Primary Technology - Podcast Rankings and reviews

Stephen Robles and Other Guy Jason Aten somehow manage to make tech news fun, which is no small feat, unless of course you’re the kind of guy who carries his phone in his front, dominant-hand pocket (facing leg), and never shows the battery percentage numbers under any circumstances. They break down the latest gadgets, AI chaos, and industry drama with just the right mix of insight and humor. It’s like having a couple of really nerdy (but not annoying) friends keep you up to date on everything happening in tech. If you want a podcast that keeps you informed and entertained, this is the one. It’s been my absolute favorite since 1973, when it was only available on 8-track tape!

Listening to Primary Technology feels like hanging out with two good friends who just happen to know a ton about tech! Stephen and Jason break down big tech topics in a way that’s super relatable, mixing sharp insights with plenty of laughs along the way. It’s the perfect mix of smart and fun—definitely a must-listen if you love tech and a good time!

Also, for those keeping track at home: battery percentage is on, dominant hand pocket and auto app updates are off because I like to live on the edge.

Oh, and just so you know, I still own a working Radio Shack TRS-80 pocket computer and once surfed the digital waves on a 300 baud modem in a past life—respect the classics!

One of my favorite podcasts to listen to.

New shortcuts discovery: I’ve dug up a hidden syntax that can be used inside the “Show Result” action in shortcuts that augments Siri’s behavior when the shortcut is spoken, like on a HomePod for example. This syntax is hidden visually inside the content that’s typed or passed to the show result action.

1. [Siri pauseForSeconds:0.3]
* Adding this in the middle of a sentence tells Siri to wait for x-seconds before speaking the rest. It supports decimals.

2. [Siri show:”Text” say:”text”]
* Adding this in a sentence will have the shortcut display certain text but pronounce different text.

Apple used these in their “True or False” game shortcut seemingly to improve Siri’s phonetics for parts of the content that wouldn’t read properly. Like having Siri say “Ninety-two” but display “92”.

In my testing, these two commands don’t work when pasted into the shortcut for whatever reason. Typing them out, paying careful attention to spaces and letter case usually ends in success. AFAIK, the shortcut doesn’t care what text is inside the quotation marks as long as everything else is typed properly.

I haven’t been able to find any other in-line commands like this, but I have to assume there are more of them. Personally, I’ve used both of these to make a more natural sounding “Morning Briefing” shortcut to run in CarPlay on my way to work.

This podcast continues to get better and better! It’s my only podcast for Apple news and information. You both give great information and work extremely well together. As always, battery percentage on, Apple Pencil tip towards top and dots on. I have messaged Stephen a few times regarding tips on products to buy and he has responded quickly and given great advice. Currently updating my Plex library with burning my hundreds of Blu-ray’s and adding captions to all of them since both of my daughters are hard of hearing and wear hearing aids. Stephen recommended a Blu-ray reader for my iMac and software to get them all converted. It’s been a slow process but I’m almost done. It is very helpful to have all the captions on for my daughters with whatever we watch. Thanks for all your help!