[00:00:09.020] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.310] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.650] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.490] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.520] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And today's a little bit unusual because we've pre-recorded this. And why are we pre-recording, Taylor?
[00:00:30.310] - Taylor
Because I will be at Wordcamp when this episode gets released.
[00:00:36.730] - Gordon
That's right. So it's actually Tuesday right now, and the episode goes out on Friday. So Taylor is off tomorrow, in fact. And where is it this year?
[00:00:48.110] - Taylor
So this year it is in Athens, which they announced last year at the last Wordcamp at the end.
[00:00:55.680] - Computer
Time for a five minute break.
[00:00:58.010] - Gordon
Made me jump.
[00:01:00.090] - Taylor
Let's just set that so it doesn't go off again.
[00:01:02.470] - Gordon
Yeah, good idea. See the joys of recording it ahead of time. There we go. So yes, it's in Athens, which they announced at the end of last one.
[00:01:13.430] - Taylor
Yes, and they will announce obviously next year's one at the end of this one.
[00:01:17.480] - Gordon
Okay. So you went last year. And so tell me what you're expecting or what your goals are for this year.
[00:01:25.080] - Taylor
So last year I didn't do Contributors' Day, which is... So Wordcamp is a three day event. The first day is Contributors' Day. So this is where you can basically contribute to WordPress in any capacity, whether that is committing code to the core source code, whether that is doing translations, whether that is writing up docs, whether that is doing tests, reviewing code, design, accessibility, workshops. There's lots and lots of ways that you can contribute to the open source WordPress platform.
[00:02:06.270] - Gordon
Okay, so you're going for that this time as well?
[00:02:08.920] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:02:09.290] - Gordon
And what are you planning on doing in Contribution Day?
[00:02:12.320] - Taylor
I don't know. It kind of depends. I mean, there's lots of... If you look on the core WordPress or Make, I think it's make.wordpress.org or something, you can see good first starter bugs or fixes and things like that. And that's a nice way to get into being a core contributor. And there's obviously people that get sponsored and work full-time on the open source platform. And again, I say sponsored because nobody really owns WordPress. There's just lots of people that contribute their time. And the sponsoring is done by big companies. So one of the biggest is Automatic, who they own WordPress.com, which is the hosted version. They also own lots and lots of plug-ins like "Jetpack" and "WooCommerce" and things like that. And so they contribute a set number of hours each week to developing WordPress and making it better.
[00:03:16.290] - Gordon
Okay, so you are going to look and see what you can do. That's Contributors' Day. What else is there that you're looking forward to?
[00:03:22.140] - Taylor
On the other two days, there are talks, so you can go and listen to a talk on pretty much anything. So it could be agency based, it could be accessibility, it could be WordPress in general, full site editing, which is obviously quite new to WordPress. And there's also workshops, so you can get your hands dirty. Some of them require you to have a laptop and you follow along. So last year, I went to one that was using the WordPress API, and it was showing us how you can get data from the API, how you can extend it, how you can create new posts and publish posts from the API, things like that, which is really interesting and something that I knew a tiny bit about. But I learned a lot more and I learned how to use Postman, which is an API service that allows you to send APIs and test them and things like that. And there's talks on all different things as well. Gatsby, which is a headless framework for headless sites with WordPress. But yeah, pretty much anything and anything.
[00:04:28.580] - Gordon
And of course, you'll be meeting up with people you know, I assume.
[00:04:31.680] - Taylor
Yeah. So there's also people that I have made friends with online. So people like Jewel, who is the CEO of WP Manage Ninja with plug-ins like Fluent Forms, Fluent CRM, which we've spoken about before. Other people, there's a guy called Patrick who we've been recently using his plug-in on one of your projects, who's been awesome and helped us. So it'll be nice to be able to see him. And yeah, just meet people that I have made friends with or, and meet new friends. Make new friends.
[00:05:01.230] - Gordon
Very exciting. So I assume that because you're going to be away for Friday when we normally go live, you'll be talking about your experience for next week when you get back.
[00:05:13.470] - Taylor
Yeah, next week I will tell you all about how it went.
[00:05:16.010] - Gordon
And this is going to be your second month of 12 Months of Coffee, isn't it?
[00:05:21.520] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:05:22.270] - Gordon
So Athens is going to be Month Two. That's very exciting. Anything else you want to tell us?
[00:05:28.310] - Taylor
I don't think so. We'll wait for next week.
[00:05:31.510] - Gordon
Very exciting. So hopefully you'll come back with lots of new knowledge and information, and you'll be able to push WordPress even further than you do already. So that would be good for everyone, for your customers, and for me, and for you. Looking forward to seeing it and hearing about your trip.
[00:05:50.110] - Taylor
What's your topic?
[00:05:50.970] - Gordon
So first of all, just a quick update on my computer. As you know, I've been having an awful lot of problems with it, and I ordered a new computer. Did I mention that?
[00:06:02.640] - Taylor
Just a couple of times.
[00:06:04.110] - Gordon
Okay. So my new computer arrived and it's now set up, and it's running really well actually. The problem I've got is transferring everything over to it because I decided as a new computer, and also a different chipset. So my previous computer is an Intel. The new computer is Apple Silicon. It's an M2 Pro for those who are interested. And so I decided because there is different code that runs on Apple Silicon to optimize it, to get the best out of it, I decided that I would reinstall all the applications so that I wasn't just copying across older versions of applications. That way, I'll ensure I get the most optimized versions. And I decided I would copy across the data that I needed. Now, that means there's an awful lot to check because as I was showing you earlier today, there is a pre-set that I created for exporting files on a particular program. And by not copying everything over as one big chunk in time machine and doing it separately as different items, things like that get missed. And so what I've done is I've left the machine that I was running on sitting to the side, and I'm just going into the apps and looking at the settings and recreating them on the new machine. And I need to make sure that I've done all that before I repurposed that machine. One thing I should say about the machine is that the old machine, the iMac that I had that went in for repair, came back and it was completely repaired for free by Apple. I don't think I did mention this, did I?
[00:08:06.030] - Taylor
Yeah, I think you mentioned the fact that they have pretty good support.
[00:08:10.220] - Gordon
They have really good support. And the UK consumer law allowed me to get the hard drive, which was failing, to be replaced. And that meant that I actually lost about three weeks worth of data because my latest backup was on the third of May. And I didn't have a backup since then because it wasn't working properly. And so that is the three weeks worth of data that I've lost. But it's not urgent, as in the important stuff, the company took off my computer before, but it was struggling. It was taking a long time to take data off because the drive was dying, basically. So I do have databases that I needed that were up to date. My next job is to get Final Cut project that I'm working on back up and running with all the plug-ins and everything else that it needs; because they're not installed, and I need to make sure I install them. So that's happening. And then once I've done all that, the iMac can be reformatted, new operating system put onto it, and then I can move that down the chain and the machine that I've got as my second machine currently will then get reformatted and taken out and sold. So if you're looking for a slightly older iMac and you're wanting a good price, watch this space because I'll have one for you at some point soon. Right, so that's my computer update. Another thing that we have to talk about is the Apple announcement which happened yesterday for us. But if you're watching this on Friday, it would have been on the Monday. An awful lot of updates going on there. Some updates to computers, to Macs, which we were expecting. So they've now got every single computer they sell is now on Apple Silicon. So they've moved all of their machines over to their new technology, which is great because it means that they now have full control over the whole machine. So all of the CPU, GPU, all of that, all the memory, all of that is being built inhouse. And so they can coordinate the software with the hardware without being restricted on speed, which was the issue that they were having with Intel, which is why they wanted to move over. Intel just weren't progressing their chips fast enough for Apple. So now they've got it all inhouse. It's down to them now. And it seems they've got quite a good team that are building on these chips and making them faster for every iteration. So that's great news. They've got... Are you tired? You just yawned there. They've also brought out a new Mac Pro, which is the one that I was just mentioning, which seems interesting. It's an M2 Ultra, which is the fastest chip they do. But if you spec it out to the highest spec, it comes in at something like $18,000, something like that, which is a huge amount of money, but with that comes a huge amount of power. So for those people who need it, I guess that's not going to be such a big price. They've also updated the Mac Studio, and that was one of the options I had when I was going to buy my replacement, my new machine. I ended up getting the Mac Mini. I think the Mac Studio would have been nice, but not essential because the M2 is doing everything I need it to do. So I don't need to get a faster chip, so that's good. There's a lot of software updates that are coming out. You're already on the iPhone Beta, which came out yesterday, so you're already on that. Any first impressions from that, from what you've seen?
[00:12:07.720] - Taylor
It's a slightly cleaner UI. The new keyboard is very nice. The auto correction and things like that is a lot nicer and supposed to be a lot better. It's meant to have machine learning and things like that.
[00:12:26.880] - Gordon
Yeah, there's newer filters going in there and there's AI as well, which is interesting. So that will be good. Anything else?
[00:12:35.010] - Taylor
They have new contact cards, which are quite nice. And so when people call you, you can set what comes up and you can see a nice picture with their name and stuff.
[00:12:45.150] - Gordon
Share play in the car is good. It means that if there's someone else in the car with an iPhone, you can effectively allow them to decide what you listen to on the journey. So it's not coming just from your iPhone that's plugged in now. People in the car can add things to the playlist, which is interesting.
[00:13:06.790] - Taylor
You don't need an Apple Music subscription because it all runs off your Apple Music subscription.
[00:13:11.700] - Gordon
Yeah, which is really good. It's a really good solution. It's going to make car journeys for families and all sorts of people much more fun, much more enjoyable as well. So that's that. Lots of Mac OS updates, Watch OS updates. The Apple TV is getting a new update. Oh, and of course, one more thing. They've got this new device that they're now talking about, which is coming out next year. And that's their mixed reality headset, which is really interesting. Have you seen any of the information about it?
[00:13:54.570] - Taylor
I've seen bits of it, but I haven't looked too much into it.
[00:13:57.540] - Gordon
So unlike the Meta Quest, which is the headset that I have, this is a 'mixed reality' headset. So what it is is you can see your environment as if you were putting them on and there was clear glass in front of it. So it's a headset that goes over your head. You can't actually see all the way through it. It's just giving that impression because it's got lots of cameras and the screens in there which make it look like you can see out. And it's in full colour. It's stereoscopic, so everything looks 3D. So you can see your environment, which means you can also see if people or animals are coming into your field of view. And augmented reality allows you to use apps like you do on an iPhone or your watch. And using eye tracking, which is really interesting, you can just look at the app you want to open and click your fingers together like that, and it will open. And you don't need to move your hand. You can have it down here somewhere. They've got cameras that are looking down and they can see these things. And your eye tracking is basically moving the cursor. And if you want to type something on the keyboard, you just look at the letters you want to type, and it does that. It also has voice recognition. So you can look into a field and then talk, and it will just put your voice in there, which is really good.
[00:15:28.430] - Taylor
Very clever.
[00:15:29.190] - Gordon
It also, you may not have seen this. It also works with their other ecosystem. So if you've got an Apple laptop, for example, you can open the screen of your laptop, you can look at the screen, and it will then transfer what's on that screen into your virtual mixed reality space. So you can have basically a screen just floating in the air, and you can make it bigger, again, just by looking and dragging. And so you get a huge screen, and you can work on your computer using a Bluetooth keyboard, Bluetooth mouse if you so wish. And it's all running on your laptop, but you're seeing it through the headset, which is really cool.
[00:16:11.450] - Taylor
That sounds very clever.
[00:16:12.540] - Gordon
You also get to see eyes if you are not the person with the headset on. So you can see the person and you'll know when they're concentrating on something else because you won't see their eyes. But if they are looking at you, then you'll see their eyes as if it were glass, which is really interesting way of dealing with that concept. There's lots of other things that they've got which I think are going to appeal to a lot of people. They've got spatial audio, for example. You can sit and watch films, TV shows as if you had a huge screen. You can make it as big as you want it to be. And they've already got a deal with Disney to add in extra content. So you could be watching, for example, a basketball game. And one of the things you could have is separate screens on the side of your TV, effectively. It's not a TV, but you know what I mean, with the scores on it. They also have the ability to do trackside is not the right word, courtside views where you can see everything in 3D as the game is progressing. So you can actually turn it and look at whatever angle you want, look down on it if you wanted to, and watch a live game with all this new way of watching it, which is just fascinating. So that's all coming. They are very clever, Apple. They're not releasing it till next year, which gives time for developers to get their hands on it and to create their own software and their own applications. So that on day one there's going to be a wealth of apps that you can use. There is a problem with this system, though.
[00:18:05.450] - Taylor
What's that?
[00:18:06.970] - Gordon
The price. I mean, it is a pro device. My Meta Quest cost me, I think it was £400. And the Vision Pro, "Apple Vision Pro" is what it's called, is very premium. It looks really good. It's made really well. But three and a half thousand pounds. That's a lot of money. That's only slightly less than what I've paid for my new Mac and screen, which I understand because it's a computer in itself, but it's going to stop an awful lot of people from purchasing it.
[00:18:51.250] - Taylor
I think that you need that though, otherwise you'd undersell.
[00:18:55.820] - Gordon
Yeah, no, I get that. It's been six years in the making. They've spent an awful lot of time doing research and development. They've got to recoup all those costs. I get all that. And the diehards will go out and buy one and they'll be using it. And I think generation three, four, maybe, you'll get to a point when it's going to be a bit more mass market and everyone can afford it and everyone can use it. And it means that everyone else who's making headsets like Meta Quest will have to up their game because they don't want people jumping ship. So yeah, it's going to be a very interesting space. They're calling this the 'Spatial Computing' because you don't have to have a desk, you don't have to have chairs. You can be in a space and be able to work. You don't have to have your computer. You can just do your work wherever you happen to be. One of the examples they gave is someone sitting on an aeroplane watching a film, and you've got a digital crown that you can turn, and it blocks off reality so that you can take yourself into a virtual environment. But you choose how far it comes. You can have it to here so you can still see your real environment outside of that. Or you can have it go all the way around. And sitting watching a film while you're on an aeroplane on this huge screen is a really interesting concept for spatial computing, which is what Apple are calling it, and it's their new platform.
[00:20:33.480] - Taylor
Sounds good.
[00:20:33.750] - Gordon
So we will look forward to seeing where that goes. Yeah, very exciting.
[00:20:38.460] - Taylor
Nice.
[00:20:40.230] - Gordon
Ooh. One last thing. Voicemail on iPhones is getting transcriptions, which is interesting because if you get a call and you're in a meeting, for example, and you don't know whether it's important enough to stop your meeting and answer; you can basically send it to voicemail and it will then transcribe in real time what the person is saying. And then at any point, you can pick up the phone and answer it and talk to people.
[00:21:10.740] - Taylor
That's clever.
[00:21:11.320] - Gordon
Which is really clever. So you can decide whether you want to talk to people or not, depending on what they have to say, if you don't know who they are, obviously. So that was worth mentioning because I thought that was a really interesting concept. So yeah, that's me done.
[00:21:26.290] - Taylor
That's me as well.
[00:21:27.660] - Gordon
Thank you so much for watching. As always, you can find us on Facebook and on YouTube. Please like, share, and subscribe.
[00:21:36.570] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:21:42.070] - Gordon
And all the transcripts will be there. It takes about a week or so for the transcripts to go on. And I should say a big thank you to Hayley, who does all our transcripts. She's incredible at doing them. And it's really beneficial for our website, and our podcast, and our viewers that she does this. And so we'd both like to thank her, again. I know we've said this before, but it's a thankless task, honestly, listening to us waffle on and making sure the transcripts are accurate. Sometimes she gets some very funny words that come up, which are very interesting. She screenshots them and lets me know, they're very funny. Anyway, thank you to you. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next week, 1pm on Friday, where we'll find out all about Taylor's trip to Athens. Until then, my name is Gordon, and I am from Drayson Design.
[00:22:38.150] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:22:41.120] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:22:41.740] - Taylor
Bye.
