AwesomeCast 797: Apple Shortcuts + Fast & Furious Coaster Chaos
What happens when Apple makes automation easy enough that you can simply describe what you want your phone to do? And what happens when a brand-new roller coaster decides you should experience most of the ride backwards?
Sorg and Dave Podnar cover both questions and a lot more in AwesomeCast 797.
Apple Shortcuts Is Becoming a Lot More Approachable
Dave kicks things off with an update to Apple Shortcuts that could make one of Apple’s most powerful tools accessible to far more people.
Instead of assembling every action manually, users can describe the workflow they want. The system then helps construct those steps.
Dave built an example around something he does regularly: posting photography to Instagram. His shortcut lets him select a photo, use AI to create an Instagram-friendly caption and hashtags, copy that text to the clipboard, and open the sharing process.
Sorg installs Dave’s shortcut during the show and tests it himself. It correctly recognizes elements of a photo and generates a usable starting point for a caption — although its assumptions prove why human review is still important.
Watch the automation example:
https://youtu.be/cKg04R2hMxk?is=wQoUs9u6GvQSZvDO
Try Dave’s shortcut:
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2a97e0b460d44bbdae0e035f495c0ba2
Cowabunga: Sorg Visits the TMNT Pizzeria
A work trip to California also gave Sorg an opportunity to visit the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizzeria in Santa Monica.
This goes well beyond putting a few Ninja Turtles pictures on the wall. The restaurant incorporates different generations of TMNT history, including classic cartoons, comics and newer incarnations of the franchise.
There are free-to-play Ninja Turtles arcade games, glowing green lighting, themed murals, merchandise, character statues, specialty pizza and drinks, and an extremely green restroom complete with a glowing manhole-cover design.
For a Ninja Turtles fan, it is part restaurant and part mini museum.
Locations:
https://tmntpizzeriala.com/pages/locations
Sorg’s video:
https://www.tiktok.com/@sorgatron/video/7688173127259458829
Celebrating Ellen Ochoa
Dave’s Awesome History segment celebrates astronaut Ellen Ochoa.
Ochoa became the first Latina woman to travel into space and later served as director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Her career also includes the Presidential Medal of Freedom and efforts to encourage more young people to explore science, engineering and technology.
One of the smaller details that stands out: Ochoa is also a musician and took a flute into orbit, a reminder that science, engineering and the arts do not have to exist in separate worlds.
Her accomplishments have even been celebrated with an Ellen Ochoa Barbie.
Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift Gets Extra Fast and Furious
Sorg also made it to Universal Studios Hollywood shortly after Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift opened to the public.
The coaster features vehicles capable of rotating riders during the course, creating different perspectives as the train moves through its elements.
Sorg’s first ride went smoothly.
The second one was more memorable.
His car rotated backward and stayed that way through much of the coaster. When the train returned to the station, the vehicle was still positioned incorrectly and could not properly enter the unloading area.
That led to Universal employees dressed as mechanics arriving with tools and equipment to work on the ride while Sorg and the other passengers remained aboard.
If you wanted an immersive Fast & Furious breakdown experience, apparently Universal has that covered too.
Sorg also talks about revisiting the Universal Studio Tour and seeing how the active movie lot continues to change, including the Back to the Future courthouse area and other famous sets.
A Surprisingly Useful CarPlay Trick
A Nissan Rogue rental provided another piece of travel technology worth discussing.
Sorg discovered he could have Waze displayed in the instrument cluster while keeping Apple Maps open through CarPlay on the center screen.
That meant one navigation app could continue handling the main route while another searched for a destination along the way.
In this case, that very important destination was In-N-Out Burger.
A Major Boost for SAE University Teams
Sorg also discusses an announcement he helped cover for SAE International: a $1.5 million Haas Foundation commitment to SAE University Programs.
The conversation focuses on what eliminating or reducing registration expenses can mean for Baja SAE and Formula SAE teams. Many of these programs operate more like student clubs than fully funded university athletic programs, meaning students can spend a tremendous amount of time securing sponsors and money before they can concentrate on designing and building their vehicles.
Removing even one major expense allows teams to put more attention toward engineering, machining, testing and competition.
2027 Haas registration information:
https://fullsight.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CMPRGSPRT/pages/2384789512/2027+HAAS+Registration
Yes, Guile's Hair Is Now a Popcorn Bucket
The merchandising department responsible for the Street Fighter movie may have achieved something special: a Guile hair hat that also holds popcorn.
Cody Rhodes modeling the thing sends Sorg and Dave into a larger conversation about just how elaborate theatrical popcorn buckets have become.
Optimus Prime trucks, Alien heads, Marvel props, Castle Grayskull — movie theaters have turned the humble popcorn container into another branch of the collectible business.
See the Guile bucket:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1558537736313992&set=pcb.1558537776313988
AI Is a Tool. Somebody Still Has to Check It.
The episode closes with a discussion about the explosion of AI-generated graphics in everyday advertising.
Sorg has started noticing and documenting obvious examples in the wild, from small local businesses to large companies. Both hosts agree that automation can save enormous amounts of production time — including on AwesomeCast itself — but using AI does not eliminate the responsibility to review what it produces.
Bad information, strange imagery and generic designs can all survive the process when nobody checks the final result.
At the same time, the rise of instant AI imagery may create another opportunity: artists, photographers and production teams can put more emphasis on showing the actual craft behind their work.
Automation may make producing something easier. Making something worth paying attention to is still the challenge.
Support more conversations like this and help keep AwesomeCast going at https://www.patreon.com/AwesomeCast.
