Daniel (00:00.834) Dave! Dave (00:02.468) Hello! Daniel (00:03.895) You Daniel (00:07.8) You got teeth. Dave (00:09.552) So for listeners of the show, describe what you're seeing, Daniel. Daniel (00:14.062) Dave just jumped on the call and he has like in like elongated incisors like his his teeth is like he's like very Vampire ish. So happy Halloween, I guess It is it is nighttime here, so yeah, I'm not I'm not surprised I'm seeing you Dave (00:25.432) Yes, happy Halloween. Yes, it is the it's actually Halloween as we record. This will be going out after the fact. But I thought I'd get into the theme just for the start of the show. So, yeah, I'm sorry. Listen to the show. This is meaningless to you, I guess. But at the moment, I'm definitely engaging my best vampire look. Daniel (00:54.857) I'm gonna invite you in to the show. Dave (00:58.068) Thank you, thank you. I don't know why whenever I've got these vampire teeth in, suddenly my voice starts to go towards being... Do you know the actor Matt Berry? Daniel (01:14.222) I might, but the name doesn't ring a bell right now. Dave (01:17.634) Okay, plays a character called Laszlo in What We Do in the Shadows, the US. Yeah, So all of a sudden I start to sound a bit more like this, because that's his character and I'm in the vampire mode. So off we go. Daniel (01:22.319) yeah, yeah. Daniel (01:35.534) The thing I became a vampire to be cool and f forever. Dave (01:42.094) Yeah. Have you listened to my music? I think that's probably enough of that bit, Daniel, because I'm going to be mumbling my words. So excuse me one second. Go for it. Daniel (01:54.478) All right, while you take these out, I'm going to do the intro. So hey, welcome to Waiting for a Review, a show about the majestic indie developer lifestyle. Join your scintillating hosts and let's hear about a tiny slice of their thrilling lives. Hi, I'm Daniel, Junior Druid Wrangler at Telemetry Deck and also going as a slutty software engineer today. And I'm welcoming Count of Darkness and Chief Audio Reactivity Engineer at LightpeenApps.com. Dave, hi, Dave. Dave (02:23.93) Hi, Daniel. Yes, yes. I shall put down my vampiric persona and join you here more as the audio reactive coding person that I am and have definitely been for the last couple of weeks. But we'll talk about that in a bit, I guess. Yeah. How you doing, Daniel? How's life? How's everything? Daniel (02:31.042) Hahaha Daniel (02:43.342) Fantastic. Daniel (02:51.518) I'm good. I had a really stressful week last week and I was kind of out for the count for most of the weekend. And then I also got vaccinated for various things. I got vaccinated for COVID in this arm and influenza in this arm. And so I was kind of just even less energetic. But now, as of today, just The vaccine side effects have passed, and also just my general downness has passed because I just had such a weak. I was at a conference where I presented two presentations. And in the meantime, the servers were kind of burning to the ground, so I had to rescue them. And we had various customer discussions and stuff like that. Dave (03:43.106) no. Daniel (03:50.804) And I was at like 1 % energy or something. If I was an iPhone, my battery indicator would have been yellow. Dave (03:57.001) mate. Dave (04:01.88) Yeah, and it sounds like you'd have been hitting the I can't charge right now until everything is called down mode, which I've definitely seen recently. Daniel (04:10.314) Yeah, exactly. But as of today, I feel just recharged. The server seems to be working again, fingers crossed, which I've said this way too many times. And it just turns out at our scale, just running this whole cluster is just a lot of hard work. But I have help. I have my fantastic buddy, Arno, who is now kind of like a part-time Dave (04:19.024) Mm-hmm. Daniel (04:39.384) Druid Wrangler at Telemetry Deck, guess. And he's helping me a lot. He's an expert in lots of service security and also just all the hosting stuff. And so what he does basically is whenever we encounter a problem, we not only try to fix it, but he also just puts a chart on Grafana about it. And I have these incredibly cool dashboards now. Dave (05:02.608) Mm-hmm. Dave (05:07.408) That's awesome. Daniel (05:07.66) that just at a glance give me an overview about just the general health of the cluster. And that is already very, very helpful. Dave (05:19.748) I'd love a sneak peek at that at some point, Daniel, if you posted anywhere, if you can, because I'm curious. yeah. Daniel (05:24.521) I can, I can. Yeah, you tell me about what you did to go VJ while I post this. Dave (05:36.9) Yeah, sure. So, Daniel, we've spoken about this a few times in the last few shows, but I've been up to a thing where I've been programming in audio reactivity to the app. And what that means in a nutshell is pretty simple words. Okay. You've got the microphone is reading whatever music is playing in the room that you're in. And then it's controlling parameters in the app. So the app starts to do things in time to the music. Daniel (05:47.821) Mm-hmm. Dave (06:07.248) And it's been a bit of a journey. I'm just like, so I can't remember how much we've talked about in the last few shows. I'm sort of looking down our show notes just to double check, but the stack I've got is a bit, is a bit wacky. It's I've got a Rust library embedded in the middle of it. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a stack there with the Daniel (06:17.691) Yeah. Daniel (06:29.632) Okay. yeah, you told me about this last time. I remember. Dave (06:35.96) A Rust library that's wrapped up presented as a binary Xe framework eventually rolled inside of a Swift package. So I've got a Rust Swift to Ducken of a dependency that I've built. Daniel (06:52.238) Yeah, like basically a three libraries in a trench coat. Dave (06:58.586) Pretty much, yeah, but it's doing its job. it's, yeah, the long and the short of this though, really, and this is the conundrum I'm up against right now is the UI. So I've got this thing working and that's great. And that's definitely been scratching the solving technical problems itch that I always have, but it now needs to be user facing. Daniel (07:13.24) Mm-hmm. Dave (07:27.66) And in an ideal world, I'd have figured out the design before I had the feature, but here we are. So I've got the mechanism to integrate it to the parameters down for the most part, right? There's a little microphone next to any slider that you use and that's nice and easy. Okay. I want it to be audio reactive. I'll hit the microphone and select one of the monitors that is part of the feature. Daniel (07:47.502) Mm-hmm. Dave (07:57.402) But the bit that's actually tricky, and I found this immediately with the test flight beta, is actually discovering the feature and guiding people through how to turn it on. Yeah, so at the moment, you can turn it on if you go to a parameter. The on and off is there with all of the audio monitors that you can configure. Daniel (08:10.368) I can imagine. Dave (08:24.136) And that's not very discoverable, to be honest. I've had one person already asking me, how do I turn this thing on? So yeah, this is the conundrum. I sat down yesterday, I was looking at the app. I have a settings menu. Inside that settings menu, you can configure two features that are already reasonably big in terms of what they do for the app. So in there, I've got a settings menu for configuring MIDI controllers, a settings menu for configuring the video over network output, NDI. And now I'm adding audio reactivity, and I'm looking at that settings menu going, can't bear another Lynch pin feature inside of it, buried inside of all the other little settings and do that. Yeah. Daniel (09:21.246) Yeah, but like, why is it not on the main screen though? Like, why is it this not like front and center while you're like, VJing? Dave (09:25.528) Yeah. Dave (09:29.698) Yeah. So I've, I, I'm looking, I'm looking at all these things and, and a lot of it is that when you, when, once you've turned it on, you kind of need it to get out the way. there's a level of like, okay, you set these things, you then move on and you actually use the app and you, do your performance. so taking up the entire, entire sections of the real estate on the screen is not something I really want to do. so these things get binned into the settings menu and then they're not very discoverable for people the first time around. So it sort of seems to present, think what I feel is an obvious set of choices. One thing is I can onboard people into this when they first boot the app up and I can present these things in the middle before they can do anything. Hey, these are things you may want to turn on. That could be a route. I think that might be a bit much. in some ways, because not everybody really cares about these things when they first launched the app. The other that I'm thinking is actually changing the settings menu entirely. So I've got like almost a tab bar on the bottom of the different things you can select. And in there I've got Trace for the media. So you've got numbers one, two, three, four, five along the bottom. And you can select your different grids of videos in the app. there's a thing for selecting the effects and then there's the settings button. It's already very top heavy on the bottom there. So what I'm thinking of doing right now is that settings button, instead of it triggering the existing settings screen with all of these different things listed down, I'm going to swap it out. I'm going to have a different sheet that pops up and it's going to have these features that you can turn on and configure. as being the main act, the main thing off that settings button. So you hit it and it's going to have, yeah, connect your microphone audio reactivity loud and clear as a cell in the middle. It will have the controller stuff. It will have the network video and input and outputs. There'll be at least three things in the list there that are very obvious and easy. Dave (11:54.436) And then all the existing settings are probably bury a level down beyond that often ellipsis or something so that you can still go and see the amounts either this, the see the that. And I'm guessing I'll probably put the paywall in there as one of the other options in this list as well for free freemium users. So that's my thoughts at the moment. I kind of need a bit of a redesign to get this thing in. But I don't want to be too heavy handed with it. I don't want to break too much of the existing like flow and use of the app. Yeah. Go on. Daniel (12:30.51) Yeah, I get that. Question? So if I have your user interface in front of my mental eye, you have basically your video screen and then you have a list of effects, And then you select an effect and then you kind of change the parameters of that effect. Would it be possible to have a checkbox there that says this effect is audio reactive? Dave (12:40.432) Mm-hmm. Dave (12:52.718) Yes. Dave (12:59.226) Yes, that's another place to surface it. Daniel (12:59.81) because then this would be very discoverable, but then you'd have to be like, okay, all the different effects need to be either reactive or non-reactive. I don't know if that's a problem. Okay, because that would be pretty discoverable, right? Dave (13:08.036) I've got that down. I've got that down already. That's that's okay. Yeah. It would. It would. And so in context is it's there. But it's also one of those things where, like I say, I feel with these features that I need to be surfacing them in a way where people know they actually exist. Because I think I'm actually missing a bit there with people. So you load the app and I guide you through, OK, this is how you load videos and get started with mixing. bear in mind, most people, like a lot of people who are my target audience, will already have a view of what they're looking for and be kind of in the niche already. But I think the problem I've got is it's not obvious on first go that this thing can do these things. So that's like I say where I kind of need it to be just a little bit more in your face somehow. Daniel (14:18.082) Yeah, get that. Dave (14:18.83) Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's where my head's at at the moment. What's simplest way I can sort of bring this in, but also elevate these features. And I feel like we've done an awful lot of sort of audio descriptive and I kind of want to share the screen of the app, but I think I'll make a mustard on post and I'll link it out and if people are listening, can click through and have a look. Yeah. Daniel (14:45.902) All right, let's do that. You wanted to see my Grafana dashboard, So I posted it to the master done so we can share it on the, we can share it on the, what's it called? The show notes. I'm sorry, the show notes. I'm also showing it to you on the screen for our YouTube listeners, YouTube viewers, I guess. So hi YouTube viewers. So what you're seeing right now is a dashboard with all the different. Dave (14:52.048) Mm-hmm. Dave (15:01.752) Yes. Daniel (15:13.902) servers in the cluster and what they are doing. Like there's a CPU histogram and there's a RAM histogram. The historical notes are all saying that their RAM is like at 92 % used, which looks concerning at first, but these are machines that kind of reserve 90 % of their RAM just for their use at all times. So this is actually expected behavior. Dave (15:23.024) Mm-hmm. Dave (15:40.068) Yeah. Got it. Daniel (15:41.822) And you see that the CPU has a few spikes. There's just like when stuff is actually being calculated. But other than that, they're pretty quiet. What I also have, I kind of cut off some data here that is alerts. So you don't see those because that has some internal data that's like various IP addresses and stuff that I have to double check that are not externally reachable. But here, what you see is a list of Druid errors. Dave (16:01.263) Peace. Daniel (16:10.35) It says no data because there have been no errors in the last 48 hours, actually, which is very nice. And also you see lots of throughput data for the message queue, basically. all the signals come in and they go into a message queue, and that's where Druid kind of picks them up. And they are pretty good as well. Also speaking of IP addresses, this says IP addresses here on the side, but these are all internal, so I'm comfortable sharing those. Dave (16:13.84) Hey, that's Yep. Dave (16:31.184) This is cool. Dave (16:37.264) Fair, Now this looks really cool, Daniel. So I'm guessing this is like mission control at the moment for you, for everything. Yeah, love it. I wonder, you looking at this every day? Do you have this on a screen all the time or is this more like when something feels wrong, you go and check or what? Daniel (16:44.716) Yeah, pretty much. Daniel (16:58.734) What I have is, you know how in Safari you can pull a tab to the side and then it's of just pinned there? So I have Grafana pinned there and then I have this dashboard and I have a few others. But this is like the most important one. like just when I'm kind of bored or in a meeting or when something's not wrong or when I just like go to work in the morning, like this is just the first thing I look at these days. Dave (17:27.504) That's cool. That's really cool. I, yeah, I like to say keep mulling something similar for myself, but honestly, I think that version for me is your product is telemetry deck. cause the biggie that I've always kind of wondered is like, okay, can I self host Grafana? Okay. That's me messing around with Docker for an hour or two. Fine. Okay. I can live with that. Set up a small Linode or something. that's running that. and then can I ingest app store data? And honestly, that's probably not too hard, but I couldn't seem to find a plugin that I would have been happy with for that. and then I'm like, okay, so now I'm probably three, four hours down the line, honestly, and this feels like a sales pitch for your product. And I guess it kind of is, but what I feel like I should be doing to solve this particular problem is just setting up the revenue cap. connection and then making sure I've got a dashboard into laboratory deck that's showing me that that financial data coming through alongside the user activity. That'll be enough. Yeah. Daniel (18:38.754) Right. That's exactly what you should do, really. Like, I'm even tempted to pipe a lot of that server infrastructure, like log data, into Telemetry Deck. And for some of those, I'm actually doing that. Like, I have a Telemetry Deck dashboard that says, like, successful calculation jobs versus, like, calculation errors, stuff like that. Because... But for the stuff that I'm kind of currently calculating or, like, gathering in Grafana... Dave (18:48.346) Mm-hmm. Yep. Daniel (19:08.716) Like this is all stuff that just like is easier in Grafana because there's like plugins or connectors or infrastructure there that just makes this easy. Whereas I would have to like write the adapters myself and like, I'm not in the business of writing adapters from, I don't know, AWS CloudWatch to telemetry deck right now. But it would be entirely possible. It's just a, it's, might be a performance thing that depends on the amount of data, I think. Dave (19:27.938) Yeah, yeah, it's a. Daniel (19:36.558) But basically, it should be possible, especially, as I said, I am posting a lot of these query-related data directly into Telemetry Deck. It might be a performance-related thing because right now we have one huge data source. And that data source not only contains everything, but it also contains all the possible parameters that you can send in a signal. And that might bite us in the butt. at some later dates. actually I'm running a few experiments these days where I have multiple data sources set up, just like nothing that is customer facing yet, but basically in the background for various select customers and especially for our own stuff. I've just had it set up like separate data sources. I'm just going to experiment with them, see if they, if I can do stuff with them that increases performance and especially reliability and stuff. Dave (20:04.261) Yes. Dave (20:15.205) Yes. Dave (20:31.778) Awesome. I mean, there is something to be said as well for your monitoring structure needs to be airlocked and decoupled from the thing it's monitoring, right? So at the moment, having everything through Grafana is probably not a bad idea just from that perspective. But I could certainly see that if you're experimenting with these other data sources and that flow of data through like Ultimately, you could have a separate telemetry deck instance or something where this stuff's being piped on your own dashboards. Daniel (21:05.922) Yeah, pretty much. Also, Grafana has given me some ideas for UI elements or UI changes. But at the same time, I'm also seeing stuff like, I came to the same solution that they came to, which is pretty satisfying, actually. Dave (21:22.757) That's cool. I would say as well though, like if to my mind, Grafana and telemetry deck, you're solving different problems. It's different types of data in some ways as well. yeah. Daniel (21:33.52) Totally, Should we interject what Grafana actually is? Dave (21:39.256) Yes, probably. Daniel (21:40.462) Grafana is a tool that you self-host and that is basically, you usually use it in combination with another tool called Loki that kind of grabs metrics and log files and all kinds of stuff from various servers and services that you host, like for example, from Druid, but also from all our backend servers. And then you can build yourself dashboards with charts and those charts. pretty nice, not as nice as telemetry deck charts, of course. And they update in real-ish time. And so it's a good way to have a huge dashboard quickly built up for SUS admin stuff mostly. also, in theory, you could put all kinds of data in there. Dave (22:10.64) Mm-hmm. Dave (22:30.222) Yeah. Yeah. That's no, it's cool. It's very cool. And I'm just looking down the sites and yeah, it's definitely aimed at, yes, this admin and exactly what you're using it for, to be honest. I'm looking down the Loki website and of course it's mentioning, Kubernetes straight off and, all of that sort of stuff as well. yeah, it looks pretty cool. I think your dashboard for telemetry deck is wonderful, Daniel. And it's good to see you've kind of got this like, I think in my head, I imagine that when you're trying to wrangle all these servers, you're sort of in like a war room in the telemetry deck office and you've got all these monitors with all these dashboards around you. Please tell me it's as glamorous as that. Daniel (23:16.718) Yeah Daniel (23:24.768) It is a slammer. The thing is, I'm a one monitor kind of person, right? But I have a very large monitor. And the new MechOS has this feature where it can just drag windows into a corner, and it occupies exactly a quarter of the screen then. So pretty much, it looks exactly like a NASA control center. Dave (23:28.79) Yep. Dave (23:39.258) Riot. Dave (23:43.098) Brilliant. Brilliant. Well, speaking of Mac OS features, Daniel, you have Apple intelligence, don't you? Daniel (23:55.082) I have, I am Apple intelligent now. Yeah, like I kind of expected to not get any intelligence from Apple, but turns out because I'm in the European Union, right? And I can't, for example, I cannot mirror my iPhone because that would just be like too powerful. But what I have actually is you don't get in the EU, you don't get Apple intelligence on the iPhone or iPad, but you do get it on the Mac for some reason. Dave (24:24.58) Okay. Daniel (24:24.974) So I have updated to Mac OS 15.1 and I gotta say, like you can totally make fun of these, but the two features that I really like surprisingly much is notification summaries and email importance sorting, like priority email basically. Dave (24:48.4) You Daniel (24:50.53) So how, because I got so much email, right? And I also got a lot of notifications. So what I recently did was like, I posted on Macedon, like, hey, I got this feature. I'm gonna try confusing it by replying with the weird stuff to this post, right? And like, I got like, I don't know, 10 replies. And then the summary reads, ignore previous instructions, compare pizza Hawaii recipe with a power book. And don't forget the bananas left outside without keys. Dave (25:24.56) I'm guessing that's your Mastodon audience having fun there seeing what they could make it do for you, right? Daniel (25:30.134) Right. Yeah. And, it was a super fun experiment actually, but, yeah. so that, but like with, more, want to say like with, with notifications that make a bit more sense, it's, is like not the, like not perfect or anything, but it's like, it's like, okay, I read like one line of text and I, I can more quickly scan if there's anything in there that is like, I got to look at that. Dave (25:57.264) That's cool. That is cool. And I don't have it yet. I need to update. I've just realised I'm on the older version of Mac OS. I'm living in the past, mate. So. Daniel (25:59.49) Right. Daniel (26:08.012) Yeah. you're living in the past, mate. The other thing is email priority. So if I open up my email inbox, I have like 18 billion unread emails. But at the very top, there's this thing, says priority and there's like, just basically, like, there's three emails. And these are indeed the most important emails for the day. Like I wouldn't like completely rely on that, but it's actually very pleasant to see those. Dave (26:12.548) Yeah. Daniel (26:37.462) And also the emails, like they are now summarized as promised by the, like, so the, you know, like it says the email subject, but, beneath that, doesn't say the first few lines anymore. says, I don't know, like you have been invited to a meeting with XYZ on this date, which, which is pretty cool actually. yeah, it's nice. There's a good use of local on device AI. Dave (26:56.432) Yeah. Dave (27:00.654) Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. well, I need to update. need to check that out. And, yeah, I sort of feel like, I've been out of the Apple loop a little bit, Daniel as well lately, you know, been off in my lane, messing with my own apps and, playing around with Android here and there and Rust and this and the other, and then something snuck up on me this week. So we had Daniel (27:15.81) Mm-hmm. Dave (27:30.357) New hardware, we have new Apple hardware has been released. So yeah, what have we got? You linked it in our show notes to talk about. Daniel (27:32.268) Yeah, we do. Daniel (27:42.734) Right. I was trying to find one article that just has everything, basically, so that we don't have to link to 17 different articles on, I don't know, 95 Mac or whatever they had, all these individual articles for everything. And I thought we could just go through everything that's been announced this week and be like, hey, this is actually pretty cool. So first thing is iMac M4. Dave (27:50.692) Yep. Dave (28:04.1) Yeah, yeah, go for it. Daniel (28:12.59) So it has new colors. It has the M4 chip. And it has 16 gigs of RAM, which is a kind of recurring theme with this version bump. Dave (28:23.02) yeah, this one thing I clocked as I was scanning stuff yesterday was that, yeah, it looks like that base level of Ram has gone up a notch now, right? Daniel (28:34.008) Right. Also it has seven colors, green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver. I mean, these IMAX, they look kind of nice. Like they look the same as the M1 IMAX. But even back then I was like, I kind of want one, but I don't have a use for one. But still, like they look gorgeous. Dave (28:35.76) Yeah. Dave (28:50.884) No. They do. I kind of wish they still did the, was the name for it? It's where you could use your display target display mode. So you could use. Yeah, exactly. Use it as a screen with a Max Studio or rather use it for what it is. And then when it starts to feel long in the tooth in any way, then upgrade the upgrade to. Daniel (29:05.068) Yeah, when I use one as a screen. Daniel (29:20.856) Yeah. Dave (29:21.87) something else, but actually still use the display because I love, I love the colors and you know, the display itself will be a lovely 24 inch display. yeah. Daniel (29:27.747) Hmm. Daniel (29:32.43) Yeah, totally. Like about 10 years ago, I did have a 27 inch iMac back in the Intel days, and it was like super powerful and everything. And I kind of justified the purchase price with the same idea. Like, I'm going to buy this. then once it has outlived its life, it's still an amazing screen. I can use it just in target disk mode. But by the time that thing had outlived its usefulness, it there was no way to connect it to any existing Mac anymore. And also it kind of needed to run. So it needs to like completely run as a computer. Like it's not like a silent display or anything. has fans and everything. instead I kind of sold it for half the price or anything. like Apple hardware is easy to sell usually. So that's what I did. Dave (30:15.8) Yep, I moved on I guess. Yeah, yeah. I think we'd be in a different world with these displays. They're running a lot more silent than them. Daniel (30:22.008) But yeah, 16 gigs of RAM. Daniel (30:27.116) Yeah, I doubt if they like, do they even have fans? don't know. Dave (30:32.282) I don't know, they do look gorgeous though. Yeah, I'm a fan. What else did we get? Let's scroll down. Daniel (30:35.925) tomb. Daniel (30:39.468) Right. MacBook Pro M4 and M4 Pro and M4 Max. 14 and 16 inch models, nano textured display option. Starts at 16 gigs of RAM and space black and silver. Dave (30:50.692) I think, yeah. Dave (31:01.242) That entry level is good. It's good to get off the old levels of 8 gigs of RAM that seemed a bit vultry for these days. And I think again, it's a sign of where things are going, right? If we've got things like Apple Intelligence and all of the other bits. Daniel (31:16.558) Dude, I bet if Apple intelligence didn't need a minimum of 16 gigs of RAM, these would still start at 8 gigs. come on. This is 100 % Apple intelligence and nothing else. Dave (31:24.021) Probably. Yes. Dave (31:30.042) fair. Keep keep going. They look like okay, they look like the previous ones with an M4 chip. What's this though? This is different. Daniel (31:37.964) The even more miniature Mac Mini. I love this one. This thing is about half the size of the previous Mac Mini. It has an M4 chip, 16 gigs of RAM. It kind of looks like an Apple TV. Yeah. It's very cute. It's like a tiny version of the Mac Studio because it also has two USB, vertical USB-C ports on the front. I don't have an image of that right now in front of me, but you've got to believe me. It's very cute. Dave (31:41.327) Okay. Dave (31:46.318) Yeah, it looks like it looks like an Apple TV on steroids. It looks like an Apple TV on steroids. Yeah. Dave (32:03.599) Yes. Dave (32:08.652) It's cute. It does. Daniel (32:09.132) And it still has ports and everything. And it still has an internal power supply. Like this thing, this thing is really cool. Like I kind of want one. Dave (32:16.564) Yeah, I have no use for it whatsoever. I've got a lovely Mac studio sitting on my desk and then I look at that. so one of the things about, about my, I guess everything with what I build with Govj with all the visual stuff that I'm into, like having that background, way back when we're talking 20 years ago now, a long time ago, hauling kit to gigs was a pain. Daniel (32:19.757) same. Dave (32:46.312) I was literally doing visuals gigs in nightclubs and things with the friend that got me into it all, where we were hauling three flight cases of kit, plus a PC tower, plus a monitor of some description, right? Daniel (33:03.434) CRT monitor. Dave (33:05.43) At one stage, yes, that's what we had. So it was heavy. There was a lot of kit. Then I look at where we are now and I look at things like that, that Mac mini, and I'm like, I would have killed for that at that point instead of hauling a... Yeah. yeah. Daniel (33:18.032) yeah, totally. Like same with laptops really. Like I used to go to these LAN parties and we also kind of haul those like tower computers and CRT monitors around. And now you just like, like the last few LAN parties I went to before the cold practice kind of died down. I just like sat down and opened my laptop. Dave (33:38.404) Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the laptop sort of, you know, has definitely been the thing that's taken things over in that respect. And the same in the visual scene, is that that's that's what sort of started happening circa, I guess, 2007 ish, maybe a little bit before. But yeah, I look at this this little Mac mini and I'm like, that's that's got some incredible uses for in Daniel (33:56.268) Hmm. Dave (34:07.222) art installations that are running video software like mine. All sorts of things. So yeah, nice move. It's. Daniel (34:16.034) But also this is a seriously useful computer. It has the possibility to upgrade to the M4 Pro. So this is a serious desktop computer too. If you don't have a Mac Studio, this might be even more powerful. This is definitely more powerful than my computer right now. I have an M1 Pro MacBook. This is like... Dave (34:19.984) Yeah. Dave (34:24.036) Mm-hmm. Dave (34:39.471) Right. Daniel (34:43.17) This is really cool. I can totally imagine this just standing on my desk, just being very tiny and cute, and just chugging along. This is very nice. Dave (34:52.336) Well, maybe we've got one of these in the future. It's very interesting to see. I'm looking on Apple's site right now and they show it. Interestingly, there's a little video on the first bit of the page and it's got the Mac Mini, it's got some headphones, a games controller, and then there's a keyboard in the middle that is not an Apple keyboard. yeah, and that Daniel (35:06.71) huh. Daniel (35:15.79) Because it's bring your own keyboard. Dave (35:21.41) video then plays through with a whole load of different setups as one with the Mac keyboard Mac mouse or Apple mouse rather and then there's one with like a Logitech thing it's an interesting proposition there's some kind of positioning it as a almost as a games machine actually looking at this with the controller against it Daniel (35:40.546) Yeah, they've announced Cyberpunk 2077 for the Mac as well. Dave (35:47.032) Right. That's yeah. Daniel (35:48.55) I bet it will run pretty well on this machine, which is ludicrous, Dave (35:52.016) It's cool. It's very cool. yeah, love it. I don't have an immediate use for it, but it certainly makes me look and go. I would like to think of uses for it because it looks so cute and cool. Daniel (36:07.534) Right. Right. Then we get the MacBook Air. That just gets a spec bump. So it's still on the M2 chip. there's also the M3 version. But there's no M4 MacBook Air. What they did, the only thing they did was the MacBook Air now also starts at 16 gigs of RAM instead of starting at 8 gigs of RAM because we've got to get ready for Apple intelligence. All right. Dave (36:16.912) Mm-hmm. Dave (36:21.21) Did they not do an M4? Okay. Dave (36:29.954) Of course, of course. Intelligence. Dang. Daniel (36:36.758) Another thing that we have is just the fuel for 10 billion memes, which is we have a new Apple mouse and trackpad and keyboard. And the only thing that's changed is that it's now charging via USB-C, but still from the bottom. Dave (36:51.984) Okay Daniel (36:53.857) which everyone makes these memes like this. You know, there's a picture of the magic mouse and it charges from the bottom and ha ha ha, look at those idiots at Apple and they say they know industrial design. And I'm just like, come on, like that joke was funny like 15 years ago or whatever, but this is obviously where the charging port needs to go. Like, because otherwise it's just like sticks out all the time. Like you need to charge the thing for 10 minutes every month. Like, come on, like that is a time where you can actually put the thing upside down. Dave (37:09.775) Yeah. Dave (37:19.951) Yeah. Daniel (37:23.714) Like that joke is just like, ugh, come on, find a new joke. Dave (37:26.882) Yeah. Do you know what would be fun? is if they got rid of the port completely and then just made it wirelessly charged. Daniel (37:30.508) What? Daniel (37:36.418) That would be cool. And I was kind of like half expecting this because like, why not? Like everything is Qi charging now. Like they have the, like they have totally, they totally have the capability. I mean, I don't want to speculate too much, but I can't imagine it's just like, they don't have the infrastructure yet. Like because they have like Qi 2 or like MagSafe, which is very much like used to charge phones, right? Dave (37:56.858) Mm-hmm. Daniel (38:05.782) And so this thing doesn't have really a place where you could put a MagSafe puck or something. I mean, it could come in the future or something. I could see that. Or a new studio display that has in its base a charger. So just to charge your keyboard or mouse, you just put it on the base. Dave (38:14.277) Yeah. Dave (38:23.568) Yeah, I could certainly imagine like something like that way for the mouse for sure. Interesting, not interesting, I guess, but a side note, I've moved on from using a trackpad all the time back to using a mouse in the last week. I have a lot because my wrist needs better support. yeah, I've got lot logitech lift, which is an ergonomic Daniel (38:37.706) huh. Ooh, wow. Why is that? Daniel (38:46.978) Yeah, is that better for your wrist? Daniel (38:53.006) like one of those sideways mice. Dave (38:54.062) mouse. Yeah, and it's it's cool. I've gotten used to it very, very quickly. Daniel (39:01.158) nice. I like that. All right, cool. I'm still like trackpad only everywhere. I just love the Magic Trackpad. Like that's my input device of choice. I do have a Logitech mouse for gaming, but I don't game almost ever, ever since like KSP tool got discontinued. that's just, when I game, I use a steering wheel now. Dave (39:03.312) Yeah. Dave (39:06.83) Yeah. Dave (39:11.994) So I loved it for a long time. Dave (39:21.84) you Well, you clearly need a Mac mini with a PlayStation controller connected according to Apple's Daniel (39:30.03) I have a PlayStation with a PlayStation controller. That works out pretty well. Also, Apple Intelligence is now everywhere, What I'm missing is my personal wish was that the 12-inch MacBook would make a return because that would just be my perfect on-the-go machine. The dream is not... Dave (39:34.832) Well, you're halfway there. Dave (39:52.901) Mm-hmm. Daniel (39:59.288) completely dead because the MacBook Air didn't get a proper upgrade. But my personal dream machine would be a 12-inch MacBook Air that is just very tiny. And I can just put it into a pocket and just take it with me everywhere because I do so much. Every time I need a computer, a phone just doesn't cut it. I tried it a few times. And even if I had an iPad, because you recently suggested do just get an iPad, I do too many things where I combine the terminal, multiple browser windows, and maybe an editor and a GitHub. And I know that most of these things probably can be done on an iPad, but the switching is kind of hard. But also the, Dave (40:28.75) I suggest you get an iPad, get a keyboard. Dave (40:42.512) Fair enough. Dave (40:48.144) Yeah, they can. Daniel (40:53.806) Once I'm at the stage where I just have to create an SSH tunnel or something for and then use a browser to communicate through that tunnel, it's probably possible, but it feels like just trying to control something through a... You know one of those operations these days where you just have these very small incisions, like my appendix got removed that way. Dave (41:18.436) Yep, like a yes. Daniel (41:21.208) kind of minimally invasive operations. It kind of feels like that. Like I can do all the things, but I have to do it like kind of around the corner and like very like unintuitive. Dave (41:29.072) Yeah, yeah, it's like keyhole surgery, but your hands are sort of tied. Yeah. Yeah. Daniel (41:33.112) keyhole surgery. that's the metaphor I was looking for. So anyway, I'm still not sold on doing my kind of work on an iPad or iPhone. Dave (41:43.984) Do you need a Mac to do your kind of work? Daniel (41:49.07) You're alluding to the fact that I could use a Linux machine. Dave (41:52.962) or an anything machine that is the size class that you're looking for. Yeah. Daniel (41:58.722) Yeah, mean, like realistically, I don't need another machine at all. I have a laptop. It is very capable. It is just a bit heavier. But like if the servers, hopefully if they are no stable knock on wood, then I shouldn't have to like run to the to the machine as much in the middle of the night or whatever. It's just like one of those, you know, I would really like to be able to be on the go and be like, Dave (42:04.377) Yeah Dave (42:07.92) Mm-hmm. Dave (42:20.975) Yeah. Daniel (42:27.992) You know, I'm the chief druid wrangler for Tinnemitry decks, so I should be able to at any time just pull out my device and wrangle some druids. Dave (42:38.276) You can't. mean, No, but I guess what I'm thinking is, is like, yeah, how far off is a MacBook Air, you know, even in the bigger class that it is. I'm seeing you writing that down in our show notes. We always refer to the show notes. Listeners should know that we have a Apple Notes notes that share between the pair of us and Daniel (42:39.64) title of the show. Dave (43:07.404) I've got it on my other screen so I can see when Daniel's putting things in there in real time. if your thing is just about having something that's easy and portable and in that sort of smaller size, well, it's not a Mac, but those machines do exist outside of the ecosystem. Daniel (43:27.602) they though? Because I haven't really done my homework here, but a cursory glance at different machines is it's either a Windows machine, which I don't really feel comfortable on, or it's an Intel machine and it's very fat. it turns out that I recently talked to a Linux machine guy about this. There's local company here in Augsburg, actually, Tuxedo Computers. Dave (43:42.138) Mm-hmm. Daniel (43:55.554) They make laptops specifically for Windows. then I kind of like at the conference that I was, they had a, they had a, like a stand. And so I went there and asked them this question, like, do you guys have a tiny laptop that that's on ARM because I want the battery longevity and the low, like low temperatures and stuff. And that I can just carry around. And they were like, kind of prototype ish. And so he pulls out this prototype and he's like, let me try to boot it. But it. Dave (44:19.802) Yeah Daniel (44:25.954) boots every other time or so. And so the device did boot. And they said the problem is that they get this hardware from Qualcomm, I want to say. And it's not very documented. And there's not a lot of drivers. Wi-Fi doesn't work properly. Graphics acceleration doesn't really work, stuff like that. It is basically Dave (44:30.714) Okay, it's not sounding too healthy. Yeah. Dave (44:46.902) Right, okay, yeah. Daniel (44:53.644) Like from, like this is not official information, right? This is just like what some guy at a trade show, not even a trade show, like some guy told me, so this is not a release product or anything. and he might be lying or whatever. Like, I don't even know if he's, if he's officially just like, whatever. So this, to me, this device looked exactly like a co-pilot PC. so the hardware might be, might be very similar and that with a Dave (45:09.806) Yeah, yeah, yeah, fair enough. Daniel (45:20.056) functioning Linux, that would be probably a capable device, but also was too big. It was also for 14 inches. And I can't take 14 inches, Dave. I just can't. Dave (45:30.8) Stop it. One second. I want to try and share something from my screen. Dave (45:44.824) Yeah, let's see if this will share. So we're going off into the weeds here, but I'm kind of, I kind of want to run with it because I spotted this and yeah, I don't know if I'm. Daniel (45:56.878) 2800 New Zealand dollars. Dave (45:59.968) Yeah, New Zealand dollars, yes. So you're looking at what about. Daniel (46:05.294) 2800 Dave (46:08.34) don't, don't the sticker shop looks. Yeah. Interesting. So if we convert that to us dollars, then we're 1600 us dollars. Yeah. And convert that to your euros about 1500. Daniel (46:18.702) Okay, one six, 1,600. Daniel (46:25.87) 1549 less, even less. So, okay, okay. I'm placated. Still not cheap, but yeah, this is like MacBook Air territory. Dave (46:28.974) Yeah, OK, yeah, don't worry. The sticker shock's not too bad. Yeah, yeah, but look, look, this is foldable. Daniel (46:38.4) A ThinkPad X12 detachable generation 2. Dave (46:42.872) Yeah, yes, it's Intel, but it's on the ultra chip. So it should be a bit more prone to being lower powered and more manageable for your battery life. Look how thin that thing is, though. This thing looks interesting. So it's not Apple, but if you're server wrangling and terminals and web browsing, then. You know, there are things there. Daniel (46:56.534) It is very, very thin. Dave (47:11.694) that's in the 12 inch class. Daniel (47:11.978) It is kind of nice. I give you that. It is kind of nice. Thinkpads are... I assume it will run... Like this runs Windows out of the box. But I assume because it's Intel, it will also run a Linux of some sorts. Dave (47:15.887) Yeah. Dave (47:21.496) Yeah, Windows 11 there, but yeah. Dave (47:27.608) Yeah, almost guaranteed. And because it's a ThinkPad as well, like they tend to be very well supported on Linux and that side of things. 32 gigs of RAM there, Daniel. It can run. Daniel (47:37.038) All right. I'm still because I am, because I am, That can run two Apple intelligences. Dave (47:46.828) Exactly, exactly. you know, like I say, it's maybe not as homely as a Mac, but yeah, these things are there. Daniel (47:58.702) I mean, I give you that. I'm going to nitpick a little bit, which is A, it has a detachable keyboard, which looks cool, but this is not a lap computer because it always needs a sturdy place to stand out. It has a kickstand, so you need to put it on a desk. That's the one thing. And that's the other thing. There's so many little things that just fall off, and I will totally lose. This is like three. Dave (48:02.126) Yeah, go for it, go for it. Dave (48:09.686) Mm-hmm. It needs that bit on the back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep going. It's got a pencil with it though. Come on. Dave (48:25.476) Well, you don't have to use it though. Daniel (48:28.206) three, like the keyboard, like the pen and the display. Dave (48:32.432) It's got both a trackpad and a little nub in there though Daniel, right? You don't get the... Yeah. Daniel (48:36.846) It has a nubbin. Very ThinkPad-y. Like, I mean, if someone gifts me this, will definitely use it, but I don't think this... I'm gonna spend $2,800 New Zealand dollars on it. Dave (48:51.706) That's fair. That's fair. I'm going to stop sharing my screen now, but yeah. Daniel (48:53.986) But it's cool. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. I'll give you that. I'm reasonably sure that Apple will probably never make a 12 inch MacBook again, because if you are in that size class, they want you to go on an iPad. But at the same time, the iPad, because it is very much locked down, is just fighting with an arm tied behind your back. Dave (49:16.464) Mm-hmm. Dave (49:21.25) It is. And, you know, I'll give you that as well. I made the argument towards you should just get an iPad, but really it's not a very informed argument. And you'd end up with an app. There's apps like Termeus for being in the terminal. You would then end up fighting. Yeah. And you'd end up fighting with the windowing to get everything you use on the screen. And I can see that that will be suboptimal. Daniel (49:37.152) or secure shellfish? Daniel (49:50.008) So what I have now is I have the Grafana dashboards on my phone, which are surprisingly usable. And I have all the necessary SSH keys in my version of Secure Shellfish that's on my phone. So I can SSH into the servers and do most of the things from my phone. And that is enough, I think, for some emergency druid surgery. Dave (50:10.768) Mm-hmm. Daniel (50:17.176) So I don't have, like one thing that I really need to find out is how can I trick iOS Safari into pretending it is a huge screen and it can zoom out all the way because I have a few web interfaces that are just not optimized for desktop at all. So that's something I've got to figure out. And then I think this is good enough for now because I almost always take my laptop with me anyway. Tim Cook, call me. Call me if you ever want to release a 12-inch MacBook. Dave (50:31.503) Yeah. Dave (50:47.056) Well, hopefully maybe one day you'll get the call and if not then you know Maybe maybe something like the ThinkPad but I hear you on the kickstand it kind of needs to be proper laptopy that that will put me off really Daniel (50:57.582) You Daniel (51:03.054) Our mutual friend, Konstantin, I don't even know what to Google for right now. He posted a thing on Mastodon, which is basically a laptop-ish device, like a portable computer, I want to say, that is powered by Raspberry Pi. And that looks incredibly retro. And I love it. But the thing is like five inches thick, I want to say. I don't know how inches work, but it's very thick. It is not iPad. Dave (51:08.864) I do. I know what it is. Yep. Dave (51:24.611) Okay. Dave (51:28.952) Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, Daniel (51:33.016) thin, but it looks incredibly cool. Dave (51:39.022) You could, one thing I am aware of actually is, excuse me, I'm going to share my screen again. And then I think we should wrap the show because we are well in the weeds, but let me, let me just show you this, this thing. There's a KDE slim book. It's very Linux, very, very Linuxy. But it's literally a KDE laptop, but you can see here it's configurable with lots of stuff. Daniel (51:57.781) Ooh. Daniel (52:07.623) up to 96 gigs of RAM. How many Apple Intelligences? Dave (52:12.528) many. 12 I think? I'm not sure. Yeah, so this has got a Ryzen chip inside of it and specs blah blah blah. But yeah, I mean, this isn't what you're looking for. I don't think, but it is also kind of cool for what it is. It's a slim laptop. 16 inch. Yeah, I know. Daniel (52:34.926) 16 inches Dave, 16 inches. Dave (52:39.588) But 120 Hertz display, anti-glare. You should. Yep. Daniel (52:42.626) No, you know what I'm going to get? I'm going to get an old school netbook, like just like 15 year old netbook for like they cost like 150 bucks when they were new. Like how much how much could a netbook cost these days? That's what I'm going to get. Dave (52:49.476) You don't even have to go, Dave (52:55.024) It's a netbook, Daniel. $10? Daniel (52:59.244) How much could it cost? Daniel (53:05.004) Yes, pretty much. Dave (53:05.878) Right, on that bombshell, let's wrap the show Daniel, because it's time. Daniel (53:11.018) Alright, I'm gonna wrangle some druids. Dave (53:15.215) Go for it. Daniel (53:16.6) Fantastic. Dave, this has been awesome. Listeners, thanks for listening. Please rate us on iTunes and YouTube. Send us emails at contact at waitingforreview.com and join our Discord. The link is in the show notes just below basically. Where can people find you Dave? Dave (53:31.674) Mm-hmm. You can find me mostly on Instagram these days for videos and shorts and things about my apps. that's lightbeamapps.com D-O-T com or one word again, linked in the show notes over on Instagram. Or you can check out my little link tree like WordPress site over at feed.lightbeamapps.com where I've got everything else linked up. Daniel (54:02.968) That's actually pretty neat. All right. Yeah, for me, just like go to http colon forward slash forward slash www.telematrydeck.com. Dave (54:05.348) Yeah, yeah, I love that. Love that little thing. Dave (54:16.814) Nice. Kill. Yes. Yes. With one finger. Daniel (54:19.18) You gotta type it that way on a netbook. Daniel (54:27.088) All right, that was fantastic. Have a great day and see you soon. Bye. Dave (54:30.596) You too Daniel. Yeah, take care mate. Bye.