2.2% one, I don’t think it’s significant second, the reality is, people bought a lot of tablet devices between 2020 and 2021. Because of all the pandemic, and no, the cycles on these devices are not 12 months are much longer than that one. And second, I believe, if anybody has played with a MacBook, even the MacBook Air with an M one, they’re incredibly fast. And as a person, which main machine is the iPad, my main machine is an M one iPad M one. I mean die. Okay, it got banned, according to Apple, and therefore, it’s it needed a replacement, whatever. The fact was, I spent Saturday, Sunday, Monday to six days selling Hallmark almost nine days without a Mac without an iPad. Do I have other devices in my office? Yes, I do. Do that hurt my productivity? Yes, it hurts so much at the point that it says if this machine gets bent again, I will while they fix it get another one to run because the cost was too high. Well, I can use the MacBook Air M one that I have in here. Yes. Will I replace that machine with my iPad over my dead body? Okay, and my my argument to this is not if the Mac can the iPad can do when the Mac two. Okay, as I have said now for a while, you know, the question is not is the iPad can do what the Mac can do. The question for me is can the Mac do what my iPad do and his weak proof? The answer, for me at least is now I’m going to now get back to my out of my sub box and let you continue the show.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:26
So do you think that we have reached peak iPad? Do you? Do you think that we have reached a point where we’ve reached peak iPad in the market?
Augusto Pinaud 37:33
or No? No, no, I think what happened was, again, how how many people have great both devices in the same year and the number it’s small period. And the M one it’s an incredible machine is incredibly fast. But it’s lagging on the software and it wants us back then. Okay. I’m sorry. Same thing with the macOS. What do you think the MacOS is using the full power of them one? No, they couldn’t. Now we are going to see this year is where we are going to see the leaps and bounds that both the iPad as well as the Mac OS can do with the software. But I don’t care how big is Apple is you can keep secrecy of a chipset, okay, and the operating system and develop incredible, especially very when the gap that you create was so big and the gap with them one is so big that there is no hurry. As I said earlier in the show today about to watch the Apple Watch. It’s boring. Why? Because there is no contender in the market, then why they don’t need to think very hard. What we need Oh, oh, two sensor. That was a great innovation. I’m sorry. That’s depressing. Okay. But the problem was we said no to sensor, we weren’t already ahead of the market. So like, it’s very hard to push when you don’t need to push to be ahead of the market. And we need that competitors to come and really beat Apple so Apple can turn back into the monster that it is.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:15
Yeah, I don’t think that we’ve reached peak iPad. And I’m actually really curious when WWDC comes around, whether or not you know, the rumors of the iPad, or the iPod Touch, come back. You know, that would be an interesting rerelease of a product on the market and how that mixes with the other mobile options among iPads, iPad Air’s minis and the pros. And I think I think across the board, I think it really makes a lot of sense for them to have the different options for different markets.
Augusto Pinaud 39:45
It was not in the news for this week, but Apple today announced Do you know that the iPad touch is there is that is legacy now officially? And it’s it makes sense. Okay, if I have tickets, okay, and 10 and 13. If you ask my kids, what an iPad is, they will look at you like, I don’t know, okay? And if you show it to them, they say, oh, it’s like an iPhone without data. Again, that will be the answer. Sorry, they don’t care for the device. They want an iPhone, they don’t want an iPod Touch. And, and it’s fine. The brand did what it did. And it did very well. And the kids now won the iPhone, or the iPad, and actually, my 10 year old, okay, came and said, hey, what can I do to get data on my iPad? Okay, that’s what he wants. Now, he understand that if he can get data he can play anywhere on his iPad has no data. And that’s what he wants. So he’s trying to negotiate how he’s going to pay for data until he saw the cost. But that’s a different story that, you know, outside of this event today.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:55
Yeah. So it’s official that they’re not going to bring another iPod touch to the market?
Augusto Pinaud 41:00
Well, I’ve caught it as of today. I don’t think so. Interesting. They may bring a smaller iPad, but I don’t see.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:06
Yeah, I mean, I mean, it would be the same thing, right? If they made an iPad and iPad, iPad micro, as opposed to the iPad Mini would just basically be an iPod Touch. So it’s kind of curious to me how that all works. Yeah, I mean, I don’t I don’t care either way, I but I think it’s really, really interesting to see a successful piece of hardware, married with a really good operating system, you know, on the market for as long as the iPad has been, and and what they’re doing with it. So one of
Augusto Pinaud 41:35
the things that you see is how early families are doing giving phones to the kids, you know, and so why even if you think about it, if you get my phone right now and go and upgrade, my phone been okay, I can give it to the kid without a phone line. Why buy an iPod Touch? Right? It’s a difficult product to place on the current technology realities.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:59
Yeah, I can see myself getting an iPod Touch over an iPad Mini, though, I mean, I don’t need an iPad Mini. Whereas I would still want to have access to some applications that I’m not going to get an iPhone, you know, I have, I have a bunch of Android phones. And I’m just not going back to, to iOS. And so that’s just but having that form factor would make a lot of sense for a lot of applications that I would want that form factor for so I can see, I can see you you totally for some of us who are just testing things and troubleshooting with clients. You know, that kind of thing. I know it’s an edge case. But either way, let’s move on to productivity resources of the week. As you all know, Gousto. And I come across many personal productivity tools, apps and services in our productivity journeys, to bring you Anything But Idle each weekend. So in this segment, productivity resource of the week, we each bring you one or, you know, two tools, we think you might like today, we each have two tools. And so the first one up is a tool called Luna task. And I found this out actually through I think it was an entrepreneur, Link. And entrepreneur was like selling a lifetime access deal to it. So definitely check that out. If you go to entrepreneur.com and type in Luna task or something like that, you’ll find this application. And I think it’s like $49 USD to get a lifetime access to it. But the reason I bring this to you is because Luna task is really interesting because it is a privacy focused task application. And it doesn’t just do tasks, it has a task manager built in, it’s got a notebook. So it has a note taking functionality. It has a habit and mood tracker, a Pomodoro timer, and a journaling application, all built into this one tool that is and can be used, local and encrypted. So you know, for those of you who really want to have something that is insular and discreet on your operating system that is separate from the world. Luna test may be something interesting for you to look at. From my my brief playing around with it, it seems like a really decent application, and looks really nice works on Mac OS, Mac OS, Windows and Linux. So you have all the Desktop Application Options. They’re beta testing, Android and iOS. So soon you will have mobile applications available. And so I’m presuming that they’re, they’re doing this lifetime deal to build up the funds to be able to hire that Android and iOS development team to make that happen. But you know, with the Calendar tool built into it, where you can connect your calendar, it seems like a really nice clean looking application almost reminds me of Mailbird and the way in which Mailbird looks in terms of the the design aesthetic. So just wanted to kind of pique anyone’s attention who was really looking for something like I think the mood and habit tracker piece element, that whole thing is really unique. You don’t see that in a lot of tools, having this kind of mood and emotion, energy tracker built into the tool itself. So It supports Markdown and the note taking system. And the journaling app looks kind of blase, but you know, who cares? But it has its own bookmarklet for being able to put in your book, you know, grab web pages into the tool has email integrations Zapier access. So pretty, pretty solid device for something that looks and seems like it’s young. I actually don’t know how old it is. But it seems fairly young. And it seems like it’s pretty solid tool. And of course, for those who are privacy focused. Okay, so what is your tool this week?
Augusto Pinaud 45:30
Well, my tool this week is called IO. And it is initially it was introduced to me as a mind map tool, and you can collaborate on the web, and you can include that was very interesting multiplatform apps for the Mac websites. But after I downloaded and I started playing with him, Oh, this has a lot more it’s so basically, they allowed you to do three main things, create what they call a task board thing going to Trello. Okay, create mindmaps or create whiteboards where you can collect a bunch of information, one of the cool things that they have is that you can, from the different mindmaps get to what they call on the top of my planner, so you can put different tasks, different things in places, and it will give you an organized version of what you have on every mind map. It is pretty it has things I have not seen on other Mind Maps regarding their presentation. So it is a very interesting application. I’ve been very happy playing with it. So you can do as I say, Task Force, mind maps, whiteboards, you have the planner, you can do chat, if you have people, you know, collaborating, so it seems a new contender, or at least is new for me contender in town. And it’s been very interesting my time playing with it.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:04
This used to be dropped task, which was launched in late 2013. And they rebranded a few years ago. And I have to say dropped task turning into a yoga. I mean, it’s a really great application and the name change didn’t stop there development of a fantastic platform. And so everyone I know who uses it loves it. So it’s a really, really great platform. So thanks for bringing that to
Augusto Pinaud 47:29
you. I was very impressed. I been homeschooled want to use my note user for many, many, many years. And aside of the idea of me to migrate, my note that I can see the room actively that I was very, very impressed with what I saw in there.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:49
Yeah, I’m a I’m a free mind slash mind 42 user for the web collaboration slash local mind mapping side of it, and they’re very, very spartan tools, but they’re interoperable. And so I’ve just never been able to get into simple mind or into any of the Mind Meister X mind because it requires that lack of interoperability that I’m just not willing to utilize in a mind mapping environment workflowy mixed with with free mind, mixed with mind 42 is probably the closest thing since you can import and export XML files or OPML files that are in an outline format to the mind map format and back drop Tasker Iowa provides that really nice blend between Kanban and you know mind map and outline and so on and so forth that I think is a really nice feature there. Either way onward to our featured story this week a good so what’s our featured story this week,
Augusto Pinaud 48:46
oh Apple begins allowing you to repair the do it yourself repair service is now available in the States at least for iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 So Apple is launching or do your cell service you will be able to buy parks and get even tools for rental and there are certain limits their warning signs but they are going to give you access to the repair manual you know that you’re going to get to the port they’re going to give you the thing and you know it isn’t resting because you know when you look at the prices is not more cheaper than bring it to the Apple Store let them do it but they check the box that now you can do it you know and I won’t even and and play you know I Fix It was mentioning that mon Apple requirements are that you need to provide a serial number the IMEI number for the device to buy for replacing the parts. I don’t know what is the reason for that. But basically you can buy the parts and if you return the old parts They give your credit back. So I’m using, I’m assuming that Apple is trying to in crease the number of recycling that they’re going to do from this old parts instead of people putting them on the trash. So kudos to Apple for that. And at least for the battery, I went and play with Kailyn, rent a battery, what will be the cost for an iPhone 12 Pro to get the battery, okay, it was 70 bucks, you get 2415 in, if you replace the the return to replace that part, that then will be 46 bucks to do it yourself. And they said you do this, then you need to call us after that or call AppleCare. So we do the testing, they can send you a link and the software will run in the phone. This is very interesting. But as I said, this requires somebody with skills. And this is important to remember, this is not thought design. For the average user, the average use Richard should walk to the Apple Store and drop the phone in the envelope and pick it up the next day. Because the risk of damaging the phone. Yes, it’s not going to damage the warranty. And I think that’s part of the serial number idea is when you come back and say I don’t know what happened was the phone. They say oh, yeah, this is the part that you tried to replace. Too bad. Okay, but I don’t
Raymond Sidney-Smith 51:30
I think I think there are a number of different things going on here. One, is that right to replace movements around the world are catching up with Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft and the other OEMs. And so they are trying to get ahead of it. And Apple’s doing the bare minimum here. I know that you’re loading them for the recycling component here. But I think there’s probably a bit more on the loss prevention. And it’s it’s loss prevention mixed in with cost recovery. And so I think there is an environmental benefit here. Yes, but I don’t think that was the primary point is kind of an afterthought. And, and for a company that’s supposed to be, you know, progressive in their views on the environment, they should really, they should really take it up a notch, right? Microsoft, I’m still aware of your ocean mouse, that was an idiotic product. So so I’m not, I’m not, I’m not happy with Microsoft on that level, either. But, you know, the, the reality here is that the right to repair should be a right it is a right, it’s just, it has not been enumerated by at least in the United States yet. But we should have a right to repair our own devices, I can go take my shoe and get the soul replaced, I should be able to go take my phone, on my phone and take it and have it fixed in any way shape or form that I want to Apple doing the bare minimum of giving the 12 the 13. And the third generation iPhone SE capable toolkits is, is is one thing, it’s a bit patronizing for them to come to me and tell me that I can’t fix my own phone. But I fully absolutely agree with you. This is not for most people, most people are going to damage their devices and damage the technology that’s in their hands. And they should really leave this to competent people who can can do this stuff. And for that means that means might mean like you know your 15 year old daughter who is savvy with with technology, but it also probably means going to an eye fix it or to some other, you know, authorized repair person who can who can do this kind of stuff. So I think it’s a good step in the right direction. Sure. Do, I think that we should be far, far further with regard to repair kits for these technologies? Yes, also, I think I think we need to do more, and we need to be more vocal to OEMs that they shouldn’t and can’t lock in, you know, technology so that, in essence, I’m just, I’m just licensing the phone that I own, I paid you $1,000 for a phone $1,300 With peripherals and all the other things, and then, and then I can’t even fix my phone. I kind of it kind of makes me
Augusto Pinaud 54:03
the guy who has tried to fix them before, you know, and I tell the story when my son got his he got my iPad Pro, the 9.7 and the screen broke that was recent, that device was upgraded. So I gave it to him and I knew it wasn’t the beginning of the pandemic. So I said okay, when you know, pandemic gets, I will say he was desperate. So I said, Okay, fine, I’m going to buy the screen, and I’m going to do the repair. Okay, instead of going to apple that said, he got a new iPad exam after that. And that has been my experience every time I tried to repeat it could be that I don’t have the patience or the skills or both. But in my experience, take it to Apple has always been cheaper than me trying to fix it.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:52
Now I’ve fixed many, many phones from Android to to other tablets to A couple of iPhones, and you know, I’ve, I’ve accidentally scraped off, you know, important components, I’ve damaged an actuator or two, when attempting to repair screens, you know, these things do happen. And so you’re gonna have to, you know, when you damage the actuator on, on an iPhone screen, you got to toss that and get a new new screen with proper a fixed actuator again, so that you can, you can get it to work, right, and there are a plethora of, of, of aftermarket and you know, less than stellar parts that you can buy on Amazon and other places, and you have very mixed results and whether or not those things are going to work. And so I like having the ability to buy directly from the, from the producer of the phone, to be able to say, Okay, this is something I know will work when I plug it in. And if it doesn’t, I can go back to the Apple store and say, Hey, I tried this display, and it’s not working, can you fix it, you know, or provide me with one that I know is going to work. So I like that surety that you can have, I wish there was more of that they could go to Lenovo and say, Hey, I need this part. And I know you can to some extent, but they make it really, really difficult for you to be able to do that stuff, you know, you know, this Gousto. But you know, I had a keyboard on one of my Chromebooks fail. And, you know, replacing that, I mean, you really solved the problem for me, but Lenovo couldn’t, you know, they, they were able to sell me the keyboard to the to the laptop I bought from them, it was ridiculous that they couldn’t sell me there’s one particular part that they didn’t sell separately from other pieces, that should be illegal. I mean, just really, it’s, it’s criminal on some level for them to sell me a product and then to make it completely obsolete when one particular component of the device no longer operates. So we need to have a better stance here on all of this. And I know I’m a bit on my soapbox about it. But I really get aware when these kinds of things happen to people around me. And I get those calls, you know,
Augusto Pinaud 57:00
but I’m going to share this with with people not not for any other that I’m sure that problem that you have. It’s a problem that other people have. And, you know, we he Ray tried to find it in Lenovo, I tried to find that either. And then suddenly, I thought about, well, what about going we went to a couldn’t find it. And then I thought about finding a broken device. And that’s where we found somebody was selling the broken device with the keyboard. And that’s what I bought on ship. i The person was trying to get rid of the device and we fix the keyboard issue. But I don’t want to share it just because in case somebody else is having that same struggle. If your OEM do not provide you the piece fine for a broken device on eBay, because you don’t care for the device you care is for the piece that you’re missing. And that may be the solution.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:52
Absolutely. Okay. With that out of the way. Announcements, and then we’ll wrap up
Augusto Pinaud 57:57
two announcements. One is happier app won the Webby Award. That’s Gretchen Rubin app, and she won the Webby Award this year. And our second announcement is an article from protocols say most customers do not appreciate subscriptions, productivity minutes, apparently do. But it goes into the cost of all these apps. And you know how much they add? And how much is your monthly costs? When you start adding all these subscriptions, all these apps, and sometimes we don’t notice how much this adds up and how quickly it adults.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 58:43
Yeah, and like apps, like a services like setup, which is kind of like the MacOS, Netflix, you know, subscription service. Or it’s an it’s the Netflix of Mac OS apps. I don’t know if they do iOS apps as well. But the idea though, is that you subscribe to a payment, you know, subscription. Yeah,
Augusto Pinaud 59:03
there is there is one to do. They don’t do iOS, but they do Mac and I don’t remember the name of the company,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 59:08
I’ll set set up set out. And so you know, there are those kinds of services. And there are others out there like that. And so you can save substantial money if you if you kind of use something like that, but then you don’t necessarily own the software, not that you own the software anymore, you’re licensing it either way, but you’re paying on a regular basis for access to this pool of software. So that may be something to also consider. Also, a lot of people get other software that’s already baked into their, their conglomerate tool of choice, whether that be Google workspace or Microsoft 365 Or in the Apple ecosystem, you know, you have the I work I don’t know what it’s called anymore Is it? Is it still I worked so you know Pages and Numbers and yeah, basically that productivity suite you know, you have all of those things kicked into the iCloud, you know, ecosystem and it’s a you know, like utilize the tools that are available to you many times you don’t need the extra tools, they’re nice to have. And so I think that’s always a good point just to keep things, you know, fiscally responsible in some way, shape or form. And so with that, we’ve covered the productivity and related technologies news this week, I Gousto. And so thank you, as always, for putting together this show each and every week. It is my pleasure. Okay, on anything but idle.com, you will find our show notes, you will find links to all t
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