Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the IA cast, and may the Fourth be with you. All right, we have some great folks with us today. If you didn't get the intro, it is Star Wars Day, so I'd want to throw that out there with us today. We have Marty SoBo back with us.

Hey, all.

And we have two new folks with us today. We have Angie Fisher.

Hello.

Nice to be here.

Yeah, it's good to have you. And we have Lynn Snyder here with us.

Hey, there. Good to be with you guys.

Yes, we're glad to have you guys on. This is great. We always love having new people on the podcast, and this is just a great conversation. We always have great talks on this show, so we're always glad to get folks that are interested in technology to come on here and talk with us on our topics. So, again, welcome. Thanks for being here, and we hope that you guys come back on future episodes. So as we typically do, Marty, do you want to give folks kind of the highlights of what you guys have been covering on Unmute Presents for the past week or two?

Sure. Let's see. Today we dropped an episode all about Audio Vault and their website, what they do, which is for those people who don't know, it is all audio, but it's old movies and television shows, everything from the way up until the current, and it has Audio Description with it. And so you can download stuff off of there, and then you could put it on your phone or your devices, all of that good stuff. So that was out today. You can check that out. We have our regular Friday Finds, which is News topics every week with Lynn. That comes out every Friday. On Tuesdays, we do the live show in the morning, and that goes out as a podcast in the afternoon. And then on Sundays, we're always putting out something to teach a topic of some sort or another. So that's what's been going on. And check all that out and go from there.

Excellent. Unmute Presents is a great show, and they have the ACB Community call, so check that out. You could get involved and have your questions answered. It's great stuff. So I listened to the Audio description episode this morning. It was great content. So check that out. I've always wondered about the Audio Vault because any kind of I think there are special rules in Audio Description and those kind of things because all of that content is for free. But I always wonder about the legality of such a thing. And I was wondering if you guys might want to touch on that in another episode if you guys have any information. Is this something that you have to be worried about? Downloading free content that is described. I think it's passable because since there's no video with the audio content, have.

You guys heard that? That is correct. And Audio Vault is also a nonprofit organization and so they're taking time to put it all together. And so that takes that off of the big companies that are putting the stuff out. So I think they kind of figure, hey, let's just let it happen because it's just helping people enjoy the content who couldn't otherwise enjoy it.

Right. It's just very interesting because there's always people out there that say, well, you're going against copyright, blah, blah, blah. But if it's a good service, I think it's a good service.

If you were to go to a movie and you are someone who is either visual or hearing impaired, you can get a special device to help a movie theater. It doesn't cost you any extra money and you just got to ask for it and they'll give it to you.

And I love getting audio described movies on itunes and places like that. Although I wish that they would audio describe the TV shows.

There are TV shows on there as well.

There is on Audio Vault, but on itunes I have not seen any.

Which.

I think is a shame.

Yeah. And I think from my own experience, it seems to me that sighted people can't stand audio description. I mean, I know when I watch something with sighted family members, when I have audio description on, it tends to drive them. Yeah. So I don't really think people I mean, some people might not mind that.

But then there are also people who are cited who like it. They like having it on, kind of. They don't have to necessarily keep their eyes on the screen as much. Yeah.

Well, that's what Michael Babcock was talking about in the episode, that his wife will watch TV with him and she other things.

I think that you kind of know what's going on while you're doing other things more than you would if you were just kind of watching a show in the background.

You have to have your eyes glued to the screen quite so much so you can do other things and still know what's.

Now for me, what I do is I'm going to go see a movie this weekend, guardians of the Galaxy volume three. Yay. So glad that's out. And I will watch it without description because I like the experience of seeing it with. I have some usable vision, so I like the experience of seeing it without audio description.

Yeah.

But then when I get home and it's out on digital, I will watch it with to see what I missed.

I'm amazed as a non visual person how much you miss about. You can watch an episode or a movie or whatever you think, you know, back to front really well. And then you get the audio description component and it's like, wow, I missed so much.

Right? You get like an old movie that's been described, right?

It's a whole different situation, especially like.

Comedy and stuff, where you can definitely interpret action facial expressions in order to get the gist of things.

This is one of the things I wanted to talk about in our tech news. We just had the third season of Star Trek Picard, and I'm a huge Star Trek fan. And one of the things that they have done on YouTube is they have a show called The Ready Room and so where they talk about Star Trek and everything involved in that. One of the things they did for VR glasses users is do a tour of the Enterprise D bridge. And that was incredible because you don't have to use a headset to see it. I was able to get my iPhone as close to my face as I wanted to move the iPhone, and it moved the perspective of the camera as if I was wearing glasses.

Oh, wow, that's pretty wow, that's pretty awesome.

And so, for me, sometimes the glasses make things too far away, but this just having it right in front of my eyes was just like, wow, this is incredible, because it really makes you feel like you're at that location. So it was with Will Wheaton and I cannot remember the person's name who was in the art department. And they were talking, and they were standing there, and you could actually see them standing, walking around, and they would have the camera in one place, and then you could look around, so you could actually see the rounded light ceiling of the Enterprise, the dome where you could look into space, all those things. And it's like, I've seen the show. I watched The Next Generation when I was a kid, and then I'm kind of rewatching Star Trek now as an adult. And just seeing it from that new perspective was incredible. And the fact that we have that technology now is just something that's really remarkable. And I think for people with low vision that have a hard time experiencing depth, to be able to see it in that aspect, like, okay, there's a ramp that's going up there, there's steps over there. That's pretty incredible.

So would you consider that like a VR experience?

Oh, for sure. It is a VR video. YouTube supports VR content, and apparently you don't need glasses to experience that. So that was really incredible.

That's amazing.

Yeah, I think VR is going to be a huge probably the new thing that blind visually impaired individuals are going to be able to benefit from.

I think it's going to still take time. There's a lot of rumors and that kind of segues into our next thing, and that's the rumors for WWDC coming up. There's talk that we're going to see a new VR headset at WWDC. I don't know if that's the case, but that's the word, and it's going to supposedly run reality OS. I don't know if that's the case, but I'm really excited to see if we get that or not. There's also talk of a 15 inch MacBook Air. It's almost confirmed. I mean, people that are on these websites are saying this will happen.

I'm excited about the 15 inch MacBook Air. I think it's long overdue. I feel like the people who are MacBook Air users or any of the lower end, not MacBook Pro, they are always relegated to something 13 inch or less. And it would be really great to have a MacBook Air and a 15 inch screen. A lot of people would love that, I think. I know I would. I would love to have a 15 inch MacBook Air.

Yeah. And I'm kind of thinking the speakers would be better.

I would imagine you have more room.

To put a better battery.

Yeah, better battery.

The talk is it probably will not have an M Three, so it'll have an M Two chip. I'm fine with that. But something I was thinking of, I thought it's too soon for them to have an M Three. And then I thought about it. No, it's been a year now. That is crazy that the M Two has been out that long. It doesn't really seem like it's been a year since they released because I.

Guess I think it's because we're not used to max updating or being updated this quickly or back to back to back event.

Well, I was surprised when they made the commitment to have all Macs updated to the M processor within two years. They almost got there, although they haven't said anything about the Mac Pro. So who knows if they're going to do it and if they are going to do it, what they're going to do. Exactly. So everyone's waiting to see, I guess.

Well, in the podcast that I've watched, they've said that a lot of people that use the MacBook, I mean, the Mac Pro have been very happy with the Mac studio. And that's very interesting because when they had the trash can Mac, as we call it, people were not happy with that. And it's a very similar design language. Not the same design, but everything's a peripheral. Everybody's happy with the Mac studio, but they weren't happy with that trash can Mac.

I didn't think they gave I don't think they had the same results in terms of fans kicking on overheating issues and things like that, which they did have a lot with the trash can, but with the Mac studio, they aren't having those issues. With this new M One processor, the fans and the overheating issues kind of have been resolved for the most part. And they did make that Mac Pro, which was modular, although I'm not sure how relevant modular is now.

Right.

So if they do come out with a new MacBook or a new Mac Pro, I'm not sure is it going to be modular? And if it's not going to be modular, then what would be really the point. If they have the Mac studio, I'm kind of a little interested to see where they go and what they do, because if it's not modular, it's almost like the Mac studio kind of covers that because they get something that's way smaller with close to the same power, or even more power, for that matter. And nobody wants to buy a huge, giant machine if they don't really need to.

It'd be just empty air.

Right.

The board would just be a very small thing inside that huge enclosure. I don't think there's any GPUs that can work with the Apple silicon machines yet, so I don't know that there's a need to. So I think when there's a need, they'll make it. But I think that the Mac Pro is kind of the Mac Studio is kind of that transitionary point. Like, do you need it? And the Mac studio fulfills two spots, the 27 inch imac imac and the Mac Pro.

Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see what they do there.

Yeah, so that's kind of one of the bigger news stories. And then Google and Apple have been in the news that they've made a partnership. Have you guys researched this or you all want to talk about this one?

Yes, that with the Air tags, the tracking devices to try to stop some of the malfeasance that's going on, some of the bad behavior with stalking and other things. It gives people more, I guess, awareness that they're being tracked. Something about when the tracker gets separated from the user's phone.

Some of what they're trying to do here is they're trying to all get together and get on the same page, which is really great in my mind. Yeah, that is a great and also what they're trying to do is they're trying to make one kind of thing within the operating system instead of a standalone app, so it'll make it harder to do foul play with it if it's built into the operating system. And then once they have that implemented, it'll be able to be across all of the trackers, not just Apple's tracker. It'll be able to be on the other manufacturers that make similar devices. And so they'll be able to hopefully get all of the other manufacturers on the same page, along with the Google and the Apple ones, if Google comes out with one, because they don't have one currently at this time, but hopefully they will come out with one and they'll all be on the same page. And that way if someone tries to do something fishy, then you'll get alerted or you'll know that there's a device around you, and you'll be alerted that this is not your device and to, hey, pay attention that there could be some foul play around you. Just be aware of your surroundings.

There's one thing that really just bugs me about that whole thing, though. Everybody says Air tags are so bad because people can track you. There is nothing that Apple has done with Air tags that hasn't been done before with Tile and the Track.

Yeah, that bugs me, too. I read this is the first time this has ever happened. No one really thought of this until the Air tag. Give me a break.

Well, anybody who has an iPhone and they know that you could do the exact same thing with your phone, your phone is tracking you everywhere you go. Or with a Tile tracker, pop on and see where you are if you wanted them to.

Yeah, I think a lot of the issue is, too, that people were putting tags in people's cars and they weren't aware of it. My question, too, is that the Apple Air tags, at least, they're pretty expensive. I mean, I would like to get a pack of them, but it's like $99 for a pack of four or something.

Yeah, but you can buy one for like $30 and it's about the same.

Price as the Tiles. And the thing about it is with the tracking and that's what I mean, people are using them to put them in cars and track people. But they could have done the same thing with Tile and it works the same way. It still uses an iPhone or an Android phone. If you have the Tile app, you can track where your stuff is or where your tracker is. I mean, people have have found stolen cars because of tires.

Sure they have.

But because Apple made it popular, then everybody used it for wrongdoing and everybody says, Blame Apple, and then everyone's coming.

Down on Apple because of it. Right.

But what I'm excited about with this though, real quick, is this will be able to make Android phones, chromebooks, Android tablets, all part of the Find My network. You could possibly add your pixel to your find. My and that would be cool.

Yeah, that would be.

Does that mean you'd be able to take like a Pixel phone if you owned one and add it to your Apple account?

Yes.

So that you'd be able to see that device even though it's not an Apple device.

Correct.

Your find my network or your chromebook. Wow.

Yeah, that's what's really exciting about this.

That would be awesome.

Definitely. Well, I guess it'd be awesome.

Bridge the gap.

So it just means more interconnectedness. Speaking of more interconnectedness, Angie, this is a topic that you can talk about. Microsoft is rolling out the Phone Link app to more and more users. I don't have it yet. It still says coming soon. For me, it's a stage rollout and I'm not a fan of those. But what are your initial impressions of Phone Link with the iPhone?

It's got some work to do, but I can connect my phone to my PC. I can see notifications. My screen reader reads them as they come through. I can make a phone call I can call the phone. Part of it works really well. I wasn't able to see, of all things, incoming messages. I can send messages just fine. You can't do audio, you can't do pictures.

Basically.

Right? I like where it's going and I hope it continues the trend. It's good so far. The connection part was kind of you scan a QR code and follow the directions on your PC and your phone and that connects you via Bluetooth. And that's essentially what it is, it connects to Bluetooth. And then when you open I have a laptop, so when I open my laptop, it grabs my phone and starts pulling down notifications right away. So that end is kind of neat. It's geeky, and I'm not sure if it's something I'm not doing, but I can't see incoming messages. I can only see what I send.

That's strange.

So what I've gotten to do with it works super well, I'll put it that way.

Right. It sounds like it's still something that they need to improve. Now, when you scan March, is this.

Everyone version or is this a beta version?

It's live now, I guess it's rolling out to everyone.

It's rolling out, right? It's like a really majorly staggered release.

Kind of like kind of like our.

Slow rollout GPT Four.

Yeah, kind of like the other slow rollout that's happening right now. And that's blue sky oh, yes.

Nice segue, nice segue.

Yeah.

Blue sky is becoming very popular. More and more people are getting invites and a lot of communities have moved over to Blue Sky from Twitter. So Twitter is really tanking right now. I mean, we keep saying that it feels like every few weeks Twitter is tanking again.

I think it can't get any worse, right?

It does.

And the reason is just going to implode and there's going to be so many people just gone to other places that the stock on it is just going to be in the tanker.

Because what's happened now is Elon has allowed other people to get their check marks back because nobody is paying for them. Recently, a lot of people's check marks that have been verified for a long time that have said they're not going to pay for Twitter blue have lost their check marks. So they're jumping ship and they wanted somewhere to go to. So magically they had invites to Blue Sky and so they've tried it out and they like it. Blue sky was created by Jack Dorsey, the creator of the CEO at one point of Twitter, and he said that it would be a decentralized place social network, similar to Mastodon. We have not seen that yet. It's still been one server which requires you to have an invite to but I don't think the grass is necessarily greener. It has its other own problems. Accessibility appears to be an issue. And the word is that the trolls and people that are fans of hate speech are just waiting at the gates to get into this thing.

Sure. Even though they would have Twitter, so they would have their own network.

But.

They can't troll and hate on each other. They have to do it to other people. And then there's a lot of talk about Mastodon losing its chance to become the next big Twitter. And when people say this, I always say, look, Mastodon could not support 300 million people at once. It just can't. It has to be a slow join and people are still joining, but everybody in the media is like, no, Mastodon is not the place to be because you have to figure out where you want to go. And that's confusing.

Yeah. The instances.

Go ahead.

I've heard that Mastodon is trying to help make the sign up process easier for people.

They did, and they made a mistake in doing that. And I'll tell you why. From what I've heard, they've changed the sign up process to promote Mastodon social.

Yes.

And because they did that, apparently 400 accounts were created last night that have been used to spam people on pretty much every Fediverse server.

Wow.

I got it. I think Andrew got one.

I got two.

You got two?

I got two. I got one and I recorded it and I got one, another one right after.

Wow.

I didn't get anything.

And I think it has to do with how much people are visible. It's very interesting though, because, man, I'll tell you what, if they had as much crypto as they said they were giving out to people, somebody be rich.

That's right.

Yeah. So you wouldn't as an administrator of an instance like as you are, Michael, but you wouldn't be able to defderate Mastodon, the main Mastodon server. Right. Because that's the unfortunate part, because you would really shut a lot of people out.

It makes up 20% of Mastodon. It's huge. But there is one thing you can do, is limit the number of posts and amount that can come in from an instance. Mindly Social apparently put out an alert that they are limiting Mastodon social and they are making it to where there's an option that you only see posts from that server if you follow somebody on that server. And that might be what we all have to do.

That might be, yeah.

So I think it's a shame that decisions like that have to happen if.

They'Re going to keep it what it is right now and not turn it into the mess that Twitter became.

Because I always felt like Mastodon has to do it somewhat of an identity crisis. There's always this debate about what we want Mastodon to be. Do we want it? Some people would like it to be a Twitter replacement. Some people say no, they want it to be. And then a lot of people say it's nothing but tech bros on there. It seems like it's hard for are we on the same page about what we want Mastodon to be.

I think it should be able to be different things for different people because there are so many instances for different things. If it's done right, it could be whatever you need it to be.

And there are some people that don't like not retweets, but I don't know what they I forget what they call it. Yeah, they don't want that. They want to stop things like that.

Well, then just don't do it. You don't have to do it.

Yeah, but I think that's the issue is that people are doing stuff that they did on Twitter, not because they want it to be Twitter, but because there's a need to do a certain thing. Sometimes there is a need to quote people.

Well, I do think quote posts need to be better, but I think that and it's a great feature. I have had conversations with folks and they say that it's used for abuse on Twitter and things like that. I've never seen it be used for that, but I've never been in those circles. I've never been in those circles. So I think it just depends on what part of Twitter you're in and things like that. I've never had problems on Twitter, but if somebody gave me problems, I'd block them.

Yeah, well, that's what I did, too. But I noticed during a certain period in our political history, I was getting a lot of stuff from people I didn't know, and I was like, Why am I getting this stuff? I mean, why is the timeline, the algorithm sending me some of the stuff it was sending me? And I don't know why it was weird.

That's why I love mastodon, because there is no algorithm, right? It's just fantastic. It's amazing. The last thing I want to talk about, we've had a very long tech news segment on here, this episode, but this was also part of our discussion. But I want to kind of talk about something before we get on to our second mastodon talk for today, and that's about our Iacast Plus. Iacast plus is our new premium podcast feed where you can listen to outtakes and other content from the Iacast team. And it [email protected] iacast plus. It's a minimum of $3. You can use Apple Pay. We make it very easy to subscribe. So check that out. And you can hear all of our great outtakes from our episodes that we have taken out. So they are very funny. They are hilarious.

I ate Ask Bloopers guys, go check it out. Yes, funny stuff.

So check that out. And then we'll do special events on there as well. So that's very exciting.

And we may have Google iOS coming.

Yes, Google iOS coming up, which will be a special event on the Iacast Plus feed. So very exciting there. So let's continue about mastodon. And that's to bring up the Mona app. And it may be somebody's pick today. But I want to talk about it because it is important. And the reason why I say it's important is because it also ties into subscriptions because it doesn't have one and Ivory does.

I for Mona because that's great. I feel like I'm subscriptioned out.

Yeah.

I feel like subscriptions. Are you're technically paying for a subscription when you bought Office 2017 or whatever version it is? Then there's 2020, and then there's 2023.

You're renting it.

You're technically buying a subscription anyway because you're having to keep up to date. So the fact that we would be paying for software every few years, you're technically doing the same as a subscription. We're just fooling ourselves to think we're not, because a lot of times that old software we have becomes unsupported, insecure, obsolete, or just doesn't even work anymore. But we'll get into all of that in just a minute. I want to go back to Mona, and the reason is the Mona app for mastodon on iPhone, the Mac iPad is just fantastic.

Oh, good. I haven't tried it yet.

And it gives you so many features. My favorite two features are the Communities tab where you can add other servers and just browse that server, their local and Federated feeds, and also the ability to find somebody's profile and go to an option that says Load from Remote Server. Now, what do you guys think that does?

It brings down all your content that you already have on there without having to redo it all from scratch? Again?

No, even better.

I was wrong.

It would take the material directly from the instance. Right? It does do the other instance.

But what is not kept on your instance? Because it pulls down all the posts and things that are on your instance. You see all of their posts and things since you've been following them. But what is the one thing that is not kept on your instance? Who they follow and who they're following.

Yes.

Or who their followers are and who they're following. So Load from Remote Server actually allows for you to see who they're following and who their followers are without actually going to that web page.

No other client does that.

No other client that I know can do that. Yeah.

No, they cannot.

Wow, that's amazing, because that really addresses one of the criticisms that people have about mastodon, is that they can't find people, right? Yeah. I mean, that's one of the big criticisms.

So there's two criticisms search and then that addresses the it addresses communities figuring out where people are and just following the community and finding new people to interact with and the ability to find people to talk to. And I feel like that's huge. What are your thoughts on that?

Go ahead.

I think it's great. I mean, I think if you're somebody who takes the time to post, you don't really want to be talking to yourself, right. You want. Your message to get out there. So I think this is a great step forward in that regard.

Obviously, people like features and the capability of being able to do all the things, so that's really good. And for it to work on all the platforms, if you're a Mac iPhone and iPad user, then that's great. You have actual true native app across the board. I think people love that.

So it looked like when I was looking at it in the App Store, that there are different tiers, different price points, depending on whether you already have Spring. Spring if you had cheaper or if you wanted. I'm trying to think what else there were a couple of tiers, two or three, I think, depending on what the.

Pro and the Pro Max.

Pro Max.

The Pro gives you access on one device.

One device.

Promax gives you access on all of your devices.

Yeah.

Which one did you get, Angie?

Promax. I was a Spring user before, so I just lila Fed.

Well, like we were talking about, there's no subscription. So even if you get the Pro Max, which is the one that gets you on all the devices, it's still only, what, $15 or 15 or $16?

Yeah. That's not reasonable, right? That's absolutely reasonable.

Yeah, that's great. I would definitely pay that. That is not unreasonable to have a native app on all three platforms that sync and do all the things you need.

And it's super accessible. It's really customizable. The feature set is just amazing. It has really good if you're a Bluetooth keyboard user on your iPhone or your iPad, it has really amazing keyboard support.

You can even hook up a game controller and scroll up and down with the Joysticks or the oh, that's cool.

Yeah, that is really cool. Yes.

I don't know that I would use.

That, but go, Michael, you tried this, right?

I have not, actually. But for the sake of doing it, I might have to just try it.

Yeah, just try it and see.

It even shows on their App Store page. And that would be neat if it worked with Voiceover as you're scrolling through a change, that would be neat. But it actually shows on the App Store page. It shows game controller support, so that's really neat.

Well, they do say it does work with Voiceover across all the platforms. That's excellent. I definitely appreciate any developer who takes the time to implement the accessibility features so that everyone can use the app.

It's amazing. It just is really good. I think between us all, we probably use like six different I know at one point I had six different Mastodon clients. And the two that I keep going back to, I like Toot with three O's and Ivory for sounds. But Mona, I use that on the daily. That's the client that I routinely open and actually interact with.

Now, the one that I did like was Toot with two O's and the exclamation mark.

Yeah, that's the one that I use. I'm sorry.

And the reason why I like that one is it has administrator notifications, so if somebody signs up on your server, it will say, so and so signed up.

And it also has fun noises.

Yes.

So usually when I get, like, an app mention or when someone engages with you, you know it right away. That app is so distinctive and you.

Could change the noises. But it does have an elephant noise. Yes, I do like that. It does have the Mastodon app noise. Like, they actually have the original Mastodon app.

Mastodon.

But that's the Mona app. And very exciting stuff. But the main topic I wanted to talk about today, we had a lot of stuff to talk about. This has been one of our more packed episodes of the IA cast.

A lot of stuff going on.

Yeah. And it's just going to get crazier and crazier coming up on the whole keynote announcement stuff. Google I o and then WWDC.

Yeah, it'll be a busy month.

May and June are going to be nuts.

Yes. So Voice Dream Reader, I'm sure everybody who listens to the podcast knows it has gone to a subscription model. It's very buggy because I redownloaded the app and got prompted subscribe. Even though I owned the app, I purchased it. It still gave me that. It's just a bit of.

They could.

Have done it better. And it's kind of like a lot of podcasts talked about IRA when they made changes to their plans, they did not explain things well. So people were very confused about the pricing that they would have to pay. And I feel like that's kind of the same with this. And I feel like this is just one more example of an app that is a subscription. Now that is going to add subscription fatigue to a lot of users. I mean, you have voice, dream. You have bookshare, you have audible, you have kindle. If people saw my subscription, you have your Apple One. Right?

Living is going up. People are actually going to start looking at that stuff. Yeah.

You got to survive. You got to pay to live.

Yeah. I guess the question is, how do we reward developers if we don't like the subscription model? Well, I don't even mind the subscription model so much, but gosh, $60.

$60, though.

I better do $80 for bookshare. I mean, that's nuts. Come on. Now.

Here's my biggest fear, is that once you start hitting 50, 60, $70 for subscriptions, you're really going to have to pick and choose what it is that you're going to use. I don't know about everyone else, but once you hit four, five, six apps at that price, that's really starting to kick into your budget. Budget of what you're going to be spending. And you're going to really have to decide what it is you're going to spend your money on. Because I guarantee you that most people can't afford 50, 60, 70, $80 on all the things.

Right.

You're going to have to really decide what's going to be the things that you're going to pay for. And I don't know, I think developers are going to think twice, or at least I'd like to hope that developers will think twice about how much they're charging. And maybe they would rather have a lot more subscribers at a lesser price than few subscribers at a maximum price.

Well, you know, a service that I really like and I really support and I hate that I had to do this. There's a service on the Mac called Setapp. Have you all heard of this?

Yeah, I have it, actually, currently.

Have you, Angie?

I've heard of it, but I've not used it.

Is that the one where you can get like, tons of different apps and kind of a bundle sort of thing?

$10 a monthly fee and then they have a bunch for apps on there? Yeah.

Okay, cool.

But the thing about it is you're paying $10 a month forever, right, to have the same apps.

Now, when you stop, you lose all those apps.

Right.

You lose the apps.

Now I could buy clean. My Mac is $35 a year, right? Yes. So if I'm paying $10 a year, that's about, what, 120? So then I look at let's see mars Edit Okay, I'll just buy that app and I own it, right?

Right. Yes.

And I just go and get these other apps that I want that are pretty cheap. They're not very expensive. And I've done all of that purchasing, and I own those apps.

Yeah.

Right.

That's how I'd rather I'd rather do it.

So that's kind of the way I'm looking at subscriptions. What are you getting for the money you're paying?

That's right. That's exactly what I bring up.

There's something, though, that I will say that set up does, in My situation, give Me The Ability To Be Able To do like I believe What Michael Is Saying is A Great thing, because You Buy The App, you Own It, you're Done With it. You can use it as much or as little as you want and not feel bad and all of that good stuff. At least if for me, I'm using Setapp, they're adding new apps all the time. And if there's an app I do like and I do want to try it, it's not going to cost me anything to go down the full version of it, download the full version of it and give it a try to make sure, is it something I'm going to like, is it something I'm going to use? And does it work with Voiceover? A lot of times you don't even know. You spend money on something and then it doesn't work with Voiceover or it not turned out to be what it is you were expecting and you end up wasting money. So that's what we've all appreciate about having set up.

Another little trick you can do, depending on how much that app costs, you can go and subscribe to Setap for a month, try it out, cancel your subscription, and then buy the app. That's another option.

Right.

And the reason why I say that is if you say you want to share your Set app with a family, that's another $10 on top of your subscription. Now, another thing that really is painful with Setapp is if you want to add another Mac, it's another addition on your subscription.

Wow.

It's one device for your subscription if.

You get a new Mac.

No?

Okay. That's okay.

One machine at a time. But if you have two Macs, like, I have a MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air and an iPhone. So each of those devices adds like 2-3-I believe, on top of your Set app. So those are things.

So I have a MacBook Pro and then I have the home studio. So I pay 15, and I get it on both the computers. But if there's an iPhone version, I don't have to pay any you do.

Get it built in with that. Okay. And then if you have a family account, that makes it up to $20, plus any other Macs you have or your family has. So that can get expensive. Whereas if you buy the app, you get it for your family. If you have the family with Apple, you get it on five family members.

Machines, all your IDs.

So, again, it's what is the right situation for you and your group? But also, it kind of goes back to Netflix. I'm kind of buying all of the TV series that I really like on itunes because I have more Apple devices. If I were in Android land, I'd buy them on Google Play. Right. But that way, if one day Paramount Plus says we're not making Star Trek anymore, well, then I can just cancel Paramount Plus.

And.

Same for Netflix. Whenever Stranger Things is done, Netflix is going away. Disney plus is a lot more reasonable. It's like $6. And there's a lot of things with that. But when you're looking at $20 for Netflix, however much for Hulu and some of these others, and Netflix just keeps.

Going up and up and up and up and up.

And the password issue as well, that's looming. We have to decide what is the best option for us. And I think that's really what I wanted to really drill home here on the podcast is when we're looking at, like, Voice Dream, what is the right option? Is speech central the right option. Because it's free? Well, maybe they don't have the amount of voices that you like, then look at. You can stay with Voice Dream, but it just depends on what you need for your situation and what you're able to afford will determine what you can do, because with Voice Dream, you're looking at a subscription for iPhone or iOS and a subscription for the Mac. So again, that's getting pretty expensive per year.

So the question is, if we don't like the subscription model, how do we reward developers for how do we incentivize them to continue developing, supporting, marketing their apps into the future?

I think a subscription fee isn't necessarily bad.

Right?

Just at what cost? I understand that they want to make as much money as possible, but some are $10 or $20 a year, and some are 50, 60, 70, $80 a year.

And the thing is, if you pay that price, you don't even know what you're going to get. Maybe you won't get anything.

There's a particular thing too with the latest updates to Voice Stream reader. It just has bug fixes. So we're not really getting anything yet for all this revenue.

And it's just maintaining the app.

Right now here you have a competitor who's willing to give it to you for free. So I definitely would be investigating that and seeing is it going to do all the things that Voice Dream did for me and at a zero cost, and definitely not $60 a year per device. Right. Is that what it is? 60 per year per device?

No, you have to pay for iOS.

For iOS for new if you want it on Mac. Is that going to be a separate $60 a year?

Well, however much they're charging for the Mac version, I don't remember how much that is.

Developers have to keep their apps up to date when the iOS updates come or the Mac updates.

And they need to eat too.

Yes, exactly. So that's what I always think about. Like, I do want to reward developers for what they do because I know it's hard. It's hard work being a developer, I'm sure.

And that's what not many people realize how much work goes into.

Yeah, but it just depends on if the developer is charging a responsible rate for the features that they're adding.

Right.

And so what I want people to take away because we're going to have to wrap up pretty soon. There's so much more we could talk about on this, what I think people need to take away from this and tell me if you guys agree. Be mindful of what you're subscribing. You may hear this app is amazing. It's great. And you may hear about it from a friend. Okay, try the demo. Usually they have like a seven day demo before you subscribe and start paying. Try those things and make sure it's what you want. There's a subscription I have that's $40 a month. Sounds crazy. And it's LinkedIn learning and it's fantastic. It basically can teach you everything from how to code to be a better person in business. And it's a great subscription. I've used it. It used to be called Linda.com and it was a fantastic service and so that's why I keep supporting it. It was bought by LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, but again, it just depends on what your needs are and where you need to save money and how you're going to do that. For me, Setapp was on the chopping block because I could just buy Mars, Edit, Rapid Weaver and clean my Mac and all those kind of things, and it was great for me.

And some people would say subscription to chat GPT plus that's the craziest thing ever. But I couldn't be without it. I just love it.

So it's worth it to me. And I chose to actually stick with Setapp because for me, just clean my Mac and Clear VPN, which are both owned by the same company, the same company that makes Setapp outside of Setapp, they're both subscriptions per year. And so I figure if I want to pay a subscription, I'd rather just pay to Set app. I use those two apps, get the full versions, plus I get a whole library of apps that I also get to play with and use and all of that anyway. So in that aspect, it was kind of a wash for me.

So we're going to have to wrap up here pretty soon. But do you guys have any final thoughts before we move to our picks for the day?

Subscribe responsibly yes.

Pick what you need.

I like that that's the name of the episode that is totally responsive. Yes.

The title.

Yes. That was excellent. Well said. All right, so that's going to do it for our discussion today. But as usual, we have our picks that we would like to go through. So, Marty, you want to kick us off with your pick and where people can find you online?

Sure. So my pick actually is going to be just press record. And the reason why I'm picking that app is A, because it works amazing across all the platforms, mac, iPad and iPhone and the Apple Watch. And there was a conversation I had recently where people were asking, do you use the keyboard on your Apple Watch? Some people said yes, some people said no. It's too much of a pain. Well, just press record saves you a lot of time if you don't want to use the keyboard. Because first of all, it works with voiceover. It's super easy to use, and you can record your audio just like we're doing now. But it also transcribes in text as well at the same time. So you have both, actually. So there you go. Give it a try. It's an awesome tool to have, especially on the Apple Watch. And if anyone wants to get a hold of me, you can reach me at feedback at unmute show.

So I want to point out something. If you go back way in the archives to like episode five, if it's still available of this show, it's like episode five or something like that. I recorded an entire episode of the show on the Apple Watch using just press record.

There you go.

That app, too. It's awesome. I love it. It has a little mic on your wrist. It's beautiful.

It was on the series zero Apple Watch.

Nice.

And I will also add they've updated just press record quite a bit since then, and they continue to update it. And it's not a prescription or subscription. Excuse me. It's a one flat fee, and you get it on all the platforms.

It's wonderful.

There you go.

It's a wonderful app.

All right, so, Lynn, what is your pick for this week and where can people find you online?

Mac Whisper. It's one of my favorite apps, and it will take audio and transform it. Not transform it. What's the word I'm trying to say? Transcribe. Sorry. Transcribe. It into text, and I use it on the Mac. It's very simple to use. Awesome app. And I have the Pro version, but you wouldn't need to get the Pro version. I think the Pro version is, like, $16, which isn't much, and it's not a subscription. It's just a one time thing. But I just think it's an awesome app. And it's very fast, depending on your Mac and how much Ram you have and your processor and all that. So it's pretty resource intensive. I think it tends to choke on itself a little bit. I have eight gigs of Ram, and it does choke on itself a little bit. Like it'll, say, not responding, but eventually it'll straighten itself out and get going again. So I really like this app. I can run an hour worth of audio through it, and it does a beautiful job of transcribing. So I really like that. And I don't have a public email yet, but I'm working on that.

Excellent. Okay, well, we'll have you back on, and when you have that, we can share that out to everybody.

Great.

Excellent. Angie, what is your pick for this episode and where can people find you online?

I pick is Mona for Mac. I like all the iterations of Mona, but Mona for Mac is just a really good Mastodon client. It's a clean interface, super easy to use. Go check it out. And you can find me online at tech enthusiast at Dragonscave Space. That's my mastodon ID.

Excellent. And I think we're coming in right at the wire here. So that's great. Right at the hour. So that's excellent. My pick is the new, well, I guess a year old or two years old. Nintendo Switch OLED edition. I purchased this last weekend. I've been playing with it. Really neat device. I was able to unbox it and set it up. It has magnification really nice and looks really good. Great screen. Great. It doesn't have the best sound, but it does work really well, especially if you hook it up to a TV. The load times are better better kickstand. It has an ethernet port in the base where it didn't before and things like that. So very nice device as where people can find me online. You could find me online at mikedoey's. That's Mikedoise at Techopolis social on mastodon. I'm [email protected] and you could find me on Facebook. Michael Doey. So I'm all over the web so just do a search for me and thank you guys for being here, really appreciate all of you guys. Angie, Lynn, Marty, you guys have been awesome. We've had some great discussions in the very short hour. It feels like been great fun.

Yeah it's an honor.

Thanks for having us.

We hope that you guys will be back on what's that Marty.

Thank you. Thank you, I said.

Yeah. So it's been really good and all of you guys that don't sound like you're the best, I hope you all feel better and yeah it's been really great having you all and we'll see you all next time. Thank you everybody on YouTube and we'll talk soon. Thanks everybody.

Bye.

Later.

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