[00:00:09.07] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.17] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:10.01] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.26] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.26] - 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 thank you for joining us. It's been a busy week as far as announcements go and also releasing of software. So I will talk about that in my topic. Shall I go first this week?
[00:00:39.05] - Taylor
Go on then.
[00:00:39.28] - Gordon
Okay, so let's get straight into it. This week was very busy with Apple announcements. Now the only reason I mention this is because we keep up to date with the Apple announcements, because we use Apple products in our work. And this week we had three announcements on three days. The first day they spoke about brand new iMacs which are in new colours and use the M4 chip, which is going to be a lot faster, and the M4 Pro chip also. And then the second day, which was Tuesday gone, they announced the Mac Mini, which is the computer I use currently. So the Mac Mini has basically gone from sort of about seven and a half inches square with rounded corners down to about five and a half inches square, which is a huge difference. Yeah, it's very, very much smaller. The footprint is very small and they've managed to make it a lot more powerful than the one I've got. And they've kept the price similar to what it was before. And that comes with the M4 chip and the M4 Pro chip. And then on Wednesday they announced new MacBooks. Did you see this?
[00:01:57.02] - Taylor
I did.
[00:01:58.01] - Gordon
New MacBook Pros and these also come with the new M4 chip and the M4 Pro. Actually, I'm not sure they come with it. Yes, they do. M4, M4 Pro and the M4 Max, which are, you know, different levels of chips with different number of GPUs and CPU cores, etc. Basically the M4 is the base; Pro is faster; Max is really fast. That's basically all you need to know. And the, what was it? The MacBook Airs have also been increased to align with the memory of all of them, which is a minimum of 16 gigabytes now. It was eight for a long, long time. But I think maybe they need more because of the Apple Intelligence which also was announced and released on Monday. So 18.1 iOS and iPadOS was released along with Mac Sequoia 15.1. And all of these have the brand new Apple Intelligence features. Well, the beginnings of them anyway. You can do things like summarise email threads and you can find photos better and quicker and you can create video memories based on a prompt and taking the photos that you already have. And you've also got all of the writing tools as well, which will allow you to rewrite content with a professional tone or an informal, friendly tone, or you can proofread it, etc. etc. So all of those features are now available. If you're in the UK or anywhere other than the US, then you do need to change the language or the region of your device to American US and then you'll be able to get the new Apple Intelligence. Alternatively, you can wait till December when it's going to be all in the UK language format. So you'll be able to wait until then if you want. But you do get the brand new Siri as well, which has a lovely animation with all of the glowing border.
[00:04:29.03] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:04:29.19] - Gordon
If you've seen it, you'll know what I mean. It looks great. I really like it. So that's all the announcements that were made and the software that came out. What I want to talk about is very closely linked to that and that's, do you upgrade to the new hardware when it comes out? Now, you know, there's lots of different answers to this and each person is going to have their own answer. I have a Mac Mini and you know, mine is an M2 Pro. So there's been two generations of chips since I bought my my Mac, my main Mac. And so I think, you know, "do I want to upgrade, do I want to spend another two and a half thousand or whatever it's going to cost me to upgrade to a decent Mac Mini." And I do the same with the iPhone as well. I upgraded to the iPhone 16 Pro because I had the iPhone 14 Pro previously. And so again, it was two generations. So based on that, you would think, yeah, maybe the Mac is going to need to be upgraded. But my question really, when it comes to upgrading existing hardware for the latest versions, because I do it, you know, you always have new versions coming out. My question to you is, does the new hardware do something that you are unable to do at the moment and want to do, or is your existing setup causing you problems? Now, what I mean by that is, are you finding that the workload that you are trying to put through your machine is struggling because it's underpowered, or the software that you're trying to run needs a higher powered spec computer? For me, I upgraded to the iPhone 16 Pro because of Apple Intelligence and the better cameras, better camera, had a camera button, etc, etc and that's the main reason I upgraded because I use my phone for taking photos quite a bit and I really liked the idea of Apple Intelligence when it was announced. So I don't know if you can hear our dog is just barking. I don't know what he's doing but Taylor's going to see him. So that's the reason I upgraded the iPhone. Now as far as the Mac goes, it's a 2023 iMac. So even though it's two generations chip newer now, and it's got, you know, better ports, it's got the Thunderbolt 5 instead of Thunderbolt 4 which is a lot faster. Do I need to upgrade? Do I have anything that the new one does that the old one doesn't? And for me the answer is no. There's nothing on the new system that I desperately need. My computer is currently very fast. I quite like the speed of it. It does everything I need it to do. It allows me to run Apple Intelligence and I only bought it last year. So for me, I'm not going to be upgrading my Mac this time around because I don't need to. Everything that I need is done. I've got everything I need. But there's a lot of decisions when it comes to upgrading hardware and the only advice I can give you from my experience is just as I said previously, do you feel you need to upgrade because what you have doesn't do what you need it to do? Or is there a compelling reason to buy the upgraded version because it does something that you really need or want?
[00:08:29.08] - Gordon
You get this, don't you, with your MacBook Pros. You sort of see the new versions and you did this a while back and you sold me your old one so you could get your latest one which is sitting in front of us.
[00:08:40.07] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:08:41.12] - Gordon
What sort of advice or decisions do you go through when you look at hardware upgrades?
[00:08:48.10] - Taylor
So it's difficult because the previous version I had was a 13 inch MacBook Pro. So I upgraded because I wanted a bigger screen so I now have a 16 inch MacBook Pro. Prior to that I upgraded because I went from an Intel laptop to a M1 chip. Yeah.
[00:09:08.00] - Gordon
And the speed increase was quite dramatic at the time, wasn't it?
[00:09:10.28] - Taylor
So that were the reasons why is I either was reaching the limit of the storage because they had less storage in the older laptops or the hardware kind of the, the software wasn't fast enough or the GPU and things like that wasn't fast enough or I just wanted new, the new kind of screens or whatever that I needed or wanted for better productivity.
[00:09:37.19] - Gordon
So your laptop is your main machine, isn't it? Whereas the Mac Mini and the Studio display is my main machine. So yeah, they're the ones that we normally consider upgrading, don't we?
[00:09:47.09] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:09:47.28] - Gordon
And for me I'm not going to this time because as I said, nothing in the new one that I desperately need and the one I'm running is working really, really well. And I think the same is probably true for you, isn't it?
[00:09:58.15] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:09:58.27] - Gordon
Yeah. So that's it, that's my topic. If you have any other hardware that you're thinking of upgrading then, or you have the option to upgrade because there's a newer version, then just have a look and just, you know, do a pro and con list, basically. Do you need to upgrade? Are you able to run with what you've got without losing any, you know, work? Or does it slow you down too much and you find that if you get a newer one that's going to be faster, you'll be able to do more work? It's a very personal decision, but hopefully that's given you a few things to think about. What would you like to talk about?
[00:10:33.09] - Taylor
So over the past couple of weeks I have been working on a little web app. So this web app is a way for people to be able to analyse reports. So the reports I'm talking about is our BNI traffic lights. So in BNI we get points for different things that we do. So referrals, visitors, training, attendance, testimonials. And there's different, a number of points you can get for different levels. So you could get, for example, three training, you get five points, for six trainings you get 10 points and for nine, which is the max, you get 15. And there's different levels and scales for all of the different metrics. The traffic lights are a tier system of depending on how many points you have. So it's out of a maximum of 100. If you have 70 or more you are in the green, if you have 50 or more you are in the amber. If you have 30 or more you're in the yellow. And less than that is grey, I believe is what the.
[00:11:44.12] - Gordon
Do you mean red?
[00:11:45.17] - Taylor
Oh, sorry, red and then grey. Sorry. So there's the, yeah. So depending on what, how many points you have, depending on what level you are. The traffic lights are calculated on a rolling six month period.
[00:11:57.27] - Gordon
So just before you talk about the traffic lights period and so on what's the, what's the benefit of this to people? Why would they want to be green?
[00:12:06.12] - Taylor
So it's a way of being able to track how you're doing in BNI.
[00:12:09.22] - Gordon
Right.
[00:12:10.05] - Taylor
So what you find is the better, the higher you on the traffic lights, the more you're getting and the more you're giving to BNI and your fellow members that are in your chapter and things like that. So if you're in, you know, all of the high green for all of them, that means you're going to be receiving and also giving. And so yeah, you're going to.
[00:12:30.05] - Gordon
So you're getting the most out of your investment with BNI.
[00:12:33.09] - Taylor
Exactly.
[00:12:33.29] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:12:34.16] - Taylor
And the traffic lights are calculated on a rolling six months. So that means that at the end of the month, when the traffic lights are calculated and generated and we get sent them via email and a spreadsheet every month, the sixth month will drop off. So a reason why this might be bad is say you had six months ago the best month you ever had. You got, for hypothetical sake, you got 20 referrals, you got 10 visitors, you got 10 CUs, which is training, a testimonial. And yeah, that's what you got.
[00:13:20.18] - Gordon
You got like 60 points in one month.
[00:13:22.24] - Taylor
Yeah. That would mean that they would then drop off at the end of the month. So you would then go from green all the way down to potentially red. So what the traffic lights do is, or what the report does is it tries to help you see what is dropping off.
[00:13:38.26] - Gordon
And this is what you've done, this is your web app.
[00:13:41.05] - Taylor
Yes. So there was a spreadsheet that was created by somebody else in BNI, another member. And it basically gave you all of the different things in a spreadsheet. So it just had the value, or the metric and then the value and it showed you what was dropping off, essentially. We also had another member in the region actually that would manually go through and calculate all of the stats.
[00:14:05.11] - Gordon
Sounds like a lot of work.
[00:14:06.21] - Taylor
So they would go for each member, they would get the six month export and a five month export and then do all of the maths to calculate, "okay, what's dropping off, how many points will they go down?" Because sometimes you could lose things dropping off, but you don't actually change points because you have gone into a lower bracket, for example. And so someone needed, they went through it and calculated all of this manually. And I said, you know, "why don't we automate that? Why don't we have something that generates it for you?"
[00:14:34.11] - Gordon
We like Automation.
[00:14:36.13] - Taylor
The spreadsheet that somebody created, the other BNI member that was done manually. So someone created all of the calculations and stuff, but it had to be manually run, manually imported, manually, kind of calculated, etc. So I kind of was thinking, surely there must be a way that we can kind of automate this. So I created a little web app that allows you to upload the six month export, the five month export, and based on that will give you all of the things that are dropping off.
[00:15:07.11] - Gordon
For each person?
[00:15:08.18] - Taylor
Yes. So you could either upload a personal report or you could upload a chapter report. So personal is obviously just for you, and the chapter would do it for every single person in your chapter. There are some chapters that have 60 plus members. So obviously that's quite a lot of people to...
[00:15:24.25] - Gordon
A lot of time saving, if you automate it.
[00:15:27.16] - Taylor
So what it does is it gives you these kind of progress rings and shows you how many points you've got out of the maximum. So again, I've used the grey, red, amber and green. And basically if you have zero points then it'll be grey. If you're like in the middle, then it will give you amber. If you've got the max points, it gives you green, etc. And it very visually shows you how you're doing overall across the board for all of your different metrics. It then gives you a little summary and it kind of tries to highlight and show you the trends of the report and what's dropping off, how you're doing, if you need to worry about anything. So if something is dropping off but it's not going to make a difference, it says, you know "you've got a couple of things dropping off, but this doesn't affect your overall score." And then at the bottom it says, "suggested recommendations on how to improve." So depending on your level will depend on what you get suggested. So if you're in the grey, red or amber, it will give you suggestions on how to get to the next level. So if you're in red, it will say "you need to do one testimonial and two trainings to get into amber," for example, which is really nice because it's very, very easy. It's not saying do, you know, nine CUs to get max points, it just tells you the minimum you need to do to get to the next level. If you're in the green or you're dropping off out of the green, it will say "to stay in the green you need to do this" or it will suggest what you need to do to get max points. So if you're already in the green, you can't obviously get any higher. So it can't suggest "do these things to get to the next level." So it says "to get max points, this is what you need to do" and obviously it gives you the full kind of recommendation or the requirements to get the maximum points.
[00:17:19.01] - Gordon
So this is all quite valuable. So are you going to be sort of approaching BNI head office and suggesting that they roll it out to everyone?
[00:17:28.15] - Taylor
So we are going to do a kind of trial run within my chapter. The idea is that you'll be able to upload this, the documents and get a PDF export. Currently it just renders it to the browser, but I'd like to get an export. So then you can obviously share that within your group and all of the members can see it. And then if that goes well, I'd like to kind of roll it out to the region and potentially the rest of the UK. This will be something that anybody will have access to, so it'll be a public link on the internet. So the idea is that anybody, if they are on the leadership team, they have access to the entire chapter, whereas if you're just a normal member, you only have access to your own kind of data. And so that was why I created the option to upload a single user or an entire chapter. But it will be there for anybody to use, anyone can use it and I think it'll be really, really valuable and really useful. It would be hard to put it for the entire world or, you know, international, because there are different scoring systems for different places in the world.
[00:18:38.06] - Gordon
And different languages, etc, etc.
[00:18:40.24] - Taylor
But yeah, the idea was just to help, mainly myself, that was why I wanted to do it, because I wanted to see what was dropping off and I've tried to make it as humanly readable and kind of just no jargon, just straightforward, as if you were having a chat with someone, saying, "look, you know, if you want to get to the next level, you just need to do one testimonial," and try to make it as kind of straightforward as possible without having any kind of calculations, maths and things like that. And that was kind of my main goal.
[00:19:09.28] - Gordon
That's very good. So this is all being tested now, is it?
[00:19:14.20] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:19:15.09] - Gordon
Fantastic. That's really good. Well done, Taylor. That sounds like a really good little job to do and a nice, nice thing to give back to BNI because it's given you quite a lot, hasn't it?
[00:19:26.22] - Taylor
Definitely, yeah.
[00:19:27.11] - Gordon
It's nice to give back.
[00:19:28.17] - Taylor
And if it, you know, gets used throughout the UK, that'd be nice because, you know, I can put my company name on there and then other people will see me and it's potentially good exposure for other people that are looking for similar work.
[00:19:42.08] - Gordon
Tools. Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:43.20] - Taylor
But yeah, it was just more of a fun project that I kind of played around with. And I've got lots of different phrases that are stored so that the export and the summaries, etc, are not the same. Because it can get very, very boring if every single summary is written in the exact same way. And that's when you would kind of just end up turning off and switching off. So I've tried to make it so that it randomly pulls different sentences and phrases for every single summary so that ideally you should never get the same summary more than once. And yeah, keeps it interesting. It keeps it more kind of realistic and you know, personal really.
[00:20:25.09] - Gordon
Very good. That's excellent. Maybe you'll update us in the future and let us know how it's going.
[00:20:31.02] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:20:31.16] - Gordon
Talking of updates, how's your 75 day challenge going?
[00:20:35.08] - Taylor
It's good.
[00:20:36.01] - Gordon
What day are you on?
[00:20:37.03] - Taylor
I'm on day 10.
[00:20:41.14] - Gordon
Okay, so you haven't, you haven't gone back to one again. That's good. Fantastic. Well done. That's all I want to say today.
[00:20:48.19] - Taylor
And me as well.
[00:20:49.16] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, we can be found on YouTube. Please like, share and subscribe.
[00:20:54.27] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:20:59.23] - Gordon
And if you would prefer to listen to us on our podcast version, then we're on all the major podcast platforms. You can subscribe to that and when a new episode drops, once the show notes have been added, it'll just appear in your feed. Thank you for joining us. We can be found here again next Friday at 1pm until then, my name's Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:21:26.01] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:21:28.17] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:21:29.11] - Taylor
Bye.
