Subscription Madness!

Intro

Jeff Battersby (0s)

The stupid tax I paid was $250, Tom.

Tom Anderson (0s)

Nice. Good job.

Tom Anderson (0s)

Hello everybody and welcome to a brand new episode of Basic AF. Tom Anderson, as always joined by Jeff Battersby. Hello, Jeff. I'm doing great. How are you, sir?

Jeff Battersby (20s)

Good morning, Tom Anderson. How are you?

Jeff Battersby (25s)

I'm great. I had a busy couple of weeks. I just

Jeff Battersby (30s)

Opened my first restaurant not mine

Jeff Battersby (34s)

But I I

Jeff Battersby (36s)

lead bartender at a

Jeff Battersby (38s)

New bar in new bar restaurant barbecue place foods fantastic in Beacon, New York

Jeff Battersby (45s)

called the piggy bank - oh and

Jeff Battersby (48s)

So we just

Jeff Battersby (50s)

yesterday had our super big opening party, which was bonkers bonkers. I I'm a little disappointed because my health app, you know, the gentler workouts or whatever the heck it's called. It didn't pick up what I was doing yesterday. And I had four bartenders on the place was wall to wall. And it was it was loud

Jeff Battersby (1m 20s)

I'm an old man. So I had earplugs in the whole time. The bands were, were supposed to start outside and we got pouring rain. So they were inside. It's an old bank. So it was cavernous and loud because of course, the band was parked near the end of the bar. But I was, I was working harder than I do for

Jeff Battersby (1m 49s)

anything like

Jeff Battersby (1m 50s)

that. I'm, I'm, uh, you know, well, that goes without saying, I don't do any work for this podcast. But I'm listening, you know, we lift and cleaning dishes, lifting the stuff, walking back and forth. I played bar back yesterday and I was, you know, supporting all my, the four bartenders that I had on. I lifted more weights than you do on a normal basis, you You know, lifting up glassware.

Tom Anderson (1m 51s)

I thought you were going to say, "Then I do for this podcast."

Tom Anderson (1m 59s)

That too, right?

Jeff Battersby (2m 20s)

have everybody and walking from one end of the bar to the other.

Jeff Battersby (2m 23s)

And, uh, by the gentler app, they said to me this morning, well, you could probably do a little more work today.

Jeff Battersby (2m 30s)

You can, it's like, okay, pal, I gotta, I've, what I need to do is I need to add a workout that says bartending, that it be what I'm doing all day.

Tom Anderson (2m 32s)

Yeah, get to work, Battersby.

Jeff Battersby (2m 42s)

And then I will, uh, I will actually get a workout, but, uh, yeah, yeah, right.

Tom Anderson (2m 45s)

It's like your mom hacked your gentler streak.

Tom Anderson (2m 47s)

Get to work, Jeff.

Jeff Battersby (2m 48s)

Get to work, Jeff.

Jeff Battersby (2m 51s)

Stop it.

Tom Anderson (2m 52s)

She's great.

Jeff Battersby (2m 53s)

And then the other thing, we're opening a play on--

Jeff Battersby (2m 56s)

you're getting this on Monday.

Jeff Battersby (2m 58s)

We are in tech week this week.

Jeff Battersby (3m 2s)

We're running the show, and we open on Friday.

Jeff Battersby (3m 6s)

So I have been going nonstop.

Jeff Battersby (3m 9s)

I go from one thing to the next.

Jeff Battersby (3m 10s)

I was at the theater in the morning, at the bar until 1:15.

Jeff Battersby (3m 15s)

I slept until 9, though.

Jeff Battersby (3m 16s)

So I got a good seven hours sleep, which is my usual.

Tom Anderson (3m 19s)

he walked kind of delicately into the studio there so stumbled a bit and

Jeff Battersby (3m 21s)

And I'm looking less like our robots today.

Jeff Battersby (3m 26s)

I look like the baggy eyes.

Jeff Battersby (3m 27s)

I'm looking like Tom.

Tom Anderson (3m 28s)

yeah we've we've switched roles i'm well rested

Jeff Battersby (3m 29s)

I'm looking like the Tom Robbins.

Jeff Battersby (3m 34s)

You're well-rested with baggy eyes,

Jeff Battersby (3m 35s)

and I look like I haven't slept in four days.

Jeff Battersby (3m 37s)

But I've been well.

Tom Anderson (3m 37s)

you're on a binger that's good yeah everything's good um coming up into the warmer days i've had to

Jeff Battersby (3m 39s)

How about you, Tom?

Jeff Battersby (3m 40s)

What's up with you these days?

Jeff Battersby (3m 49s)

Oh, yeah. I need to mow.

Tom Anderson (3m 49s)

which this is not what this show is about so let's just get back on topic here uh allergies have been killing me that's where I was heading with that so uh we had some more rain and windy it's cooler today which is good there we go old man talking about the weather this is basic af episode 60 by the way show notes can be found at basicafshow.com/60 so this week i've been well i've been and try to.

Jeff Battersby (3m 52s)

All right, well, you know, I like...

Jeff Battersby (3m 56s)

Yeah. Good times.

Jeff Battersby (4m 5s)

The show where we talk about our bunions, and, uh...

Tom Anderson (4m 19s)

Figure out a way to listen to more podcast.

Tom Anderson (4m 22s)

Okay.

Tom Anderson (4m 23s)

So as we've talked about a little bit here and there on the show, when I was commuting from, you know, into the city for work, you know, I'd have hour and a half each way.

Tom Anderson (4m 32s)

So I was listening to a lot more podcasts and that's where I tend to do it.

Tom Anderson (4m 35s)

I don't like to do it when I'm actually working because I find it's distracting.

Tom Anderson (4m 39s)

Uh, and so my commute these days and for the last.

Tom Anderson (4m 43s)

Jeez, 15 years, I guess, uh, is roughly 20 minutes a day.

Tom Anderson (4m 49s)

Maybe 25 at most.

Tom Anderson (4m 50s)

So 15 one way takes about a week to listen to an hour long podcast.

Jeff Battersby (4m 56s)

Oh my god...

Tom Anderson (4m 56s)

Um, cause a lot of days, exactly.

Tom Anderson (4m 59s)

And so a lot of days, you know, I'm coming home.

Tom Anderson (5m 1s)

Uh, I don't usually listen to anything coming home.

Tom Anderson (5m 4s)

Cause that's kind of like my quiet time after work to kind of context shift and say, okay, work's done.

Tom Anderson (5m 9s)

Let's just chill out for a few minutes, driving home.

Tom Anderson (5m 11s)

Um, and so anyway, I'm looking at some ways to.

Tom Anderson (5m 16s)

get more podcasts.

Tom Anderson (5m 19s)

but we're going to talk about that in a later show.

Tom Anderson (5m 21s)

That's not really what we're talking about today, but, uh, that led me, uh,

Tom Anderson (5m 25s)

the app I'm looking at for that plus another one led me into looking at all of my subscriptions because these are going to be two more subscriptions.

Tom Anderson (5m 32s)

And so I was like, well, let me see what I have subscription wise now.

Looking at Our Subscriptions

Tom Anderson (5m 36s)

And, uh, cause I feel like my subscriptions are not necessarily out of control.

Tom Anderson (5m 41s)

Like I'm a, I'm aware of everything that I've had,

Tom Anderson (5m 43s)

but it's been a while since I've put a list together just to see exactly what it is who I'm paying it to win.

Tom Anderson (5m 49s)

And those kinds of things.

Tom Anderson (5m 51s)

And so I did that and I was like,

Tom Anderson (5m 53s)

oh wow, that's a lot of subscriptions.

Tom Anderson (5m 55s)

Like a lot of subscriptions.

Tom Anderson (5m 57s)

And they're not all apps.

Tom Anderson (5m 59s)

They're not all just for me.

Tom Anderson (6m 1s)

Some of them are shared.

Tom Anderson (6m 2s)

And we're gonna dig into the list here in a couple of minutes.

Tom Anderson (6m 4s)

So I thought it would be good to look at that and kind of compare.

Tom Anderson (6m 7s)

I know we've got some similar things that we're subscribed to.

Tom Anderson (6m 9s)

Of course, they're not all the same.

Tom Anderson (6m 12s)

But look at that and talk about

Tom Anderson (6m 16s)

how and what about the audit process.

Tom Anderson (6m 19s)

What I'm doing to try to reign that in a little bit.

Tom Anderson (6m 23s)

So we have a lot.

Tom Anderson (6m 27s)

So I put together a list and this does not include AppleCare.

Tom Anderson (6m 33s)

So I've got AppleCare on not everything that I have from Apple, but a lot of things.

Tom Anderson (6m 39s)

So phones, you know, our phones have it.

Tom Anderson (6m 42s)

My iPad Pro has it.

Tom Anderson (6m 45s)

My Apple Watch has it.

Tom Anderson (6m 47s)

and they're not very expensive.

Tom Anderson (6m 49s)

I think the, well, let's see.

Tom Anderson (6m 51s)

The phone, I think, is the most expensive one.

Tom Anderson (6m 53s)

It's $10.26 a month or something like that.

Jeff Battersby (6m 55s)

Yeah, yeah. So and I just because I just hit the initial AppleCare, the end of that, you know, I'm getting all the renewal notices for those things include for my MacBook Pro and my iPad Pro, which were stolen at the same time. So to renewals there as well. And yeah, I do I do have those I have a I have several subscriptions on on that. So I have AppleCare plus for my iPad Pro. And then on my

Tom Anderson (6m 56s)

Do you have that for your phone?

Jeff Battersby (7m 25s)

MacBook Pro, which I still love. By the way, I have both Beats and I have AirPods. So I have those on my watch. And then I have AppleCare plus theft and loss for my phone. So yeah, I have I have a few of those. And they're surprisingly inexpensive. As those things go. I mean, it's insurance like

Tom Anderson (7m 43s)

You might need that.

Jeff Battersby (7m 55s)

car, right? You know, which my car insurance, we can have that conversation. Kick those dudes to the curb. But yeah, I do have AppleCare on everything. And then it I mean, that comes up by itself to a pretty decent sized annual subscription package. I'm looking at probably close to 100 210 between all those

Jeff Battersby (8m 25s)

a year. So yeah, I do. But I'm grateful to have it. You know, that kind of

Tom Anderson (8m 25s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (8m 29s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (8m 34s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (8m 34s)

And it's funny, usually like appliances and things that don't do the extended warranties on, but for, uh, Apple stuff, I will laptop in particular, the Mac mini, I did not cause it doesn't go anywhere and I'm like, you know, where's it going and there's so relatively inexpensive to replace it's like, oh,

Jeff Battersby (8m 47s)

Yes, same with me.

Tom Anderson (8m 54s)

I'll self-insure that.

Tom Anderson (8m 56s)

So yeah, I've got Apple care for, for all those things.

Tom Anderson (8m 58s)

And like you, it's probably a couple of hundred dollars a year.

Tom Anderson (9m)

Like I said, I didn't put it in the list yet for some reason.

Tom Anderson (9m 3s)

But, um, so I also included some streaming services.

Tom Anderson (9m 9s)

Um, so like Amazon prime, which I don't really watch the video piece, but we have Amazon prime comes out to $139 a year.

Jeff Battersby (9m 15s)

Okay. 99 bucks and now you have to pay more. By the way, if you're doing the streaming stuff, which this pisses me off too, sorry. But it used to be if you had Amazon Prime, you had no ads. And now they they added a little bump to that where you have to pay to have no ads. It's criminal as far as I'm

Tom Anderson (9m 16s)

Now it used to be what 99 bucks.

Tom Anderson (9m 18s)

I think it was.

Tom Anderson (9m 18s)

So that's going up quite a bit.

Tom Anderson (9m 32s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (9m 36s)

No ads.

Tom Anderson (9m 36s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (9m 38s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (9m 40s)

Yeah, so that comes out to $139 a year.

Tom Anderson (9m 42s)

Netflix, which keeps creeping up as well,

Tom Anderson (9m 45s)

is now $18 a month for the plan that we have anyway.

Tom Anderson (9m 48s)

So that's $215 a year.

Tom Anderson (9m 50s)

So already I'm up to four, 380.

Tom Anderson (9m 54s)

I think that is.

Tom Anderson (9m 56s)

360 a year between those two.

Tom Anderson (10m)

That's the only streaming service,

Tom Anderson (10m 2s)

that we throw Apple TV+ in,

Tom Anderson (10m 3s)

which is part of Apple One Premiere.

Jeff Battersby (10m 5s)  

• Mm-hmm, I am, yeah, I am.

Tom Anderson (10m 6s)

Are you on the Premiere on that as well?

Tom Anderson (10m 9s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (10m 9s)

And so I looked at that.

Tom Anderson (10m 10s)

We talked about this.

Tom Anderson (10m 11s)

I looked at that when they raised the price from,

Tom Anderson (10m 13s)

'cause I think that started at $29.95.

Tom Anderson (10m 15s)

They went up to $32 and now it's $37.95.

Tom Anderson (10m 19s)

So that's a lot.

Tom Anderson (10m 20s)

That's $455 a year.

Tom Anderson (10m 24s)

And I looked at that to say,

Tom Anderson (10m 26s)

okay, maybe I don't need the Premiere level of that.

Tom Anderson (10m 29s)

Maybe I could drop it down.

Tom Anderson (10m 30s)

and that's when we joked that...

Tom Anderson (10m 33s)

I found out the wife is a big News+ reader.

Tom Anderson (10m 35s)

So I was like, "Hmm, okay, we're not gonna touch that.

Tom Anderson (10m 39s)

"We'll leave that where it is."

Jeff Battersby (10m 39s)

Smart boy, smart boy.

Tom Anderson (10m 41s)

And so with that,

Tom Anderson (10m 43s)

so those are kind of the big ones for me, right?

Tom Anderson (10m 45s)

So it's $4.55 for that on top of that $3.60,

Tom Anderson (10m 49s)

so I'm already at like 800 bucks a year.

Jeff Battersby (10m 52s)

Okay, and you're not doing any other streaming services

Tom Anderson (10m 55s)

Right, yeah, just those three if you wanna include Prime Video,

Tom Anderson (10m 59s)

which I don't think anyone here really watches.

Tom Anderson (11m 2s)

I watch stuff every now and then 'cause he asked for the login,

Tom Anderson (11m 4s)

but not a whole lot.

Tom Anderson (11m 7s)

Now, some of these fall into the category of hobby.

Jeff Battersby (11m 13s)

Okay.

Tom Anderson (11m 13s)

And so some people play golf,

Tom Anderson (11m 14s)

some people go on, you know, they take trips.

Tom Anderson (11m 17s)

Some people do, you know, people do lots.

Jeff Battersby (11m 18s)

You sit in your basement and do what, Tom? Tell me the truth.

Tom Anderson (11m 23s)

I sit in a closet and talk to Jeff.

Jeff Battersby (11m 24s)

Great.

Jeff Battersby (11m 27s)

You can come out of the closet, Tom. It's okay.

Tom Anderson (11m 28s)

We're living our best lives here, Jeff.

Jeff Battersby (11m 30s)

We're 20/25, pal.

Tom Anderson (11m 34s)

But, so there's some costs with this.

Tom Anderson (11m 39s)

So if we look at that,

Tom Anderson (11m 39s)

so podcast, you know, we split the cost for that.

Jeff Battersby (11m 43s)

Yep. With all the money we're making off of it, we split.

Tom Anderson (11m 44s)

So Buzzsprout, which is our distribution, right?

Tom Anderson (11m 47s)

Well, yeah, it's pennies compared to the revenue that's coming in.

Jeff Battersby (11m 51s)

Try.

Tom Anderson (11m 52s)

Yeah, so we've got Riverside, which is what we host,

Jeff Battersby (11m 54s)

Yep.

Tom Anderson (11m 54s)

or we use for recording this show,

Jeff Battersby (11m 55s)

Recording.

Tom Anderson (11m 56s)

which is 19 bucks a month, I think it is.

Jeff Battersby (12m 1s)

Yep.

Tom Anderson (12m 3s)

Buzzsprout's the distributor, so that's 18, so that's 37.

Tom Anderson (12m 6s)

And then I've got a subscription outside of this that's for Beehive, which is the newsletter platform

Tom Anderson (12m 14s)

that I use, and it's $59 a month.

Tom Anderson (12m 18s)

So that's $708 a year just for that.

Tom Anderson (12m 22s)

And I throw that into the hobby pile.

Tom Anderson (12m 25s)

And it's also a bit of an insurance policy of sorts.

Tom Anderson (12m 32s)

I kind of subscribe to the thought that everybody should build some sort of an audience so that they have a plan B,

Tom Anderson (12m 38s)

should plan A of their current employment situation go off the rails?

Jeff Battersby (12m 42s)

Mm-hmm, that's I'm managing a bar go ahead

Tom Anderson (12m 42s)

They have something.

Tom Anderson (12m 44s)

And so, (laughs)

Tom Anderson (12m 49s)

and so I use it for that.

Tom Anderson (12m 52s)

But that's 700, some well over a thousand bucks

Jeff Battersby (12m 55s)

Mm-hmm. Okay. So I have a couple of other streaming services. I'm sorry, say that again. Well, yeah, we'll get we'll get to that. I do. I'm avid newspaper reader and magazines of particular sorts and types just to you know, that's that's I'm a reader in a in a big way anyway but I do

Tom Anderson (12m 56s)

between all of those, just as far.

Tom Anderson (12m 59s)

What else do you have?

Tom Anderson (13m)

you have any, um, you have some.

Tom Anderson (13m 2s)

magazines and stuff, right?

Tom Anderson (13m 5s)

You have magazines and streaming services to, well, okay.

Jeff Battersby (13m 25s)

have a couple more streaming services I do a Paramount Plus I do have Hulu and I do have Peacock a lot of times I'll pick those up and drop them depending on what's going on just to be able to say watch a particular sport I am a European soccer fan so I do not subscribe to the MLS on Apple TV Plus but I do watch either Paramount Plus or Peacock. I like to watch.

Jeff Battersby (13m 55s)

You know, the Premier League and those kinds of things.

Jeff Battersby (13m 57s)

And by the way, it's not usually a sit down on my button and watch.

Jeff Battersby (14m)

It's usually I'm cleaning my office and I've got a game on while I'm doing that or,

Tom Anderson (14m 4s)

Yeah

Jeff Battersby (14m 5s)

you know, it's or folding laundry or doing some something that I need to be doing or yeah or cooking dinner and watching a game.

Jeff Battersby (14m 12s)

So it's a lot of that. So I do have those.

Jeff Battersby (14m 18s)

I do have those subscriptions that I'm using. I like you have Netflix,

Jeff Battersby (14m 25s)

which they used to have a brilliant algorithm.

Jeff Battersby (14m 27s)

I will say that their algorithm stinks now and these guys make it so hard to find what it is you're watching and one of the other things about Netflix that I don't get and this is a side conversation for another day as well,

Jeff Battersby (14m 41s)

but most everything integrates with Apple TV Plus so you can go into the Apple TV Plus app and see what you were watching on Netflix and then go over to Netflix.

Jeff Battersby (14m 49s)

It does not do that for Netflix. Every other app does that.

Jeff Battersby (14m 52s)

So, and it did for five.

Jeff Battersby (14m 55s)

And then I do a lot of, like I said, print stuff, subscribe to the Washington Post, although I unsubscribed after Bezos decided that they were no longer going to do a deep dive opinion stuff.

Jeff Battersby (15m 21s)

So I said, fine, you're not going to do that.

Jeff Battersby (15m 22s)

I'm not going to pay.

Jeff Battersby (15m 23s)

page.

Jeff Battersby (15m 25s)

you to have pro oligarchy content. New York Times I subscribe to paper on the weekend. So usually before you and I record I'm sitting upstairs reading the newspaper on a weekend and then coming downstairs to talk politics because that's what this show is about. And subscribe also to the Atlantic Physical Magazine.

Jeff Battersby (15m 55s)

Harper's Physical Magazine. Harper's, by the way, still the best deal in town. It's about 15 bucks a year for some great reading, if anybody cares. And then I subscribe to, this is going to be way out. I have been bartending for a while, but there's a magazine called Imbibe, which is kind of a really nice

Jeff Battersby (16m 25s)

industry magazine. But it's not industry, it's more about, in fact, they had Beacon, the town that this bar I'm working at is in, they were featured in it in the last issue, which is crazy. They went up and down the street and had a bunch of bars in there and a lot of conversations. Actually, one of them with one of my bosses, who has another place that's right down the street that's kind of a draft beer place. Anyway, that was in there as well.

Jeff Battersby (16m 53s)

all that to say

Jeff Battersby (16m 55s)

some of those subscriptions are bloody expensive the New York Times I was almost going to cancel and just do digital only with them and they cut me back but they were a solid 80 bucks a month for just Friday, sorry Saturday and Sunday delivery which is bonkers in terms of expense. They're now, they cut me back.

Jeff Battersby (17m 25s)

I think I'm paying 30 bucks when I told him I was going to quit.

Jeff Battersby (17m 27s)

It's kind of like going to cable, right?

Jeff Battersby (17m 28s)

I'm going to move to a different company.

Tom Anderson (17m 29s)

Right.

Jeff Battersby (17m 30s)

I'm going to give you a discount if you stick around for three more years.

Jeff Battersby (17m 33s)

So yeah, I'm, for all those subscriptions, I'm probably paying on the order.

Jeff Battersby (17m 43s)

I didn't do all the good math like you did.

Jeff Battersby (17m 45s)

I thought I was going to be able to, but didn't have time this week.

Jeff Battersby (17m 47s)

But I'm paying probably just for those magazine subscriptions on the order

Jeff Battersby (17m 55s)

year, plus your appointments, you know, that's a yeah, 30 month. And right, yeah. So, so I'm spending money, the magazines are a little little better. I only had a digital Washington Post subscription, which by the way, you know, I'm using Apple News way more than I did, I have complaints about it,

Tom Anderson (17m 59s)

Right. Well, you said the times was what? 30 a month?

Tom Anderson (18m 3s)

Yeah. Jeez. So that's 360 by itself.

Tom Anderson (18m 7s)

Whoo.

Jeff Battersby (18m 19s)

we can talk about that someday. But, but I'm finding that that

Jeff Battersby (18m 25s)

place that a lot of those that centralizes a lot of those subscriptions. So the Atlantic shows up there, Washington Post shows up there, New York Times does not. So that's kind of a pain in the neck. And then a bunch of other news sources that

Tom Anderson (18m 38s)

Didn't it? Did it used to? Was the Times in there before? I feel like it was there before.

Jeff Battersby (18m 38s)

that I have. No, maybe it was. New Yorker definitely is. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (18m 42s)

It wasn't there before. New Yorker? New Yorkers there? Okay. Maybe that's what I'm thinking about.

Jeff Battersby (18m 45s)

Yeah, that's New Yorkers there. And that's still there. And that's free as part of your Apple, your Apple Premier

Jeff Battersby (18m 53s)

subscription so you get the new.

Jeff Battersby (18m 55s)

Yorker, which by the way, that's something that's stupid expensive for a subscription if you go to get it on your own.

Jeff Battersby (19m 1s)

So yeah, it's, uh, I'm for that kind of stuff that I'm really listening.

Jeff Battersby (19m 10s)

I, like I read the news every single morning or something along the lines of that, both for this podcast and both for my brain and, you know, so I'm using, I'm using that.

Jeff Battersby (19m 22s)

So...

Jeff Battersby (19m 25s)

They're valuable subscriptions to me, you know, because I actually it's not just like they're sitting there doing nothing. I'm actually

Jeff Battersby (19m 33s)

Reading what's there and you know sharing

Tom Anderson (19m 37s)

Right, and that's kind of one of the reasons I went through this exercise was to say kind of to do this audit to see which of these do I'm actually using.

Tom Anderson (19m 48s)

And then they went from there. I need to go back through and say, okay, I'm using it. But do I really want to continue to use it, or do I want to, you know, do I need it, which is different question.

Tom Anderson (19m 59s)

And a lot of these are luxuries that are like, yeah, I could get by without it. Now I know a couple that we both have

Tom Anderson (20m 7s)

We both have a subscription to like the fitness tracker. So you've got gentler streaks. I have athletic

Jeff Battersby (20m 12s)

Yep. Yeah, which by the way, I don't need that one. But man,

Tom Anderson (20m 15s)

Carrot weather.

Jeff Battersby (20m 22s)

I've got it on. I've got it on the you know, talk dirty to me version of it, which is basically what it is. Which

Tom Anderson (20m 23s)

I do, too.

Jeff Battersby (20m 30s)

which, you know, it calls me an idiot half the time. But for some reason, you know, my inner person loves that. But yeah, and And that's a $40 annual subscription.

Tom Anderson (20m 43s)

I can't remember which tier I've got in on that one, but I tell you, one of the biggest things I like about it is, so spring and summer, of course, you know, it's thunderstorm weather around here.

Tom Anderson (20m 56s)

And so you'll get severe thunderstorm warning, you know, and it shows you all, if you read it, it'll show you, you know, 15, 20 counties that are affected.

Tom Anderson (21m 2s)

But a lot of times, because our county's fairly sizable, there could be a storm warning for our county, but not where we are.

Jeff Battersby (21m 11s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (21m 13s)

And then when it pops up, it says, "You're outside of the affected area," and I really like that.

Jeff Battersby (21m 15s)

Yeah, I really like that, too.

Tom Anderson (21m 17s)

And it's just a good weather app, and I like, on the phone, you can go in and customizing.

Tom Anderson (21m 22s)

It's interesting because you can go in and kind of build the app to look the way you want it to look, which is pretty rare, like a lot of apps, you can change colors and mix things up, but this one, you can really dial in to get it to look the way you want.

Jeff Battersby (21m 35s)

zero in and it will change dynamically depending on what's going on to you've got the ability to have it you know if it's snowing you know it can you can see specific information you know just related to what's going on so I really do like it it's a it's a well designed app it's a lot of fun and yeah it's one I'll continue I think paying for one of the ones that I have that you may or may not have is flighty. I may

Jeff Battersby (22m 6s)

not need this as much anymore. It's close to $50, $47.99.

Jeff Battersby (22m 10s)

It's a weird, weird price point. But what that is, is it's a it's a very, very good flight tracking app. And particularly when I was traveling a lot teaching Apple certification classes, it was the best place to put all my stuff. And in when I'm making a lot of airport runs to pick people up or do things like that, I can throw those flights

Jeff Battersby (22m 35s)

and it gives you up to the minute even better than the airlines information on, you know, whether or not a flight's delayed, or you know, what kind of things that they might see,

Jeff Battersby (22m 45s)

and you can track the flight. So whether or not I need that as much, you know, I might be able to dumb that down. But it's it's a very good app that I like in that I use when I need to use it I use regularly.

Tom Anderson (23m 3s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (23m 4s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (23m 4s)

I've used that one a few times.

Tom Anderson (23m 5s)

It is nice.

Jeff Battersby (23m 6s)

Yeah, really well designed.

Tom Anderson (23m 6s)

Especially, I mean, if you're a heavy traveler, that would, yeah, I could see why that would be a half to half.

Jeff Battersby (23m 9s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (23m 12s)

Yes. I think we both have this one. Are you are you still using frames frame screenshot?

Tom Anderson (23m 20s)

Oh, share shot?

Jeff Battersby (23m 21s)

Sure. Yeah, I'm sorry. It shows up share shot correct frame screenshots. Sorry. We Yeah, we've had you on many times Mark, I'm sorry for botching your app.

Tom Anderson (23m 23s)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (23m 25s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (23m 26s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (23m 28s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (23m 29s)

Mark.

Tom Anderson (23m 35s)

He's had a rough week, okay?

Jeff Battersby (23m 36s)

Yeah, yeah, zero sleep and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 15, 15 a year, but worth worth every penny. And really beautiful app on Mac, on iPad. And the more they do with that, the better it gets. They could.

Tom Anderson (23m 40s)

Yeah, I use that one all the time.

Tom Anderson (23m 41s)

So yeah, that's staying in the rotation.

Tom Anderson (23m 43s)

And it's not much.

Tom Anderson (23m 44s)

It's 14 bucks a year or something like that.

Tom Anderson (23m 47s)

15?

Tom Anderson (23m 47s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (23m 50s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (24m 1s)

We need to have mark come back on maybe we'll be good maybe after

Tom Anderson (24m 4s)

Uh, wwdc see what he thinks about the the new stuff

Jeff Battersby (24m 6s)

Yeah, that would be great.

Jeff Battersby (24m 11s)

I am using Halide. I pay for a Halide subscription. It's 10 bucks a year. And it is my camera app of choice. Absolutely. And shout out to Chris Freytag.

Tom Anderson (24m 18s)

Mm-hmm it's your camera app of choice, correct?

Jeff Battersby (24m 30s)

I did not end up buying a Fuji camera, but I did.

Jeff Battersby (24m 35s)

I did end up buying a camera and I'm really happy with it.

Jeff Battersby (24m 40s)

I ended up getting to use,

Jeff Battersby (24m 43s)

I've been shooting Nikon for years and years,

Jeff Battersby (24m 45s)

but had not touched my Nikon camera in a long time,

Jeff Battersby (24m 47s)

but I ended up getting a Z5 and I love it.

Jeff Battersby (24m 52s)

Two lenses that I got, but most of the time,

Jeff Battersby (24m 56s)

the phone's what I'm carrying around with me.

Jeff Battersby (24m 58s)

It's in my pocket.

Jeff Battersby (24m 59s)

And Halide, they're zero processing.

Jeff Battersby (25m 6s)

Photographic style, if you want to call it that, I love it.

Jeff Battersby (25m 11s)

It really is a great feature.

Jeff Battersby (25m 13s)

It takes all the, you know, most, most,

Jeff Battersby (25m 15s)

your phone app does a lot of work for you to, you know,

Jeff Battersby (25m 19s)

do colors and all sorts of things like that,

Jeff Battersby (25m 23s)

or over processes in some cases.

Jeff Battersby (25m 25s)

I really like this, really like this a lot.

Jeff Battersby (25m 29s)

And so 10 bucks a year, well worth it for a great camera.

Jeff Battersby (25m 34s)

in the end.

Tom Anderson (25m 36s)

And along those same lines, do you have any image editing apps that you subscribe to?

Jeff Battersby (25m 42s)

I do so I I was using Pixelmator for the longest time and now Photomator and those guys got bought by Apple so Apple now owns them and I don't know what that's gonna do whether that's gonna be part of a pro photo editing app that Apple does but yeah they I do use that and and I don't think that's a

Tom Anderson (25m 49s)

Mm-hmm, right.

Jeff Battersby (26m 12s)

it was never subscription model it was a it was a buy and buy and keep kind of thing yeah and they update that on the regular I had really really good app so that is that is what I use and the other one that I use is Acorn yeah right it's gonna be in services well maybe it'll go in there in my current service yeah well everybody needs a Photos Plus yeah so

Tom Anderson (26m 12s)

I don't think so.

Tom Anderson (26m 16s)

Keep.

Tom Anderson (26m 21s)

It will be soon. Apple's going to put it into the surfaces. Yeah. Photos Plus.

Tom Anderson (26m 32s)

Great.

Tom Anderson (26m 38s)

Okay, so I have a Lightroom subscription.

Tom Anderson (26m 42s)

I do, and I picked that up.

Tom Anderson (26m 44s)

So I, back in December, during the holidays,

Tom Anderson (26m 48s)

I picked up, I think it's the iPhone Photo Academy course

Tom Anderson (26m 53s)

that is advertised all over the place.

Jeff Battersby (26m 54s)  

• Yeah, you said that, yep.

Tom Anderson (26m 56s)

And I got, I don't know, third of the way through that,

Tom Anderson (27m)

I need to go back to it.

Tom Anderson (27m 2s)

And it's been really good.

Tom Anderson (27m 3s)

And they have a companion photo editing course that is based in Lightroom.

Tom Anderson (27m 8s)

So I went ahead and picked up Lightroom because I really needed it for that.

Tom Anderson (27m 12s)

But I haven't gotten back to the course yet.

Jeff Battersby (27m 13s)

Did you have any Adobe stuff before that anyway?

Tom Anderson (27m 16s)

No, and so this is only the,

Tom Anderson (27m 18s)

I think it's just the Lightroom mobile subscription.

Tom Anderson (27m 20s)

Like I didn't do the Creative Cloud or any of that stuff.

Jeff Battersby (27m 20s)

Okay.

Jeff Battersby (27m 22s)

All right.

Tom Anderson (27m 23s)

That's overkill for what I want.

Jeff Battersby (27m 23s)

How much how much is is that a subscription to?

Tom Anderson (27m 27s)

Yeah, it is 50 bucks a year,

Jeff Battersby (27m 30s)

Yeah, it's okay. Not horrible.

Tom Anderson (27m 30s)

which I didn't think was terrible.

Tom Anderson (27m 33s)

And so that one's on the fence if I'm going to keep it.

Tom Anderson (27m 36s)

It just depends, like I've got to get back to that course.

Tom Anderson (27m 41s)

And then if that ends up.

Tom Anderson (27m 42s)

If I end up building some decent workflows in there and stick with it, I might keep it, but we'll see.

Jeff Battersby (27m 46s)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's one of the things I like about Photomator, Pixelmator, Pro Photomator is it's for me it's it doesn't do the organization I think that Lightroom does you know it which is one of the nice features I don't know about that the mobile app version but Lightroom you know has a lot of it's definitely photography tool you know that's the beauty of it it really is designed for that. PIXMAN is a photo.

Jeff Battersby (28m 16s)

Editing tool, but also an illustration tool like there are a number of other things that you can do do with that. The other one by the way that I use that I really like is Acorn. So I have both of those. It has and and that's a little indie developer you know husband and wife team that that rivals all the others and it does some things really well like right out of the box that makes it worth me paying. I don't even know. That's a single purchase, too.

Tom Anderson (28m 20s)

Yeah

Tom Anderson (28m 25s)

Mm-hmm. I remember that one. It's been around a while

Jeff Battersby (28m 46s)

And I think I buy it directly from the developer. Flying Meat is the name of the developer.

Tom Anderson (28m 52s)

I'll throw him a few bucks just for that.

Jeff Battersby (28m 56s)

Yeah, right? They are great. Flying Meat is a great developer. They do great stuff, and it's a great app. But those are outright purchases that I've gotten. But Lightroom does have the feel of a photo.

Tom Anderson (29m 17s)

Right, yeah, it's definitely workflows and things like that.

Tom Anderson (29m 20s)

And I'm definitely not a power user by any means.

Tom Anderson (29m 23s)

And like I say, I picked it up for this course.

Tom Anderson (29m 27s)

But I feel like once I get through the course,

Tom Anderson (29m 30s)

because I have those other apps as well,

Tom Anderson (29m 34s)

PhotoMator, PixelMator and the concepts will carry over to that.

Tom Anderson (29m 39s)

I think for the for the bulk of it.

Tom Anderson (29m 44s)

kind of a random one that I picked up and I only use it at work.

Tom Anderson (29m 48s)

is an app called Mimestream, which is an email client for Gmail and because we're a Google school and I used the mail app for years and years and years and I may go back to it, it's just get, it's some, it's probably, I don't know if it has to do with how Google does mail or what, but it just sometimes flakes out and the messages take forever to load or they're missing and searches, kind of goofy in the mail app still, and Mimestream.

Jeff Battersby (29m 50s)

What is that?

Jeff Battersby (29m 54s)

Okay, sure

Tom Anderson (30m 17s)

Mimestream uses the Gmail API, I believe, so any of the features in Gmail that are available via the API you get in the app, and it's a really nice app, they did a really good job with it, it's being actively developed, it's five bucks a month, so not a ton, but again,

Tom Anderson (30m 33s)

it's just email and I looked at Spark again last week as part of this, you know, audit,

Tom Anderson (30m 41s)

if you want to call it that, and it did some interesting things.

Tom Anderson (30m 48s)

And then it was kind of goofy too, in certain ways, and I was like, eh, and I used it years ago and they changed the interface up, gosh, six or seven years ago now, I think.

Tom Anderson (30m 59s)

So I don't know, I may stick with that or Mimestream or I might just go back to the old clunky mail app because it's free and it's just email, so it's like, I get a kind of a plus one account through work.

Jeff Battersby (31m 4s)

Apple mail. Yeah. Yeah. Do you subscribe to office or no?

Jeff Battersby (31m 11s)

Microsoft Office? Okay, so you don't have to do it. Yeah. I pay for that annual family. Yeah, same. I don't. I don't use it unless I have to. You know, what happens is pages, numbers and keynote are great for anything that I'm doing.

Tom Anderson (31m 18s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (31m 18s)

And I'd never use it.

Tom Anderson (31m 20s)

I don't know.

Tom Anderson (31m 20s)

I use it at work quite a bit, like just Excel.

Tom Anderson (31m 23s)

Like I refuse to.

Jeff Battersby (31m 35s)

I use it for a lot of theater stuff that I do.

Jeff Battersby (31m 37s)

And the beauty of that is if people have an iPad or something like that, I can share documents and they can work on them.

Jeff Battersby (31m 43s)

So my assistant stage manager doesn't have a Mac but has an iPad and we have shared documents.

Jeff Battersby (31m 52s)

For example, during the show, like the last week coming into tech week this week,

Jeff Battersby (31m 59s)

we're taking line notes, in other words,

Jeff Battersby (32m 1s)

actors as they go through, you know.

Jeff Battersby (32m 4s)

If they change lines from what they're supposed to be, what they're written in the script as, we send them back notes and say, "Here's what you did.

Jeff Battersby (32m 13s)

You inverted these words."

Jeff Battersby (32m 14s)

We try to get as, by the time we open the show, as close to what it is that we're doing.

Jeff Battersby (32m 21s)

So after years of doing this, I have templates for things like that.

Jeff Battersby (32m 25s)

And I just share those now in iCloud Drive with my assistant stage manager.

Jeff Battersby (32m 29s)

So she's entering that information.

Jeff Battersby (32m 31s)

We used to do it on paper.

Jeff Battersby (32m 32s)

She, you know, we would write these notes on paper and then.

Jeff Battersby (32m 34s)

Go in and manually add them after the fact.

Jeff Battersby (32m 37s)

Now we, we use those, those shared things.

Jeff Battersby (32m 40s)

And this is a little off topic, obviously, but, um, I have to have a Microsoft subscription because I get Excel spreadsheets that I have to work on.

Jeff Battersby (32m 52s)

And I get an occasional word document that I'm doing collaborative editing with other people on.

Jeff Battersby (32m 58s)

So I keep that subscription and that's, you know, not cheap a year either.

Jeff Battersby (33m 4s)

You know, it's not a, excuse me.

Tom Anderson (33m 7s)

I haven't looked at that in a while. What is it about a hundred bucks?

Jeff Battersby (33m 7s)

It's, it's about that.

Jeff Battersby (33m 10s)

I'd have to look at what I'm, I can look it up right now, but that's

Jeff Battersby (33m 14s)

one, I don't even think about, you know, it's just, uh, it's just one of those things that's, that I'm using.

Jeff Battersby (33m 23s)

Occasionally in that occasional usage requires me to keep that subscription,

Jeff Battersby (33m 27s)

which is kind of dorky, you know, but there, there we have it.

Tom Anderson (33m 31s)

Nah, throw it in Google Sheets and that's free.

Jeff Battersby (33m 35s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (33m 37s)

If you've got everybody in your world using, uh, using Google sheets is going to make me, let me just see what, what the, what the cost is, Microsoft 365, get it.

Jeff Battersby (33m 47s)

It's, and because others in my family have need of it, um, I do a family account.

Tom Anderson (33m 53s)

Hmm right

Jeff Battersby (33m 53s)

So it's 130 a year.

Tom Anderson (33m 56s)

Balances out more people you can get to use it the better

Jeff Battersby (33m 57s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (34m 1s)

Correct.

Tom Anderson (34m 2s)

Right at least then the value proposition tilts a little more in your favor, yeah

Jeff Battersby (34m 2s)

Correct.

Jeff Battersby (34m 2s)

Correct, but the...

Jeff Battersby (34m 5s)

...goes up.

Jeff Battersby (34m 8s)

Here's one that you probably don't subscribe to...

Jeff Battersby (34m 11s)

...that cost me $130 a year. I subscribe to the National Theatre at Home, which is...

Jeff Battersby (34m 20s)

...the UK's...

Tom Anderson (34m 21s)

Oh my God, so do I.

Tom Anderson (34m 23s)

No, I'm kidding.

Jeff Battersby (34m 23s)

...right on what planet, what alternate universe are we in right now?

Jeff Battersby (34m 29s)

So National Theatre is the UK's...

Jeff Battersby (34m 34s)

...which is brilliant, you know, their stuff's really good, and a lot of times if you want to see these shows...

Jeff Battersby (34m 38s)

...you have to go to a movie theater or to England...

Jeff Battersby (34m 42s)

...both of which are...

Jeff Battersby (34m 44s)

...way more expensive than...

Tom Anderson (34m 45s)

So this is a deal compared to that.

Jeff Battersby (34m 47s)

...$120 to $130, right? I saved money. I didn't have to buy an airplane ticket. So it's all those, so I...

Tom Anderson (34m 48s)

Good cost savings. Good job, Battersby. Good.

Jeff Battersby (34m 54s)

...subscribe to that, and that's another one that, you know, my kids use too, particularly my oldest daughter, who is an actor.

Jeff Battersby (35m 2s)

She...

Jeff Battersby (35m 4s)

...uses that to watch shows as well. So that's good stuff.

Jeff Battersby (35m 7s)

That's not something I was expecting you to do, but what I did want to say, speaking of things in the UK...

Jeff Battersby (35m 13s)

...a mistake that I made, which is an easy mistake to make...

Jeff Battersby (35m 20s)

...I temporarily subscribed to The Economist...

Jeff Battersby (35m 24s)

...to read a very specific article, and...

Jeff Battersby (35m 28s)

...normally what I do when I do things like that is I subscribe, and I immediately go into the subscribe...

Jeff Battersby (35m 34s)

...option and cancel it.

Jeff Battersby (35m 36s)

So that whatever the renewal date is, I...

Jeff Battersby (35m 40s)

...you know, I'm not automatically subscribing. I can make a decision as to whether or not I love or don't love the thing. Well...

Jeff Battersby (35m 47s)

...with The Economist, I...

Jeff Battersby (35m 49s)

...somehow...

Jeff Battersby (35m 51s)

...managed not to go back in, and I will tell you, Tom, for that mistake...

Tom Anderson (35m 57s)

How much stupid tax did you pay on that?

Jeff Battersby (35m 59s)

...the stupid tax I paid was...

Jeff Battersby (36m 2s)

$50, Tom.

Tom Anderson (36m 3s)

Nice!

Jeff Battersby (36m 4s)

$250 for a mistake. I think they have some other options in there, but that was that was my, uh, I am still reading it. There are things I listened to and I'm, you know, there's a, they have a really good podcast, which you can subscribe to just their podcasts for six, basically $6 a month, uh, Babbage's, which is a technology podcast that I listened that's quite good. Yeah, so $60.

Tom Anderson (36m 5s)

Good job!

Tom Anderson (36m 14s)

Did you at least continue to read it during the rest of your subscription?

Jeff Battersby (36m 35s)

$60 a year, essentially, but your digital annual account

Jeff Battersby (36m 40s)

that includes all of the above is a fat $250

Jeff Battersby (36m 46s)

that I neglected to unsign up for.

Tom Anderson (36m 47s)

It's alright, we've all done it.

Jeff Battersby (36m 51s)

So, oh, dude, and that can happen so often.

Jeff Battersby (36m 55s)

You know, there's a lot of that that's there,

Jeff Battersby (36m 58s)

but, you know, that boosted my yearly subscription rate pretty significantly.

Jeff Battersby (37m 5s)

for for this one.

Tom Anderson (37m 9s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (37m 9s)

Yeah. So, by the way, in order to be able to check and see what you're subscribing to. I had to have Tom walk me through this because my brain was fried this morning. But if you want to see

Jeff Battersby (37m 21s)

where it is that what it is that you subscribe to that you may have inadvertently forgotten about, you go under your Apple

Jeff Battersby (37m 29s)

idea in the settings app. Go into your app, select your

Jeff Battersby (37m 34s)

Apple account as they call it now, not Apple ID. And when you select that, there's going to be a media and purchases option.

Jeff Battersby (37m 41s)

And then underneath that, there's going to be a subscriptions option, you click the Manage button, and that's going to allow you to see what it is that you're that you're

Jeff Battersby (37m 52s)

subscribing to on the regular. And you also see what it is that you have subscribed to in the past. Another one of those fine subscriptions that I screwed up was Final Cut Pro on my iPad.

Jeff Battersby (38m 4s)

That's cleared out now, but I accidentally subscribed to that one for a year or two. Yeah, it pays to go in immediately and turn the renewal button off on that. Exactly.

Tom Anderson (38m 17s)

All right, go ahead and cancel it and keep it until it runs out, at least for the app store stuff.

Tom Anderson (38m 26s)

Because I was looking at mine and I split them out app store versus direct and it ends up being about 50% either way for what I've got, at least in the list thus far.

Tom Anderson (38m 40s)

You know, something that I know you subscribe to for a while, uh, you got rid of when.

Tom Anderson (38m 47s)

was on the show with us.

Tom Anderson (38m 48s)

We talked about it.

Tom Anderson (38m 49s)

Fantastic.

Tom Anderson (38m 50s)

How, um, my yearly subscription for that re upped in February and I am taking a hard look at that one.

Tom Anderson (39m 1s)

I think I might not keep that one after this year, $4 and 75 cents a month.

Jeff Battersby (39m 3s)

What are they charging now what's fantastical charging

Jeff Battersby (39m 7s)

Okay, it's not hideous

Tom Anderson (39m 9s)

Not terrible.

Tom Anderson (39m 10s)

And that's the thing with these.

Tom Anderson (39m 11s)

It's almost like a trap because it's like, Oh, it's, it's four bucks a month.

Jeff Battersby (39m 12s)

60 bucks a year

Tom Anderson (39m 14s)

That's nothing.

Tom Anderson (39m 15s)

and it's like, oh, there's another.

Tom Anderson (39m 17s)

and there's $4.99 and $2.49 and $3.99 and $1.25 and $8.25

Jeff Battersby (39m 20s)

Oh Tom, it's just a latte. What are you talking about?

Tom Anderson (39m 23s)

and $11.58 and it's like, oh, now we're all this.

Tom Anderson (39m 27s)

Wow, wow, that's a couple hundred bucks a month.

Tom Anderson (39m 29s)

And so that one's on the fence for me 'cause I saw someone post it and I'd love to give them credit if I could figure, if I could remember who did it,

Tom Anderson (39m 39s)

but I can't remember off the top of my head,

Tom Anderson (39m 41s)

but it was using focus modes to kind of do the calendar sets.

Jeff Battersby (39m 42s)

Old man.

Jeff Battersby (39m 44s)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (39m 45s)

Like I like fantastic how to do.

Tom Anderson (39m 47s)

Um, so I'm not sure about that one.

Tom Anderson (39m 51s)

Uh, good note.

Tom Anderson (39m 52s)

Six is another one that I have.

Tom Anderson (39m 54s)

It's a whole $10 a year.

Tom Anderson (39m 56s)

I used to use it a lot.

Tom Anderson (39m 58s)

I don't use it much anymore.

Tom Anderson (39m 59s)

So I think I'm going to cancel that one.

Tom Anderson (40m 1s)

Um, but again, this just shows how these things show up on the list and they just kind of lay around, you know, and, you know, to Apple's credit for the app store related things, they're, they're easy to manage, but if you don't look at it or pay attention, that stuff just kind of builds up, or you forget to turn it.

Tom Anderson (40m 17s)

off, like you've mentioned there a couple of times.

Tom Anderson (40m 19s)

And I've done that too, on some things.

Tom Anderson (40m 20s)

Um, the utilities and a lot of this, you know, most people won't need these.

Tom Anderson (40m 31s)

Things, some of these things we're talking about, cause they're kind of

Tom Anderson (40m 34s)

nerdy power user things, if you want to call them that strange term for these.

Tom Anderson (40m 38s)

But so things like, you know, we talked about share shot, which is great utility.

Tom Anderson (40m 44s)

Do most people need that?

Tom Anderson (40m 45s)

Probably not.

Tom Anderson (40m 47s)

But if you share content and do a lot of screenshots with it, they're

Tom Anderson (40m 52s)

pretty invaluable because they make it so easy to do it and look nice.

Tom Anderson (40m 56s)

Uh, paste is a clipboard manager app, beautiful clipboard manager app.

Tom Anderson (41m)

Uh, I've had that for several years now.

Tom Anderson (41m 3s)

Do most people need that?

Tom Anderson (41m 4s)

No, but do people who do a lot of copying and pasting and things like that, like these kinds of tools?

Tom Anderson (41m 11s)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (41m 11s)

And it's not much, it's $1.25 a month.

Tom Anderson (41m 14s)

um, my node, my mapping app.

Tom Anderson (41m 17s)

It's 250 a month.

Tom Anderson (41m 18s)

It's one of those I use probably 10 times a year, but it's like serious work when I do it, so I'll keep it.

Jeff Battersby (41m 21s)

Mm-hmm

Tom Anderson (41m 25s)

Um, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (41m 26s)

Wait, let me ask you a question because you're you're stating these all is by the month costs

Jeff Battersby (41m 32s)

So are you like when you're talking about my note and using that are you?

Jeff Battersby (41m 41s)

Using it for a month and then

Jeff Battersby (41m 44s)

Dropping the sub until you need to use it again, or are you you paying that annually?

Tom Anderson (41m 49s)

so those one the ones I just mentioned so paste is an annual and it's $14.99 my note I don't know if they've got an annual you can just pay or not it's it's $2.49 and I just left it that I just keep it on because I never know what I'm going to need it so and so that's something I did do too is for some of these, like I went back and I was like okay what can I do to save a few bucks?

Tom Anderson (42m 20s)

And so some of them do have you know do annually and you'll save over the monthly and so I did go through and changed a couple of them to that and saved a little bit of money there. But like utility wise like I got rid of Canva Pro because there was a period where I was using that quite a bit and now I don't so that's the image editing graphics design that kind of stuff. That was 13 bucks a month so that one wasn't cheap.

Tom Anderson (42m 49s)

And so I ditched that so that's 156 bucks a year basically for savings. I have one I only had it for a month or two it's called TypeShare which is a kind of a writing app they've got templates and you can you know for atomic essays or social threads and things like that and it would format them and you could schedule it but it was 20 bucks a month and I just was not using it enough for that some people use it a ton that wasn't for me so that that was a big one I got rid of.

Jeff Battersby (43m 18s)

Are you doing a personal subscription to chat GPT or is that a work?

Tom Anderson (43m 20s)

Yeah so ChatGPT I have the plus which is 20 bucks a month personal yeah yeah and I've got a Gemini advanced at work that work pays for yeah because we've got that data agreement in place with Google so it ties into our workspace and we can load sheets and stuff into it and all that but yeah

Jeff Battersby (43m 31s)

Okay, and that's personal.

Jeff Battersby (43m 33s)

Personal. Okay.

Jeff Battersby (43m 36s)

Okay. Right.

Jeff Battersby (43m 43s)

Gotcha

Tom Anderson (43m 44s)

stuff into it and all that, but, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (43m 48s)

No surprise, I don't I don't pay for any for any yeah, I

Tom Anderson (43m 50s)

I use it a ton now, so I'm like, "Eh, it's too much."

Jeff Battersby (43m 55s)

Know you do I use it for a lot and I I am using it for

Jeff Battersby (44m 1s)

I'm using Claude for

Jeff Battersby (44m 5s)

occasional stuff

Jeff Battersby (44m 8s)

And I would say one of the it's really interesting but one of the guys that owns their restaurant

Jeff Battersby (44m 14s)

You know that I'm running the bar for

Jeff Battersby (44m 17s)

He was having trouble with

Jeff Battersby (44m 20s)

Setting up the sound system

Jeff Battersby (44m 22s)

Yeah, and the instructions were no good. And he was he was using chat GPT and he

Tom Anderson (44m 25s)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (44m 26s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (44m 27s)

I'm like, "Damn, this is great!"

Jeff Battersby (44m 29s)

Walked him through everything he needed to do to fix it. So pretty pretty slick He was he was really pleased with it. But yeah for those those kind of one-off. Yeah. Yeah, right That's exactly what he was. So anyway

Jeff Battersby (44m 43s)

Kind of get around to winding this up because we've also pushed the envelope here. What is your annual nut for subs?

Tom Anderson (44m 53s)

Uh, so, oh God, this is embarrassing, um, it is several thousand, I'll put it that way.

Jeff Battersby (44m 56s)

Yeah. Same for me. That's, that's the reality. It's several thousand dollars a year.

Tom Anderson (45m 4s)

And I think that's kind of where we wanted to go with this is the creep on this is so easy to do, um, because everything's a subscription now, everything, you know, your streaming services, your magazines, your, well, the magazines always have been, but, um.

Jeff Battersby (45m 7s)

Yeah.

The Impact of Subscription Creep

Jeff Battersby (45m 13s)

Yes. Correct. And that's the.

Tom Anderson (45m 23s)

little utility applications that you use, things like that.

Tom Anderson (45m 26s)

Uh, and so I would encourage everybody, if you haven't, um, you know, build a list, you don't have to make it a fancy list, just write it out on paper and tally it up and see where you're at.

Tom Anderson (45m 35s)

Uh, some things that you might look at as potential ways to save costs.

Tom Anderson (45m 40s)

If you could do an annual over a monthly, maybe you subscribe monthly just to test it out and you figured out to stick around and you're still using it, but now maybe you switch to the annual and you can save, you know, 10, 20% usually there.

Tom Anderson (45m 53s)

Um, maybe take a look to see if there are alternatives that do the job.

Tom Anderson (45m 59s)

Good enough.

Tom Anderson (45m 59s)

Like I'll still use Canva, even though I've dropped the pro like the free is, does plenty for what I need at this point in life.

Tom Anderson (46m 6s)

Um, and then also there's a, a service called Setapp that is a subscription service for applications, but it has quite a few, uh, applications in it, popular Mac apps in it.

Tom Anderson (46m 23s)

So, for example, I do not, and I was looking at it for, because as part of this, I was like, well, I wonder if set app would do anything for me.

Jeff Battersby (46m 25s)

Do you use that or no?

Tom Anderson (46m 34s)

And so basically the premise with set app is you pay the subscription for that, and then you get access to all of the applications that are part of the set app service.

Tom Anderson (46m 41s)

Like a clean shot X, which is great.

Tom Anderson (46m 45s)

Screenshotting applications in there.

Tom Anderson (46m 46s)

My note is in there.

Tom Anderson (46m 48s)

Paste that we talked about is in there.

Tom Anderson (46m 50s)

Oh God.

Tom Anderson (46m 53s)

What's that, uh, utility that, uh, shows all of the menu bar items that show like your GPU, that one's in there.

Jeff Battersby (46m 59s)

Oh, uh, bartender?

Tom Anderson (47m 2s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (47m 2s)

And then the one that, uh, shoot, it's been around forever, but it'll show you like the CPU cores, how much Ram is being used.

Jeff Battersby (47m 11s)

Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Tom Anderson (47m 12s)

Um, yeah, I can't remember what it is.

Jeff Battersby (47m 12s)

I can't remember what that one is either, but yeah.

Tom Anderson (47m 14s)

Um, so there are a lot of big name apps in there and they all come part of, as part of that bundle.

Tom Anderson (47m 19s)

And so the highest tier for that, I think is 15 bucks a month.

Tom Anderson (47m 23s)

And that covers four Macs and four iOS devices.

Tom Anderson (47m 25s)

And so I looked at that, but it was only going to save me like two bucks a month for the stuff that I had.

Tom Anderson (47m 29s)

So I was like, yeah, that's probably not worth it.

Tom Anderson (47m 31s)

Making the change with the license.

Jeff Battersby (47m 34s)

Yep. And then if commercially, there are other apps, like there's the rocket money app, which you hear advertised on every podcast on the planet. And it takes it for hours, because

Jeff Battersby (47m 47s)

nobody's advertising with us. But it's a, that's another one that will look at all your subscriptions and let you know what the what the deal is. It's a kind of a financial app. And it's I can't remember if it's owned by into it now or one of those companies but there are.

Jeff Battersby (48m 5s)

It is an app that you can use to look at all your subscriptions and kind of control them in one place. If you don't want to do the manual work. It's not that hard to do the manual work, honestly, just to have a look at it and to see what it is that you're that you're spending and that you're doing. But it's worth your while because as I think you use the correct word, Tom, it's creep.

Jeff Battersby (48m 34s)

You know, it's subscription creep. And a lot of these are, as you said, applications that you may in the past never have had a subscription for. You just bought the app and moved on. I do like the subscription model because I think the apps get better support as a result. You know, you don't buy one copy that, you know, you never pay for anything for the future.

Tom Anderson (48m 58s)

I was just gonna say, and I do not mind paying the subscriptions at all for apps that I use on the regular basis.

Jeff Battersby (48m 59s)

and then these developers can't do work anymore.

Tom Anderson (49m 13s)

So that, and I found out a lot of these I do, but there were those handful that I don't,

Tom Anderson (49m 18s)

but that's just another good exercise though, is to go through and kind of do, there's the the financial piece of this, but also go and look at the.

Ways to Potentially Save

Tom Anderson (49m 28s)

Functional piece to say, is this app still serving a purpose for me?

Tom Anderson (49m 32s)

And if it is, and it's not a, you know, any burden on you financially,

Tom Anderson (49m 35s)

there's no problem with it.

Tom Anderson (49m 36s)

It's just sometimes though, like you say, that old, old creep.

Tom Anderson (49m 40s)

And, you know, Jeff's got a $250 economist subscription that he didn't intend to have.

Jeff Battersby (49m 43s)

I'm a creep. I'm sorry. We had to go to Radiohead when he said creep. Yeah, I'm looking actually at set up and that's a subscription service. You get every single one of these apps that are here and there are a lot in there. Actually, it's

Tom Anderson (49m 57s)

I know some people do use that as a way to kind of make it more cost efficient for some of those.

Tom Anderson (50m 9s)

So we'll put a link to that in the show notes.

Tom Anderson (50m 10s)

I think it's setapp.com or something, but it used to be easy to say, "Oh, it's just a .com."

Tom Anderson (50m 16s)

But these days it could be setapp.app, who knows?

Jeff Battersby (50m 18s)

It is setup.com as I'm looking at it right now. Yeah, yeah,

Tom Anderson (50m 19s)

Is it?

Tom Anderson (50m 20s)

Okay.

Jeff Battersby (50m 21s)

there's a lot of quite a few apps in there.

Tom Anderson (50m 21s)

All right.

Tom Anderson (50m 22s)

All right.

Tom Anderson (50m 23s)

So we'll put that in there.

Tom Anderson (50m 24s)

There are, and there's some big names.

Tom Anderson (50m 25s)

Do you see the menu?

Tom Anderson (50m 27s)

That's it.

Jeff Battersby (50m 30s)

Um, if I look for it, let me hear, let me put in search and for by task menu, and let's see what we get menu bar X I stat menus is the one that you're talking about. Yeah, that's the one but bartender is in here. Definitely. Which maybe I'll have to look at this and see maybe this is a better subscription than the one that I have for bartender. Yeah, there is a ton. Yeah, for baseline.

Tom Anderson (50m 42s)

That's the one.

Tom Anderson (50m 43s)

Yeah, that's been around forever.

Tom Anderson (50m 52s)

There's a lot in there 250 plus apps it says

Jeff Battersby (51m)

One Mac $10 a month, Mac and for iOS devices, 1250 a month, power user for Macs for iOS devices $15 a month. So if you're no,

Tom Anderson (51m 11s)

Right, it's reasonable. I mean, that's not bad.

Jeff Battersby (51m 14s)

it's well, especially if it's it's a bunch of apps that you're already using, you know, and you're paying separate subscriptions for each one of those. Definitely.

Tom Anderson (51m 18s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (51m 22s)

Well, that's kind of what got me into that Fantasticalic,

Tom Anderson (51m 24s)

so they've got a couple different calendar apps in there,

Tom Anderson (51m 26s)

and I was like, "Well, could I get by with one of those,

Tom Anderson (51m 28s)

even if I didn't want to use Apple's calendar app?"

Jeff Battersby (51m 29s)

Mm hmm. It does, Tom. Sure, absolutely. So as usual, our great show, music, psychokinetics, Celsius seven,

Tom Anderson (51m 30s)

But anyhow, so I think that wraps us up, Jeff, for this.

Tom Anderson (51m 35s)

All right, you want to take us home with the closing credits?

Close

Jeff Battersby (51m 44s)

highly recommend that you check them out on wherever you stream your, your music from. It's Apple Music for me. We have Brandon Martin Design, who has done the fantastic job of--

Jeff Battersby (51m 59s)

making us look like robots and look better than we do in real life.

Jeff Battersby (52m 5s)

Leah Reich would be happy to tell you that,

Jeff Battersby (52m 7s)

as she was here with us.

Jeff Battersby (52m 8s)

And I just want to point out that this is not anybody that does anything for us,

Jeff Battersby (52m 15s)

but the Dungeons in the Attic podcast is now on all your streaming apps.

Jeff Battersby (52m 19s)

So if you're listening to them on Apple,

Jeff Battersby (52m 23s)

or you're listening to them on Spotify and you want to listen to them on Apple podcasts,

Jeff Battersby (52m 29s)

and they're doing a great interview series right now.

Jeff Battersby (52m 31s)

So interviewing their cast members.

Jeff Battersby (52m 35s)

So I highly recommend that you check them out.

Jeff Battersby (52m 37s)

Dungeons in the Attic, the DEDA podcast,

Jeff Battersby (52m 39s)

just because they record in my basement.

Tom Anderson (52m 43s)

They do. Sometimes to your chagrin, but okay. Yeah. All in love though.

Jeff Battersby (52m 50s)

It's fair.

Jeff Battersby (52m 51s)

Fair, fair.

Jeff Battersby (52m 53s)

Absolutely.

Jeff Battersby (52m 54s)

Tom Moore, can we get stuff of yours?

Tom Anderson (52m 57s)

Let's see. You can find me on threads @TomAnderson. That's basically where I post these days. Newsletter TomFAnderson. A little different there. TomFAnderson.com/newsletter.

Jeff Battersby (53m 9s)

And what does the F stand for, Tom, besides what I say about you behind your back?

Tom Anderson (53m 13s)

That's pretty much what it is.

Jeff Battersby (53m 18s)

As always, good to talk with you, Tom.

Jeff Battersby (53m 20s)

I really enjoy our time together.

Tom Anderson (53m 20s)

Me too, sir. All right. That is going to close us out for this episode. As we frequently say,

Tom Anderson (53m 28s)

and we always mean, we do appreciate you spending some time with us. We know there are tons of places you can go for these types of discussions on apps and Apple stuff and everything. We're honored to spend a little bit of time with us. We will talk to you again in a couple of weeks.

Outro Music (53m 42s)

I don't wanna know about your imperfections, dude Prefer to leave you on a pedestal, so I'll improve 'Cause if I'm finding out you know that I'm just like you That gon' smash my whole world, lost in the loop [In the loop]

Tom Anderson (53m 43s)

Until then, take care.

Jeff Battersby (53m 44s)

See ya.