By Dan Moren

August 31, 2023 7:02 AM PT

Automate this: Moving Audio Hijack recordings to a folder in the cloud

Note: This story has not been updated since 2023.

The key to automation is figuring out what problems it can solve to make your life easier. For example: the problem where one of your podcast co-hosts¹ has to regularly text you because you’ve forgotten to put your audio file in the shared Dropbox folder. Regularly enough that he has literally created a meme to remind you. To wit:

We’ve all been there.

In my defense: I spent many years editing this particular podcast, during which I didn’t ever need to upload my file because I was the one who collected them. To add to that, I also have a few other podcast-related tasks that I need to take care of post-recording which often end up distracted me from this particular need.

Still, seems like something automation could easily fix, right?

Thanks to Audio Hijack‘s automation features, yes! Here’s how I did it.

First, I added a new automation that runs on Session Stop called Copy File to Dropbox. This is a one-line script—app.runShortcut('Recording Copy')—that in turn calls a Shortcut I’ve created.

In Shortcuts, this particular workflow is just four actions.

First up, get the contents of the folder for this podcast (which is organized using another Shortcut that I’ve previously written about), then filter those contents for the most recently modified file (which should be the folder created for the latest episode). Then get the contents of that folder, and filter it for a file whose name contains ‘Dan’ (as all my local mic recordings do). There should be only one.² Then simply use the Save Files action to copy that file to my shared Dropbox folder. Done!

Now, whenever we finish recording the show and I naturally hit Stop, my file is automatically uploaded to the appropriate folder, and I don’t have to do a thing. And best of all, my co-host doesn’t have to bug me anymore.

Though I do kind of miss the memes.

(Editor’s note: You can alternately use the moveFile action within Audio Hijack’s own scripting interface:

let file = event.file;
if (file == null)
    return;

if (file.fileName.includes("Dan")) { 
file.moveFile('Path/to/upload/folder/');
}

Then you don’t need to rely on Shortcuts at all. —J.S.)

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]

By Jason Snell

August 30, 2023 4:21 PM PT

Ultra or not? The evolving world of iPhone marketing

Note: This story has not been updated since 2023.

For the first few years of the iPhone’s existence, Apple introduced a single new model every year. In that time, total iPhone sales shot up from nothing to $100 billion a year. Not bad!

But in the decade since then, the iPhone has had a huge growth spurt. Between fiscal 2014 and 2022, total iPhone revenue doubled, from $101 billion to $205 billion. (Thus far in fiscal 2023, the iPhone has generated $156 billion, and the fourth fiscal quarter will almost certainly vault it well over the $200 billion level again.)

What changed? Certainly, today’s iPhones are vastly more advanced than the iPhone 5S of ten years ago. But the single biggest change is the shift to treating the iPhone like a product line rather than just a product.

From 2007 to 2012, the iPhone was a single product. Sure, sometimes you could buy the previous year’s model at a discount (a practice Apple continues to perfect to this day), but there was only ever one new iPhone. Apple took its first steps to differentiate the line in 2013 when it introduced the iPhone 5C to go with the iPhone 5S.

The iPhone 5C was a flop, though its failure still vexes me. On paper, it was a great idea: rather than selling price-conscious buyers last year’s model, Apple spruced up the iPhone 5 with bright colors and a lower price. Maybe it was the plastic back, or maybe people really didn’t want bright colors. Regardless, the lesson Apple seems to have taken away from the iPhone 5C debacle is that differentiating on price isn’t the same as differentiating on functionality, and dressing last year’s phone in a new case won’t fool anyone.

Apple’s first big move came in 2014 (the week this site launched!), when the iPhone 6 was joined in the product line by the iPhone 6 Plus. The iPhone 6 was bigger than the iPhone 5, but the iPhone 6 Plus was way bigger and at a price premium. iPhone sales leaped, and I’m sure the number one reason was that a lot of people wanted a bigger iPhone, and it had taken a bit too long for Apple to adapt.

But I’d argue that another reason the iPhone began its upward trajectory in 2014 was simply that iPhone buyers had more choices. You could choose the big phone or the smaller phone, join the Plus Club, or keep it standard.

For most of the era in which there have been smaller and larger versions of the same model, Apple has kept the specs between the two phones more or less equivalent. A bigger phone might have room for a bit more battery, but it also needs to light up more pixels. A few times, though, Apple has taken advantage of the size of the larger iPhone to try out new camera features. In 2016, the iPhone 7 Plus had a second lens that the regular iPhone 7 didn’t offer.

2016 also marked the introduction of the first iPhone SE, an attempt to broaden the iPhone product line by upgrading older phones with somewhat newer specs. Unlike the iPhone 5C, which was just an iPhone 5 in a colored shell, the iPhone SE was an iPhone 5S body with the brains of an iPhone 6S—and at a lower price. The fact that Apple has now gone through three generations of iPhone SE suggests that the product resonates with buyers in a way the iPhone 5C didn’t.

In 2017, Apple tweaked the formula again. In addition to the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, it added a new, high-end phone with a high-end price: the iPhone X. Not only did the iPhone X introduce a bunch of features that would become standard on most iPhones, like an OLED screen and Face ID, it also established that some iPhone buyers would pay a lot more for a high-end model.

The iPhone X marked the beginning of an era of experimentation. In 2018, the iPhone X was replaced by the XS and XS Max, bringing the big/little dichotomy to the higher end of the product line. Rather than revise the iPhone 8 again, instead Apple introduced a larger, more affordable model, the iPhone XR. In hindsight, the XR was the predecessor of 2019’s iPhone 11.

Apple’s big marketing innovation in 2019 was rebranding the entire product line, establishing that the high-end “iPhone X” line would be called iPhone Pro, while the more affordable XR-style device would be the regular iPhone. This is more or less where the lineup stands today, with Apple experimenting with base-model phones large (iPhone 14 Plus) and small (iPhone 12 and 13 mini).

The end result is that Apple has scaled its iPhone line from a single new model to four, each of them with different attributes. The question for 2023 is if we’re in for another year of status quo or if Apple plans further experiments up at the high end. I’m intrigued by the conjecture that the high-end iPhone Pro might not be called Pro Max, but might instead take a cue from the Apple Watch and be dubbed iPhone Ultra.

I love the idea of an iPhone Ultra, but if Apple is going to commit to that product name, it needs to also commit to making that part of the product line live up to the name. This year’s rumors suggest the high-end iPhone will have a major camera upgrade, presumably a much larger zoom enabled by a periscope lens. Sounds great, but one look at the history of the iPhone would show that all past camera advancements on the big phone have rapidly integrated into the rest of the product line.

If Apple really does change the name of the Pro Max to Ultra, it suggests to me that the company is not done spreading out the iPhone product line and exploring just how much money its high-end users are willing to spend on the very best features.

By Jason Snell

August 25, 2023 11:11 AM PT

Giving up the iPad-only travel dream

Note: This story has not been updated since 2023.

Every time any of us packs a bag, we are making some very specific tech-focused decisions. It starts with what devices we need (or can live without) and cascades into charging bricks and cords and anything else that will keep us powered up and not feeling regret about having left an essential device behind.

I’m spending a few days this week visiting my mom, and it’s the fourth or fifth time this summer I’ve needed to pack a bag as a part of a busy travel schedule. For many years, I tried very hard to travel with only an iPad. (Why bring two devices? And I’m not leaving my iPad at home.) Since the arrival of Apple silicon, however, I’ve gone back to traveling with both an iPad and a MacBook Air.

As the Mac picked up speed (and the M2 MacBook Air packed even more power into a delightful new design), the iPad seemed to evolve slowly when it evolved at all. I’ve noticed that a lot of my colleagues who were previously working hard to integrate the iPad into their professional work have backed off, retreating to the more flexible and powerful Mac side of the house.

In the battle between iPad and Mac, I’m a longtime member of Team Both—I use my Mac most of the day at my desk, but when I write elsewhere in the house or backyard, I switch to an iPad Pro in the Magic Keyboard case. And that iPad (in a regular case) is my primary computing device when I’m not in work mode.

I’m not at all ready to declare the “use iPad to get work done” experiment dead. With the forthcoming release of iPadOS 17, Stage Manager has thrown in a bunch of improvements that suggest the iPad’s progression to more functional status continues, albeit at a pace that’s a bit too slow for my liking.

But here I sit at my mother’s dining room table, typing on a MacBook Air. Something has changed in my approach to travel, and I’m trying to understand just what it is and what it tells me about the trajectory of the iPad as a productivity tool.

My productivity needs are clearly unlike those of most people, but the truth is that everyone’s got different productivity needs. The problem with the iPad continues to be that as it builds functionality, it has failed to build in flexibility—or at least the flexibility offered by a platform like macOS. If the iPad doesn’t support it, you’ve hit a brick wall. Your choices are to find a workaround or give up.

As I’ve written about for the better part of a decade, I’ve tried endlessly to find a solid workflow to record podcasts on the iPad. Oh, sure, there are plenty of workarounds, but the bottom line is still this: the iPad’s audio system is so inflexible that it just can’t do the job.

Sure, it would be swell if a utility like Audio Hijack could run on the iPad. But even a simpler solution, like being able to record microphone audio in one app while simultaneously using Zoom to have a conversation, would make this approach viable. Speaking of Zoom, that app’s built-in recording feature will save a recording of your local microphone audio… on every platform except on iOS and iPadOS.

But it’s not just podcasting. Take the Stream Deck, a clever external device that lets you press buttons to kick off all sorts of tasks. I’ve come to rely on it, so much so that in a moment of weakness, I bought a second Stream Deck (for travel and potential use in a backup office I’m setting up) on Prime Day the other month.

While there’s an iPad app for Stream Deck, it’s not what you think. It turns the iPad into a Stream Deck, so you can tap on its screen and execute macros on a Mac or PC. If you connect a Stream Deck to an iPad directly, nothing happens. The Stream Deck software on Mac and Windows runs in the background, looks for button presses, and then runs macros. That kind of software just doesn’t fit how Apple envisions the iPad experience.

Sure, the iPad has the Shortcuts app, and many of my Keyboard Maestro macros really just execute shortcuts… but this very useful accessory just doesn’t work with it. How could it? Even if there were a market for it, I don’t think the platform is robust enough to support it.

This is where the iPad is today. It’s good enough for what it does. If it doesn’t do it, it doesn’t do it. This is the fundamental difference between the Mac (a platform that basically lets developers and users do anything they want) and the iPad (where if Apple doesn’t specifically allow it, it can’t be done).

The beauty of the Mac as a platform is that Apple doesn’t have to think of every use case and doesn’t have to build out every single esoteric detail in order to enable new features. It empowers developers and users to build what they need, and by extending the Mac’s functionality, they incrementally increase the Mac’s value as a computing platform.

On the iPad, advancement doesn’t work like that. Instead, it’s decided in various meetings inside Apple where specific features will get prioritized or deprioritized for the next operating system cycle. Once every year or two, we will hear about some (legitimately exciting!) new features that will extend the usability of the platform. And that will basically be it. The waiting begins again.

I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of creating more inconvenience for myself in order to push the iPad past the boundaries Apple has set for it. For the cost of an extra 2.75 pounds in my backpack, I can travel with a MacBook Air knowing that more or less anything I need to do while on the road can be accomplished without requiring weird workarounds or risking a catastrophic tech failure.

I want to do it all on my iPad. I hope that one day I’ll be able to. But for now, I’m done pushing the envelope. Apple will determine what I can do with my iPad, and when that changes, I’m sure they’ll let me know. Until then, all any of us can do is wait.