Voice Cloning and Future Directions

Hello and welcome to Mac Power Users. My name is Steven Robles. Joined by my friend and yours, David Sparks. How's it going, David? Hey Steven, how are you today? I'm doing well. I'm excited to talk about an interesting product category today with a special guest. Yeah, welcome to the show, Jason Snell. So good to have you back. Good to be back. One of the ultimate Mac Power Users is also an ebook power user. I guess. Yeah. No, I think so., man But e every time I wanna think about buying a new ebook or I go over to six colors 'cause you cover it so much and we thought it'd be fun to share with the audience uh just kind of a check in on the state of ebooks and some of our workflows and what we do with them and and you're the guy man. Okay. Well I'm happy to I'm I'm happy to be that guy. I I that is one of the areas where I'm an outlier in my specialty area, but I'm interested in the subject and I I use the products. So you know one of the beauties of going out on your own is you can sort of decide what you want to cover to a certain extent. And so I get I actually get a lot, this will probably come up, I get a lot of questions from people about these large format e-readers where you can have a pen and you can take notes and I'm not interested in that category. So I have no I have no opinions about it. Like large e-readers and writing with a pen on an e-reader, I just don't care. Perfectly valid category're. They trying to find more users for this for for e-readers in general. I think getting people to use uh it as a note-taking device and have it be kind of e-paper is cool and all, but I'm not I I have the luxury of picking my spots, and that is not a spot I'm interested in picking. So I focus on reading, the reading part of readers. And for folks who don't know, Jason reads a lot of books. So um fiction and primarily fiction in there primarily fiction. There's nonfiction in there too, but yeah. Like a ha like you know, whatever, eighty or ninety books a year sometimes. I don't know. It's a lot. It's pretty good a lot last year. Certainly fi certainly fifty. I my my good reads target is fifty-two books a year, one a week. And um I I've've been over that. That's awesome. I also do want to say a follow-up I watched you on Jeopardy when you were on there, and pretty wild how long the run was of the person who won that round that game. Oh yeah, the guy who beat me, Jamie Ding, uh, won thirty one games in a row and he's the fifth all time best Jeopardy player, so I don't feel bad about losing to him in a game that was not a runaway and that if he had gotten the truth is, if he had gotten the final Jeopardy question wrong and I had gotten it right, I would have beaten him. And the same for my uh fellow opponent Jordan. Uh it just so happens that um he knew it because he knows everything. But um I did read a huge load of mostly sort of like children's books about broad subjects because that was one of the pieces of advice that I got about studying for Jeopardy. Uh so I was sitting on a beach with an e-reader in Hawaii reading about like the first ladies. That was stuff that I was doing in it in the run-up to being on Jeopardy was reading a bunch of ebooks about uh random topics that I might be asked about, including composers, which was the final Jeopardy I lost on. But I I went back and looked and that the trivia bit that was the final jeopardy question for me was not in that book, The Lives of the Composers. So I it w it was I was worried that I had read it and forgotten it. Um, but and I knew something about that fact through history, but I couldn't place it. Um 'cause classical music is is not my thing. Uh and that is an understatement, is one of my horror categories. But the good news is that the the the book that I read on the beach about the composers did not actually include that trivia tidbit, so I wasn't gonna get it anyway. And me and my wife are musicians, and we actually took two semesters of music history as a requirement for our degree. And even that us, the final jeopardy tripped us up as well. So it's I'll tell you Jordan who was on with me from Edmonton, she's an an Episcopal priest, and she did her viewing party with uh people from her church community, including the choir. And not only did the entire choir sing along to the Jeopardy music at the end, but they they all knew the answer because they're all classical music people being in a church choir, and they knew that the Brahms lullaby is the name of the lullaby song that I never knew is anything but the lullaby song, and so I was never gonna get that one right. Yeah, so so for folks who aren't up to speed, Jason went on Jeopardy. He did very well, uh but he got beat by one of the biggest champions in the history of the game. So if you're gonna get beat, that's the guy to get beat by. Oh, yeah. My my narrative kept changing because when we showed up that morning, it was um it was he was just the guy who won on Friday. So like literally he was, a one-time champion. He was the least intimidating you could possibly be because you just won the last game before the on the previous tape day. And so that was fine. And then um in and they taped five games a day. And on day two, he set an all-time record for basically he tied the record for the most right answers in a game, and he set an all-time record for their a stat called Koriat, which is basically the sum of the uh money you would earn for correct answers. Um, and and that's 42 years of history, and he played basically the best game in history. And that's when everybody in the green room looked at each other and was like, oh no. And then after we left, you know, I lost game five to him. He won 31 games . So like the the longer it went, the the less bad any of us felt about losing to Jamie because he was uh he he's he's just a great he's an all-time great player. So but it was a fun experience, uh really a lifelist kind of exper ience. I gotta you know take a picture with Ken Jennings and tell tell an anecdote. I told the anecdote about getting um a hands-on briefing with the iPhone the day after it was announced and and you know months before anybody else got uh got the final unit. And um that's a fun story that you always wonder if I'm gonna go on TV and they ask me one anecdote from my life, what's it gonna be? And it turns out it was the it was the iPhone anecdote that they liked. So that's that was that was a fun story. Probably probably give 'em a list, right? They choose. Oh yeah, there's a big th you give them a list and then there's a questionnaire so that if your you're the items you came up with are bad, they ask you a bunch of qu like leading questions and you fill out this PDF and then at and then and then on the day they give you a card uh with five of them that they've selected and those are the ones that they've chosen um and that's the card Ken Jennings holds when he's talking to you. And then they they walk through a couple of them and have you kind of tell that story in the morning before the taping, and they decide on the one that they like and they circle that one and uh and so that was the one that they picked. I thought for a long time that they were gonna pick um the fact that when the iPod was introduced, um, not six months goes by where somebody doesn't send me an email or a text saying, Is that you in the iPod launch video? And the answer is yes, I am prominently featured in the audience of the iPod launch video. It is me. It is still me. But um I think the iPhone has a little more modern currency than the than the iPod at this point. So they went with that one. Well uh getting back to the topic of re of reading. The um so you're not interested in the big notebook style devices. Sorry. I I will just weigh in on that real quickly. Everybody in the audience uh by everybody, a lot of you keep telling me how useful these e ink uh writing devices are. I have now three times purchased one and returned it, and I have just realized that I should be on a list where I'm not allowed to buy them because they do nothing for me. I would rather use paper and pencil or digital tools. I and and I know the emails are going to come because I said this, but I just cannot get into those devices. I get why people like them, although I would say as uh I've I have a a 13-inch iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil. And the truth is, if I if I even had a glimmer of that, I would I would think of it. But the but I was a kid who had bad handwriting. I'd never have felt comfortable holding a pencil or a pen. Um for me, the greatest joy of discovering computers was that I could type outwards instead of writing them by hand. And so the idea I find no comfort in writing notes by hand . And I understand that a lot of people do. And that's great. And if I was in c you know back in college, I obviously took notes by hand and I can do it. And uh I if I could do that on an iPad today, that would make me like, well, you know, would it be better to do something on a different kind of device than an iPad? But the truth is that that mode just isn't of any interest to me at all. I I take notes on a computer or an iPad or uh or my phone by typing in words. I do bring a notepad with me sometimes to like interviews and stuff. And I scribble things down. But even then I wouldn't want to be in in the moment of like being a journalist re interviewing somebody, I would not want to fuss with anybody's software. So yeah, a pencil and or pen and paper for that. I also want all my notes in one place because part of the power of doing that is then searchability and now with some of the AI tools, just being able to synthesize all that information. And while you could write even with an iPad Apple Pencil and you know make that into searchable or even printed text, why? I mean that stuff does get I mean that all that stuff does get indexed now, whether it's an e-reader or on the iPad. There is handwriting recognition that puts that somewhere where you can search it and all of that. Like you can do it. And and for some people, I think that's the like I love the fact that if you're somebody who's most comfortable putting putting a stylus on a a flat plane and writing out words and that is the thing that really hones your thoughts or allows you to collect information, that it's no longer a dead end. I love that. It's just not something that I'm interested in at all. And I'll I'll also say uh my co-host Jason, he uses the the remarkable. He has the one that's almost like a handheld type remarkable tablet because it's more of like a notepad, more portable. But for me personally, like both of you, none of those devices have appealed to me because also if I want an e reader, I don't want a multi device. You know, I don't want something that can do multiple things because reading is something that I want to focus on. And which Yeah, go ahead. I think actually brings us to one of the most important points whenever I talk about e-readers, which is people say you have an iPad and an iPhone, why have another device? Why have a unitasker? And my answer is that the unitasker is the point for exactly the point you made, which is I like to buy a reading device that is just a reading device and really it's just a text reading device . Like there are color-y readers now. I have one. I use it. The color is irrelevant to me. It really is text on a page for reading, text on a page. For for comics, I will read an iPad because the I I would rather look at my OLED screen on my iPad Pro to read a comic book that's in full color and is awesome and beautiful. But like for text on a page, I know that there are focus modes, right? Like this is Mac Power Users. I know about focus modes and all of that. But the fact is, even with focus modes, a multitasking device where you know that everything else on the internet is a swipe away is really different than a device that is a unitasker that's really just for reading. And in addition to that, like it's reflective light instead of a backlight, so it's easier on the eyes. You can crank it down really low if you're reading in bed at night. It's got a very simple interface and the battery lasts forever. So, like there are there are lots of reasons to to have an e-reader, but that is for me the number one reason is I like putting my iPad down at the end of the day and picking up the e-reader before I go to sleep and reading a few chapters of a book and not there is no push notification. There's no temptation to check my email or to look at social media or to look at Slack. I I'm just reading a book at that point. And I again doesn't have to be the approach for everybody, but that's why I like it is that it doesn't do anything else. And I actually go all the way to the analog spectrum. So when I read books, I buy the physical book and I have it shipped to my house and I read the tree in my hands. And one of the ri things I've wanted to use e-readers for, and maybe by the end of this conversation I'll try a different one, is for like highlighting passages or saving parts of the book for later, whether it's quotes. And so the elaborate system I've come up with is basically a shortcut where I will take pictures of the pages that I want to remember something from, and I have a shortcut that I can run and I save those photos for every single book into an album. So I'll have a photo album for the book 4,000 weeks. And then I'll take a shortcut, run it on that album, and it pulls all the text from all the pages that I took pictures of , parses it using Apple Intelligence and the ChatGPT extension, and just makes a bare note with pull quotes and good points. And then I can always look back at the photos and search them because photos will search the text as well. Right. If there's something I wanted to find again. That's very impressive. Although I'll I'll say you could also invest in like a highlighter pen and some bookmarks and like you can dog ear some pages and you could do it that way too. But yours is more high tech. Which I which I I appreciate. I can't dog ear pages. It it hurts me to dog your pages. I know. Well, I mean, yeah, or you get some post-its like there are there are lots of analog techniques, but I get what you're saying, which is you're snapping interesting things and then and then those are getting converted to text and then you've captured your interesting things. I just I I what what push me again since we're kind of laying the groundwork here, one of the things that pushed me over into ebooks is um I would take trips where I was in the middle of a hardcover that weighed seven pounds and I was only about about I was like three quarters of the way through it. But it was the book I was reading. So I take it with me and I'd like to finish it on the plane and then it's just like I'm carrying it around and I'm carrying it home when I'm done. And I realized like you can you can put forty books on an e reader and it doesn't weigh it doesn't the but the bites don't make it any any heavier. So I think that's a great advantage. And and I just I recently read a book in paper, which is rare for me, but it's a book that came out in the UK and you could order the the physical book on Amazon from the UK and it'll ship it to you, but for e-reading, it's locked to the region, so it's not available if you're in America. And so I bought the physical book because it's an author I really like, it's a sequel to a book I really loved. And I read that in paper. And what it reminded me is, yeah, it is like, oh, I gotta hold it, and then like it's got two, and I gotta move my head, and then I gotta physically switch slit. But what really got me about it is paper books don't light themselves, and you can get a book light and all that. But I read a lot at night in the dark when my wife is already asleep. And I and also, frankly, the lighting in my house isn't really great for reading for reading books a lot of the time. You're like, I gotta turn the lights on brighter and I gotta angle the book to get the light. And like ebooks, i they light themselves now. The original Kindles didn't by the way, it was really embarrassing. But they do now and they're that's really good. And so that's another reason why I kind of have have let uh paper books go by the wayside. I wonder if it's generational too. Like um for me , I uh I carried a hundred pounds of law books when I was in school, and like I have carried books and read physical books for you know the first half of my life and I'm okay not doing that again. Whereas I think for people who grew up with ebooks, there's a romance to physical books that I don't feel. Trevor Burrus, I think that's true in general. I think there are a lot of people who have who love like I love books. My wife is a librarian, okay? I love books. We have a lot of books. The books I buy now tend to be coffee table books, photography books, comic book hardcover collections that are just gorgeous. Absolutely, I still buy books, but what I don't buy is, you know, cheaper just text-on-a-page books, because I'd much rather have the portability for those. And yeah, I mean your your law books is very similar to my I'm reading a Neil oh no, I'm reading a thousand page long Neil Stevenson book and I'm going to Hawaii and I had to lug this thing with me, which is literally what happened. The last the last big hardcover book I traveled with right before I bought my first Kindle was a Neil Stevenson Kryptonomicon or something. It was like a thousand pages long. I I looked up the weight of it and it's like it was like five pounds or something. It's just like forget it. So I have no nostalgia for that, but I I don't I don't blame people who who wanna feel connected to the book in some way and who like having books on shelves in their house. I mean, again, I do have books on shelves in my house, but if I'm if I'm reading at night, like I'd rather I had to find a book light and clip it on when I was reading that one book in paper. And I was like, this is why I don't do this. I will say that I I didn't carry a lot of books in college, but I carried a lot of sheep music. And so maybe and I do like digital sheet music now on iPad. Uh huh. But I will say I do have nostalgia for books because when I first entered the Apple world, I learned by books and I still have my original Final Cut Express HD manual that I bought from Barnes and Noble. Good times. Because it was that book. That's literally I literally learned from that and the Adobe Photoshop book. And so I do have some nostalgia for the physical, maybe. Yeah, I got it. I you know on the internet everything's taken to an extreme. I think if I think you like what you like. If you want to take notes on with a pen, you should do that. If you want to read paper books, you should do that. I what I really like is that we now have other options that sometimes a lot of people will find superior. And I think that's I think that's a good thing. And yeah, if you're reading nonfiction, especially, although I do this because I do podcasts about a lot of the books I read, um, for the incomparable, so like highlighting passages that are interesting in order to get that highlights file out later or even taking a brief note. I also have a bunch of friends who are novelists and I get the ebooks from them when they're working on them, like a beta version of the book. And that's also great for similar reasons. I can select and put a little note in that is, you know, cryptic, but enough for me to expand on it when I finally send my um my notes back to them. So there are lots of great uses of of this sort thing, and that's why I've kind of adopted it. I'm a big fan. This episode of Mac Power Users is brought to you by Squarespace. 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That's squarespace.com/slash MPU. Offer code MPU to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for Mac Power users. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Rela y. I would like to talk about the ecosystems because I am a bit out of touch. I uh I rage quit Kindle when they said they wouldn't let me download the books anymore. Um I've been buying books from Kobo, but I have not bought a reader from them. I just read the bo I don't know Jason, what what is out there now if someone wants to get into ebooks? Well a lot of a lot of people are on Kindle and I hear that when I recommend uh other readers that are not Amazon's readers, um , that's what I hear from a lot of people is I is they feel like they're locked in. What I would say to that is , first off, is like there are better Kindles than there used to be. The Kindle software was a joke for a very long time and it's much, much better now. Um, my big problem with Amazon is that they don't make a reader with physical page turn buttons anymore, which I'm a big fan of. I really like the idea of resting my finger on a button and then going click click, click, instead of having to like move my finger over and tap and make sure I tap right and then move it back. And it's just a it's a little affordance, but uh and and I guess it's kind of a luxury. I don't consider it a luxury, but Amazon sort of first they considered it a luxury and then they just stopped making it altogether. Um and that bugs me. But they they have some very good like the paper white is a really good, fairly affordable reader. The the signature edition of that has an accelerometer in it, so that if you really want a physical page turn experience, you can tap the back, double tap the back with your finger and it will turn the page, which is kind of nice that they did that. Um, but also I felt like I didn't really feel good in the Kindle ecosystem. Um, so the first thing I'll say is if you got a lot of Kindle books and so you can't imagine giving them up, if you have a Kindle or a device that uses a Kindle app , you can still you can keep your Kindle books, right? Like there's I think there's nothing stopping you from keeping your old e reader around unless it breaks, although even then you could you could probably find a used a used Kindle that still connects to Amazon. And like and as long as you've got a Kindle to read if you want to revisit an old book on your Kindle or on your iPhone or on your iPad, you can do that. So I think that it's not as dire a situation as it might be, because you can keep it around. I keep an old Kindle around. I I mean I have a lot of old Kindles, but I keep some around. And if there's a book that's on the Kindle, I'll go read it on the Kindle. Um also there is a world of like DRM removal out there that is technically illegal, although I think it's fair use. And if you have a physical Kindle, it's easier to do that. Although Amazon makes it increasingly hard. But there's also just you know, keep your old Kindle around and get a new e-reader. Um, so I think I think it's not as big a barrier as maybe people make it out to be. Um, Kobo is the big competitor. I have looked at some of the others. In Europe, there are some other competitors that are not really available in America. Um, Kobo is uh uh it's a Canadian company. Um, there there is a misconception that Amazon has all the books. The Kobo store has all the books too. They're generally at the exact same price. I think Kobo has a price guarantee so that like if it's cheaper at Kindle, you can take a screenshot and say, give me a refund of the difference and they will do that. So there's a lot to be said for that. And Kobo's hardware is really good. That's the other, that's the other big thing about it. Kobo hardware is really good. They have um the one I'm using is the Kobo um I think it's the Libra, is it the Libra color? Mm-hmm. Um which is like I preferred the Cobo Libra too, which it which was replaced by the Libra color because to get color on an E ink screen the contrast is a little bit a little bit worse um but the fact is they're not selling that they're only selling the color version and that is at this point that's my favorite e-reader is the kobo libra color there are some other really good kobo that' ares larger. That one is the sweet spot for me. Um I think my wife is using a Kobo Sage, which is a little bit larger. Um and so it's more like a trade paperback instead of a paperback, I guess. Currently sold out, side note. Yeah, I think I think they're gonna replace it with something. I I this is what concerns me is that I'm I I worry about what Kobo is doing in terms of their e reader priorities. But I I think that um that the the Libra is the sweet spot right now if you're looking for something other than a Kindle. If you're looking for a Kindle, I I would look at the paper white. I think the paper white is the sweet spot there. Um, it's a good product . It's just, you know, it's Amazon. There are a lot of things about Amazon that I don't love. It's better than it used to be. But um, but I have I have had no issues going to Kobo from Kindle. They both also I will say they both do a good job of supporting libraries, which didn't used to be the case. It used to be that Kindle was much worse at libraries than Kobo. Um Kindle is in some ways better than Kobo now in terms of libraries, but basically they both will support using Overdrive with your local library. Um, and that's a side tip here is if you if you don't have a library card from your local library, you should get one because libraries l lend out ebooks in addition to paper books. And audiobooks. And audiobooks. And the best app nobody's ever heard of is called Libby , which is the uh the app that is the front end for that. And you log in with your library card and you can use it to listen to audiobooks and it's a good audiobook app and you can use it to hold and check out ebo oks and then once you log in on your Kindle, on your Kindle, you go to the Amazon website and press a button and get sent to your Kindle. On Kobo, you log into your library on your Kobo. And then when you check out a book on Libby and you sync your Kobo, it just the book shows up. Um and so it's just kind of instantaneous that way. You can also actually browse your library on Kobo, which is a unique feature of of Kobo, but I to be honest, browsing through web pages on an e-reader is no fun and the Libby app is great. So if you're on an iPhone or iPad or whatever, uh the Libby app is awesome. And then you can just send those to your device and you know read a book. It's it's really great. I'll also shout out the Hoopla app, uh just because my wife uses this like the heck out of Hoopla. Like any any time she hears a book recommendation, she'll just go directly to the Hoopla app and nine times out of ten, it's the same thing. You give it to your public library card or register it and then you can just listen to the audiobook and it just go and it's free. Yeah. Yeah, which is I I guess technically audiobooks are kind of at this point e reading of a different kind. But yeah, that there there is don't sleep on the library is what I'm saying. You may have hooplaw also gives you access to like movies and stuff that you that you just get for free with your library card, which is pretty great. So but I I think a lot of people think of the library as being um whatever it was when they were a kid and it's like books in uh in on shelves and stuff, which is still all there. My wife is a librarian, it's all still there. But it's also ebooks and audiobooks. And um and yeah, if you're not using the Libby app, you should be because you will get I I read a lot of books checked out from the library now that I don't have to buy. Um and that's always my first stop is oh I heard about this new book and I'll put it on hold at the library. And if I just can't wait I'll I'll buy it on Kobo. But um a lot of times it's actually kind of funny to play. It's fun to play library roulette where you've got a stack of uh a a stack of holds and then you know weeks will pass and you'll get a push notification from Libby that says, oh, this book out of that stack, this random book is the one that's up next. And you're like, great, let's check it out. And that's kind of fun to have a little it's a list you built, but after weeks go by, you're like, you don't even remember what's on that list, and you're adding to it all the time. And then things will just pop up and you can uh read that ebook right then. It's pretty great. Or audiobook. library cards, which gives me even more power in those applications with ebooks. Mm-hmm. Uh but interesting when you travel, like I went to Edinburgh last year, they wouldn't give me a library card because I was a young man. The rules change like in San here in the Bay Area, if you live in the Bay Area, you can walk into the San Fran cisco library and get an SFL SFPL card. And one of the nice things about Libby is if your library does reciprocal with other libraries, or if you get a library card at another library, you can all you can add them all to Libby and it will do some intelligent matching of like this book is actually available at this other library sooner and they'll let you put put it on hold there or check it out. Um but but yeah, it's bibliotourism. Being married to a librarian, I have been to lots of libraries around the world. I bet. Can I can I just there's actually a really fun community on TikTok of librarians and libraries trying to do like super trendy or, you know, take advantage of whatever's going viral right now, but then like show that you should read a book and go to your local library and it's pretty great. I kind of love it. I also wanted to mention with Kindle before we get too far away, I did have the occasion I bought e readers for my two younger kids this past holidays, and I did get Kindles and I actually got my middle son a Kindle color soft because he enjoys reading manga. And I was like, this is gonna be great. Like he can actually see the colors and stuff. And I would just caution anyone if you're wanting to get a color e-reader , make sure that the actual things you're gonna read are in color and provided in color. Right. Because we came to realize that all the manga he reads is just black and white. Like black and white. The color is cover or the cover is color on like the Kindle Color Soft, but then as soon as you open it, it's it's black and white. Yeah, lot of them goes black and white. Yeah, it's also true that those col the colors in a color e reader are muted. Um I I I've heard people say, yeah, but you know, you get those book covers and then when you turn off your reader, the book cover is in color and it's like, yeah, but the backlight goes off and you can't see it and it's muddy. So it's a momentary. I I I question unless you're somebody, this is a use case. If you're hi a highlighter person and you highlight different things in different colors , it's really great because you can now highlight in six different colors. And so you've got your little virtual highlighter pens there and that can be a a signal later. But um for comics, the other problem is the size. A lot of comics are just meant for a format that's larger, which is why I think an iPad is much superior to any e-reader, um, especially a smaller e-reader, because you know, I I have read comics on my Kobo mostly as a test and on the and on the Kindle Color Soft. But like really for it to read for it to be readable, you gotta zoom in. And then you're like then you're using an interface. Then you're like panning around within the the page and then it's not as as fun just having a page in front of you. So I don't yeah, be really wary about um about comics and color on e-readers, because it it will look. I have no doubt that the ultimate comic book reading or manga reading e-reader is gonna happen, that they will make one that is really nice color and is really large, so you can not have to resize the image. But um but it's going to be a while. And at that point I still think you'd be better off with an iPad. Uh on the uh topic of color, I just want to follow up the uh the Kobo, because I'm thinking about getting an e-reader. It's been a long time since I've used one . I just use my iPad generally. And um so the Kobo is of interest to me, but when you say the one you have has color on it to me, that is a concern because I actually just want the text to be super sharp. Does does adding color to that Kobo compromise the actual text? I mean it is so if I did a I did a review of it where I did a zoom in on the Libra 2 and the Libra color, and you can see that in the Libra color there is a kind of it's a little bit grayer in the background, and it's actually like a fine dot pattern on the on the device. In practice, I've been using the c Libra color as my primary e-reader for the last year. And the truth is , it isn't an issue. Um it does the text is just as crisp. It's just that the background is not as kind of like white. It's a little grayer, but it's already a little gray. It's just a matter of being slightly grayer more than anything else. So I don't think it's a big issue. And the thing is really the color is irrelev ant. Um the text is all in black and white and reads very clearly. Color the color DPI on these displays is actually lower, but the black and white DPI is still high. So it doesn't it doesn't I I would say what I don't like about it is it's a step back that the that that if you don't care about color, you're getting a display that is not as pr crisp as the old one was in terms of the contrast anyway. But the truth is in practice , using it day to day, it's fine. Yeah. Does that affect battery life as well? No. No. The ink screens just a little bit different, but uh the battery life on these things is enormous. I mean, that's part of the beauty of it is that ebooks aren't very big, so you can load dozens of books on it. And the battery will last you. If you turn off Wi Fi and Bluetooth, like it'll last you you know, at least a week, if not more. Uh there's enormous standby time and enormous reading time. So that's one of the things I love about it is that the battery life is so long. So you've already talked about some multi-devices like taking notes and e-readers, and you don't prefer those. I'm curious if you've tried things like the books Palma two Pro. I got one of these and was like, oh, this will be like a little e reader and it'll have a camera and I can install pocket casts and I can literally listen to podcasts on it. And then I found myself never picking it up. So I I've read a I've reviewed a bunch of the books readers. Books is a Chinese company that is taking stock Android parts and making e-readers out of them. So stock Android parts start and stock e ating parts and using Android as the backing. And then they try to do some customization. What's funny is I've been reviewing their stuff for a while now, and the first stuff that they sent me was really bad. Like the hardware was good, but the software was just , you know, it's Android, it thinks it's a phone, even though it's not. Um and it and what's happened over time is that they have gotten better at modifying Android and they have gotten, I think basically not only their own apps, but partnerships with other app s to say we really want you to do like an e-ink mode where you know it like because what what the if you're running Android and uh it first off, it always assumes you're on a color L uh L C D screen phone. So the problems is it's black and white or it's a very limited color palette. And what you really want is not to scroll. You want page refresh. Because you can't scroll on any screen. The refresh rate is so slow. If you try on that book on that book's Palma uh an app that wants to scroll and you do this, it's just this smear that happens and a bunch of flashes and eventually it settles down. It's really bad. So they've gotten a lot better over time with it. And the Palma, so they make ones that are the exact same size as a Kobo and a Kindle and have H turn buttons on them and a pretty good. The problem is it all requires something to be a little you you need to be a little more nerdy because you gotta log into the Google Play Store and you might need to go to the at the Play Store and and download some apps and configure them right and there's like shortcuts of like long presses to get things. It's not the beauty of Kindle and Kobo, both of which I think are based on Android, is they only really one run one app and it's the app you use for everything all the time and like you see nothing beyond that. And with books you have to use Android. And I'm not saying anything pejorative about Android. I'm just saying it it you you need to be a little more technically astute in order to do it. Um, and then early on I found that the the quality, even being technically fairly technically astute, was not great. It's a lot better. What makes the palma interesting is it's the shape of a phone. And that means it can it's much more pocketable. And I like that about it. Um I I I also in practice don't use it very much because the phone, for me, the phone size is less comfortable in my hand. And and because it's from a phone the the page turn buttons are the volume control buttons on the side which means that you're you're kind of like gripping it in your claw and then you need to get a finger right on the button so you can press the next page button. And like I know that's a little thing, but ergonomics matter, and like the the thin and light and a little bit wider e-ink readers from Amazon and Kobo are ease, I think nicer to hold in the hand than the shape of uh a smartphone. And so and you already have a smartphone, right? So you get the books Palma and now you got two smartphones in your pockets. Like I love the idea of it. But uh and I think that there are for there are people for whom it is perfect because it is smaller, because it is so pocket able. But um it it is you know there there's I feel like I hope there's enough of a market. I think the problem is the market isn't big enough because like I feel like there is room for somebody to make a better e ink reader that is based on Android but, has more apps on it. Like I would be really I I mean I wish Kindle and Kobo would do this, but they won't, which is I would love an RSS reader on my e-reader where I could read articles because that is also just reading text on a screen, and I do that on my iPad instead. But like I'm intrigued by that kind of idea, but that requires extensibility that Kobo and Kindle are never going to give me. So an Android e-reader that's a little more extensible, but pretty easy to use, um, would be really nice. I just don't know if there are enough people in that market. All the books is trying. Book Books is the company that's that's trying there. That's been my white whale. I'm a big fan of the ReadWhy service and uh so much so that I use their Reader app. So my RSS feed is also in their app. And I've loaded a lot of my ebo oks into it. So it's like the one stop for me. I will say, um, to give uh Kobo credit, um, they used to have a partnership with Pocket and Pocket went out of business. They now have a partnership with Instapaper. So all your Instapaper articles will sync to the Kobo and uh the Kobo also has Dropbox support. So any PDF or ebook file or anything else you drop in a in a particular folder on Dropbox will also um be loadable. So it's it's better, it's better, but but the actual like what you have is what they give you and that's all you get. You you can't install an extra thing on a Kobo or a Kindle. It's just not what they want you to do. So so my white whale is a e-reader that also runs the readwise reader, which exists in Android. Right, exactly. That's that's exactly right. I bought one of the books readers and I installed it and the experience was terrible. Right, because it thinks it's it thinks it's a phone and it's not. Yeah. And and unless the developer modifies it, that that's the real challenge right now is that is that as as extensible as Android is, the bottom line is you need to um you you need need developers who are aware that they might be running on an e ink reader. And very few of them are. There's some there like there's some open source projects or some very small like indie Android developers who really see the value in it. There's a really good e gen generic ebook reader called Moon Plus on Android that's very good that I use when I'm using the books one. I I there's another uh reader I want to mention , uh, which is not not an ecosystem as much as just a piece of hardware. And I know Steven has one of these too, which is this company called XTE Inc. out of uh again out of China. And they are making these, they have a a a a little tiny they're teeny tiny e readers. There's a thing called the X four and then they now have one that's called the X three. X three is small enough that you can actually like attach it magnetically to the back of your iPhone. X four is a little too big for modern iPhones. It's sort of like for the iPhone fifty. Yes. You can do it sideways. It used to be that some some of like the I think the Pro Max 16 you could do it upright, but now you can't. It is so it's super primitive . It's it it it's based on an ESP thirty two processor, so it's not running an OS as we would think of it. It's a it's more like an embedded system kind of thing. Um and so okay, negatives. It's uh it doesn't have a light on it. So you you have to have a light or lighting or be outside to read on it. But it's incredibly small. I think if they put a light on it, it would be over the top, actually, how great it would be. But it's still pretty good. Also, no touch screen. I think to be clear, no touchscreen. No touch screen, although I don't mind that because it's got uh you know I I love buttons, Steven. This thing's got so many buttons on it. It's got too many buttons, in fact. It's got getting stuff onto it, how do you do it? Because I had to do the micro SD card thing and I'm like, Yeah, so here here's the secret with this. I got one of these and I was gonna write a review of it, and I thought I can't because all I'm gonna do is kick it because the software is so bad. Exactly. Right. Turns out there's an open source project called CrossPoint. Yes. Um , someone commented on my video and they were like, Justin, just flash this other ROM. And I'm like, seriously, so cross point is what you need to install on this thing. Okay. It's so good. It transforms this thing from a bad product into a good an actual good product. Okay. And and and the idea of flashing firmware seems super repellent, except this is the amazing thing. You go to the cross point website, you plug in this thing to your computer via USB. Go to the pro crosspoint website in Chrome. There's a button you click that says upload the firmware from Chrome. It attaches via USB, flashes the firmware, and then it reboots, and now it's using CrossPoint, which is really good software designed for this thing by this open source project. And at that point, there are lots of ways to get books on there, including Wi-Fi. You can connect it to Wi-Fi. You can set it up if you're using the caliber e-reader software on your Mac. You can actually set it up to sync wireless ly with caliber and sideload books that way. There are lots of ways to do it once you get cross point on there. So I highly recommend that if people want to try it. These re e-readers are really cheap. It's like 50 bucks, 60 bucks. Yeah. Um they're the the the the draw drawback is they don't light themselves, which is yeah, meaning you're gonna need and they're so small you can't really clip on a book light because it would just tip the whole thing and break it in half practically. It's so thin and small. Side note, is the nook still a thing, the Nook e-reader? It's out there. Barnes and Noble is the partner for that. I bought one to try it out last year and I returned it because I feel like it's it's just behind the times and not getting the um not getting the effort that that Kobo is as a Kindle alternative. It th it is out there and they you know, they're using Barnes and Noble as their partner for for books and stuff, but I didn't think it was um I wasn't very impressed with it. Kobo, by the way, Kobo's big partner is Walmart. You can actually log into Kobo with your Kobo ID or your Walmart ID, which is kind of interesting. So they they also have a partnership, and I assume you can buy a Kobo at Walmart. But um anyway, XT Inc. is really interesting and fun. And I wonder if maybe there's a I mean, I've heard from a lot of people who say they love it because they can like ride the bus or the train or whatever and just keep this in their pocket and like it's nothing. It's like a super low. It's not like a credit card, but it's kinda like a credit card or or something. It's super small. But what's the difference between that and just reading it on your phone at that point? This is this is way lighter and the battery lasts forever. It's easy. I mean that's that's those are really the reasons why. And it's an e-ink screen. But yes, uh I I think it is fair to say that for a large chunk of people, you might as well just read it on your phone, period. I I just don't I look when I'm in the waiting room at the doctor's office I read on my phone. I do. But I'd rather not. Like I don't I don't like it as much as reading it on an e reader. I don't like the back light. Um I don't like the the the interface as well. But um but it's true that like to be interested in e readers at all you have to take that first step, which is maybe I want something that isn't just reading on my phone or my iPad. It's true. And before we get too far away, I just want to mention I l'iterveally scrolled Instagram reels on the ink display of the Books Palma two Pro and you really haven't lived until you've seen this egregious display. Yeah. And that's the one with the good refresh rate. That I have i i the refresh rate is even worse than that. So it's wild. Yeah, and then there's another one that I see often uh is the daylight, which is almost like an iPad competitor. It's not really an e ink, I believe, uh technology. in that one Are you guys familiar with that? Yeah, there's a lot out there that are there are a lot of companies that are trying this thing where they're using a standard phone or tablet technology and then they do a like a uh uh a layer on the screen that's like a uh a gl are a glare screen redu cer um to make it f and then they put it in a black and white mode especially and and they make it feel like an e-reader, but it's just a tablet at that point. And I mean if I I got one, it was a TCL maybe made a tablet that that that they said was like that. And it was just an Android tablet with a with a high contrast black and white mode and uh and uh you know a a special screen treatment. Um I I'm really skeptical of that, although it does make me wonder if uh you know if there's something in, you know, should you just get an iPad with uh with a anti-glare coating on it and and do that? And the answer is that would be pretty great, other than the fact that the iPad's going to be bigger than an e-reader and its battery is going to die after a day. Yeah, I mean, that that really is like I was talking earlier about I would love to have an e-read er that ran read wise and could read my books on, but that I just feel like every time I look I don't see it and I ultimately just end up going back to my iPad mini. But I have hope, you know, I I feel like they'll get there. Um and and I think you're right This episode of Mac Power Users is brought to you by Fundera powered by Nerdwallet. Running a small business is tough, and when it's time to get a loan , it can feel impossible to find a lender you actually trust. It's wild out there. Big banks say no, then the internet is full of sketchy offers with sky-high rates and fine print you can barely read. It's super confusing out there for small business es. 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Now that I'm a self-employed independent creator, there are some things that I could use a loan for. I've thought about getting like one of those sheds for an office and new studio space. And trying to find a small business loan, it's just really confusing. And that's why I'm gonna look at nerdwallet for mine. And here's the best part for a limited time. When you visit nerdwallet.com slash MPU and fill out the no obligation form, you'll get VIP treatment and talk with a real person who knows all the ins and outs of small business lending. So don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Nerdwallet.com slash MPU to find Fundera Inc., NMLS ID number 1240038. Our thanks to Fundera, powered by NerdWallet, for their support of this show and all of Relay. Do you guys want to talk about reading workflows? Because you read you know a lot of books, Jason. What I guess what's the method? Uh I guess download it and read it on your ebooks. Yeah, yeah. I mean Libby Libby books at the library is step one. If I hear about a book, I go and see if it's at the library and and then um st if it's not or if it's gonna be a long time or if I have a deadline because I want to talk about it on a podcast, I will go to the Kobo store and I'll buy it there and just load it on my Kobo. I will admit that I also use caliber, which gives me the ability to take DRM free ebooks, or it lets me it lets me back my ebooks up. So I don't, I'm not a book pirate, but I will pull my purchases off of my Kobo into Caliber. So I have them without DRM and that also means they're searchable and stuff, which is great. Um on my Mac, I can I can pull them out because at that point it's just an EPUB. But basically the workflow is just um step one Libby step two Kobo store. And I'll usually do that on my Mac or my iPad. And then when I get to the Kobo, all I'm doing is a sync. And if they're not already there, if they haven't already auto-synced, I will force a sync and then they're there and I read them that way. And that's kind of the whole workflow. And then I guess at the end of it there is a um if if it's something I'm taking notes on, there's an egg uh uh there's like an export process where you plug it in and and pull the notes file off so that you can read that. And that's not like super user friendly, but you can do it. I'm curious, do you when and where? Like because you have a goal of reading so many books in a year, do you actually schedule time? Is there just natural time within your week that it happens? Is there a a regular time every day? What does that look like? Yeah, and I mean end of the day, when I go back to bed, um I will read for a while until I'm too sleep y, uh, and then I will put the Kobo down uh and go to sleep. Uh so that's number one. And then like otherwise it's like maybe if I'm really into something on the weekends, I will, you know, sit and read for a while and then um airplanes Airplanes I I realize that I spend all this time loading movies and TV shows onto my iPad to watch on the plane. And then even I'm even if I'm going to London or something, I'll spend most of the time just sitting there reading a book. I'll read a I'll read like multiple books on a on a flight sometimes, if it's a long flight. And I love it. Like I put my airpods in, I'm listening to music. I have I have my Kobo and again the long life, it's it's not gonna run out of battery. And I will just read so much. So on trips, um and and then downtime when I'm on a trip, especially if it's a vacation, um like when I go to when I go to Hawaii, for example, if I'm not studying for Jeopardy anyway, I will read an enormous amount of books in those situations. But during like regular everyday life, it's mostly before I go to bed and um and some on weekends is mostly when I do it. What kind of music do you listen to when you read? Like lyrics? Is there music ? Yeah, though for me, the rule is so this is funny because people process music in different ways, and I hear from people who are like, I only listen to soundtracks, I only listen to instrumentals, and for me, that's not the barrier. The barrier is I listen to music I'm familiar with . I will write I can write to music. In fact, I I I write to music a lot, and it's a way for me to like charge up my writing. And the that music has lyrics, but it's music I know by heart . And so the lyrics don't intrude. It's just music I know by heart. And and you're getting the emotion, not the words. I'm like, yeah, I mean this is the this is one of my challenges is people come out with uh artists I like come out with new albums. That is hard because I have to find a time to listen to it where I can pay attention to it because that I can't listen to while I'm reading, because I'll just get distracted by listening to the music. But once it's in a playlist that I've listened to a million times before when I'm working. Um at that point, I that that's perfect. And I will often, you know, I'll choose one that sort of fits whatever my mood is at the time and then I'll read that way. So and last thing for me, when you're trying to when you're tr books you want to read, I know you sp the Libby app, you get a push notification, this book is available. Do you have a place where you track books specifically that you want to read soon? And do you track books that you have read aside from just in your Kobo reader? Because there's lots of apps now where you can just track that stuff. Do you do that? Yeah, I I don't have an incoming tracking unless it's a unless it's for like a project. So like the incomparable, we do all of the shortlisted Hugo and Nebula nominees. So it's basically the two short lists for sci-fi fantasy books of the year. And I read those every year and I have done that for like fifteen years now. Um and that's usually a list of like seven to eleven books. And I do keep that because I want to make sure that I'm making progress and that like I know which ones we're covering in the next episode. So we just did an episode with three of them and I know what the next three are and I am currently reading number three of those and I've got a little checkbox that says these ones I've already read, because I'd already read some of them but when the nominations came out. Is that in reminders though? Where is that? Where's that? That is in notes. Just Apple Notes. It's Apple Notes with check boxes. Um but that's that's rare. Generally I don't plan it like that. I just um I've got I've got a lot of books that I bought that are just sitting on my Kobo. I mean that's part of it is that sometimes I buy a book and then like I so I have at any given time five or six books just sitting there that I could read next and when I get to the end of the book I sometimes unless I've got an assignment coming I will just kind of like shop um and then the when a book comes up on Libby, you know, there's a little more tension there because it's like, well, this one you got to return in 14 days. And then it becomes like, do I defer it or do I take it? And if I take it, you know, I read it and it's next in the queue. But it's kind of catch-as catch can for that. I log everything on Goodreads. I know there are a bunch of alternatives to Goodreads out there. Um I don't love Goodreads, but Goodreads does exactly what I want. It it actually kind of works like letterbox for movies for me, where like the number one reason I want to do it is I want to press um log and type in the book and maybe give it a star rating and then be done. And so um Goodreads does that for me. And then yeah, I do the Goodreads challenge. So I I I set myself a target and it can tell me if I'm on target or not. But invariably I'm if I'm not on target, then I go on a vacation and then I'm way past target. And one of the nice things about the Hugo Awards is I usually read all the nominated novellas, so a little bit shorter, and those all count. So there's I I in the summer when I'm reading the ri awards fiction, I will I will get a bunch of um they're not those aren't the thousand page books. So those ones go fast and that's kind of nice. I can I can load up my uh my book count that way. Lard that up a little bit. And this year I it's not going to be a problem because of all those children's books. I logged all those too. Uh so those all count. I I have the most antiquated uh method of my list. So David, I wanna hear if I if I beat yours too. How do you keep track, David, of your books you want to read or have you? I don't have a list. I I do have a a pile of books that I've bought and uh a lot of times the resource is the incomparable podcast because Jason does such a good job covering it. I I don't read all the Nebula the nominees, but you guys always pick one or two and you describe them enough to know which ones will resonate with me. And um so I I get those and I've got those. I do a lot of fiction on audiobook uh you know because that's what I do when I'm gardening or driving, I like to listen to fiction. Uh for nonfiction books, I do I'm an aggressive, as I said, I'm an aggressive user of readwise service. So um you can highlight them and then it gives you space repetition on things you've read. I mean for a nonfiction book I'm I take it a little more seriously uh but the uh but fiction I I I just get collections from friends and podcasts and and I have favorite authors and when I'm ready to read a fiction book, I look at my little cue and pick one. Yeah. So I I this is the most ridiculous method, the probably the least Mac power users like. When I hear about a book I want to read, I'll go to the Apple Books app and mark want to read. I'll buy I'll mark that. So then I have a one place that things across my Apple device of books I want to read. But when I actually want to get the book to read it, I buy the physical book, I have it shipped to my house, and then my nightstand is my queue. I have like three or four books stacked up. The top book is the one I'm currently reading. And then sometimes I I'm also curious how you guys do this. If you read simultaneously multiple books at the same time, I'm typically a completionist. I have to finish one book before I start the next, but I've been reading The Body Keeps the Score for like the last year. And it's like a heavy book at times. And so like I've read a lot of it, but then I also went to Your Body on Art So my nightstand is my cue and it's it's pretty antiquated. Very analog. Good for good for you, I guess. I would say if you're buying the books especially if you're buying on Amazon, you could just like add them to your Amazon card as a for later and do it that way. But well and but sometimes I will also both buy the physical book and buy the digital Apple book version because if I'm ever traveling, I will want to if I want to keep reading it. Ah yes I will literally carry that physical book with you. And because I don't have an e reader that I really love right now and that I have with me, I'll use my Apple devices when I travel. Yeah. If I read. And so it's it's a pretty broken system, but it's been working for me. It's fine. Not everybody has to do everything the same way. I think that's David, are you a simultaneous reader or do you are you complete a book and then go to the next one? I complete a fiction book before I go on to the next one. Uh nonfiction books and me have a complicated relationship. I will very easily skip large swaths or stop one midstream and at any time I've got and I also like to read classics. I've been on an epic T iscake the last six months. So I've I've got a bunch of books in process, but for fiction books I have to read one to the end 'cause then I start getting confused. 'Cause I like a lot of like uh uh space opera science fiction stuff and like is this the galaxy where they have time travel or is this the one where they you know it's a real danger. It is yeah well that's one of the things I appreciated uh when Mike and Gray would do book episodes of Cortex and they would talk about nonfiction books. That helped give me permission to sometimes start a non-fiction book. And when I feel like I've gotten the idea and the author is just kind of rehashing it 15 different ways, like it's okay to not finish that book. It's funny that you mentioned that. I I um I have done enough, I've worked enough in publishing, you know, with magazines and also knowing enough authors and I I have done some book proposals over the years . I know enough that with nonfiction, I can often see what the pitch was and see like that the pitch was this, and the editor was like, it needs to be wider and they're like, Okay, but that's not really the core of what I'm doing, but I widen it. And you can see sometimes that it's like to get this to book length, I'm gonna take this idea and iterate on it a couple of times. Sometimes you can see that in books. In fact, uh a book that I highly recommend, which is Apple in China. Yes. Um, I can see the outline in Apple in China, and like there's a lot in that book that is about like the very ear liest days of Apple manufacturing. And like it sets the stage pretty well, but it's not what the book's about. And I thought, I see what's happening here. I see what this book is doing. And I think that's actually you you get did a great tip there, which is like there are a whole class of nonfiction books where the idea is there's an idea to be gleaned. And a lot of times the book is going to it reiterate that idea uh in different ways and different shapes until you get it. Yeah. And it's okay to say, okay, I get it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just not a fan of a lot of the productivity slop out there. Yeah, they wrote a great blog post and somebody said you should pitch that as a nonfiction book, and the editor said, Here's how we stretch that out into a book, and as the reader, you are not obligated to read it. Well, that's one of the examples that I use is a book that I I love, but actually honestly never finished was the book Range by David Epstein, because he talks about generalists and he talks about if you have multiple interests and you pursue them, like it's okay. Like being a jack of all trades isn't a bad thing. And for someone like me, who had interests in music and tech and podcasts and video, that gave me permission to like do all these things. And he talks about how those generalists sometimes make better leaders and better troubleshooters and problem solvers. And that was like the first three chapters. And as I kept reading, I was like, okay, I I think I think I got it. Yeah. And I read a little more. And I was like, I think I'm good. So put it down. Still recommend. And it's a great book for those, you know, who need that kind of permission, like I did, but I didn't need to finish it. I got it. Well, Jason, I need to make a decision because I I am actually interested in trying to go back to an e-reader for some things. I think I'm giving up on the dream of an e-reader that gives me my read wise highlights and my uh my RSS feeds. So it sounds to me like you recommend Kobo at this point. And I've got a big library of um of ePubs that I have that are you know I can put in any device. Yeah. So I guess Kobo's the answer. I yeah, I think um look at the Kobo Libra color. Um it is the one that I'm using right now. I think it's really good. It if you want to do some article reading on it, if you're thinking like what I do is it's long form articles where it's literally that moment I do a lot of reading on my iPad in the morning, but like I I will run into an article on the web during the day and I'll be like , you know, s happy for you or sorry that happened, but I ain't reading that. It's that moment of like um oh my God, this article is so long. I will send it to Instapaper and it then goes to my Kobo where later I can say, okay, I'm gonna dive into that long article. Um so that gets you at least some web content that you can put there if there's something you're like, I want to save this for later. This is too much. Um and then I highly recommend Caliber, which is open source. I think it's open source. It look it's old. It looks like uh you know uh,, one of the first Mac apps to be ported from Uni x in the 2000s. It's like a really rickety and almost Windows 95. Yeah, but what it look what it's good at is especially for Kobo, is Kobo supports an enhanced version of EPUB that does some nice things on Kobos and Calibur has a Kobo plugin and will like convert all EPUBs to what are called key pubs on the fly when it syncs it to your Kobo. And so they'll end up reading better on the Kobo, which is really nice . And then that's that's also there's a plugin called Obok, which I guess is technically illegal. Kobo spelled backward. Um, but it it'll do the thing where you can basically take any of the books that's le that you bought on your Kobo and you can put 'em back in caliber so that you've got a backup copy of it for later, which I do like to do, even though it's not strictly necessary or legal. I think it's fair use of a thing that I bought. It's telling that the caliber website on the homepage it has a 15-inch G four, I think uh MacBook Pro man like that with the front. The thing about caliber is that it gets updated all the time, like literally all the time. I there is not a moment that every launch I do of that app it says there's an update. Like it's amazing. That's wild. But it's also like it it feels like it's straight out of like 2004. Workflow-wise, though, A, what's your current RSS reader? And B, if you come across web content like from Apple News or something, do you send that to Insta Paper or how do you capture that to read somewhere else? If there's something in Apple News, I'll probably just read it during the day and and then move on with my life. My I I wrote about this on six colors a little bit. Um my my RSS flow is that I only read in the morning. Um and I am using readkit on my iPad to do that. Readkit is a is the RSS reader that works for me. I it works with Fedeedbinbin. I am a Fe subscriber, which means technically I can also send articles to Feedbin and they show up in my RSS reader the next morning. Um, but I mostly don't do that. And um recently what I did is I realized that I I felt overwhelmed because I had this combination of a bunch of I get a bunch of newsletters and I forward them all to feed bin. So the my newsletters show up in my RSS reader, but then I realized I was also subscribing to these sites that have like eight posts in a day or twelve posts in a day, and they were overwhelming. Like there's the newsletter that I really care about, and then it's intersporsed with like 10 little posts that I kind of collectively care about. So I actually um now have a script that runs every morning at 6 30 in the morning. And it takes the contents of these RSS feeds that I like that have been posted in the last day and turns them into a list of links in an RSS feed that I subscribe to. So instead of having like random article, random article, my newsletter, random article, random article, a newsletter I care about, random article, I have the two newsletters and then I have a thing that's like here are your tech links, here are your pop culture links as items. And those items are just a list of links. Um but that was for me, that was like a key finding of like I see what I am overwhelmed by here is like I'm trying to mix and match uh and the interface doesn't really isn't really well suited for that. Now what I don't want to do is like go through a like, now let's read this folder and now let's read this folder. I wanted like a super simplified interface. And so that's I I've been doing that for a couple of weeks now and I actually really like it. I I think that's worked out um pretty well. And I I may visit Claude Code and try to make it a little more sophisticated. But um for now it is it you know it's a Python script that runs once a day and it is it has simplified my morning reading a little bit in readkit. So it's almost like a menu more than it's a reading list. I mean you could even argue that it's it's the it's kind of like I'm building a UI on top of the existing UI where it's like, I want another layer which, is, you know, I want to see my newsletters and these like RSS categories interspersed together at the same level. And like somebody could write an app that does that, right? But like I can't. So instead I hacked RSS to do it for me, where I can I can just say, like you can put all the links from um nine to five Mac and Mac stories and Mac rumors and and the you know the blogs I read about tech. You can put them all in one item and make that item co at the same level as my newsletters. And I, you know, because I cause I realize I only really do read at that level once a day. And so what I really want is a snapshot of what's going on at 630 in the morning. You can actually, I mean we just talked about AI tools on last episode, me and David, and one of the things I've used Claude Cowork for is I've connected Fastmail, which now has a first-party MCP server. And if you do that, if you can do exactly what you're saying and create a scheduled task where Cloud Cowork looks at all your newsletters and does exactly that. Either creates a list of links andor like summaries of this with links to the newsletter. And I also can use it now to search. So if I say, Hey, what were the top links shared in the pod news newsletter? I can just like Claude can just tell me. Like I don't even have to go to the email. Pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Um I was also gonna say uh just uh I use a shortcut for something I just want to share with you, Jason, because you're talking about like aggregating news once a day. I do a daily show for some m for members about the tech news and I've created a shortcut that has a bunch of RSS feeds, like you're saying, and it basically takes all the articles shared for today, published data's today, gives those to AI, tells AI, only take unique stories, not ignore duplicates , but if a story is covered across multiple sources, consider it more important. And so it will identify the top stories of the day with that metric. And then it shows me a list of ten stories in a choose from menu in the short cut. I select five stories and then it pulls the full body text of that article, sends it through AI to summarize it, and now I have a top five tech news story of the day script that I can just read down and show. That's put that's that is not that far off from what I'm trying to do with the with my tech fire hose uh where uh where it's way too many links and I do actually want the a little bit of LLM work to kind of like group them and dedupe them and rank them. That's really smart. I like it. There's there's a lot of ways to do that now. And the trick is to give it enough context to know your taste. And that just takes some time . Yeah. Yeah . This episode of the Mac Power Users is brought to you by One Password. Head over to onepassword dot com slash MPU for 20% off your plan. OnePassword is the security solution that both Steven and I use to protect ourselves and our families. The internet can be a dangerous place and OnePassword is your guide and protector. I'd like to take a minute to talk about the dark web today. It's obscure corners of the internet , accessed through open source location concealing technologies. That anonymity can be a good thing in some ways, but it can also be a bad thing. It's a magnet for hackers, scam artists, and identity thieves. And one of the most common transactions under dark web includes the sale of people's stolen personal information. 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I've known the team at OnePassword since they were a very small company, and I can tell you it is just ingrained in their DNA to protect your privacy. That's why I've been a subscriber for all these years. I need a team of obsessive security people protecting me. You do too. Go check out one password at onepassword.com slash MPU. Get 20% off your plan today. Protect yourself and your family. Thanks one password for all of your support of the Mac Power Users. All right, we opened the can of worms of AI. Let's talk about a little bit. Jason, you've done something interesting with your newsletter. Tell us about it. Yeah, so I I have a newsletter for Six Colors members that is based the way it works, because I did it myself. So much of Six Colors is there's probably a tool that does this now, but a lot of it was built before those tools existed, so I just did it myself. Um and I decided that I wanted a newsletter that went out automatically. Um and I'm not on Substack or any of these newsletter platforms. I'm just using WordPress. And there are plugins that'll do it, but you know, it's that you you both will know this feeling, which is I could take something on the sh off the shelf. It doesn't do it the way I want to do it. I want to do it my way. And so I wrote a Python script by hand with this is before the AI coding era, and I that looks at my R SS feed for members. Um it it sees if I posted something of substance on that day, it's designed to run every day. And so there's a bunch of checks about like is there a full post or a member post or like a a a little link post or a link to a podcast does not cross the threshold. And if there is , it generates a newsletter. Now it's more complicated, right? If there is on a certain day, it actually has to go back in the RSS feed to previous days to find when the last time something triggered it so that it doesn't replay things from the past or miss things, like a little link post that happened yesterday that otherwise would have been dropped entirely. If there was no newsletter yesterday, it needs to know so that it includes the content from yesterday as well as today. So there's a lot of logic going on there in Python to do all of that based on the RSS feed fires at 5 p.m. or 445 p.m. Pacific. Um and then there's a bunch of other stuff in there like if there are certain tags or if it's above a certain length, my mail provider will not support um items above a certain character count. So I have a bunch of like logic that's like if it's too big, it finds the little read more post uh text that's in there and cuts it there and then inserts something that says this is too big for the newsletter. Click to read it on six colors. There's a lot, and I iterated uh uh over months on this thing, but um it does work and it's a subscriber benefit, and so people cause what I found with six colors is I want to meet people where they are, especially if they're paying me as a member. So like if they want to read on the web, they can read on the web. If they want to read in RSS, they can read in RSS. And I thought with the rise of Substack and things that are like it , clearly there is a desire among some audiences to read it in email. And that's absolutely been the case. I hear from people who are like, I'm so glad that you do this email because I don't visit the site every day, and I don't expect them to, and they're not doing RSS for whatever reason. Or maybe like me, they find value in instead of having like individual posts kind of like trickle through that when something happens, because otherwise there's no newsletter, at the end of the day, Jason sends me a newsletter with what happened that day. And so that's built up over time. Uh it's got little bits of logic for like where the links go. And and uh if if there's like multiple links to podcasts that have been posted, they get kind of concatenated together into a podcast section. It's really nice. But and I've been doing that for I don't even know how long, a couple of years now. I'm very happy with it. I think it I think it's a really nice product that yes, I have kind of replicated Substack um backward from my blog which is how I wanted to do it. I don't think of the newsletter first, I think of the site first and then the newsletter is a summation of what's happened on the site. But I it gets me what I think people want. Next step though is in terms of coming to people where they are , one of the most popular things, we did it accidentally, but one of the most popular things in our membership for Six Colors is the Dan Morin and I do a podcast every we ek that's just for members. And we did it, like I said, kind of on a lark of like, let's see what people think, because we have a lot of following from podcasts. And what we were selling people was a website with words written on it. And it turns out that a lot of those people are a lot of them our members really are very um podcast forward at least. And they love the podcast. So I realize now that I have a substantial membership base that is more podcast forward . So I had this thought, which was , what if I could make a podcast out of the newsletter. Right. And what I knew immediately from personal experience and friends experience is there was no way I was going to sit down, like I don't even want to put the newsletter together by hand every day. I wanted to spend time writing a script that would auto-generate the newsletter wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I didn't have to worry about it. The newsletter got put out. I wanted an automatic podcast of basically my newsletter. How would I do that? And so now we do live in the in the AI era. So I I use my friend Claude and we looked at my newsletter script and we walked through, and it was Claude Cowork, I think, to begin with. Um, and we had this, you know, I had this dialogue with Claude where basically I'm saying, okay, here's this newsletter. I want to do a version of this as a podcast. Um, and we had to walk through a bunch of steps, right? So it 's like what's the best available text to speech API? Because I'm not going to have somebody read this. A computer needs to read this, but I want it to sound good. And we went through a bunch of iterations. I actually I don't I don't know if you guys have talked about it's been a past sponsor of mine elsewhere. There's a service called Listen Later, which is kind of like InstaPaper, but it does text-to-speech and puts it in a podcast feed instead. So you save an article and it reads it to you in a podcast feed. It's very clever. I I I was so frustrated with all these different text-to-speech APIs. I finally reached out to the guy who does listen later and I was like, what do you do here? Because and he gave me some great advice. It turns out actually that if you use the most modern open AI API for um text of speech, it uses an LLM and it like doesn't read all the words. It's unbelievable . Like why would what? And he he was like, yeah, don't do that. Uh use the older one. The voices aren't quite as good, but it's it's deterministic. It's like it will read all the words you give it. So that's what I started to do. And like I experimented with Googles and OpenAIs. And then I ended up I ended up back at OpenAI with a more primitive text-of-speech engine. So that was like step one. And then there's like you then you're shopping for voices and they're like well there's five voices at open ai that are of decent quality and I like I picked two that I thought were really good and then then there were three others that I I was like these are okay but I don't think I'm gonna go with them. Um, so you know, so I'm doing that and then I'm also going back and forth with Claude Cowork on like I want to replicate the logic of the newsletter. I only want to put out a podcast if it has those same triggers and we want to look back in time. So we were really using my script as the basis, but modifying it to have uh a place where it goes out to the text-to-speech engine. Now, again, you you start to iterate and you realize things like, um, if it's a if it's a link post, I should probably say where the link is going to So there's a bunch of logic for like if if it's a link post, say this is a link to the verge.com. Uh and how does that work? And and do I want to have links to the podcast in there? I don't because the the this is a podcast. If they want to listen to the podcast, they can listen to that podcast. They probably do. Um so it built similarly, but this time kind of like working with my script as the base and with Claude of like building up how you do text to speech and then a bunch of stuff like it turns out that you can't give too much speech to the text to speech API. So you have to break it up into little bits every few paragraphs. But it turns out that something weird about text to speech is like all the audio comes back at different vol umes. So you have to normalize everything to get it to be the same volume. Because it's like a loud paragraph and then a quiet paragraph. You're like, well, that's no good. I'm I generated so many terrible podcasts. And then it's like, well, I want chapter markers. So we built a you know, I had Claude build me a uh thing that it not normalizes everything but then it puts chapter markers between each article because I want this to be a good podcast. Um I decided and I would listen to these and and I would be like, this still doesn't do it. So a lot of posts, we block quote other people's content. We like do a quote and then we comment on it. And I was like, how do you do that in audio? So what I did is I went back to those three voices that I didn't think were quite as good. And block quotes are read by those three voices, and they just randomly rotate. But it means that when you're reading a story, a voice is reading you the story, and then the quote is read by somebody else, a different voice, and then it goes back to the original voice. And I'm like, that's how you do that. And I in' audio s been a lot of iteration like that. And you there's still stuff that's missing. Like hyperlinks, like normal hyperlinks that go places , there's really no way to do that in audio without it breaking the flow of the writing. I do have it read footnotes out loud and it actually stops at the footnote and says begin footnote, reads the footnote and then says end footnote because I thought I kind of need to have the footnotes in there.ad Reing them at the bottom out of context doesn't make any sense in audio. So we're gonna push those in, but I'm not gonna read hyperlinks out loud. That's too it's a bridge too far. And um and then the lat oh and and like a lot of details like um text to speech engine, you can feed it HTML. You can say this is a subhead. It doesn't read them right. So I ended up inserting like if you find a subhead, I want this much audio, I want silence before it and after it, so it feels like there's an actual pause. So it turns out there's a lot of engineering that goes into like art direction or whatever of this podcast to get it to sound like it's actually decent. And then the last one was Glenn Fleisch mann writes a how-to article for me every Monday. And a lot of times he's got like um little snippets of code like from the terminal. And I ran one of those through and it was like the thing lost its mind because it's trying to read termin al commands as sentences, which just no . So um so again I had to spend some time with Claude Code and we like worked on it to like basically what I said was because so much of this AI stuff is you're the project manager and so you're trying to define what the features are and what the behavior is and then asking it to come up with the code. And in that case, it was we need a code mode where if something is put in code font, the way it's sent to the TTS engine has to completely change. And like literally we need to map so that if there's a backslash, it says the word backslash. Right, right. Only in that mode. And it's not perfect, but like it sounds like what a person would be if would say if they were forced to read a terminal command out loud. Obviously, nobody is going to enter in a terminal command based on something they hear in a podcast. But at least at least you get the context of like type sud o, you know, or sudo uh you know backslash period, whatever it is, like it it it sounds like code font in your ears. So that's the story is basically I replicated my newsletter script, but it turns out that in going to an audio version, um there was an enormous number of new creative decisions that need to needed to be made to make it sound decent. And I gotta say, I'm really proud of it. I think it sounds pretty good. Um I was unsure whether people would be, I tested it on some of my members. Um like what's the reception is this usable? Because I didn't want to go down this path it w if it was not usable. And it turns out that my intuition was right. There are a lot of people who are just not going to read the newsletter or the RSS feed, but who have a lot of podcast time. And and the feedback for those people has been really good. Obviously it's the same content that's everywhere else that we do it, but in a format that like, and I really like the fact that I'm using some good voices, I'm alternating the voices per story. So you're it's not the same voice for every story. They they sort of go, there's a male voice and a female voice, and they kind of alternate female, male, female, male, depending on how many stories there are. I love the additional voices for block quotes was a good one. The code thing was a good addition. So it's in a pretty good place. I have no doubt that one of these days somebody's gonna say, Did you hear the latest one? It's really bad. And I'm gonna be like, Oh boy, I gotta fix that. Did you think about training eleven labs on your voice and have it be in your voice? I did . I the initial conception of this was that I was like, Hey Dan , Glenn, you open to the idea that we might do some voice clon ing and have our cloned voices read it. And let me tell you, so I did a test. It's terrible. That was that was my answer. Is it's so bad. It sounds worse than the synthetic voices. It doesn't really sound like me, but it sounds enough like me to be creepy, but also not very good. And so like I'm kind of open to the idea that maybe that would be a future direction, although I don't think it's necessary . Um, I kind of like that it's different. In fact, uh I, you know, I like that it's appreciably different. That's one of the reasons why I have, even though most of the contributors to Six Colors are men, not all, but most . Um, I I put the female voice at the front because I I think it's actually good to say this is not a person who wrote the article. It is a robot one, and not, you know, it it's it's we're not trying to replicate my voice or Glenn's voice or John Moltz's voice or Shelley Brisman's voice. We're not trying to do that. I'm open to the possibility that we might do that in the future if they were really good, but I'm really skeptical if that will happen. I I actually think even if they got it really good, I'd be a little repelled by it. Yes. Because I've been listening to you for years and I know your inflection and I would notice. I agree. That that was what I thought I thought I was gonna be open to it. And then I heard it and I was like , no. Like it was a hard no. No way. I'd like to get both of your live reactions to my clone voice, because there are some times that I do this. And I think I can do this hold on with the audio. I'm gonna drop a mark and I'll send Jim a better uh audio recording. Wang described as an ongoing cyber attack. The company said a sophisticated distributed denial of service attack began around eight forty PM . Okay. The cadence is wrong, but it sounds like I mean, what do you think, Jason? Yeah, I also I will say you are reading I mean, or your synthetic voice is reading a kind of like news headline script. Correct. One of the challenges with what I write is it's very voicey a lot of times on six colors . And like, and you know, what John Moltz writes is extremely voicey. And it's like, there's no way. Like, what I found is that those things are really good. In fact, a lot of these TTS engines, including the the 11 Lab and Labs clones , one of the contexts is like, what is it doing? Is it soothing? Is it news headlines? And like news headlines is a speaking style that I think it actually can emulate pretty well. Yeah. But once you're like in blog post land and it's it's very much personal voice, it really falls apart. So I'm not inclined to do it, but I'm open. It was actually, the initial idea. And then I just, I was like, no, that's not going to work. Let's go the other way. Can we pivot and find some decent synthesized voices? And that's what I'm optimistic about is that the synthesized voices are really good, even at weird vo icey stuff. You can I'm amazed at they read these sentences like the John Moltz writes that are jokes. And you're like, how is it going to get it? And it doesn't always get it. But there are moments where I'm like, it got the cadence exactly right of what this sentence is supposed to sound like. And I think that the voice clones are are are going to be behind because they're not being tuned because they're they're one-offs. Whereas these these core voices that are, you know, there are only three or four of them are much more sophisticated. Squarespace, Fundera, and OneP assword. And thank you to our members who support us directly. We're going to go record more power users. You get access to that. You also can watch the video of it for more power users. And we got another bonus episode coming very soon. So thanks for listening. We'll catch you next time