← Clockwise
Clockwise
644: I Saw 'The Dark Knight,' Right?
00:29:23
Whether we'd wear an Apple AI pendant, the vintage tech bringing us joy, how we feel about AI-generated playlists, and whether to buy an M4 Mac mini before the Apple event.
Loading summary
Transcript65 lines
- [00:03]
A
It's Time for episode 644 of the Clockwise podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, February 18, 2026. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, 30 minutes.
- [00:28]
B
Welcome back to Clockwise the tech podcast where we're leaping into tech even in non leap years. I am one of your hosts, Micah Sargent, and I am joined across the Internet, a good pal, my dear friend. It is Dan the man, Lauren. How you doing, Dan?
- [00:44]
A
I'm doing well. Not many people know Leaping into tech was the original title of this. That's. I made that up right now. You did just made that up.
- [00:52]
B
You leapt into that. I leapt into the lie with abandon. While Dan goes leaping over that edge. Let us welcome our awesome guests. To my left, partner at Lickability, host of Absolutely Crushed, it's MB Bischoff. Welcome back to the show, MB God,
- [01:15]
C
it's so good to be back.
- [01:16]
A
And to my left it is senior developer advocate at GitHub and the newest addition, I believe to the MacBreak weekly podcast, it's Christina Warren. How you doing, Christina? Hello.
- [01:26]
D
Hello. Yes. Yes, that is. That is correct. My first, my first episode will be next week.
- [01:30]
A
Very exciting. I say that only as someone who sat in for. In your chair. I got it warm for you. You're ready to go.
- [01:36]
D
Thank you. So much.
- [01:37]
C
Music over there, is that still happening?
- [01:38]
B
I think they do from time to time, yeah.
- [01:41]
C
Okay, good.
- [01:41]
B
Yeah. Well, I think it is time for us to get rolling. We've got 30 minutes, four topics. Mine for you is this. I'm just curious. If Apple were to make an AI pendant, as the company is being rumored to be doing, would you wear one, given that it would have, in theory, robust privacy protections in place? Mb, we'll start with you.
- [02:13]
C
I don't think so. I kind of got burned a little bit on the Vision Pro. Haven't gotten one of those. Thinking that I would be making a lot of apps for it. Turns out nobody really wanted those. And so it just sort of sits gathering dust on my. On my desk. Also, privacy isn't the main concern. I think for me it's like the. It's like walking around New York City. What would that look like with like a little like Apple pendant on? I suppose if everybody's wearing them in the way that everyone's wearing AirPods, it could eventually become normalized, but I don't think so. The most you'd catch me doing is probably wearing one at like a tech conference or something like that.
- [02:53]
A
Yeah, I think I'm. I'm probably with envy on this one. I. I feel like I, I, you know, I want to say no, just straight off the bat, these things, this whole category of device kind of weirds me out. Even with privacy, you know, promises it's still fundamentally collecting information about the world, about you. And I think there's a social aspect to that that, you know, we've come a long, long way. Have we? We've come a way from like the Google Glass, the earliest days of Google Glass. You know, people wear their Meta Ra and whatever, and there are certainly a lot of these types of devices that are, you know, people are trying to make it happen. I just feel less convinced that it's something that is going to give me the kind of return on investment that I actually, you know, would, would be willing to make that trade off and have something on me that is, you know, performing those various functions. AirPods, you know, sure, they look a little weird, but you know what? I like listening to music and they're great headphones. It works great for me. I'm willing to make that trade off. Uh, even things like smart glasses, I feel like, you know, there is a promise there of functionality that feels compelling enough that I might be willing to wear them at least as like sunglasses outdoors style thing, but just a little bended. I don't know, it just doesn't, it doesn't feel compelling to me. But then again, Apple hasn't had a chance to weave its story about why I will want to record everything happening around me forever and ever and ever. Maybe they'll convince me, maybe not. I don't know. Christina, what do you think?
- [04:20]
D
Yeah, I had a, I had a conversation about this with some friends yesterday and I kind of wound up switching my opinion. At first I was like, because I think the rumor was in addition to the pendant, like, maybe there will be AirPods that will have cameras in them. And I was like, Give me the AirPods with cameras in them. Because, like, I don't know why that seems more palatable to me than a pendant, but I was like, I'm all for it. And then I was kind of thinking about, I was like, do I want everyone to have like a body cam? And the answer to that is like, no. Like I saw the Dark Knight, right? Like, you know, like, I do understand that at a certain point, some of this is all for not if enough other people have it. Whether I have one or don't doesn't matter. I see value in like the meta Ray Ban glasses. I think that they're interesting and useful. I had AirPods was one of the very first, people who had, like a prototype pair out in the wild, and it was remarkable how quickly people got used to them. But A, I don't really believe the privacy stuff, no matter what people want to say, and B, I don't know. I also. These things tend to not be designed for. For people who don't have flat chests. And so that is another kind of concern. I'm like, okay, what's the ergonomics going to be like? So I don't know. I never say never. I could definitely be a hypocrite here, but this is just one of those things that as many privacy concessions as I admit, we've all unfortunately probably kind of lost. This is one that I'm kind of. I've kind of gone back on. I'm like, yeah, I don't think so. I don't love this idea unless you can show me some really amazing, super compelling use case. Like I said, I saw the Dark Knight. We saw how that ended. It was not a good thing.
- [06:10]
B
I will say that I have attempted to use a device similar to that sort of AI pendant I had, the little. I think it was called B. And that experience was awful. I remember.
- [06:27]
C
Why was it so bad?
- [06:29]
B
It was terrible because I was watching a show, and in the show at some. I don't even remember what the show was, but it doesn't matter. There was a part where they had somebody who was being investigated. And later that night, I get a notification, you know, B has your daily summary, and it's in there and it's saying, like, today you were subpoenaed and also investigated by the FBI. You had this happen and had this happen. And I just thought, you know, what I was thinking was, what happens when it hears something from some show and thinks I'm resp. Is there some threshold at which it needs to notify a thought? There are just too many unanswered questions around that. That made me very uncomfortable. And then of course, there's also the idea that, like, you know, consent is real good. And so what is the. Like, what are the bounds around that when it comes to other people being recorded around you Fourth Amendment?
- [07:34]
D
What?
- [07:35]
A
Yeah, we have amendments still. We have rights.
- [07:38]
B
Believe it or not, there are those. So, yeah, I. I don't want to be a hypocrite either, but I know that I've had a terrible experience with these up to this point. And so I would have to, I think, really be compelled that it works differently and works much better in order to. To go forth with something like this. Thank you all for your answers on this topic. Let's go to our next one, which comes from mb.
- [08:04]
C
Yeah. So excitingly, I recently had some poetry that I co authored with Claire Violet published in this publication that exists primarily on Telnet, which if you are young, you might not know, is like a protocol that you can use to connect to remote servers. And it's sort of pre Internet, pre World Wide Web certainly. And it made me think, like, what vintage technology are you still using or have you recently picked up that's bringing you joy? Just sort of by, by the nature of it, Telnet.
- [08:39]
A
Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time, Jar. You just really brought back to me these sense memories of being a teenager and logging in to all the mush role playing games I used to play. You know, this is always, usually the when, whenever these vintage tech topics do crop up as they do during time to time, it's always a good opportunity for me to needle Micah about my 1080p HDTV. But this time I'm gonna go with. For a long time I had, and I still have a Sonos, one of those Ikea Sonos speakers in my bedroom. And I had set it up to play like our local NPR station. When our alarm went off in the morning, I had some problems with it. It was a little annoying and inconsistent at times. And you know, eventually, you know, something stopped working and I didn't fix it. But what I do have is a little beautiful little bedside radio made by a company called, I think it's pronounced San Gene. And it's like a nice little wood, little tiny cabinet about the size of a speaker and just sits on my table. And I just. Now when our alarm goes off in the morning, I roll over and I turn it on and it works every time, unless my child has been playing with the knob, in which case sometimes it's just very loud music that I'm not expecting. But the simplicity of that as a thing, right? Like not only is it just a thing that I turn on and immediately starts to work, but also a thing that requires me to pay no additional money and to use no additional services or no additional technology. It's, it's simply turn a knob and everything. Here comes the news, you know, can't, can't help the news. That part, that part's not so great. But you know, as technology goes, I think it does give me a nice little hit of that nostalgia because as somebody who grew up like, you know, having his parents would always turning the Radio on and listen to the radio in the mornings. I find that it's like a little bit of continuity with my, with my parents life and my childhood. So I do appreciate that Christina.
- [10:43]
D
Yeah, so I love that. First of all, I think that's really, really great. This, I mean this is definitely retro because it's been more years than I think any of us want to admit. The company, I have a lot of problems with Analog. I think that especially some of their drop things with all the various variations of their products is really annoying. But I did get, after however many years wait, the analog 3, the Nintendo 64 FPGA thing and I've had a lot of fun playing my old Nintendo 64 games from childhood and that actually has been. So it's a new device but it's older stuff. So that's something that I've really enjoyed and that's been a thing that I've been doing for the last, actually while I've been recovering a little bit. That's been a fun way to kind of recover a little bit. It's like, oh, okay, I'm going to play Wave Race. And so having those memories come back is, I don't think this necessarily counts per se. It's not quite the same as Telnet, but yeah, playing old Nintendo 64 games, I love that.
- [11:48]
B
You know, I've got to be honest, I must be a ruthless disposer because I don't really have a lot of vintage tech hanging around that I actively make use of. So in this case I'm just going to say books, that's an old technology, a classic. Yeah, books I love, I love from time to time, I love a good physical book. My problem is if I've got a physical book, it's probably going to get written in and notated and highlighted and some, some people don't love that. Excuse me, but I do. And so yeah, I, I, I love a good book and I love notating in a good book. Mv, why don't you round us out here?
- [12:35]
C
Yeah, sure thing. Year or so I've been shooting a lot more film and I started shooting on a new film camera called the Pentax 17. But over time I've really come to love shooting on old film cameras. Specifically this camera that was introduced in the late 50s called the Nikon F. It was like the first commercially available SLR film camera. And it just feels incredible. Every dial, every button, everything on it just feels like it was built to last forever. So that's my answer.
- [13:09]
B
Alrighty folks, we have reached Halftime here at Clockwise. Which means it's time for me to tell you about our sponsor this week, this episode of Clockwise brought to you by Insta360. Now, it's possible that you already know Insta360 for the action cams and 360 degree or 360 cameras, but they've taken all that imaging expertise and brought it to the webcam world with their newest conferencing products. There's a new Insta360 wave and a Link 2 Pro, of course, the flagship 4K AI webcam. Now, Insta360 sent us these devices so I had the opportunity to try them and they're super cool. I'm really loving the webcam. I actually had the first version of the webcam, the second version now out. And it's really nice having this little PTZ camera that I can use, especially in my office where sometimes I'm trying to show things in the space and I can move the PTZ around it and zoom in. And it's got these cool little gestures that you can do to zoom in with just your hands. Really neat stuff. The Link 2 Pro has a large sensor with dual native ISO and HDR. That's going to mean of course, that you get crisp, detailed 4K video whether you're in a dim home office or you're sitting in front of a bright window. It even creates that natural DSLR style bouquet so you stand out from your background without it looking artificial. And the audio is also awesome. That's where it really shines because it has a dual microphone system, omnidirectional and directional, and uses AI noise cancellation and beam forming. So you can switch between four different pickup modes if you're in a noisy environment. Focus mode isolates your voice if you're leading a meeting. Wide mode captures everyone in the room, kind of like having a studio mic built right into your webcam. And with the built in eyesight, AI can transcribe, summarize and even visualize your meetings in real time. You get a clear transcript and key takeaways instantly and you can sync everything tools like Notion with one click. So instead of scrambling to take notes, you can actually focus on the conversation and let the AI handle the rest. It's a serious upgrade for creators, for streamers, for professionals who want to level up their setup without adding a bunch of extra gear. If you are looking to elevate your video, audio and productivity all at once, check out the Insta360 wave and link 2 Pro at insta360.com that's insta360.com or you can just click the link in the show notes. Our thanks to Insta360 for their support of this show and all of Relay. All right, we are back from the break. Dan, tell us about your topic.
- [15:49]
A
All right, well, Apple's latest set of betas, 26.4, brings, among other features, the ability for artificial intelligence, machine learning to make you a playlist based on a prompt that you write in. I'm curious to know if you've used any similar features in competing music services. Is this a feature that appeals to you or do you just want to make your playlist the old fashioned way? Christina?
- [16:11]
D
Yeah, so actually, I guess it was probably two and a half weeks ago. I did use this for the first time with Spotify and with what other AI playlist builder is, and I went in with fairly low expectations. I was like, this is not actually going to generate a good playlist. And I do have some complaints about how the Spotify implementation, which is still in beta, works. Namely it will just generate a brand new playlist if you make any sort of alterations to the prompt rather than kind of having to wait a version things, which is annoying. But I was actually really impressed with what it did and the fact that it could be integrated with your listening history and with songs that you have added to multiple lists and, and things like that. And so I actually really, really like the feature. And it's one of those things that you can even like have it set on a cadence where it'll, you know, update itself based on, on the frequency that you determine and you can, I think by default it's 25 songs, but you can be more songs than that or less songs. And you can say, okay, give me my favorite or my most listened to songs from this year or from this genre or similar to these types of artists. And I think it's actually pretty great. I'm a person who loves to create my own playlist and it's a thing that I really enjoy doing, but sometimes you just want to have an easier way of just being like, all right, just put together some of my favorite, you know, emo night, you know, songs that, that, you know, that I've listened to a lot and not mad at it at all. So
- [17:45]
B
that's how I feel too, not mad at it. I think that it's really. I've, I've also used this AI feature in, you know, in beta and that's my way of wanting to create playlists. Frankly, I. I want to be able to just type in, you know, put these three artists together and then have it, you know, create some playlist that sounds good. I love the idea of being able to say it's a.
- [18:17]
C
It's a.
- [18:18]
B
It's a rainy afternoon and I'm drinking a cup of coffee and needing to feel inspired. And then it creates a playlist for me based on that. That's just such a cool idea. And I've always appreciated not Apple's playlists that are automatically generated the. For us and all that kind of stuff. They haven't been great, but Spotify has. That's why I have a subscription to both, is because Spotify is the place that I go to for kind of the automatic generation of stuff. And traditionally that's been where I've gone for that. And then Apple Music is the place where I just have my music library. So, yeah, I'm happy that Apple is getting into that and I hope that it's better than some of the music suggestion stuff they've done thus far. I'd love to hear what your thoughts
- [19:12]
C
are, MB I don't think this is for me and I think part of the reason, and this is a bit of a brag, but part of the reason is that I am connected with and I'm even dating so many people who are so passionate about music. My wife is a musician. My partners are like music nerds. I'm dating a dj. Like, there are so many people if I need a playlist that I can just be like, hey, babe, can I get a playlist that. I don't think I need a robot to do it, but it is interesting. I have tested this stuff a couple of years ago when it was less sophisticated, and I didn't really like it. And it's interesting to hear that it seems like Christina, especially for you, who makes a lot of playlists, that it's working well enough that you would use it.
- [20:00]
D
It.
- [20:02]
A
Yeah, these are all great answers. I'm. I'm fascinated by the range here and. And I think it's because music is something that is so personal and some of us have people, resources we can turn to and help us with this, and some of us don't. Some of us are adrift on islands of not knowing what songs we want to listen to or should listen to. That's me. I have a weird taste in music and I do make playlists occasionally. A lot of times they're. If I'm like, working on a book and I, like, make a playlist of songs that I, you know, want to be in the groove for, for writing something. But other than that, I tend not to. But I do use a lot of them, the Apple Music stations, including the, you know, my station thing, to try and play stuff when I'm just like. I'm just, you know, want to hear a mix of things, some of which I like, some of which I don't know. And having the ability to create a playlist that's more targeted, I think is. It's very attractive as an idea because, like Micah said, like, being able to sort of dial in exactly what you're looking for in any given moment has a real appeal to it. I don't know how well it works. I'm kind of curious to see how Apple's implementation of it will actually deliver on that, because I have found, though I use the station feature a lot in Apple Music, sometimes it's a lot better than others. And I imagine that will probably be true with these AI playlists, too. So I'm glad they're doing it as a something that, you know, a lot of competitors are doing and therefore feels like something that they should offer. But we'll see when this actually ships, how well it really works. Thank you all for your thoughts on that. Let's go to our final topic, which comes from Christina.
- [21:33]
D
Okay, so this is also. This is doubling as, like, shopping slash buying advice. All right, so there's an Apple event in two weeks. So should, you know, you slash, we buy a base M4 Mac mini. Let's say maybe this is like a second one before the price inevitably rises for the M5 models and you are slash, we are still within the return window.
- [21:56]
B
Ooh, if you're in the return window, I don't see why not. Right. Like you're saying, get one while the price is low, but then if it's not enough, you would return it and go for the M5. Is that the question?
- [22:11]
D
Yeah, basically. Right, so, like, you know, maybe like next week sometime spend $500 using the, you know, student discount, maybe potentially get a Mac Mini, and then see, okay, is the M5 going to be so much better or is the price going to be commiserate or not?
- [22:29]
B
I think there's no reason not to do that. It's a great idea to test what's possible. And frankly, I think it's a delightful idea, particularly if you, if you jog on down to Oregon to knock off the sales tax as well. Christina, join us here in Oregon. Knocking off the sales tax. Yeah, yeah. I don't have anything else to add. I think it's a great idea. Mb, what are your thoughts?
- [23:01]
C
I'll play devil's advocate here. Please don't do this. When I, when I worked at Apple retail, people would do all kinds of things like this. And it's just like dealing with the returns is a pain and then packing the things back up, if you're gonna do it, at least be really, really nice to the person who's handling your return.
- [23:20]
A
As somebody who at times obsessively keeps like all the boxes and like even worries about peeling those stickers. Can I f stickers back on device. I hear what MB's saying. That said, you know, I think if it's something that you have a better than even chance of keeping, you know, why not, right? Like get yourself. If you need that, that M4 Mac mini and you feel like it's a good deal and the deals are only going to get worse, you should go ahead and grab one. I'm intrigued to see if they do release a new M5 Mac mini and whether it will be better. I mean, this could be the fastest update to a Mac Mini maybe in years. I don't know. The Mac Mini, not known for its frequent updates. I have an M2 Pro Mac mini and I reviewed the M4 model when it came out and was so envious of the tiny little form factor that I strongly considered whether I should sell my M2 Pro Mac mini and get an M4 instead. I did not. I still have that giant, so big M2 Pro Mac mini. So I will be interested to see if the M5 sort of. They, they show a new commitment to keeping the, the Mac Mini in sync with the rest of its products. But yeah, I say if you need it, you want to get it, why not go for it? Christina, you have our permission. Except for.
- [24:32]
D
Okay, all right, well, I appreciate that. And honestly, great, great, great call NBA. Making things easy for the employees. My thought would be if I do do this and buy a secondary Mac Mini, I would not even open it. It would be one of those things that I would literally just not even open and so it would be returned like completely.
- [24:49]
C
Then you've got my approval. You can do it.
- [24:53]
A
Everyone agrees. Three. Three out of. We all agree you should start using Trident. Three out of three clockwise panelists agree.
- [25:04]
B
Alrighty, folks, we are nearly to the end of this episode of Clockwise. I do want to remind you, head over to Clockwise Social where you can get some cool clockwise swag and help support the show. All right. My bonus topic is here. I'm curious, do you have a favorite non emoji symbol or symbols that would make up something like an emoticon that you use regularly? And yes, this is going to require some description on your part, given the audio nature of this podcast. Mb, we'll start with you.
- [25:38]
C
I am so glad that you asked me this question, Micah, because I do. I have a great answer for this. A lot of places online that I exist and also in a lot of my private communiques, I use a combination of of two unicode characters. The lower half circle, which if you're playing the home game is U+25E1, and the combining diuresis, which again is U0308. So if you want to picture this, it's a little half circle from left to right and then above it it's two dots. So it's a smile that is already oriented in the correct orientation. It's beautiful.
- [26:23]
B
Yeah, you inspired this question when you sent me those yesterday.
- [26:30]
A
I ignored the emoticon part of this and I do still use emoticons because again, I, as I earlier dated myself, I'm from the age before we had emoji, but I thought of like typographical symbols and for that I picked my favorite, which is the obelisk, sometimes also called the obelisk or the dagger, which is, you know, if you're flipping through a book and you sometimes see footnotes that have the little, you know, cross shaped dagger thing. I don't know, I just love all the various, you know, typefaces that do their own version of the dagger. I also like anything that adds a little drama to text and you know, it's stabbing at the text.
- [27:07]
C
I don't know, single or a double dagger guy.
- [27:10]
A
Oh, I mean, as many daggles daggers as you need, I think you go, but like you can dual wheel. I'm fine with that.
- [27:16]
C
Okay.
- [27:16]
A
Double daggers are fine, but yeah, there's nothing. The elegance of the single dagger cannot be overstated.
- [27:21]
D
Christina, I'm trying to think here. I mean, I wish that I were as like creative enough to be able to do this or like MB to like know like the Unicode like code so that I could, you know, use these symbols appropriately. I did used to have like for text completion, like a thing that I would just type in like asterisk, asterisk, shrug and it would do like, like the like kind of shrugged ASCII character thing. And I used that for years. The problem was is that that's really never sunk. Like it doesn't sync well on mobile. And so, and then like, you know, if you have corporate laptops and things like that, like that becomes a whole other issue. But that would probably be the closest is one that I used to use regularly for a really long time.
- [28:02]
B
Yeah, the shrug emoticon is mine. I. Mine is semicolon S, I guess. I guess I type it all the way out, semicolon S H R U G. And then it turns into the shrug emoticon. I love that one. The shrug options in emoji are just not as good. It doesn't quite capture.
- [28:24]
A
Yeah, I'm amused because I'm an HTML entity nerd from way back. So mine is ampersand shrug semicolon.
- [28:30]
B
Oh, that's funny.
- [28:31]
D
That's really good.
- [28:33]
B
Yeah, so I just, I adore it and I think it's great. And I loved all of your answers as well. Folks. If you would like to get ad free episodes of the extra unwound episode every week, you can become a member of Clockwise. Go to Relay FM Clockwise to sign up. Up is just $7 a month, $70 a year, and in doing so, you'll help support the show. All right, that brings us to the end of this episode. All that's left is to thank our awesome guests. Mb thank you so very much for being here this week.
- [29:01]
C
Thank you all for having me.
- [29:03]
A
And Christina Warren, thank you so much for joining us.
- [29:05]
D
Thank you very much for. For having me. Glad to be here.
- [29:08]
A
And Micah, we'll be back next week, but until then, we remind everyone listening out there, watch what you say and
- [29:13]
B
keep watching the clock.
- [29:15]
A
Bye, everybody.