Top Five Tech

Welcome to Top 5 Tech, my weekly show about what to watch, listen to, download, read, and something deep every week.

Now, I try to keep it tech-related, but you should watch the new Spider-Man Brand New Day trailer.

I am very excited for this movie, and a lot of the movie is actually coming out this summer,

which will play into my deep category later this episode.

But I'll link the trailer down in the show notes. I'm excited it comes out the end of July.

I'll be going to see it.

But to at least leave you with one tech-related video, you should watch MKBHD's video on the Slate Truck.

We talked about this in the primary technology episode this week.

But the slate truck is an evil

V. It's going to start under $25,000. It is very modular,

allowing you to make it like an SUV or a pickup truck. No

infotainment system, very minimalistic bare bones on the

inside 205 miles of EV range. It's got the frunk but looks

really interesting. Pre orders are right now $300 to reserve

yours, but they don't deliver until 2027. But it's a really

interesting idea. It's actually made designed assembled

everything here in the United States. So you should check out

MKBHD's video just to get a nice look at it. On what to listen

to highly recommend the decoder episode this week with Patreon

CEO Jack Conte. Every time Jack Conte talks about social media

platforms, the creator economy, I'm always very interested. Not

only is he the CEO of Patreon, but he's a creator at heart. He

is in the band Papa Moose with his spouse. He was on YouTube in

the very early days, and his approach and his ideas towards

social media and how he's changing Patreon to better

support creators. It's really fascinating. Patreon is not the

platform to move my.

circle has been really good for that, but man, I love his passion and the way he thinks

about the creator economy, and he's trying to build tools into patron that will help

with discovery, the things that creators and those in the influencer world are dependent

on platforms like Instagram and YouTube for is that discovery algorithm.

He's trying to do it in a system like patron that also allows creators to actually earn

money for their work.

So highly recommend listening.

You can also watch that on YouTube.

And what's a download?

I had never heard of this app before.

But it's for the Mac and it's called Substage.

It's a little utility that will put a window below your Finder windows that you can then

prompt with plain text.

You can plug this into AI models if you want to do that.

Or if you just want simple commands like convert this to an audio file or zip these files.

And you can just put that prompt down there in the Substage box.

And again, extended with more AI tools, things like that.

I haven't got a chance to play around with it a lot, but man, this looks super interesting.

I'm going to be trying it out.

You can try it free for two weeks.

There is a subscription model, $3 a month or $19 a year, and then you get access to

the AI models.

But if you already pay for AI and you have an API key, you can buy it for $40 and then

you just own it.

And then you bring your own OpenAI or Claude API key and then you can use it forever with

your AI of choice.

It's also part of Setapp.

So that's Substage, link below.

On what to read, if you hadn't heard yet, Apple raised prices on a bunch of products

yesterday.

As you're listening or watching this, things like the MacBook Neo got $100 more expensive,

MacBook Air $200 more expensive, MacBook Pro $300 and up.

Even iPads got more expensive, even the Apple TV and HomePod.

Now, this is because of the memory and storage crisis and shortage that's going on right

now, pretty much all because of AI.

And MacRumors was actually given a statement by Apple about what's going on.

So I'll link that so you can read it.

I'll also link the 9 to 5 Mac article that is the full breakdown.

Prices that have changed is unfortunate now if you were wanting to buy something in the very near future

Maybe you're trying to buy a student a computer to go to school with in the fall

Prime day is still going on as you're listening to this episode and there are a lot of deals

Still on Amazon at those lower prices. You can still get a MacBook Air m5 the brand new version under $1,000 from Amazon

So I do have affiliate links for that

But I'll put a link down in the show notes to my Amazon Prime Day deals including some of the Apple devices that are on

So if you really needed to get an Apple laptop or a lot of the Apple devices

There's actually great sales still for Prime Day going on and then going forward

We're just gonna have higher prices iPhone did not change price notably and finally on something deep slash

This is also a bonus what to watch me and my family saw Toy Story 5 last weekend number one highly recommend

It's amazing that they can still keep making Toy Story movies that are great

I think 5 is better than 4 I think it's one of the best ones and it's also commenting on the current state of

devices kids

imaginative play and it does it really well it's really fun it's funny it's

emotional but me and the whole family enjoyed it and highly recommend going

out and watching it you can wait for it to come out on streaming as well but I

think it's a great watch as an entire family and to be frank I imagine we all

think about or at least aware of our relationship with screens and screen

time if you have kids especially teenagers surely it's top of mind

because it's something that they just do all the time and it's a part of our

lives, even us as adults, how much time are we on screens?

And while you might not think imaginative play

is for adults anymore,

there's a couple of scenes in the movie

where it shows all houses around the neighborhood

with the glowing screens for both adults and kids

and helps you think about

how much time do I wanna be doing that

versus looking other humans in the face

and maybe spending time in person,

playing a card game, reading a book, whatever it may be.

So I really enjoyed Toy Story 5.

I think it actually has some important messages for today.

So that's top five tech for this week.

You can also get this as a newsletter,

which is delivered every Friday.

You can scan this QR code

or the links in the show notes to subscribe.

Also, if you join my shortcuts community,

we're having a lot of fun in the live streams every week.

That's for members.

Plus you get access to my shortcuts of the week,

my shortcuts database, all of that.

When you become a member,

I'll put that link down in the show notes as well.

And if you haven't yet,

I would really appreciate a five-star rating

and review an Apple podcast

so we can get this show just in front of more people.

And you know, they don't even show the ratings

up at the top, I think,

until you get to about a hundred ratings.

So help us get there.

But I appreciate you watching.

Thank you for listening.