It's the DEH podcast. Episode number 158, I'm Leo, Nottenboom of Askleo.com and I'm Gary Rosens why I go to MacMost.com. So I would start by saying what's new in Denver, but there's a bunch new in the Mac world. And I think we have a lot to talk about. Yeah.

It's, you know, the announcement last week is really notable and that it's the first time in a while at Apple is changed the Mac lineup, and it was a surprise to, I was always that they can pull off surprises. I really. Yeah. And I, we could talk about that actually about how how that actually came to be, but the, you know, it's been, you know, IMAX in the middle and then a Mac mini on the left and a Mac Pro on the right.

And then you've got your Macbook air MacBook Pro for laptops. It's been that way for a while, right? They had a little variation at an iMac pro for a while but besides that it's been kind of set and then they threw in this thing. It just came out of nowhere, the new Mac called the match studio and the reason I think it kind of surprised everybody is because there were rumors that there was going to be a high end Mac mini.

And there were also rumors that there was going to be a low end Mac Pro, and this is the fact that they were both, right? Yeah. They're both right. But, what they did you get was the fact that it would just be a whole new machine. That would be exactly right there in the middle.

You know, I guess, you know, if you look at the body of it, you could see how even somebody? Just even being shown it, like here. This is what we're announcing next week, that's on anything, we're just showing it to, you would look at it and say, oh, that's a, you know, a big Mac mini that is gonna be really cool, or maybe looking at, and saying, oh, that's kind of a small macro, so, yeah, it makes sense that people were confused and the rumor sites.

Got it wrong but it is also notable in that they so previously applied to iMacs had the 21 and a half inch screens, small screen iMac. And the 27 inch large screen iMac, which was a 5K screen. The thought was, you know, they'd upgrade both of those to the M1 processor and they did.

In fact, come up with a 24 inch iMac but the M1 processor and they, you know, killed off the 21 and a half inch. Intel iMac. The thought was that they would now come out with a larger screen. I'm act and still have two different sizes of iMac, but they can't with this next studio instead and never mentioned the iMac.

And then when they updated their site after the announcement was over the 27 inch iMac disappeared, completely didn't remain like can still have it for Intel or whatever, it's gone like it didn't ever exist. It still it's really crystal clear to me. At least. That Apple is back to having one size eyebag, which, to be fair was how it was for a long time.

You know, that original iMac that made like, you know, change the industry and all that it was just one screen size, you know, they didn't sell multiple screen sizes that to much later and, you know, going back to that kind of makes sense. A lot of people confused about it though and a lot of people I would say a lot of people some people complaining about it that they were hoping to get a 27 in iMac.

Now, it seems like that's not even going to happen, what are their options. But actually, before we get to that talk about, what this next studio is, so it's a small device, it's it's the same within depth as a Mac mini, so, seven and a half or, you know, at seven and a half inches on either side, and then it's a little more twice, the height.

So the MacBenny's, kind of flat, and this kind of is like four inches tall. And it's, you know, obviously not something you're gonna open up and, and add more memory or drive or anything too. It's just a solid device, right? And it's got pretty upgraded parts in it. It uses either the M1 max processor, which was only previously available on the high end, MacBook pros or a new processor called the Edwin Ultra, which I have to say, I called it.

I said, when they came out with them with Max, I think it was on this show. I said, William Mac sounds like, it should be the maximum, but if they did want to come up with a, with a better one, they could call the ultra right. Because in marketing speed, even though Max does being maximum ultra usually is the higher one better than maximum.

Yes. Yeah. And I also called it and I thought that, you know, if they came up with the Mac Pro, they could put say, two M1, max processors in it. You know, as I do processor, I mean obviously the head there's many processors inside the chip itself, right? And that's what the m1 ultra really is.

It's two m1 and max processors. The only thing that you have to note about that is they are actually attached to each other. They're not too processed or sitting on the board that you know, or close to each other. They are actually fused together. So there's so is it like one piece of silicon that just happens to have two of these things?

Yeah, interesting. So that means the transfer speeds between processors, right? Are not, you know, delayed by the fact that they're in separate pieces of silicon, right? So that gives like an incredible number of processors a 64, you know, GPUs that you could have. I mean, it's just incredible of 64GB uses incredible and also boost them out of memory up to.

You have a 128 gigs of RAM, it's a lot of stuff even the, you know, they basically, they doubled everything. So the max chip has 10 media encoders on it, that handle certain types of media for encoding, like H264 video or decoding and all that. And you get double lows as well because it's to identical chips refused together.

So that's what's in the studio. You can get either the m1 max or you can get the m1 ultra and the if you have the ultra you you know, get all the features, you know, bunch of extra goodies like you can go to maximum memory, it's got a bigger heat sink on it.

It's got even an extra fundable like bus because on the M1 max. You have Thunderbolt in the back and USB on the front on the M1 ultra. You've got Thunderbolt in the back and Thunderbolt in the front which tells me that it's a bus thing, right? They've got two Thunderbolt buses there, so it's really cool.

It seems to be super powerful. So my question for you is which one would you choose? And we all right before I get to that, what's important to note that they also announced something another big change in the map world. They announced a screen called the studio display. Now, they already had.

Yeah, they haven't done that. For quite some time though. They had a pro display which is a six thousand dollar screen. You know, basically six k display. It's been for pros, it's extremely expensive but they have that the studio display, something different. It's first of all, it's reasonably priced for what it is which is a five k display.

You could get a $1,200 five k display but usually the refurbished or whatever. You know it's about a little bit more to get a new one. So $1600 for five day display isn't like Apple prices. Apple prices would be like $2,000 for that, right? Plus you add in the fact it's got a 12 megapixel webcam.

Oh, wow, which is? Yeah, so forget 1080, forget 4k. It's a 12 megapixel webcam, right? It's got a three microphone array and a six speaker array. So serious AV capability, okay? Plus pass through USBC. So, you plug this thing in with Thunderbolt, say to your MacBook, Pro, or your MacBook Air, and now suddenly you are using as a dock because you can have three things coming off of the screen, right?

So if you've got this display or even how basically, this way, it's a fivek display, 27 inches, okay? Okay, so we're pretty good competitively, priced display. It could clear that, you know, from the name, max, studio and studio display. Then there meant to be paired together even though the studio just like, can be used with the lowest and MacBook air or Mac mini and presumably anything, you know.

Well, I think could be used with my Mac Pro. I'm sure any new Mac Pro that comes out, so it could be used by anything, but the name suggests that they made the two to be a pair. So, that shows tells me there's another indicator that there's not going to be a 2017 iMac.

This is the 27 inch iMac, right? You get the back studio, you get the studio display grand total for the cheapest configuration and 3600 dollars, okay. And you've got your iMac. Now last 5k iMac the one that Apple just discontinued, you could have gotten a $1,700 version of that which is like, oh, so $700 for a 5k iMac and now the lowest version of the equivalent is 3,600 dollars but that's 3,600 dollars would actually be the equivalent to a pretty high end.

Previous iMac. Yes. I mean that that was like an I-5 and no processor eight, gigs of RAM. 256 gig hard drive machine, that 70 hundred dollar one any, you know, so most people that were saying, well, I want the five KI Mac. They were probably spending well, above two thousand dollars to get, right.

Decent specs, right? The the lowest you can go on the the Mac studio. You know, with that you get the M1 max processor in it. There's the lowest version of that 32, gigs around and a half a terabyte drive and that's like the minimum you can get that's that $2,000 right back studio model.

So it's, it's the kind of thing where some people were disappointed that there's no 27 inch iMac, but there's all sorts of possibilities, right? You get, you could upgrade and a Mac mini with more memory, and a bigger drive and then connect that to a screen, right? You can get the cheapest Mac studio and not get the studio display instead.

Go out and buy one of the displays. Like, I know, both of us have a nice 32, or 27 inch 4K screen, those only cost like $400 for like a big one and you get something pretty decent. Come actually doing video on this later in the week. Comparing all the different options of, you know, what?

You could get if what you wanted was a 27 inch. I think, what am I getting? Well, I'm of course, I ordered the studio display so that's coming in, right? And that I should get first, probably not next week. The week after have just, you know, keep an eye on the shipping on that.

I'm excited about that, even though it has a big problem for me, which is that I'm using a 32 inch screen now, right? So I'm gonna be going down inside the physical size and going from 4k to 5k, which means that there's gonna be two reasons, Texas, going to be smaller, right?

So my reading glasses that I don't wear while working on my computer, may have to actually come out for me to work on my computer, we should be. Yeah, well, welcome to it to getting older. Yeah just wait. I'm sitting here with trifolds on my friend, I have to I'm worried about this.

I mean if it if it I'm prepared you know, there's that 14 days to return. I am prepared that if this is going to be a problem, I may return it I mean look at it. Say this is cool. This is neat but it may not be for me, you'll go see the eye doctor, get yourself a new prescription and just get on with it because right now, a little too cool.

Well, I've got off. I'll see now, the camera and the microphone that really interested in because technically, I should be able to do my show using exactly. Right. Yeah. It sounds like it was pretty pretty comparable to what you end up using. Yeah, day to day. Yeah, but problems with that.

First of all, the reason that it's a 12 megapixel camera is it's using what's called center state, which is this cool tech. That's cool tech. That's on the iPad had allows you to basically as a wide angle lens and it will follow you around the room like the camera is moving, but it's not.

Yeah, it's using interpolation to actually make it seem like the campus point in a direction that it's not actually pointed in. So that's why there's 12 megapixels in it. Now, what will that mean in terms of what I can actually pull off of it? Yes, or feeling my videos?

I am worried and I think at least initially, this will be true that all, I'm gonna be able to get is 1080. Even though it's got all these pixels that when I try to record it screen flow, it's going to be. This is a 1080 camera, that's all I know.

And I will have to then go back to my regular camera. I'm using now which gives me 4. Okay, right now that by changing some point, you know, at some point somebody made come up with some cool software, you know, some extension and, you know, maybe even screen flow of itself, they would come out with something that would, you know, allow you do really take charge of this camera and 4k off of that.

Yeah, well, I have to see microphone the same thing. It's like, I'm using a shotgun like now rather expensive shotgun mic and will, well, it's that I know doubt that this camera is these mics will sound fantastic for zoom. Like the next time I talk to a user group, I'll resume just going to abusing these and I think it's going to be great or me.

Yeah, well it's now I've been wearing the only time I ever wear a headset is by doing this show and that's primarily because even though the microphone isn't as good as my shotgun, I could face any direction I want. Oh, that's right. That's right. So you're kicking back while you're doing this?

I could kick back. I could look over somewhere else. I could add some talking. I could gesture because since we don't use a camera for this, I don't focus my eyes on a camera, right? So I tend to like yeah, push back. Look up at the ceiling look you know, off to the side and the problem is you would hear that in the show.

Yes. Yeah says, if I, you know, I'd have to like actually focus and like, look at the microphone the entire time we talk. So it's funny. I've actually trained by myself so that so that even though I've got a stationary mic, it's moved from an arm to a traditional desk stand.

I've actually trained myself to even though I can look around the room. I'm pivoting my head around the your phone. Yeah. Well. And I think that's what would happen to be eventually. If I if I tried to do it, it probably few episodes in, I would get used to it.

Yeah, so I mean, that's basically, you know what we've got in terms of the Mac back studio, I looked at the max and the ultra options and I'm with the ultra because there's a higher data rate for it. So not only, you're getting the two processors but you're getting a higher data rate.

So I went for the ultra but the 48 GPU core version, not the full 64 GPU version because well first why I think it's like a thousand dollars difference. And you know, I imagine having 64 GP cord just really useful for doing 3D graphics. Probably useful if you're doing like heavy video editing, like a movie, right?

Or like weekly, half hours sitcoms that kind of thing. I'm doing 10 minute YouTube videos, right? I don't think I'm gonna miss the, you know, the 16 course. So I went with the 48 GPU core version and I I boosted the, let's say the ram. I went to 64 gigs around.

I could have gone higher than that, but I have 48 now and I never even get close to using it all. And I have ate on my MacBook Pro, my M1 MacBook Pro, and I've never have trouble using that for anything including the final cut studios. So, somebody to you is this since it's a closed box.

Yeah. And you've made the choice for 64. Yeah. Do you have an option to upgrade that later? Nope, no. Okay, okay. So I but I've no doubt that, I'll be fine for the life of this video. Whatever. Is it tells you probably go through machines little bit more quickly than the average person?

Yeah, my my advice for PC buyers is to always buy more capacity than you need. And I mean that in terms of expandability, for example, my most recent desktop, which is already the year and a half old two years old came, I ordered it with 64 gig but it has room for 128.

Because as you know, over time things expand. It's not that I necessarily will be using this as my primary desktop for the next 10 years. But, my prior desktop, lasted, for like 12, or 14 years of useful service simply, because I did exact same thing. So you might find yourself going through a machine just a little bit earlier.

I don't know why I got a but you'll have a reason to, right? Because it's your job, right? You sure. One of the, one of the reasons you get me machines is not necessarily because you need a new machine. That's because, hey, there's this new machine that you need to experience you wait and and understand for your audience.

Yep. And I think, either way, I think 48 are 64 gigs of rams, because fine should last you for some time. Yes. Yeah. So not worried about that. I went, I actually surprised myself because I always tried to go up in size, for hard, drives every time. But to be fair, I've had my super expensive Mac Pro for less than two years, which isn't a point of anger here.

I've never that quickly. I've never spent that much warmer, she former machine, and I've never gone through it so quickly. But to be fair, there's nothing wrong with it, right? Could keep using it. There's not I'm not like oh I really need one. I'm only buying a new one because there was the change in processor and I, whatever, but I kept with the same size hard drive because it's only been two years since I moved up to two terabytes of the SSD and I basically took it inventory of my drive and I have two terabytes.

Now, I looked and I said, what am I really using? So I looked at, I noticed there are a couple of things like there was a 150 gigabyte file that was a test. I did in final cut like a year ago like I threw some examples stuff in and tried some transitions and I never succeeded with the library.

So I was like, well that's shouldn't be there. And then also, I noticed, 150 gigabytes of of Windows virtual machine which I won't be using because it I won't be able to use them on the M1 Ultra. Of course. I'm rarely use them. Matter fact, I was surprised. I was like God they did sitting there if that much space almost the last time I fired up one of those windows with, she's not 2022.

I tell you that. Probably once in 2021 I am trying to think of there's something I did. But yeah, so I don't, you know, that's a hundred fifty gigs, I get back and that hope that put me under one terabyte of used space, right? That was I got, I think, sticking with two terabytes, I'm gonna be fine, you know.

And then you get to a certain size for what you do. And the extra space is all like stuff that could be offloaded. I looked at my photos library, it's a hundred gigs. I looked at how much I've used for video stuff that I'm actually working on, that was about a hundred gigs and then it made me a hundred gigs of apps and up.

It's not that. Yeah, I don't need more than two terabytes right now. I went through the same product exercise this machine of mine a couple years ago and it's interesting. Like you said, it used to be that you almost always upgraded your disk space at the same time, just because your needs were increasing.

The space was becoming cheaper and so on and so on, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. And the other thing that all sets it for me, and I know what offset it for you as well. Is that the speeds on the external connections? Be a USB three or Thunderbolt or USBC are fast enough that even if you did.

Suddenly have a requirement that a, you know, I need five terabytes of something. Yeah, you slap an external disk on it and you've got some relatively high speed and tons of capacity. And that's in fact. What? I've got on this machine, I've got a one terabyte and the two terabyte SSD native on the machine which are both underutilized and a five terabyte our disc in the machine.

And another six terabyte, external hard disk and they all run kind of all the time and I spread things out but I could do with a lot less, it's pretty amazing. It really is, I think is yeah I I think it that, you know, it depends a little bit on your usage.

Sure like I be making a mistake now. I was actually somebody that made films. Like, if my, if I was always working on my current two-hour feature film and maybe already starting to work on my next two hour feature film, and the old, the two, our feature film that was right now in, you know, going through the film festival circuit, you know, that kind of thing, right?

Then I think two terabytes would be a big mistake, right? Probably should max that out, but I don't, I don't do that and exactly not going to change. So, and also looking at like, people getting in trouble with their photos library, sometimes, they're music library. Sometimes they're apps, the things.

You can't offload very easily on a Mac, like because the photos library is connected to the cloud, you can't just take it and put on an external drive, It expects to be on the boot drive, right? So when somebody gets a, you know, a 512 gig drive and they have 300 gigs worth of photos and videos and better part of the cloud, right?

And they run into trouble Like, you know, two terabytes is 20 times the size of my photos libraries. That's interesting. So you can't move your iCloud data off of your primary drive. Now, wait, I mean, you can't go and say optimize this and then only a portion is cashed locally, right?

Right. That's the way like a normal typical Mac user would do it, right? They have, you know, do it? Because I know somebody, I've got a terabyte of photos, right? Yeah. And but I store them in Dropbox which of certainly can do what? You just describe that optimized thing, They call it something else.

It states files on demand or something like that. So the file is still, there's a record of it on your hard disk, but the file is contents is not on your hard disk get, but it's actually on that five terabyte rotating hard disk in my machine because I don't need it to be super fast and only reading from it most of the time anyway.

And it's it's actually sitting there with my one drive and my Google Drive and that kind of stuff. But the point being though that the offloading it to an external hard or two, a second hard disk is it's honestly surprising it Apple. Doesn't let you do that. Yeah it doesn't.

You can't do that with iCloud. So I'm obviously if I did drop box, I could do the same thing which actually on my Mac. I've got that setup. I've got my Dropbox and my Google Drive and my laundry. I think on an external drive connected to my Mac Pro, I suspect, I mean probably a lot to do with, you know.

So what happens if you pull the plug on that drive and suddenly it was there, right? You know I don't know how I code. What I cloud with handlebar. I know there's exact bombs sure that the idea is to try to avoid having to handle that, right? With something like photos.

Right, you know, make it, make it impossible, by insisting it between the internal drive. And you know, it's someone like me. I just I want on my Mac Pro or, you know, I can't call it Mac Pro much, for much longer. It's gonna be max studio soon. I want to all of my photos to be there, so I have the optimized thing turned off, right?

Which I might other back, you know, my Macbook Pro just turned on, right? I only have like maybe five gigs of space taken up caching some of the photos, right? But I want everything to be, you know, sitting here in my office. The other things actually, like, I have things set up here.

Yeah, for my photos, the next one. But for the the other thing I wanted to bring up is I think about if coined a new a new phrase this week maybe could help determine that because thought something pops into my head. If that was making this video about, you know, not having a 27 inch iMac stuff and dealing with people's questions about, you know what, which new Mac to get and this popular, I had and I thought, oh, who said this?

And I tried to look to see who said this, and I can't find that anybody that's ever said this was before, and the phrases, there's always going to be room for indecision, indeed. And what I mean by that is somebody is always going to go and say, because I keep getting people saying I want a Mac mini, but with a little bit more powerful processor, or I want to max studio, but one version that's a little bit cheaper.

If Apple comes out with three computers, a B and C, there's always going to be somebody that says, oh, I want something right between A and B, right? If Apple came out with computers A to Z, there's going to be somebody saying, oh, I want something right? Between J and K.

Yes, no matter what options are offered to you, right? You're all are always here if it was as easy as you know, finding exactly the right machine. If everybody looked and said, oh the the new iMac 24 time a perfect sold. I don't I don't want anything more or less like, you know, that would be a perfect world, right?

Yeah. But everybody's always gonna say, oh, I wish it was a little more powerful. This wish was a little cheaper or I wish the screen size a little bit bigger, maybe a little bit smaller. I mean all this stuff. So there's always no matter what Apple offers or anybody offers.

There's always going to be enough room for in decision. It's interesting because it's so much of that in decision is exactly what feels the PC market. Because in the PC market, you can tweak the crap out of your machine, right? You know, if you want 20 gigs of RAM and instead of 16 or 32, if you want this kind of hard driver, that kind of hard drive you can mix and match whatever the heck you want, which also comes with.

Of course, it's cost. In terms of couple. Yeah, I want as well. I want that but a little bit cheaper. Yeah, it's all faced. There's some reasons when I saw the quote in our notes. It immediately made me think of of a mythbuster's quote which I think they coined failure failures always an option and it's the same.

It's it just has that same kind of feeling. There's always going to be a room for indication I like it. Yep, cool. So what do you got going on? Oh man. Well, you don't know. Nothing. Nothing a whole lot when you were exciting. Oh yeah. In the PC world.

But I was thinking about it the other day. One of the things I like to do when I watch some instructional YouTube videos or, you know, get some from somebody or actually even provide some of the videos that I do for the volunteer work, it's nice to be able to provide a transcript and it dawned on me that I too.

So many different things to generate transcripts that I thought it might be interesting to to cover some of the options and see what kind of things you might be up to, as well. Okay. The the one that I am, I'll call it the most proud of. In a, my God, what I hack kind of away is that, when I'm, when I'm in my basement on my, on my elliptical, which is what I do for exercise, I'm usually on the elliptical for half or at least five days a week, and I'm usually watching something sometimes entertaining.

Like right now I'm watching a turning rad but sometimes I'll be watching YouTube videos or skill share classes or any of those kinds of things. I will generate a transcript by taking my pixel phone turning on the recorder app and pointing my phone at the TV, it's an audio recorder, that's all it is.

But the neat thing and it's I believe it's only the recorder available for the pixel is that it generates a transcript on the fly. It actually does voice to text on the fly and it does a pretty reasonable job. So I'll be sitting there with my phone pointed at my TV while I'm exercising and when I'm all done I'll turn off the phone and Google does its Google thing, and synchronizes everything.

So that by the time I get back to my desktop, I've got a transcript ready for me. Just ready to copy, paste, edit, clean, up, quote, whatever it is. I wanted to do, which is kind of cool. I thought that was kind of innovative and probably not what the original authors intended.

No, the other thing that I have available to me is sometime ago, I subscribed to a service call, happy scribe and I have a number of hours worth of transcribing time available to me. Each month. Most of the time that's being used by Connie when she's doing askly over videos for me, she's editing and uploading and providing transcripts to augment the the transcripts that Google may be providing or I'm not even sure if they're showing up in video or not.

But the point is that, you know, we're using that and that's it, pretty traditional transcription service, you upload your audio file. They do some magic on it, you've got two levels, there's the level that is included which gets you, I think they claim 80% accuracy which is actually a little bit better.

They'll do speaker recognition. So that the transcript you get actually has this person is talking and then this person is talking and then this person is talking having it appropriately. Attributed to the speaker. The but there's also the you know extra pave version where if you want to pay so much a minute.

They'll actually have someone come in and proofread it compare. It literally a person will make sure that the transcript is accurate which I don't think I've ever done yet because the transcript is accurate enough when it comes out of there. So those were two kind of interesting approaches of there.

Are other approaches I know that sometime ago you actually pointed me at a technique using Google or YouTube. I should say that was kind of interesting but seems at least for me to be inconsistent. I don't always see this option. You remember what I'm talking about? They talk about basically letting YouTube do the automatic transcription and then downloading scription when it's done.

Yeah, right. And I'm not always able to download it which is been kind of frustrating. It's sometimes it's just not there where the automated transcription is there. Because obviously, when I upload a video without doing any of this, there's a delta, right? There's about a time. They they make the standard definition version available then they process it some more and they make the high definition version available and then presumably, they process some more and eventually make the closed captioning available that transcript.

So I always give it like a day or two before I go looking for it, but it's not always available that interesting. I haven't looked for it like that. Mm-hmm. So I haven't noticed whether or not I'm I've just tried it. Like in retros. You know, looking back already.

Just play with this. Of course, that's a depending upon your volume. That's a pain. Your I may look at that happy describe site. The problem I've always had besides, like that, is they charged too much? It looks like half prescribed a lot more reasonable. I usually see prices like a dollar or a minute, and I really need it.

I think there are two dollars a minute for the edited version for them. Yeah, I brought automatic but yes and you know the problem is that I've got things. Like I really want to provide the, I have a system set up and have a human transcribe, my regular daily videos.

Oh, that's right. I remember here hum. Yeah, so I don't have that my courses because my courses are like, I mean my biggest one is seven hours, right? And I have others that are like four hours, typically it's a lot of transcribing and it's also a lot when it comes to, you know, if you pay a dollar a minute, you've got seven hour course.

Oh yeah. That's there goes the first, you know, a hundred sales or whatever. So it's, it's a bunch. So I'm all with looking for a way to do it, more reasonably, even if the accuracy isn't perfect, you know, of just some way to get it. And part of the problem is to is I sometimes I found systems that are transcription, but unfortunately I'm using Vimeo for that and the video not only doesn't do automatic transcription or subtitles like YouTube does but they won't even sink it up.

So like with YouTube, you could upload a transcript and it'll take the transcript and sync it up with the video, right? So all you need to transcript not subtitles. The difference for people are like, what's the difference? The difference is subtitles, has times, right? Is at this time, the person speaking says this, the transition is just better than I thought, because they actually break it into segments that fit on the screen right there.

Yeah, that's actually breaking. Like, they're not looking at the sentences or the lexical structure. They're just looking at, okay, how many words will fit vertically? I'm sorry. Horizontally on the screen of this. Yeah. And will it be one line or two and all that kind of stuff. But yes, yeah, so you know, so the problem is, I can't just like get a transcript and then, you know, toss it into video, it wouldn't work.

I have to actually get subtitles that are broken up and have those times. So, you know, I need something to be able to do that. I have experimented with a couple things to pass. First of all, before I had a human doing it, I had a really interesting technique, I was using for years mechanical turk.

Oh, right. And you know, that's a service. It's still around from Amazon where it has humans from around the world doing really small tasks for very small amounts of money and you could, you know, typically could be something like, you know, find the noun in the sentence or find, you know, is this a picture of a, of a, you know, bicycle, you know, that kind of thing and get it.

Paid a penny to click yes or no and all sorts of companies, use it for all sorts of things. But you could go and say here's a ten minute video transcribe it for me and then pay a dollar for the transcription which seems low. Except that it's a worldwide service.

So there's you know when to translate the prices you know like what it costs for a gallon of milk or meal or whatever. Yeah. Basically that dollars a half days wage for somebody. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So you're not going to get somebody necessarily in New York City doing that, but you will get somebody who pressed me actually speak much better English.

Yeah. And another part of the world, you know? Just because you don't sometimes English as a second language, right? Actually means you have better transcription skills, right? So the so I would do that for a while and I would batch them. So I would wait till about a month worth of videos and then I backed them to mechanical turk and I get these text files back and I use that for transcription.

I that was an interesting way I experimented with a year ago to try to solve my course, problem I tried using AIs and I tried using Watson, okay. IBM's Watts. It has an API that you could go and if you, you know, had a code, you could go on to their site and you can, you know, basically for whatever I whatever was I was doing, I was doing it for free.

So, I don't know if eventually would have been a cost or what the deal was, but I was able to for free to have Watts and transcribe videos and it kind of worked like I was able to you know say here's a video and that we know that 10 minutes later I get a file back and it was pretty accurate but, you know, trying to build that out to something where I could easily feed in like, a whole course, load of videos was like, the next step.

And I never kind of went to the next step with that. I thought, well, they know another day. So I wish I taken good better notes when I did that because I'm gonna have to start from scratch if I want to go back which I just written down what I did, so I could get back to that point.

So that's kind of interesting. Now, I have people asking me all the time about your technique, what you just said about taking some sort of dictation, you know, software either on a phone or computer. And basically, having audio play into that dictation and what I've always said is, you know, dictation and transcription to very different things.

When you're dictating, you're actually slowing down for the software to catch up. You're enunciating because, you know, this is what's happening with what you're speaking and you're possibly correcting the stakes. Maybe even if you're not correcting mistake, when you see don't screen you are crutching your voice for something later on.

Like if it's doing a porter job, you slow down more. If you get some word wrong, maybe you're like a word of a city. The next time you say that city, maybe you pronounce it a little bit better because you noticed it was you know not getting it. So that's dictating transcription the word just keep coming full speed, you know, and the software has got to keep up with the software is like hey this person never shuts it up right?

Because they you know, it's not built for that. So I always say when you know, people ask me, can I use the dictation feature on the Mac or the iPhone to transcribe something? I say, you can try, you're probably going to get poor results. What you really need to do is you just transcription service, to do it properly but it's soon.

I think we're getting closer. Like that. Pixel function, you mentioned, right. I expect Apple to add that. Probably the next version of IOS. They have an app called voice, my most on the iPhone, and on the Mac for that, you know? And it sakes up over iCloud and they've been adding features that steadily and the last time they added like the skip silence feature and all this stuff.

And I really think that Apple's going to jump at it. I know with Siri they took a lot of data and they made a lot of progress with transcription and dictation and all that. I would be wouldn't be surprised if the next version or maybe the version after that, they say, hey new feature in voice.

Memos it now transcribes. What you speak, right? And you just do your normal dictation and then you see the little sound wave and underneath it. It shows that. Yeah, so, yeah, I think that's coming and I think it's, you know, it'll probably still be, you know, 80% accurate or whatever at the beginning.

But then once it's there, like with the pixel, then it all. All that is. As a matter of like, okay? Okay, 80% today is 85% tomorrow is 90% 95% you know and then a few years ago by next thing you know you're like hey there's works great like zoom.

People are amazed at how good that feature works on zoom of throwing up the words, right? And it's like which you should try sometime actually to turn on? Yeah, I have no idea how to turn it on. I don't understand what audio. Yeah. Are you only? Yeah. Yeah. One of the things do you know if it, if it's what it question?

I don't know. I don't know, either, you should try that. I know. But that technology there I mean if they can if it can show what people are saying that well in the screen obviously could I mean zoom might not do it for whatever reasons they have, right? That means that technology could be you.

So we're at the point now where that's this is starting to change and the computers are to be able to turn scribe things. So, one of the things I'm thinking of, as I'm sitting here is sometime after Connie finishes editing this episode and posts it. For those of you listening to it, look at the show notes and I will at some point after it'll take me there too just to get around to it, I will post a transcription of this episode done both by a happy scribe because I know, okay, I'm Gary, you probably want to see how accurate it is compared to what it is happening here.

And and I playing the episode and pointing my phone at the speaker because as I think you'll be fairly surprised at the the quality of the latter results. I've been fairly impressed with the pixel and and this is, this isn't even the latest pixel. It's a pixel 4. And they're up to pixels 6 so that it's, you know, faster processors all that kind of stuff.

But yeah, like I said, I've been fairly impressed with it. It ain't perfect, don't get me wrong but it's absolutely useful enough for personal notes which is what I'm using it for. And it can I the way I could see it being used in quote, unquote production is to have some one review what gets created or what gets captured instead of doing the capture.

Because reviewing what's there is probably a lot faster than actually sitting down and creating the transcription by hand. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So watch this space. And if anybody listening knows of other options, right? For the things I'm gonna have one. I'm sure is on AWS. Yeah, there is I think that I think I looked into that and I the Watson thing was seem to be the better option for me to actually spend my time trying to develop something.

You know, I'm actually using a, the reverse on my personal blog, any blog post I post there that I write there is a little play button, a little read this to me button and that is AWS's text to speech, reading it to you and it actually sounds relatively natural that was kind of fun to do.

Yeah, well I you know, that's an interesting subject in and of itself too because the having the computer or your phone read stuff to you is getting better and better. But also I noticed we're getting more accepting of it like remediate in the middle and I noticed this on TikTok so TikTok has a voice.

You have a couple of voices, you could use where you could have instead of using your own. This you can type some text out and it will read it to you and there's a female sounding voice. That is the TikTok voice, right? If you hear that anywhere, you know something?

No. Yes it. But what's interesting about that voice is after hearing it a bunch of times you start to I wouldn't say prefer it but I know notice for instance, things like ads are starting to use it on TikTok interest because they're like, hey, let's use the TikTok voice instead of like a professional voice actor because people who actually maybe watch it if it's a TikTok voice and even I've noticed some creators actually using it.

Sometimes instead of their own voice, I actually did this once just to see how it was done. So one of my videos does do this on TikTok and it's just like, well, you know, people like this voice or used to this voice. There's absolutely zero negative anything from this voice because it's just accepted still, obviously a computer voice and even though it occasionally, gets certain words wrong.

That's fine. It's almost like it's an accent. This is the TikTok accent. Is there certain words that gets wrong? Hey, yes. As humans not only do we sometimes get words wrong right? You know? And we often get words wrong for different diet like different dialects of whatever. So, you know, you probably write.

I know I've got this Philadelphia accent because that's where I grew up and there's there were words in the Philadelphia accent that are pronounced differently than if you are from some other English speaking place, I'm not wrong when I say them right? I grew up in Philadelphia. That's how people in Philadelphia pronounce it.

You could go and say well technically it's pronounced this way and you'd be right but I'm right too you know so it's the same thing with something like I mispronunciation in TikTok. It's like yeah, that's wrong, but it's kind of right for that TikTok voice. It's like that's the TikTok accent.

It's very from. Yeah, it's worse. And that may and that may actually become true. I mean, think of the not English speakers watching, TikToks, right? And that voice is saying a word or two wrong and they're learning English from TikTok. So people are gonna actually start using like some of those men's pronunciations are actually going to become.

Correct? Pronunciations. Or at least variations that are correct there because our to the extent we have any English teachers listening, there are a number of them that are just cringing right now. Well but language language evolves that enough is that's that alone is enough to make a lot of English teachers create right?

Yeah. So it's it's yeah it's fascinating. We I think we talked on a show a year or two ago about, you know, book about linguistics. And yes, that's computers exchange. Yeah. I changed it. Yeah. All right, I'm speaking of books, that's a good transition. So before we get the books and even before we get to a segment that we normally call aided cool, I have to start with aided confusing.

We talked a couple of weeks ago, about raised by wolves. There you go. I confusing. Yes, I am by the way you are. Okay good, I am enjoying it, but in the WTF kind of way, right? It's it's like what the heck is doing on here? What you know?

So it is very confusing, supposedly, the last episode of the season comes out on Sunday. But I, it'll be very interesting to see a where they take it, how they wrap up the season and where they leave it, because of course, they would, you know, every opportunity to potentially pitch a another season is an opportunity that would take.

I'm sure. But it's just okay. It is it is a very weird show. I mean it's not as straightforward as the first season. There's a lot of odd things you see and on top of that, the characters make a lot of questionable choices. Yes, for what it's worth. If you're going to have a baby, a nice hospital.

Room is preferred not a rock over at assets. I see all alone, but so that, what? At least I, I understood at the time. My belief is that she didn't want it and she was her intent. Her intent was to get rid of it. So the acid see was kind of convenient.

Yes. And also she did the the it's almost a trope right where someone who doesn't want a child, suddenly has the child sees the child and changes their mind. Completely right? Complete 180 degrees. I think that's what happened here. Yeah, it's so there's a lot of that that goes on to the show.

That's a good example, goes on the show. It's like oh what happened? This the acid see by itself just has me scratching my head because yes, the sea is acid. But apparently the the the part of it that actually washes up on the shore isn't because they're walking through it all the time, the critters that come out of it, they can touch without getting burned even though they were just now soaking.

I, I don't know. It's yes. There's a lot of it's a lot. Yeah. Oh anyway, on the cool side. Yes, I I ended up reading a book last week and it's one of those things where I've started it and all of a sudden I just tore right through it and it's surprised me it's called everything I know about life, I learned from powerpoint.

Now powerpoint is a lot of people's whipping boy. They'd love to talk about death by power point. And and how horrible it tool it is. And of course, this person has the completely opposite perspective and it's turns out to be a perspective that I generally agree with. It's kind of like, you know, powerpoint doesn't make bad presentations.

People make bad presentations and powerpoint happens to be a tool that they use. Now to be fair, power point does make it easy to make bad presentations in ways that perhaps some other tools like Prezi or keynote don't. But the themes that he talks about here in terms of power point, making presentations, how to use the tool?

How to think about the tool, how to think about your presentations using this tool, apply to all of the tools. And I just found it a very interesting way to think about the content that you're trying to present in the guys of PowerPoint is a very powerful tool so I just enjoyed it.

It's what's really funny. This is you'll laugh at this. So it's a hardback book when I went and looked at it like I usually do. I always always look for the Kindle version because honestly, if it's not on Kindle I'm probably not going to read it and I found it on Kindle.

I downloaded it and you know it has some formatting issues and it had some other issues and and okay, fine. I I cooked it was fine actually. Is it turned out? I read it mostly on my desktop because it was a nice big screen and you'll understand why in a moment.

But then I went to, I think he had a page specifically for, you know, after notes updates Irana that kind of stuff and one of the very first things on the pages, he's the author says hey, I know there's a Kindle version out there, there isn't supposed to be and I actually went and looked at Amazon again and sure enough the Kindle version was gone.

I, you can't find it anymore, which is kind of unfortunate fortunate for me that I found it because like I said, otherwise I probably wouldn't have read it. And it dawned on me, the issue with the Kindle version is that they took the book somebody took of the book and basically did the equivalent of screenshots of each page and turned it into a presentation which does it really work very well on a Kindle?

You can make it work, but if you've got the opportunity to have a nice big screen where you can have it all on screen at once and you can go from quote, unquote, slide to slide, then it's fine. So, they actually this book about PowerPoint, they almost turned into a PowerPoint presentation and yeah, that didn't translate very well.

I just thought that was humorous. I enjoyed the book, I got some things out of it. In terms of presentation stuff. And yeah, I'm starting to look into the power point yet again. Cool. I I read a book this week. That was also back communication. I did. You might have read this one.

Did you read this? You did. Okay so it's called if I understood you. What I have this look on my face by Alan Alda. The actor of course. It's been on my wish list for a while and I I finally got around to reading it. I was captivated immediately and like, plot through it a couple days, very interesting stuff about communicating.

And, you know, basically, the bottom line is, it has to be a lot of empathy involved when you're communicating, but a lot of practical examples, it may be think a lot. It was interesting because it didn't nothing to solve my communication problems, not that I have problems but I want to get better, you know, he talks almost completely about communicating with somebody either one on one or perhaps one person to an audience alive, audience, and that's what the book is about.

So I you know, I'm interested in like how don't I now apply that to a situation where either? I don't see the other person at all because I'm recording a tutorial that then people will have to watch. And I there's no feedback because I'm done by the time they watch it, right?

Or they, the thing where I'm answering people's comments or questions online, can't see their face. So I don't know what looked to have the on their face. I have very little information about them and in fact, I have so information about the problem. Usually that, you know, that's the biggest issue is usually have two little information or sometimes too much, or sometimes the wrong information, all this, and I'm trying to communicate with them by solving the problem.

So, you know, it's not I didn't find a completely worthless for that because I could apply some of the ideas of empathy. Like for instance, while making a tutorial trying to picture who the audience is. Yes, create them in my mind and say, what questions, what they have would they understand this?

Like if you know this was the background, this is what they knew there were things. He says like, you know, you got to know what they know first, right? Start teaching them from what they know, you know, you have to you start the right level. How because, if you start too early, well, you're boring them because they know some stuff, right?

And if you start after what they know, then their lost right from the get-go because they've no idea what terminology you're using, right? But also that comments, you know, he does a lot of talk about deciding emotion two things like a lot of the book is about, you know, the experiment of basically, when you're talking to somebody try to identify the emotions that they're going through, are they confused?

Are they angry or they happy or whatever it is and actually labeling it? And I thought well, you know, that's an interesting experiment. I'm trying with with comments now just by reading the comment, word labeled for a lot of it. Yeah. Say is this person confused are they upset?

Are they, you know, whatever. Just I'm trying to figure that out and maybe just label that first, then answer the question and maybe approach it from that maybe that will make me a better communicator. I don't know. Anyway, it was worth reading and also, if you like the Malcolm Gladwell style of books, where there's a lot of talk about studies know, there was a study done and they came into a room and they said this was the experiment.

And this is how it was set up, and this was the result and you're like, oh, that's so cool. You know, that's this is that solid book. Tons of studies about how people communicate and it goes through the study and what they learned and how was set up and all that.

And I love that for some reason I really pushes buttons for me as for a lot of people. It's, you know, interesting I read this book. I think at least a couple years ago and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Absolutely. Just as you did is this, but it's been a while.

Is this the one that also relies heavily on improv? Yes. Yeah, he talks about doing having scientists or business people, you know, that need to communicate taking off improv classes first, and that how that definitely, you know, studies now shown definitely improves communication. That's the part of the book that it's like, I just can't connect that because in profits always being with the, you know, the other person.

And I don't have that in any might be communications, right? I wonder if if doing that kind of improv even though it's all about being in person and still hone some of the skills that would translate perhaps not quite as effectively but would still translate into some of the other realms that you and I work in like you know talking to a camera or or responding to a comment.

Yeah the camera issue. I think I believe this is a book that among other things was a bit responsible for the fact that I have a little Lego figurine sitting on top of my camera. Oh yeah, to remind me that I'm not talking to a camera. I'm talking to a person and that it's just a reminder, but it is one of those things that I think helps set a queue at least for me.

Yeah, he I mean, it, some of the improv stuff was it fascinating like he talks about mirroring, that's one of the main improv things which is, you know, where basically one person lead to a person follows and tries to mirror every movement of the other person, right? With the idea that the person leading, once the other person to me are right, you're trying to get in sync and the idea that at the beginning to strangers or colleagues perhaps, you know, one is leading once following and there's a delay, the person following is delayed by a second or two and then they switch back and forth.

And after while they get, so in sync, that in third person, a third observer cannot tell who was leading and who is following all right? Yep. Which to me was fascinating. But the interesting thing was that by doing some of these mirroring like that and then trying to communicate what you're trying to say, it turns out that you're much better communicating or you're picking your because simply you're paying attention to the other person more.

You know, you're looking at their face that they're expressions are their face and you say something it's confusing. The small signals on their face that say that, I didn't understand what you just said, you get those. Right? And or maybe you get that their boy. Oh yeah. Then I get it, I get it.

I got okay. I can move ahead quicker so there anyways. Yep. So as always, we have no sponsor. The closest thing we have, of course, is, is our own content this week. I would like to point few at can I rely on my cloud services back ups? It's past Leo.com slash 29970.

This is a not obvious answer because at least using to a lot of people because both you and I often recommend people use cloud services specifically for backing up. However, using it for backing up, is not the same as relying on their backups on. Those are two completely separate things, and that's separation can really bite in the butt if you don't understand it.

Yep. One thing we didn't talk about today is going to be my self promotion thing. Apple introduced new versions of operating systems, so macOS 12.3. And I IOS and iPad OS, 15.4, the big headlining feature. All of that is something called universal control, which is really cool tech that allows you to basically put either another Mac or an iPad next to a Mac, on your, on your desk, and you have your trackpad and you have your keyboard, you just move the trackpad over and it appears on the other device, right.

And I actually in this video which which will come out before this podcast comes out, says tomorrow's, I demonstrate using it with a Mac and iPad and the second Mac and just moving with one trackpad across all the screens of all those devices back and forth. And it, I was surprised how well it works and what makes it useful isn't just that you you could use a keyboard and trackpad with your iPad and you have to reach over the keyboard.

It's not just that it's drag and drop and copy and paste work with it. Across the platforms, a crop. So I was able to track an image from my Mac across the two screens of my Mac across the screen to the iPad and onto the other Mac and drop it.

And it appeared there on the other machine. Very cool. It was, so it's basically a way of file sharing or, you know, text or whatever it is. Like, I could drag and drop into an app that was on the iPad from a file. That was on my Mac and it's really cool.

I'm, I'm really digging it. And I talked about it before, like I I don't have a use for this and I probably still don't have used for this but it's at least very lay with. I do vaguely. Remember you talking about it before and you were questioning what it would be used for.

Yeah, and I still, I am still thinking it's quite but it works so well. It makes you want to use it. No matter fact, when you go and like, you haven't you go manually, go into preferences and say, hey, connect this iPad. I want to do it with this iPad or you want.

You've turned it on, you could not go into settings. And instead, if you put your iPad to the right of your max screen, you could go and move your trackpad over to the right side of the screen and keep pushing it against the right side of the screen and you look in the iPad and you see a bold on the side of the screen of the iPad and you push further with trackpad and boom, the pointer pops onto the iPad.

I'm like, you've got be kidding me. That was so cool. Hey, that they built the interface like that. They see this little like cursor, like, trying to break through one screen to the next. It's kind of neat. So, anyway, I have a video on that command tomorrow. Very cool.

Very cool. That also sound good? Yeah. All righty. Well, we're gonna be off next week or at least I'm gonna be off. Maybe Gary will talk to you about all by himself. Okay, well, wait, two weeks where we got nothing in the tech world will happen between now and I hope not, I will be actually out on the Pacific coast for relaxing 45.

As always, the show notes for this week's episode are out at TEH podcast. Calm slash 8, you've got a comment or question. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter at podcast or you can always leave a comment in the show notes page. That's probably the most reliable way to get to us these days.

I think we're both tired of social media. So these different ways that we we have to interact with it. In the current current environment. As always, thank you very much for listening and we will see you here again in a couple weeks. Bye.