Is it time to stop using Zoom?

almost ready

so seven o'clock hello and welcome um

let me get to the right screen so hello

and welcome

um thanks for coming if you're here

if you're watching this afterwards

thanks for

not coming and watching i guess um

actually you know what this is kind of

my first live stream on vimeo live so

i'm going to be

looking over there because i've got a

second screen with a bunch of stuff in

there

if you're watching now let me know where

you're watching from

it'd be good to know and i'm gonna

open up my safari

to go through a few things now

basically i wanted to do this live

stream because i

we know that there's problems with zoom

or have been problems with

zoom um for a while and they

did actually patch a lot of things i

think it was early this year

where there was a problem with them

installing a

server on a mac i'm not going to go into

the technical details and stuff

and everyone in the security realm

were basically peeved off about it and

rightfully so because

if they're installing something on your

computer server-wise where they're

logging certain pieces of information

information they

should basically tell you why they're

doing it and what

what's going on and um so a lot of

people still

stopped using zoom back then and there

was an

there's a period back then when i where

i wasn't

actually using zoom and i started using

facetime and so on and that was good

enough

the thing is there's so many companies

now you've got to be so vigilant

as to who's using

the data that you're giving them uh you

know what's happening etc sorry i'm just

going to look over here quickly

and we're never um told

the thing with me is that i'm i can't

say i'm on top of it all the time

i i'm on top of um my news feed

on twitter and linkedin and certain rss

feeds and so on newsletters

so i kind of keep on top of it that way

and

you know people like facebook who are

basically totally

scamming you if you are using facebook i

haven't used facebook

facebook since 2012

maybe 13 um i don't use any of their

services

um i got to say i do have a mech junkie

account because obviously that's my

trade name and i don't want anyone to

use it so i

create these accounts so i can keep

those names but i don't use it

it's not on my phone or anything and

getting back to zoom zoom is kind of

getting to a stage

where it's starting to collect data

um that it doesn't need to it's starting

to

to work with governments to give them

data

and i'm i just feel a bit icky about it

and i'm not

happy with it and for even before this

for a few months i've been looking

for another way to do my video calls now

i was i was basically reverting back to

facetime because facetime works

and you know i i'm a mac junkie and i

use apple products so there's no reason

why um i didn't use facetime the problem

is the work that i do

i need to have remote control access and

that sounds really

icky in itself when i'm doing coaching

so

if i'm coaching somebody and i'm helping

somebody um

you know live on air basically uh live

on a one-to-one

coaching call they want me to help them

with certain things now i could revert

to things like

um teamviewer x and stuff like

that but that's yet another hurdle that

the client has to

um yeah install basically so having

zoom that does remote control is really

freaking handy

but i want to stop using zoom

now some people basically saying you

know well why

zoom et cetera well the chinese

government

i'm reading my screen let me see if i

can show you my screen

the chinese government are basically

um interfering with zoom

as you can see here let me get this here

so um

i'll i'll give let me see if i can put

this

in the chat

um let me put it into this chat here

and let me put it also into this chat

here as well

so um going back to this

basically what's happening is that zoom

working

closely with the chinese government

and um getting the chinese government

to eavesdrop or drop

the calls while on some

highbrow executives

in the us in this in this article anyway

are actually

you know doing a call now

obviously i'm not i'm no highbrow we're

no highbrow kind of we're not doing

anything

um um that we're um

trying to hide but i still feel a little

icky about this and i'm not prepared to

have my information

used in any way so there's no reason

to to use a service in for instance

facebook

what's up uh instagram google

i don't use any google products other

than my youtube channel

and i only use google for youtube um

i don't have any data on there or

anything so

if i feel that a company is a bit icky i

kind of want to find

uh another um

yet another service to use

now i've been looking at um whereby

which used to be called appear in and

that's actually a really good

uh let me see if i can show you this

this is whereby and

um you know what let me show you their

website because i logged in

and it's you know it's great it works

via the web browser

it works really nicely i love it they

have an iphone app

the problem is i haven't been able to

use this

properly with my clients as the remote

support

because it's browser-based you have to

use google chrome

again i don't use google products and i

don't expect my clients to use google

products

yes you could probably do it in brave

but it doesn't work so well and it

doesn't work

great with um safari

i'm a mac junkie i'm an apple guy so

this

doesn't work too well and i don't

believe it does

uh remote support either it does do

recording

which is very handy for coaching calls

but again with the recording it's a

weird a weird-ass

format it's you've got to convert it via

a converting program into a movie or a

mpeg-4 so really strange but the app is

great the company is great support is

great but it just doesn't fit

what i you know how i could use it again

i thought about going to facetime and

then using

you know something else for the remote

support stuff

but then i thought you know what again i

don't want my clients to

go through hoops to for me to help them

i just want one app to go through and

that's why i

basically use zoom so let me show you an

app um that i have found

and now they are they're not in beta but

it's um

invitation only luckily i was invited to

check them out and so far so good there

are certain things it doesn't do

they do have a road map and they are

working on it

so there are certain things that for

instance it doesn't do recording

although that's coming it's kind of

annoying but i figured out a way about

actually how to do that recording and

i'm going to go through some of this

um it it doesn't work with calendly but

again i found a way of going around this

thing with technology is you've got to

find

the letter of the evil and then you've

got to find

a way to kind of not shoehorn it but

kind of make it work within your

workflow

um so anyway let's go to around

now this is the uh the app

um this is the website of the app i i

love the website it's

so freaking simple and as you know me

and magjunky

i like simplicity and so on so this

really

um it's a great app so if you haven't

um signed up sign up

um they'll be uh they'll invite you in

there

and how it works whereas zoom has

you know a big window

with everyone within that window how

around works

is that you have these kind of hover

cards let me turn this on right so you

have these kind of

hover cards basically hover faces

and it can also track your face so

you're always in frame which is really

really nice

it does a lot of

ai audio enhancement which is really

cool so if you

if there's a team of you in the same

room basically it

will cancel out everybody else's voice

and keep your voice

um um yeah it basically keeps your voice

so it doesn't um

feedback it kind of cancels out it's

it's really clever because i

helped um i tested it with a friend of

mine so yeah it has these

kind of hover um

round faces so you can still work on

um showing your screen without having a

big window

in it which is really cool this is the

famous bbc news uh it's hilarious

um this is the noise um uh issue

uh silencing the disruptions there is

obviously

a i an iphone app coming out which i'm

really looking forward to

um and anyway this is this is their

website so this is what the zoom would

uh traditionally look like like this

this is too much information

you don't need to see and this is

basically what a round looks like you

just see

the person sometimes you want to see the

background

there are certain reasons you want to do

that but if you're doing a face to face

call you don't necessarily need to see

everyone's

uh background right so for me actually

it works out really well it has

slack in you know etc etc and

this is what i like you have a meeting

room so

for teams this is indispensable for me

it wouldn't work so well

but literally you have a link

and then you basically go into the room

and that

works the same as i don't know what

google call their services now is it

google me

google hangout whatever google something

but you know google has that

um link as well so um

this is the website go and check it out

download it um

you know get started put put your email

address in

and hopefully you'll get an invite to it

now i'm going to show you

my around app now

the person who you're calling with um

doesn't just like zoom they don't need

an account

they will need um the around

app to be um

installed now the thing i really like

about the around app

is that you're not actually installing

an app you know sometimes you have to

use an installer to install an app

this basically is uh an

application that you launch so there's

no installing of anything it's literally

a dmg a virtual hard drive

you you copy it onto your hard drive

into the applications folder and uh

off you go what they've just recently

added is this meet later so

when you click it it creates a

random meeting id and then people can

basically go

into that id so if i click here no sorry

where it is no i don't want to do that

uh

join a meeting there we go so you can

just paste that in

and that's a meeting id and then you can

just go

and join that meeting i wonder if

someone's gonna

copy that and call me i don't know if it

will work while i'm live streaming

it might go really slow okay well this

is my um

actually this is my facetime camera so

if you notice

actually i know i turned that off but

you can get that to

um track your face so now i can just put

this in the corner

and um share my screen

so i'm on a call with a client

and showing my screen this way you can

actually

just basically share the screen but if

i'm in that corner and i'm

you know want to talk to the client i

can just do i mean it's just

so much simpler so much cleaner i really

like it

and everything just kind of goes out of

the way you can make this as big as you

want

basically like this put it here there

you go

goes away um there we go has these

little colors

which which is kind of cool i like it

um it also has the generic

hey i have a question hey that's pretty

cool

uh i don't know what goodbye is that a

goodbye i don't know

it's kind of handy and i think the last

one is

uh

something like that you can actually

type stuff in which is kind of nice

now you could this is called the

floating mode you do

actually have the generic campfire mode

so

you can see these circles you can

actually add you know when people are in

the core you can actually

add them here now this is really cool if

you're in a team and

and you take notes you actually have

notes a note section

so if you're on a call with someone

they can um test notes

they can write in the same document in

this document in this window at the same

time which actually

is really really clever and uh every as

you know see there's uh

formatting as well so you can format it

which is really nice quote

format so on and so forth really simple

to the point

um especially if you're doing uh

meetings so for meeting notes it's great

image sharing kind of handy um

it's literally you just drag and drop an

image i mean this obviously

is for you know designers i guess if

they're working within a team which is

really cool

and obviously the sharing of the screen

now

when you share your screen

um you have the button kind of changes

into a remote um control remote access

it i can't remember what it's called

but kind of a remote access to um

to uh view oh what's happened there

where did i

go get back to my around this is the

call

get back to this right so um you can

basically

uh control the the remote computer that

you're

the the person that you're speaking with

which is really handy uh copy the

meeting though and then you have

all of these functions which you know

their keyboard shortcuts to actually do

those things

i really like this um there's i said

the less lesser of the evil so

i have calendly um people book

calls with me and everything is

basically

is automated and goes through canon lee

and i don't have to do anything

for the moment with this what i'd have

to do is

create a um a meeting code when i get

the

calendar invite i create a meeting code

and i just send

an invite and actually happened twice

today i sent an

um an email back to the client

thanks for booking the call with me um

here's the link to uh

in fact let me show you let me show you

candidly instead of just

talking about talking about it in this

way

uh and then you will see

what i've done this is too big so let me

get make this a bit smaller

so for instance if you book an

introductory call

one of the emails the email confirmation

what i've done is basically written this

three easy steps and this is what you

have if you're

um running uh i'm not even showing you

my screen i'm sorry

it's calendly so when you are

um

when you get a calendly call i usually

email them and say thanks for the call

etc and i would then send

the private meeting code and that's what

step three is

use the set three i send them a code

once i've created it so they can get in

now

when you know pretty much everyone has

zoom

kind of set up on their computer but

when people didn't have zoom set up on

the computer they would have to do this

anyway

right download the zoom app

make sure you do it before the call

click here to

download the zoom app for instance

launch the app and

allow the microphone and camera now this

is the beauty thing about around

actually they make this so much easier

so much easier because when you launch

the app it will say to you we need your

microphone and camera

now all other apps actually do it but

with around they've actually given

instructions as to the reasons why

they're doing it and why you need it

which is really

handy in a lot of cases and again you

would need the meeting code

from zoom so there's no real difference

between having these three steps in

any app in fact not just around but

pretty much in any app

um and this is what i uh write to

uh to my you know as an um sorry this is

what i sent

as my calendary um

confirmation basically and then i will

follow up with an email

so again tools um

it's like you've got to use the lesser

evil of the tools

i talk about this all the time um

you got to marry the person who annoys

you the least

that's the running joke when you get

married uh

you got to have your best friend that

annoys you the least whatever

you have to run the apps that annoy you

the least

and yes there are annoyances with this

but

with my workflow and i know that there

it's on the roadmap

roadmap and it's coming but i

rather deal with these issues than have

a company that's really quite big

and to be honest from the news that i've

been getting and

or i've been seeing something that i

just

don't want to be part of i don't want to

be part of

any company or business that you know

that i you know can do without there are

some companies that are totally evil and

you just can't do without unfortunately

um you can lessen the impact of it

but you can't do without um

i mean facebook is is the biggest in in

my

uh in my eyes i have nothing to do with

facebook in fact

if i click a link and

i realize it's a facebook instagram or

whatsapp type page anything to do with

facebook

i clear my caches

quit the app you don't need to restart

your computer i just

completely trash everything and then i

run it again because i just don't trust

any of these companies with my data and

my data doesn't necessarily mean my

photos or my

name or whatever my data means i don't

want them to know

where i'm going on the internet i don't

want to be tracked and you know

the apple stuff making it much easier

and around is a small

company it sounds like an advert for a

round and it's not it's supposed to be

uh not to use zoom there are

alternatives to zoom i

just showed you where by um

around and so on

let me see but around says it's infinite

only and i need

an information code for my friend

otherwise oh yes

yes yeah i mean this is the thing right

now

it is um beta only oh sorry

invite only they i'm

i'm hoping that they'll open it up quite

soon

um but i'm not sure when they're opening

up luckily i got in

early i tweeted someone saw it and said

okay here's an invite so

that's kind of handy so um

yeah i'm uh that's the annoying part

it's a new thing i guess it's just

completely new but again you don't

need um

you don't need an account if you're just

on a course so for instance i have an

account

and if i ask someone to get on a hop on

a call they don't need to have an

account

they just download the app and install

it

so yeah so hopefully they will open it

up

let me see are there any other questions

here

let me see no other questions

yeah uh yeah early access yeah

unfortunately it's early access right

now

it which is a shame but i guess they

have to do it um

i do i it does get annoying after a

while when

companies start saying you know early

access only blah blah it's annoying but

i guess they have to test it but i just

wish they could do it in a

different way but right now it's um yeah

early access

but again the whole point of this isn't

necessarily

around the whole point of this is there

are

alternatives to um

to zoom to be i mean you know you can

use

um signal for instance you can use

um telegram for instance to do video

calls

i mean for goodness sake you can use

facetime

i trust facetime way more than i trust

zoom i trust signal way more than i

trust

imessage whatever it's called so it

depends on what you want to use if

you're using what's up for any kind of

communication

i don't want to be your friend because

i'm not going to listen to i'm not going

to

use whatsapp at all

so yeah do you guys use whatsapp

do you still use whatsapp is there a

reason why you use whatsapp i know the

reasons

a lot of my clients say well you know

it's a family thing and i need to use it

personally i don't think that's a good

enough reason but i get it i

understand it but i don't think it's a

good enough reason

let me see what else is going on here

so yeah if you have any questions uh put

them in the chat

um down below if you're watching this on

my website mcjunky.com

forward slash live down below there is

a link to send me a message if you have

any questions

after the stream i'm going to close it

out there um

thanks for coming this is pretty much a

short

have you tried jitsi me

yeah i have but i don't

think that that is a

great service um let me see and remember

um i've i've i have tried this

and i just think it's a bit too

technical

for my clients for the

for the way i work with my clients the

point is to have

the least amount of friction ever the

least amount of friction doesn't matter

how much it costs

the least amount of friction um

hey dominic thanks man yeah i didn't

want this to be a review but hey

there you go um the point is to have the

least amount of friction

with um with your tools with

your clients the way you communicate

with

um your coaching clients or clients in

general

and i mean the reason why i use vimeo

more so than um youtube to do my live i

you know i paid for vimeo actually i

paid for it today

uh upgraded it again today uh it's

because i wanted it to look nice i

wanted the user experience to be

better than everything else if you go to

face i'm sorry

if you go to youtube it's a complete

mess you want to focus on

so go to going to mcjunkie.com live it's

just

simple so the point is to have the

least amount of friction with all of

your tools

and yes dominic around is actually quite

nice i really like it i like the

simplicity of it

it's the whole point of what tech

minimalism is and what mac junkie does

and what i do

is to have the least amount of friction

with you and your client you and

the person you're speaking with you and

your tools and

if you're fighting with your tools

you're not going to get anything done

uh using it not so much for coaching

though yeah exactly

um it is simpler than zoom actually that

one it is definitely

zoom is a bit bloated and in fact

um i decided yesterday

that uh tomorrow i have a zoom call and

it'll be my last zoom call i paid for

the year

i think it was june but i don't think

i'll be using zoom again

um after tomorrow and i

luckily i have a around um dominic

if you're there and you have some

invites you could send me

that i could pass around that would be

great

um so it yeah as i said it is invite

only

um but it is it's

yeah it's quite nice i like it

max thank you for sharing good to know

there are alternatives there and always

appreciate straightforward and still

honestly

thanks max i appreciate it yeah i mean

to be

you know i did a um coaching call

on my phone while i was walking my dog

because i was somewhere

and i did it on um facetime you're just

talking there's so many of these tools

you don't need

you know so you just don't need the

friction of these tools

and zoom is just too bloated there's a

lot of tools that are just

way overbloated for for their own good

to be honest

um yeah

if you can find a simple tool you find

the

the easiest tool to make your life

easier

and your teammate or client's life

easier the

better it is keep it simple that's

that's the thing

keep it simple id

yeah um

let me just put i think it's around dot

co

is that right yeah i think so

that's the year round if you need to

have a look at their website

let me see if there is anyone talking on

and

see that right here's here's the

complication i used to use restream

just to stream from my computer to

youtube and periscope blah blah and

not many people use it not many people

use these other platforms

twitch is a really a gaming platform not

many people use it

youtube i really want to stop using um

and um so i just thought you know what

make it simple for everyone to put on my

website hence i went to vimeo

and that was it i can't see anyone on

youtube

or was i on the wrong page no yeah

there you go

let's see if there are any other

questions

okay guys i'm gonna um close it out

let me stop this around call for some

reason

um

guys rounds just tweeted me they're all

watching it thanks guys

appreciate it again this wasn't for you

but it was it wasn't it wasn't this was

actually to do with zoom as i said

um that there are alternatives and

i found your product to be the better

one for me so

i'm uh i'm pleased about that and uh

yeah i'm happy about it

happy holidays thanks guys all right

guys i'll um

close it out if you have any questions

there'll be a link down below i hate i

can't believe i even said that

if you're watching on my website there's

a there's a link and you could message

me

you can tweet me as well at

macjunkie.com um

happy holidays you know what i might

even do it i love this live stream stuff

so i might do it again

hopefully it sounds good hopefully it

looked good hopefully you got some

benefit from it

um i'll see you um