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Clockwise
663: Fear-Based Approach
00:29:59
Apple's price hikes and our buying plans, our beta OS strategies, dealing with subscriptions, and Meta's new glasses fees.
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- [00:03]
A
It's Time for episode 663 of the Clockwise podcast from Relay, recorded Wednesday, July 1, 2026. Clockwise, four people, four tech topics, 30 minutes. Welcome back to Clockwise, the tech podcast that's kicking off the second half of the year. My name is Dan Moran, and I am joined across the Internet for this second half of the year by my good friend, my pal, the one and only Micah Sargent. How are you doing today, Micah?
- [00:40]
B
I'm doing well, Dan. Before you reminded me that we are past the halfway point. That's pretty wild.
- [00:47]
A
Downhill from here, uphill from here. Neither of those are good. It's all straight. Straight sailing from here.
- [00:53]
B
I never thought about that. It's all bad.
- [00:55]
A
Don't stop thinking. All right, this is, of course, the show where we INV on two fantastic guests to talk about four tech topics. To my left this week, it is CEO and lackey over at Rogue Amoeba, Paul Cafaz. Welcome back, Paul.
- [01:07]
C
Thank you, Dan. It's only the 182nd day of the year, so we are not past the halfway point.
- [01:13]
A
Sweet.
- [01:14]
B
And to my left, writer and editor at Wired, ProPublica, the Wall Street Journal, it is the prolific Meg Marco. Welcome back to the show, Meg.
- [01:24]
D
Thank you so much for having me. Very excited to begin the second half of the year with you folks.
- [01:29]
C
Well, almost.
- [01:30]
A
Unless you want to be Paul and his weird footnote.
- [01:34]
D
I like the second half. I'm excited to be in the second.
- [01:36]
A
Okay. All right, second half. All right, second half team. All right, so to kick things off, my question for you all. Do Apple's recent price hikes, as well as the industry's price hikes in general, change your plans for buying any specific technology? Are you looking at the equipment you have and thinking, I can eke it out a little bit more, or do you just forge ahead with getting what you need? Prices be damned, Paul.
- [01:58]
C
Prices be damned. No, that's not true at all. I don't have a specific plan for buying hardware that, you know, previously I had. I would get a new phone every year, and then I switched to every two years. And so now I'm thinking maybe I'll get a new battery after two years because that seems like a good way to save some money. Battery prices aren't shooting through the roof, and new phone prices almost certainly will. So I don't have a particular plan where I do this every so often besides the phone. And if anything, it'll slow things down a little bit there. But I can't imagine this won't have a chilling effect Overall, it's interesting to me as someone who sells software, because the more Mac users, the better. And when Apple debuted the Neo, what was that like, four days ago? March? Yeah, that seemed great. There's going to be more Mac users. If there's a cheap Mac out there, it'll bring more people to the platform. And now that cheap Mac is not quite so cheap and the rest of the Macs are more expensive. So it went from feeling like there was a tailwind here to a headwind in terms of Mac adoption. So personally, I don't really. It won't change too much, but it may slow me down a little bit. And professionally, I'm a little worried just in terms of getting more users to the platform.
- [03:17]
B
You know, Dan, a wise person once said, it's all downhill from here or uphill.
- [03:23]
A
They're both bad.
- [03:26]
B
And that's how I'm feeling.
- [03:27]
A
So true.
- [03:27]
B
I was prepared because Mr. Cook prepared us for it. But it was, as they say here in this neck of the woods, bummer city the morning that Apple made that announcement, because it was just kind of like, ugh, here we go again. A company that should, in theory, be isolated from these sorts of things, given how much power and control they have over, like, ordering chips is also being impacted, or if not being impacted, then making that impact fall on us, which tells other companies that they can also make that impact fall on us. And so, yeah, I think my plan is I'm kind of falling in line with what Paul's saying. Let's. Let's buy batteries. Those are not as expensive. And yeah, we can keep using our devices for longer. I think that's the way I want to go. Meg, what about you?
- [04:15]
D
I like a deal anyway, so I'm not changing in that regard. I kind of always have wanted my devices to last as long as I feel like whatever the new thing is is really compelling. But when I look at what is coming out, a lot of it is kind of like horny AI stuff that I'm probably not going to turn on anyway. Honestly, it's just not super compelling. So, you know, between that and like, honestly, I'm kind of worried about my, like, steak budget, right? Like, I have a, like meat. Like, like meat. Like, other prices are going up, right? So, like, I have a very significant carne asada habit that I've got to worry about. And I think that my Apple upgrade budget is kind of being depleted by the prices of beef. So, you know, like, that's maybe not the most fun answer, but it is. It's the best answer. I'm, I'm looking for other things I can put cumin and lime juice on before I'm worrying about getting a new iPhone. My iPhone is great. I love it. I love the one I have. I have a, like a 14 pro and it's great. Still, I have no problems with it. So maybe this too shall pass and then I'll be in the market again.
- [05:28]
A
You know, I, I think it's interesting. And Micah, maybe you also agree with this. As somebody whose job is often reviewing and or writing about the latest technology, it does feel at times that they've got us in a bit of a bind. Because I do look at things like, all right, Apple's going to come out with this foldable iPhone. I already knew it was going to be expensive and was trying to budget in advance of the fact that like, okay, this might be something I want to cover and write about a bunch and now I have to budget even more. But it certainly does make me look at all the other devices I have and be like, well, all right, how do I, how do I eke a little bit more life out of these? I mean, and I'm fortunate in that I, I bought a new laptop last fall and I think like that's good for a while. My Mac mini's holding for a while. The iPad I barely use will be fine. The biggest casualty was, you know, I was starting to think about, well, does my, my kid uses an iPad sometimes. And one of the things I was interested in is the new parental controls that Apple talked about this year. And his iPad is old enough that you can't use those because it won't upgrade to the latest software. And you know, certainly it may only seem like 50 bucks, but going from 350 to 400 for one of those base level iPads does make you halt a bit and be like, really only uses to watch videos. What am I concerned about? What's the worst that could happen? Anyway, for me I think it's a matter of being strategic and like, what are the things I actually am going to need in order to do my job as opposed to what are the things that I can keep stretching for a while, which is also why I drive like a 14 year old car. Anyways, thanks again for your thoughts on that. Let's go to our second topic which comes from Paul.
- [07:03]
C
All right, beta season is upon us as Apple users, any Apple users, what is your personal policy when it comes to running beta oss?
- [07:13]
B
Put them on my phone as soon as possible.
- [07:16]
C
Oh, you're a lunatic.
- [07:17]
B
Go ahead. Yes, well, okay. So my true personal policy is leading up to the event where the beta software is announced. This is specifically for Apple stuff because I don't do this with every company. I do a full backup of the devices that I'm going to be using like the full encrypted backup using imazing. And then I. Yeah, typically on day one we'll install the beta. I didn't do it on day one this year I did wait until day two to hear if there were any sort of immediate you, you put it on and it's going to mess things up horribly situations and didn't hear anything about that. So installed it on day two and plan to run and use it throughout the summer. I have two different show that are specifically shows where I teach people how to use the features for their various Apple devices. So being able to get ahead of everything is incredibly important to me. So I've got to get those betas going on my devices and yeah, I sort of hope for the best every time. What about you Meg?
- [08:26]
D
Well, I guess there's a difference between sort of personally and professionally. Professionally like you, I have a job where I kind of need to pay attention to these things and in that way we have some devices, we try to set those up, we look at that. Personally I'm a coward.
- [08:43]
C
No, no, you're an intelligent person.
- [08:46]
D
Thank you very much. I proceed with fear and you know, I try to pay attention to when there's know important security updates and be responsible and not let it go like out of date. But I'm, I'm definitely not the first in line to put that on my personal device because yeah, I have a fear based approach. Yeah Dan.
- [09:13]
A
I guess I'm, you know if they, if I could jump a motorcycle over all the betas I guess I would do that because I also install the betas very, very quickly. Generally though, I have a, I have a strategy for doing like so oftentimes I'm in, I'm you know, traveling. I'm in Cupertino when during wwdc. And so the only device that I will generally update, you know, while I am there is my iPad if I have it with me because it is the least critical thing I have. Like if that craps out on me, it's fine. I usually have a laptop. I got my phone. It's not going to stop me from doing anything. So I did that. This time around I installed the beta on my iPad. In fact I was like, like I remember I was testing out Siri AI while I was sitting in sfo, having my lunch, waiting for my flight. And then when I got home, I, you know, bit the bullet and installed on my laptop because I have a desktop Mac that I keep on the current version. And, you know, I did the phone too. Why not? Why? As long as we're at it, we'll just do it. And in part of that is because looking at a. I write the iOS reviews every. Every fall for 6 col, so it behooves me to spend as much time with it as possible. In particular this year, I think it was a real challenge because the Siri AI features, which are obviously the tentpole, really do require you to have like, your stuff on the device. And I always think that part of it is like, well, you gotta live with it and you gotta be trying these features out. You can't have it on like a. Like having a separate device is fine, but like, it's like having a computer that's not connected to the Internet. Sooner or later you're like, I don't know, I'm just tapping around doing stuff. But it doesn't, it doesn't become part of my workflow or part of my life. But especially with Siri AI, where it really benefits from having all your personal context, I felt like I need to do it here because this is where all my stuff is and I have been using it like. And it's not without its challenges. I think the betas in the last several years are generally, you know, more stable on average. It's. They're not without their bugs and their quirks and things that don't work, but oftentimes they're things that are more annoying than showstoppers for me. And so, you know, and the betas do tend to come out fairly frequently. And so generally you'll see stuff get fixed in. In relatively short order. Although many of my shortcuts are currently broken waiting for that next beta. So I guess I'm. I'm evil knieveling it over here. Maybe that's. Maybe that's. Maybe that's brave or foolish. Your. Your choice. Paul, why don't you wrap us up?
- [11:41]
C
Well, so I realize having now just asked this, that I asked the wrong people because you're all people who do need, professionally need to install the betas. My take.
- [11:50]
A
The wrong people. It's fine.
- [11:52]
C
My take is that almost nobody should be running these in terms of just average users and Apple right now. Nobody should, because it's supposed to only be the Developer betas. But Apple unveils their public betas probably this week, next week. And I don't see much upside for people running those, just, you know, average users, because the downside is things don't work. Things are broken, things are half done. And the upside is maybe you get access to some new features early that are going to come in September or October anyway. But like you, like all three of you, I do have devices where I have some of this stuff. And Dan, you made a really good point that this year, the Siri AI stuff does need your real data to really be useful. So I do have it on. I also have an iPad that if it craps out, I do not care about. But it does have my email and my text messages. And so I've been able to test Siri AI a little bit and see how it does with my own data. But, yeah, I keep it off of my personal devices. I have test devices for work. But for anyone listening, I would suggest. Dan, you're right. They have been better in the past several years, but there's still not a
- [13:06]
A
whole lot of upside.
- [13:07]
C
There's still betas, and there's not a lot of upside to using them if you don't need to be using them.
- [13:12]
A
All right, that's two topics down, two topics left to go. Which of course means it's Halftime here, clockwise. And this week's episode is brought to you by the wonderful, the fabulous people, Us. Yeah, it's brought to us by all your great clockwise merchandise that you can find at Clockwise Social. Hats, T shirts, mugs, tote bags. If you ever. If you can, send in a picture of yourself wearing, like, one of each item, really, to me, that would be. We'll send you a free subscription or something. You probably already have one. I don't know. Anyways, if you'd like to support the show, go to Clockwise Social and pick up some great merchandise. We really appreciate it.
- [13:45]
D
Thank you.
- [13:46]
A
And with that, halftime is over, and I will turn it over to Micah.
- [13:49]
B
I've got a lot of subscriptions and need to get a handle on things, and I was curious, do any of you use apps or services or other tech to help you budget or keep track of spending, particularly when it comes to things like subscription services? And there are a lot of offerings out there, especially with AI getting in the game. And I was curious, how do you keep a handle on things? Meg?
- [14:15]
D
So I love this topic, but I definitely don't want a subscription to help me with my subscription. Like, that's where I'm at like, that's, that's not, that's not the move. I know it's, it's not for me. Maybe it's for other people. I can't speak to that. That's not the move for me. But I love pausing and then canceling stuff. That's what I do. Right. So most things will have a, hey, you can just pause this for three months, like retention offer. There's also other things where you can just get a better price if you try to cancel, which is also really, really fun. You should do that all the time. But if I pause something for like three months and then I don't really notice, I know I can just cancel it. Good point.
- [14:56]
B
Yeah.
- [14:57]
D
That is, that is how I deal with my emotional like attachment to like, oh, I do. Do I watch this? Do I need this? It's like, well, let's see, let's see if I do. And then sometimes I'm like, oh yeah, look at all the stuff that's come out in the last three months that I want to watch on this service. And then I turn it back on again. I do that all the time. Maybe eventually they're going to figure it out and get mad at me, but it hasn't happened yet. So I can safely recommend this technique to everyone else. Also, I really like subscribing to things through Apple because they do make it a lot easier to cancel and you can just cancel and it's good and cheers to them for that. Ux. It's, it's really, really good. But I seem like way more frugal than I actually am on the show. So yeah, I'm awesome.
- [15:43]
C
You got to save all that money for the steak you're blowing money on.
- [15:48]
D
And now you've invited the entire Internet over to my house. So I really need to, I need to go to Sam's club and start chopping up my own stuff right up the steak budget.
- [16:00]
A
So I think you're the thing that makes it at the end there about Apple was it's kind of the way I, it's my default for trying to do things because it's so easy to get a top down look from your Apple account at all the things you've subscribed to if you have it all in one place. I make liberal use of the free trials and also doing the classic this is my move. If I, if I need to subscribe to something for a limited time, I subscribe and then immediately cancel it because you usually pay upfront for your like month or whatever. And Then it turns off the auto renew, you still get access for that month. And in fact this works great with free trials too because in most cases it's like, okay, you get a 7 day or 14 day free trial. I will sign up for the 7 day, 14 day free trial and cancel it immediately so I don't get bit. I've occasionally messed up on this. The other day I was trying to subscribe to something that I used to have for free, for free via my library, which is also my next tip for you. And it said it had a 14 day free trial. And I didn't realize because I was distracted as I was clicking through that I ended up paying for a year's worth. That's like, that is not what I was trying to do. Apple did refund me on that one, which was nice. And like Meg, I do turn things on and off and find very often that there are deals to be had. Dropbox is a great example. I was like thinking about turning off like I paid a little extra for Dropbox and it like they were so much. Please, please, please don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. Don't turn me off, don't do it. I'll give you half off. And I was like, half off? That's pretty cool.
- [17:30]
B
Wait, let me go cancel my Dropbox subscription.
- [17:33]
A
Seriously, I was, I. They really. You clicked through so many screens and you, they're like, okay, what if we cut you a deal? So yeah, library is another good. Is my suggestion in general for both avoiding subscription fees because they have access to many things, if you're talking about like streaming services, but also your library may have links to a lot of other, you know, publications and as well as some apps and other stuff that you may be able to get free or at a discount, which is great. And then my only other suggestion I think is, you know, you check your credit card statements. Like I try to keep mostly my subscriptions to like a card so that I can quickly go and look at the statements on that card. But it does get tricky when you have things that might be a yearly subscription or a monthly subscription. And so I don't know, you could probably build yourself a little shortcut to keep track of all your subscriptions when you make them. All right, I'm thinking I'm going, I'm going rogue here. Anyway, that's my thoughts. Paul, what about you?
- [18:30]
C
I have, I was just looking at my Apple account and the subscriptions tab there is very easy to get to, but obviously that Only covers anything you're buying via Apple. So Maika mentioned Patreon and all sorts of other subscriptions you can have. I have, I feel like this, this ridiculous text file that I curate came up last episode. I have a text file called Recurring Items and it is reminders that are in my calendar just in case my calendar ever goes kaput. And one of the things in this Recurring Items document is the subscriptions that I have. So I can see I've got Amazon Prime, I've got my calendar, I've got a couple of Patreon subscriptions, and then I've got the Apple stuff in there. So I just have this document that I can look at anytime. I probably curated it from credit card statements, but now it's just all in there. And this is supremely low tech. It is a text document, but I handcrafted it myself. So I haven't used any of the various apps that I see these ads for that are like, oh, you had three different Spotify subscriptions somehow, idiot. And the app will tell you, hey, cancel at least two of those. Maybe all three. So I'd be, I'll be curious, Micah, if you do, if you really feel you got to get a handle on it and you try one of those apps, I'll be interested to hear how it goes. But for me, I think I have it under control enough that just this tech, this text document handles it for me.
- [20:00]
B
I used to do a lot more tracking of things and then the different banking apps that I've used offered a bunch more tracking insights and everything else, and I started to use those and then I stopped paying attention to them and I need to go back to paying attention to them. And so I just, yeah, I was curious if there was some sort of universal truth of, of the, the best way to do this. But it sounds like we've all got, you know, slightly different approaches. And thank you all for the, the tips and tricks as well. Let's go to our next topic, which comes from Meg.
- [20:35]
D
Okay, so today the Verge has a story about how the new Meta Glasses have a subscription, which I guess that's not surprising, but it has a 15 hour per month rate limit for a feature that they say works without being connected to the Internet. So my question is just like, what are we doing? What are we doing here? Like, like, are we paying for this? Are, are we just going to use AI to build our own cloud solutions? What do we do? What are we doing here, you guys?
- [21:08]
A
First of all, I just question, yeah, what are we doing Here, really, I'm going to stand up and do the slow like, thing for Meta here to, to just, you know, in, in, in recognition of Meta. Just totally pulling a Meta like this just feels so much like their business model is like, we'll introduce this cool new like, thing for you. Yeah, we're going to charge you. It's going to be a subscription fee. Like you bought that. You don't get everything for free, please. We need to occur like some recurring revenue here. It doesn't shock me that they, they did the subscription, but it does make me, you know, wonder if that will dent the enthusiasm for this particular product for sure. As your broader point about what we're doing here, I mean, I think the answer is we're slowly paywalling off every single aspect of existence in one way or another so that we can all manage our subscriptions, because we will have nothing but subscriptions. I find it strange to like, have these features that are locked off like this when they feel more compelling. And also just because the fact that they claim that it's all done on device, like, I don't even. Yeah, what are we doing here? Right? Like, why are we gating off something that doesn't seem to have a resource limitation other than to provide some form of recurring revenue for Meta, it does seem very strange that they're doing it, maybe like they've made some sort of licensing choice. But I was also reminded by the report earlier this week that Meta is also investigating making its own predictions market, because of course they are. So I guess my, my feeling with Meta in general is that I, I once think I cracked that. You know, Mark Zuckerberg is out here trying to find out what happens if you build a company entirely out of pivots. And this just feels like the latest example of that is like, well, we built this thing, but what are we going to make money out of? And the answer is, well, let's just charge people to use parts of it. So, yeah, the answer is what we're doing out here, not great, doesn't exactly parse, but I'm going to stick with it. Paul?
- [23:14]
C
Well, I'm, I'm very uninterested in these glasses in particular, and I'm uninterested in hanging out with someone wearing these glasses because they're creepy. And so the fact that they also have a bad business model or an exploitative business model doesn't shock me and doesn't really bother me because I'm not interested in them, period. But broadly, I like owning things. I Like actually owning something that I have paid for and not needing to continue paying for it. This really reminded me. I bet you all remember the BMW's heated seats. Oh, yeah.
- [23:49]
B
That's what I was going to bring up.
- [23:51]
C
This is exactly the same thing where everything is in your car. It's all there, and whether you pay for the subscription or not, it should all just work. And it sounds like the same thing with these glasses where there's a feature that works offline. There shouldn't be a reason to have a switch on it, except that they want to make more money. The hopeful thing is that, hey, that heated seat subscription went away. It did not work. People were outraged enough that it didn't work and that they don't sell that right now. The pessimistic view is that, hey, companies keep trying this and I don't know what we can do about it. So, Meg, what are we doing here? Being annoyed and hopefully, hopefully boycotting this sort of thing where it really feels like we're getting gouged. In my case, like I said, for these glasses, there's no chance I'm going to buy them. But if. If Apple tries something like this and it's on a device that I have and it's something that I actually want at a. At a minimum, I'll be annoyed.
- [24:46]
B
I. Yeah, I have an outsized amount of frustration about the concept of having a thing and then someone say, some company saying, you can't use the thing that it can do unless you pay us more. That specifically the heated seat things was the first instance of that where I wanted. I don't know, I wanted a turkey leg in that moment so that I could break the bone in half in rage. So that's where I go, turkey legs. You might have steak. I've got turkey legs.
- [25:20]
D
There's so much meat in this episode.
- [25:22]
A
It's a Ren faire in here.
- [25:24]
B
All the meat that's fit to print anyway. I just can't with this. I think that it's ridiculous. I think that it's wrong. And I think that it is more evidence of, like, the Steam machine cost Apple raising its prices, a subscription service for this nonsense.
- [25:44]
A
We got.
- [25:45]
B
Stop. What are we doing here? Meg said it best. What are we doing? All right, that's my thoughts, Meg, what are yours?
- [25:52]
D
My thoughts are like, I should do something, right? I mean, I'm also not interested in the meta glasses, to be clear. Although it does sound like a great accessibility feature for people. I think that's why it bothers me so much. Because it does sound like something that would be very lovely for people who struggle to hear in loud environments. And that can all be accomplished, like in something that's like aesthetically pleasing and doesn't call attention to itself and potentially could be for free to use, that just sounds like such a benefit to humanity. So I do find that quite annoying that that's what they've decided to do to monetize. Increasingly, I'm kind of looking around my devices and trying to figure out how to block them from the Internet. Like I have a smart tv, but I also have a streaming stick that we use. I don't need both of those to be on the Internet trying to serve me ads, right? So we figured out how to block the TVs IP at the router level. And that's improved my life. And so I just keep thinking about, should we be making our own cloud environment? Figure out how to do it ourselves. Because the way to monetize these companies by kind of attaching them to just Internet enabled DRM is not good. Right. And do you need all of this stuff in order to be happier? Like, I'm happier when it doesn't work. Which was like really a strange feeling for me. I'm like, oh, wow, that was so deeply annoying. And now it just is broken. And I'm so much happier. So I would just encourage everybody to like, see what happens when you take these devices and you don't let them connect to the Internet and see if you are in fact happier.
- [27:36]
A
All right, that's four topics down. We got just enough time for a bonus topic. It's July 1st, which means the July 4th holiday is coming up here in the U.S. so fireworks. Love them, hate them.
- [27:48]
B
Meh.
- [27:48]
A
What do you think, Paul?
- [27:50]
C
Drone shows, Dan. It's all drone shows now. I don't know if you've seen any of these. There were a couple in Boston recently for the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's ride. There was one literally across the street from my house. It was very cool to see and it was way more high tech than just blowing stuff up.
- [28:09]
B
Fireworks returned me to the state of like a, I don't know, 11 year old boy. And I just, I love them. My dogs hate it though. And so living in the city, it's rough whenever there are fireworks going all the time. But I'm curious about your thoughts, Meg.
- [28:26]
D
I love fireworks. I think they're problematic because they are like, please don't go to where professionals are and have them do the fireworks. Don't hurt yourself. It's super bad to do your own fireworks, but I love fireworks. I have to say.
- [28:39]
A
I'm very much take them or leave them. I like them just fine, but I don't need to go out there. We actually went out last night. Our city, city had their fireworks last night. And we took my son, who's almost 4. He was into it for like, about five minutes. And then we were in like a little park. And he's just like, I'm just gonna run loops around the park. And we're like, okay, have fun. And my wife and I are like, sort of trying to watch the fireworks. But thank you all for your thoughts on fireworks. Hey, if you out there would like to get ad free episodes with an extra unwound episode every single week, you can become a member of clockwise, Just go to Relay FM clockwise and sign up for just $7 per month or $70 a year and you'll help support the show. And with that, we have reached the end of this week's episode. All that remains is to thank our fantastic guests. Paul Cavazis, thank you so much for joining us.
- [29:22]
C
Thanks for having me. Even though I'm a vegetarian on the meat episode.
- [29:27]
B
And Meg Marco. I was gonna say Meg meat Mark, but it just felt weird.
- [29:33]
D
Oh, God, no, that's weird.
- [29:34]
B
Meg Marco, thank you so much for joining us.
- [29:37]
D
Thank you me, for having having me. And I did not intend to make it the meat episode, but I'm so glad. I'm so glad I could bring joy to your lives.
- [29:46]
A
And Micah will be back next week, but until then, we remind everyone out there listening, watch what you say and
- [29:52]
B
keep watching the clock.
- [29:54]
A
Bye, everybody.