Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello, and welcome to Connected, episode 557. Today is Wednesday, June 18th, 2025. This

00:00:17 ◼   ► episode is made possible by our sponsors, Squarespace and Terminal. My name is Stephen

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hackett. I may have already said that, I don't remember. And I'm joined by Mr. Mike Hurley.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Hello, Stephen. It is my pleasure to introduce to this program, the Ricky

00:00:33 ◼   ► Benchman, Federico Baticci. Hello, I'm here. It's so good to be called like that.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Hi. I changed my trophy today. I realized I hadn't done it. So I need to do that

00:00:45 ◼   ► correctly reflecting to show Federico as the Benchman. Congratulations. Thank you. You're

00:00:55 ◼   ► really holding the show together. But it could have been much worse.

00:01:00 ◼   ► I was so close.

00:01:02 ◼   ► You were so close. I didn't realize this until I was like putting, kind of tidying up after

00:01:07 ◼   ► the show last week. Currently, Federico, you are the keynote chairman, the annual chairman,

00:01:15 ◼   ► and you won the annual flexis. Yeah. I have the keynote flexis. So I am the last, the last

00:01:25 ◼   ► stand between us and the future where Federico reigns supreme.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Right, right. You are the European Union to my United States. You could also put it like

00:01:40 ◼   ► that. Yes. You know, that's an interesting topic. You should find him. 10% of Federico's

00:01:49 ◼   ► revenue for the year is yours. That could be yours.

00:01:52 ◼   ► I mean, this only means one thing that in September I have, or if Apple is going to do, I don't

00:01:58 ◼   ► know, like another October event this year. I don't know, but I got to, if I can win both

00:02:03 ◼   ► the keynote again and the keynote flexis, it'll be, what is it going to be that I get to choose

00:02:08 ◼   ► my own name? You get to choose your own name.

00:02:10 ◼   ► So everybody can look forward to the most boring flexi pics of all time coming your way later

00:02:15 ◼   ► on this year. You gotta, you gotta be strategic. Just the least passion possible coming your way.

00:02:21 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, look at this, look at this chart. Uh, you know, uh, I do what I have to do.

00:02:28 ◼   ► We're playing. Uh, Steven, you use Notion in light mode? I use my Mac in light mode. Yeah.

00:02:34 ◼   ► I mean, the Mac in light mode is one thing, but I don't know. Like Notion's just like,

00:02:38 ◼   ► it's too white. It's just too much. Like it's too bright. I don't, I really dislike dark mode

00:02:42 ◼   ► in Mac apps. I use dark mode all the time, wherever I can. Yeah. Love it. You know what

00:02:47 ◼   ► I noticed with dark mode? Um, that if I use dark mode too much, no matter the device that

00:02:53 ◼   ► I'm using, um, when I look and like, especially if I'm reading text, right? So dark background,

00:02:59 ◼   ► light or white text on top of it. When I look away, I get that thing in my eyes where I still

00:03:07 ◼   ► see the text. Hmm. Hmm. You know, what's it, what's it called when you were like, uh,

00:03:12 ◼   ► like persistence, visual aberration, something like that. I have no idea. I have no idea.

00:03:19 ◼   ► There's a, there's a word like residual vision. I don't know. Um, but it only, it only happens

00:03:25 ◼   ► with dark mode. Like I, I stare at a dark mode screen for too long when I'm reading, I look

00:03:32 ◼   ► away. I see the text in front of my eyes still. Well, that's what you think. Maybe when you

00:03:38 ◼   ► use it in light mode, your entire eyeballs are blown out. Right. I mean, I would prefer

00:03:43 ◼   ► that, you know, uh, yeah, it's like burning on your eyes, right? Yeah. Yeah. You got visual

00:03:53 ◼   ► burning. Uh, that doesn't sound good, Federico. I think maybe your screen's too bright. I think

00:03:59 ◼   ► you might have the brightness up too high. I don't know. I don't know. It only happens

00:04:03 ◼   ► with the dark mode though. So do you still do manual brightness adjustment? No, no. Okay.

00:04:09 ◼   ► Cause you used to do that, didn't you? I used to do that, but then, but then their algorithm

00:04:13 ◼   ► got pretty good. I think. Hey, we might have a problem. Okay. Oh, oh. The discord called foul

00:04:20 ◼   ► on me calling Federico the annual flexis champ. So I look, I'm looking it up. You're making

00:04:29 ◼   ► this sound like something so much more serious than it actually is, by the way. I think Mike

00:04:35 ◼   ► is actually the annual flexis winner. This is why we don't just trust your manually updated

00:04:42 ◼   ► discord document, uh, for this information. Like I use all of the websites. Yeah. That's probably

00:04:47 ◼   ► better. Yeah. That's Mike. Well, I'm also saving us from, I'm actually the real person saving from

00:04:54 ◼   ► tyranny. Right, right. Because I'm holding this down for the entire year. I could fall

00:04:58 ◼   ► in the fall. It just means that my consolidation will happen in January, 2026. I mean, it's,

00:05:04 ◼   ► I'm just saying, you know, it's, this is me training for that moment, you know? By the way,

00:05:11 ◼   ► I'm just now, now I've just opened up the 2025 annual Ricky's page and it's a bloodbath.

00:05:17 ◼   ► I'm just going to tell you that right now. This is, we had, we had a lot of hopes about what's

00:05:20 ◼   ► going to happen this year and a lot of it just doesn't look like it's happening. Where does

00:05:23 ◼   ► one find such page? Uh, rickies.co or rickies.net. They, they both have them as, uh, ongoing games.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Uh, that's where you can go find this stuff. Like for example, uh, Apple announces a new

00:05:34 ◼   ► standalone Siri app based on a new LLM. Ooh, rough. You know, any day now. It can still

00:05:43 ◼   ► happen. The year is not over. I should be, I should be getting that point. A new iPhone

00:05:47 ◼   ► SE is introduced with a new LLM. I never said that there were no points. Also, you have iPhone

00:05:52 ◼   ► SE, oh, potentially a new name. Yeah, you get that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We will litigate

00:05:58 ◼   ► that at the end of the year. There are points scored. I'm just saying like, there's a lot

00:06:01 ◼   ► of stuff that isn't, but we're only halfway through. So, you know, we still get that standalone

00:06:06 ◼   ► Siri app. Oh, let's not get distracted. Mac OS 16 includes a controversial change. That's

00:06:13 ◼   ► a flexi for me. I'm sorry. There was no Mac OS 16. Rough. Yeah. iOS 19 brings agreements

00:06:20 ◼   ► with new AI partners. Rough. I don't know. There's no Mac OS 16, so. Okay. Yeah. You're

00:06:27 ◼   ► off by 10 version numbers, my friend. Sucks to be you. Sorry about that. It's hard to

00:06:31 ◼   ► keep up with time when you get older. Also, the system hasn't shipped yet, so. I actually

00:06:36 ◼   ► do have another one. So, I saw this on 9to5Mac. The glove cursor has changed. Well, the hand

00:06:44 ◼   ► used to be a glove. Now it's just like a regular hand. Does this make you mad too? You want to

00:06:48 ◼   ► make a crusade on this change? It's pretty mad, but what I'm, what I, I have to, I have

00:06:54 ◼   ► to focus my energy on the finder icon. Okay. Because I feel like I can make a real difference

00:07:01 ◼   ► in the world. Have you? And it, well, not yet, but we haven't seen dev beta 2. Soon. Soon.

00:07:09 ◼   ► But not yet. Not yet. Not yet. And our friend D. Griffin Jones had a blog post proposal for

00:07:15 ◼   ► a new finder icon that basically just flips it. Looks fine. Pretty good. But yeah, the

00:07:22 ◼   ► colors are still bad. Still makes me angry when I look at my beta Mac. Isn't this exactly what

00:07:28 ◼   ► you would want, though? What D. Griffin made? Yeah. No, I think if you're, if you're going

00:07:32 ◼   ► to do glass, that's the way to do it. Right. I'm just not convinced glass is the right thing

00:07:38 ◼   ► for the finder icon at all, but it's fine. Well, it's going to have to happen. So you

00:07:42 ◼   ► should just find the thing that you're excited for. So I can make it really big in Notion.

00:07:45 ◼   ► That's fun. Good for you. Good news. Okay. I got a new phone. I flip-flopped. Oh, good

00:07:52 ◼   ► goodness. I am now using the Motorola, Motorola Rocker E1. Listener Matt made my day. It came,

00:08:05 ◼   ► it found its way across the border to me. I unboxed it. Mike, you had suggested, and I think

00:08:12 ◼   ► it's in a screenshot of Federico's article, that I do a video unboxing it. It doesn't boot

00:08:18 ◼   ► up. I have some batteries on the way from eBay. So if they work and don't burn my office

00:08:26 ◼   ► down, I do want to do something like showing the interface and getting it to sync with an

00:08:29 ◼   ► old version of iTunes. So hopefully there's more to come from this, but at the very least,

00:08:33 ◼   ► someone to show pictures of it on Instagram. Could you use this? Would it even work? With

00:08:40 ◼   ► an old version of iTunes? No, but like, could it connect to a network? No, no, surely not.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Like, what is this? Probably Edge or something? Like 2G? If it even, yeah, it's yeah. Something

00:08:53 ◼   ► even older. I don't even know. Would it connect to Wi-Fi, do you think? I don't think it had

00:08:57 ◼   ► Wi-Fi. Incredible. I'd be shocked if it had Wi-Fi. How'd you get the music on it? It must've had

00:09:02 ◼   ► Wi-Fi. How'd you get the music? Oh, you load it on there. Duh. With a cable. Yeah, with

00:09:06 ◼   ► a cable. Really, really long internet cable. You nailed it. Around the streets. There you

00:09:11 ◼   ► go. Speaking of music, Apple Music Replay is now a native part of the music app. It's no

00:09:17 ◼   ► longer an embedded web view. So this is in iOS 26. I'm interested to see what the new experience

00:09:24 ◼   ► will look like this year if they actually are able to make it an embedded part of the app

00:09:28 ◼   ► rather than a website. So you can go in and see stuff now. It's there. Your information

00:09:33 ◼   ► is there. You can go through the year and it shows kind of what the web interface looked

00:09:37 ◼   ► like. Hoping that they can do something a little bit more interesting. They're not going to get

00:09:43 ◼   ► to Spotify levels. They're just not because Spotify is so important to their business. Spotify

00:09:49 ◼   ► wrapped. But maybe now it would be a little bit better now that it's built into the app.

00:09:53 ◼   ► I don't know. But I thought it was fun to see. How do you find Apple Music Replay inside

00:09:56 ◼   ► the app? I couldn't tell you. I found it on 9to5Mac. So I don't know where it lives, but

00:10:02 ◼   ► apparently it lives somewhere. Ryan has a screenshot of it. And so. Yeah, it looks like following

00:10:07 ◼   ► a link to the web will open Replay. Sometimes in Apple Music, I get recommended to look at the

00:10:15 ◼   ► playlist that it makes. Maybe it's like there instead, you know, like it may be that kind

00:10:20 ◼   ► of section. Yeah, it looks more native than before. That's for sure. Yeah. Rather than like

00:10:27 ◼   ► because for a while it's just a web view. Then they embedded the web view inside of the music

00:10:32 ◼   ► app. Yeah. And now it's actually just music UI. Yeah, it's kind of nice. It's kind of nice.

00:10:39 ◼   ► Can it tell me how much music I listen to on my Motorola phone? That's all I want to know.

00:10:44 ◼   ► Probably. Probably. As long as you're. I wonder if that. No, because it won't connect to a

00:10:51 ◼   ► network. I was going to say like you could probably transfer some music and then scrobble the music

00:10:57 ◼   ► from the rocker. I need to set up a thing that listens to the music coming out of the tiny headphones.

00:11:03 ◼   ► Yes. And records it. Yes. And scrobbles it. Yeah. Every day I'm scrobbling. That's a weekend project.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Scrobbling, scrobbling, scrobbling. Federico, you have a bold claim. Okay. Yes, I do. I'm quoting

00:11:19 ◼   ► you to yourself. Kudos to the Reminders team for shipping my favorite control ever in iOS 26's

00:11:26 ◼   ► control center. What is this? This is awesome. So this is a new control in the iOS 26 control

00:11:33 ◼   ► center. I think it's part of the new like visual snippets things for app intents where apps can

00:11:41 ◼   ► basically now present these interactive snippets that allow you to perform actions with interactivity

00:11:48 ◼   ► from the snippet without launching an app with more interactivity than you had before. So like for

00:11:59 ◼   ► example here, you press a button in control center and it opens this mini reminders UI that lets you

00:12:06 ◼   ► enter a reminder, supports natural language, lets you switch between lists, lets you assign a location,

00:12:13 ◼   ► a date, or a flag. And so it's like it is literally like a mini reminders interface activated from a

00:12:20 ◼   ► control so that you stay in control center, but you get a whole bunch of features from reminders.

00:12:26 ◼   ► And I think it's part of that framework, which I saw some speculation and I think it makes a lot of

00:12:30 ◼   ► sense. That framework, the snippets for app intents, obviously something that Apple was going to ship

00:12:37 ◼   ► for the HomePod with the screen, right? This is exactly what you would imagine from like, you do get some

00:12:44 ◼   ► interaction, but it's miniaturized, but it still shows you the actual UI from the app that you are invoking,

00:12:52 ◼   ► right? And so it's this middle ground. I think it's interesting because it's these snippets are

00:12:57 ◼   ► this middle ground between shortcuts and widgets, you know, in a way that like these snippets, for

00:13:05 ◼   ► example, are more interactive than widgets because widgets on the home screen, for example, and I mean,

00:13:11 ◼   ► you know, Steven, they cannot bring up the keyboard, for example, to let you type something. These things

00:13:17 ◼   ► can. And so I think it's interesting that we're now at a point where Apple has two things that kind of both of

00:13:25 ◼   ► them look like widgets. One of them is officially called the widget. The other looks like it, but it's more

00:13:31 ◼   ► powerful. So I don't know. It's fascinating.

00:13:33 ◼   ► I hadn't heard of this. I just found a session video design in interactive snippets. So you can essentially make little

00:13:41 ◼   ► components of apps that live. Yes. What like you bring up in shortcuts or from control center and stuff like

00:13:47 ◼   ► that. In theory, that is correct. I could have a widget that I tapped a button and it would launch one of these and I

00:13:54 ◼   ► could do a thing. Yes. Yeah, I think so. Yes. Yes, that is correct. Um, just let me confirm and see if I open

00:14:04 ◼   ► shortcuts, uh, will I find the same thing? Um, I can trigger it from the action button. I'll give you

00:14:12 ◼   ► that. Okay. So, yeah. So it's a control, right? It's, it doesn't appear in shortcuts. In shortcuts,

00:14:18 ◼   ► you still have the same old regular add reminder action, but this control, you can add it, you can add

00:14:26 ◼   ► it to control center or you can tie it to the action button and it'll bring up this UI, which is.

00:14:32 ◼   ► Cause like what I'm wanting is like, can to do is do this essentially. Right. It's like,

00:14:36 ◼   ► what is what I want. I think they can. Yeah. It'd be very nice. Very nice. What I would like to see

00:14:41 ◼   ► because reminders itself didn't get a ton this year. That's I think interesting. Uh, it would be great

00:14:48 ◼   ► if this was just like the UI inside reminders, which I don't think it is. Um, my main complaint with

00:14:57 ◼   ► reminders is still, there's a lot of tapping. It's like, just put this text box in there. Um,

00:15:02 ◼   ► some of it is there, like some of the, there is some natural language and reminders, but it's not

00:15:07 ◼   ► open-ended. Like maybe this seems to be big news. We are celebrating five years of connected pro, uh,

00:15:18 ◼   ► connected pro is the longer ad free version of the show that we do each and every week. Uh, if you are a

00:15:25 ◼   ► member, thank you for your support. If you're not a member, now's a great time to check it out.

00:15:28 ◼   ► There's a link in the show notes, longer ad free versions, lots of extra stuff for your support,

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00:15:57 ◼   ► which is a member show that all members get. So if you became a connected pro member, you'd get this.

00:16:02 ◼   ► Uh, me and Steven dove into our URLs, um, for finding for a different thing. And I ended up

00:16:08 ◼   ► reminding myself of how many connected jokes I have as URLs that go to places. Uh, one, two,

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00:18:31 ◼   ► Big news. Federico wrote an amazing article.

00:18:35 ◼   ► Yes.

00:18:36 ◼   ► But it wasn't just an amazing article. It was also an interview with Craig Federighi. I love this so much. I described it as what is essentially a profile of both an operating system and a person. It's like, it's really good. Federico, you did such a good job, man.

00:18:54 ◼   ► Oh my God, you should be so proud of yourself.

00:18:56 ◼   ► Thank you. Thank you. That was actually my idea, which was kind of risky, but I thought, you know, whatever, I'm, I'm going for it. So I'm glad you picked up on that. Yeah.

00:19:07 ◼   ► It's so good. Uh, I, people need to read it. Like, cause it's, it's, it's, this feels like one of those classic Federico things where it's a story, like you're telling us the story. Um, and so it's long, but it's good. And there's like history, which is important for thinking about it. It's, it's essentially the, the, the story is about iPad multitasking, but also like, how did we get here? Um, and Craig Federighi is very open actually about how did we get here?

00:19:37 ◼   ► Uh, which I'm, I'm, I'm very thankful that he did this, um, with you. I think he does a good job of explaining things. And, and, and I think one of the biggest takeaways I have is in a lot of instances, they are tending to do the thing you hope they're doing. Right. Which is like, they are thinking about the Mac, but they're trying to, to, to do better. Uh, even if they don't succeed.

00:20:04 ◼   ► And then eventually realize, let's just do the thing that we should be doing from in the first place. I just think it's really good. People should go read it. Uh, it's awesome. And the imagery is really nice too. It's very, uh, meditative, uh, some of the gifts and stuff that's in there.

00:20:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I am very grateful that I was able to work on this.

00:20:21 ◼   ► It was a lot of work last week and it was a lot of coordination, as you can expect, you know, between me and Apple PR and sort of like working on these things is very complicated in terms of like the bureaucracy of it, if anything.

00:20:37 ◼   ► But the aspect I think that I'm most happy about is that this was essentially pitched to me as, hey, do you want to have like, I believe they literally said, do you want to have an in-depth philosophical conversation of yours with Craig about the iPad?

00:20:54 ◼   ► And I thought I was like, yeah, obviously.

00:20:58 ◼   ► And I had, you know, kudos to Apple PR in the sense that I had total creative freedom in terms of what I wanted to ask.

00:21:09 ◼   ► I was concerned that, you know, some of the questions like, you know, let's talk about how people have criticized the iPad over the years.

00:21:16 ◼   ► I thought, oh, maybe, you know, maybe they're going to skip on that.

00:21:19 ◼   ► But no, it was totally fine.

00:21:21 ◼   ► And so it was really important for me to be able to just choose whatever I wanted to ask and, you know, having plenty of time to really go in depth on certain topics.

00:21:36 ◼   ► And yeah, it was a lot of work.

00:21:40 ◼   ► It was a lot of briefings and a lot of things to coordinate, but came together quite nicely, I think.

00:21:47 ◼   ► Saying that about the criticism, I think one of the things that we like about Craig Federighi is that he is like us, right?

00:21:58 ◼   ► Where like, he is both very nerdy, but also I think kind of wears his heart on his sleeve a little bit.

00:22:05 ◼   ► And I think that's kind of why our audience like is always warm to him.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:12 ◼   ► Because there's just a moment where you ask him about the criticism.

00:22:15 ◼   ► And like, at first, he says like, bafflement is how he feels.

00:22:20 ◼   ► And people said it like the Apple don't care about the iPad.

00:22:23 ◼   ► And then it says he's like disappointed because they really do.

00:22:26 ◼   ► But then kind of comes around to being like, but I understand why people care.

00:22:30 ◼   ► It's like such a real answer where like, at first he is defensive.

00:22:34 ◼   ► Yes.

00:22:35 ◼   ► But then opens up and it's like, yeah, but I get it at the same time.

00:22:39 ◼   ► And I just, I just find that so humanizing.

00:22:41 ◼   ► That is exactly how it went when we were doing the interview.

00:22:45 ◼   ► Like it, and that's, that's sort of what I was hoping that I would get, like to get to see, like, I knew I was going to see the PR persona, but I also kind of wanted to see the man who works at Apple.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Sure.

00:22:58 ◼   ► If possible.

00:22:59 ◼   ► Um, because like at the end of the day, like, and obviously like, um, the way that I phrased my questions, uh, I kept insisting on this idea.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Like, look, I get it that, that you describe things a certain way, but I also know that like your people working at Apple and like, it's not like these things sort of spring into existence on their own.

00:23:19 ◼   ► Like you're making them in a certain way.

00:23:21 ◼   ► And why are you making them in a certain way?

00:23:23 ◼   ► And so I, I'm glad that I got to see, uh, a lot of glimpses of that sort of like personal honesty about, about the answers.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Um, and yes, it's very, it's very, very nerdy, very sort of detail oriented.

00:23:41 ◼   ► Uh, I don't remember, uh, it's probably not in the story.

00:23:44 ◼   ► There was a quote about like when we were talking about, um, the beginnings of, of, of the, of the iPad, when everything was in full screen, he went on this tangent about like, oh, because like on, on old Mac OS, um, and Steven, correct me, correct Craig, I guess.

00:24:03 ◼   ► If it's, but it went on this tangent about like the only, the only element that was animating at 60 Hertz on the original Macintosh was the cursor and everything else could kind of take an arbitrarily long amount of time to execute.

00:24:17 ◼   ► But it was really important that the cursor was moving at 60 Hertz and everything else was kind of slow.

00:24:22 ◼   ► Um, and it went on this tangent for like two minutes and I thought, well, you know, that's probably something I'm going to say before the show rather than mention.

00:24:33 ◼   ► That's important though.

00:24:34 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:34 ◼   ► In the context, like there's a reason he's bringing that up and like, and I think I'd heard this, I think, I think I heard Neil Apatow say that he'd been told it in a briefing and you go into detail about it in your story, which is one of the reasons that currently, if I'm wrong, I'm summarizing you now.

00:24:52 ◼   ► But like one of the reasons that Apple was nervous about windowing is there's nothing to indicate on the iPad that things are still running.

00:25:05 ◼   ► That like if app on the Mac, if apps lock up, you can just move the cursor and it indicates to you that the system is still alive.

00:25:16 ◼   ► And that this is something that's been very important to them and it's why they struggled the way that they did and is now how they've ended up with this system where like only the app that is in there's something going on about like prioritization, right?

00:25:32 ◼   ► About like the way that the apps are working, but they had to kind of get over this idea that there is nothing in iPadOS that can indicate to you that the system is alive.

00:25:43 ◼   ► If the app that you're using has frozen, but they've just kind of had to let it go because they've decided to go in this route.

00:25:48 ◼   ► Now, of course, if you have a trackpad attached, you'll get this.

00:25:52 ◼   ► But if you're just touching, you wouldn't know.

00:25:54 ◼   ► And so, but it seems that they kind of had to just get over this in the end.

00:25:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:00 ◼   ► I think one thing that's that really struck me in reading this and it's something we've talked about, but honestly, it's not something I think about a lot is that Apple really has

00:26:12 ◼   ► two main users of iPads, right?

00:26:17 ◼   ► They've got people like you or Chris Lawley or Jason Snell who are using their iPad as a daily computer for work, right?

00:26:28 ◼   ► It is a modular computer to your great piece years ago that they're using with accessories.

00:26:34 ◼   ► They're hooking up to a display.

00:26:36 ◼   ► They're using it as I use my Macintosh.

00:26:40 ◼   ► But you have also have people sometimes buying the exact same device who are very comfortable with the one app at a time model and they choose an iPad to avoid the complexity of a Mac or a PC, right?

00:27:01 ◼   ► To them, the strength is that they can use it, quote, like a big iPhone.

00:27:07 ◼   ► And what's so interesting to me is you see Craig and Apple through this interview wrestling with that, like how do we push the bar like further and forward while also maintaining and preserving what so many people truly value about their iPad, right?

00:27:29 ◼   ► Like my dad uses an iPad because it's not a computer to get rid of the complexities he had when using a traditional desktop operating system.

00:27:39 ◼   ► That's an interesting way of putting it like because obviously, you know, I think about the idea of people using iPads simply, but not really so much of like this is the computer that is not getting on my nerves like it's not too much and in my face like it's actually an escape hatch for some people.

00:27:59 ◼   ► Yes, I am.

00:28:00 ◼   ► That is interesting.

00:28:01 ◼   ► Yeah, that was a, that was one of the key points of the conversation.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Like how do you like the idea of balance, right?

00:28:07 ◼   ► How do you balance?

00:28:08 ◼   ► Like you have this computer that I think is the most difficult to design for that you have because on the iPhone, I mean, it's a known quantity, right?

00:28:15 ◼   ► So it's a phone, you use one app at a time, everybody knows how to use a phone.

00:28:19 ◼   ► You have a Mac and, you know, it's people buy a Mac and they know they're going to have Windows, they're going to have a file manager, they're going to have a desktop.

00:28:26 ◼   ► And then you have this iPad, which is sort of somewhere in the middle that is going to be used by kids and grandparents and parents and teachers, but also people like me and other creative professionals who are going to do weird things on it.

00:28:41 ◼   ► And like, how do you balance that?

00:28:42 ◼   ► And the conversation was like, essentially, we, it was Craig saying, we thought we wanted to progressively add complexity to the iPad without ever sort of removing the default of you can use one app at a time and it's going to be fine.

00:29:00 ◼   ► They tried with SplitView and then they updated SplitView and then they tried with StageManager.

00:29:06 ◼   ► And the thing that I got out of that conversation about StageManager is that they thought that was going to be enough for some people, but the feedback they got clearly said, look, the people who want to have windowing and multitasking really want to have all the control that they can possibly have, right?

00:29:26 ◼   ► And so they realized, he didn't say this, but my understanding is that they've essentially been working on this windowing system for more than a year at this point, I would say a year and a half.

00:29:38 ◼   ► That was just my personal interpretation, nothing that they officially said.

00:29:44 ◼   ► But they've been working on this thing for a long time to essentially say, well, look, we're just going to come up with a brand new windowing engine.

00:29:51 ◼   ► It's going to allow, essentially, like they didn't say unlimited windows, but more than 10 windows on an M4.

00:29:57 ◼   ► It's going to work on, you know, lower end iPads, including the iPad mini.

00:30:02 ◼   ► And we're just going to give people all the controls that they want without removing, of course, the default experience.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And so that idea of balancing between the very two different types of users that they have, which is not an easy task.

00:30:19 ◼   ► You know, I don't work at Apple, but I can imagine it's not an easy task to have a product that is used by two completely different audiences.

00:30:29 ◼   ► It's interesting how they have taken this moment as a way to make, like to actually simplify the iPad further, right?

00:30:37 ◼   ► Where they've removed split view and slide over.

00:30:40 ◼   ► Like they've actually decided, oh, we're going to make it even simpler for people unless they want to do windowing.

00:30:48 ◼   ► That would indicate to me that people get lost in iPadOS, right?

00:30:54 ◼   ► They accidentally use slide over or accidentally have split view.

00:30:59 ◼   ► And so they've taken this as a moment to be like, if you want to do windowing of any kind, use this new system and you'll figure it out.

00:31:07 ◼   ► Otherwise, it's just one app at a time.

00:31:10 ◼   ► And I find that interesting that they've done that.

00:31:14 ◼   ► Obviously, there are going to be a subset of people that will be upset about this, but I actually think that it's an easier system to learn than the old system.

00:31:23 ◼   ► I think so.

00:31:25 ◼   ► Making a split screen pair now is so much simpler and easier to explain than it was before.

00:31:33 ◼   ► Hit that button at the top, choose this side or choose that side.

00:31:36 ◼   ► Or you can just drag the icon like you always used to all the way to the edge and it will spring rather than this like really weird where it's like, oh, you've just entered jiggle mode.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Oh, now you've dragged it to the desktop.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Now, like it was a nightmare.

00:31:50 ◼   ► And it's now much more achievable than it was before.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And it's just surprised me that they did that.

00:31:56 ◼   ► You mentioned how much time it took them to do the window management.

00:32:03 ◼   ► You write in here that it coordinates CPU, NAND flash, GPU, and battery to optimize all of that stuff.

00:32:11 ◼   ► Like this was not as simple as going to the repo in macOS and be like, let me copy this code and paste it over here.

00:32:20 ◼   ► And when you use it, yes, there are similarities.

00:32:24 ◼   ► Like one thing I'm so glad they brought over was the tiling system that was introduced in macOS last year or two years ago.

00:32:31 ◼   ► And yes, if you're re-implementing this on the iPad, you should definitely have that.

00:32:37 ◼   ► And actually you can use those with the same shortcuts and kind of build your own split screen view, which is really cool.

00:32:46 ◼   ► But I mean, you obviously have used the Mac, you've used this beta.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Like, do you think people who understand one will kind of grok the other one pretty quickly?

00:32:55 ◼   ► Oh, I think so.

00:32:57 ◼   ► I mean, it's very, very similar.

00:32:59 ◼   ► One of the things that, and especially like, it's not just similar from the perspective of, oh, there's the traffic light indicators, there's a menu bar, and keyboard shortcuts are the same.

00:33:13 ◼   ► But like now, especially with the redesign, a lot of the apps are actually very similar between macOS and iPadOS.

00:33:21 ◼   ► And I saw a friend of the show, Steve Trattonsmith, post an interesting challenge on Mastodon today that it would be interesting to put up side by side macOS and iPadOS on an external display.

00:33:38 ◼   ► And capture the differences between some of the apps, especially now that the window style is essentially the same between the iPad and the Mac.

00:33:48 ◼   ► So I definitely do think that now more than ever, if you're moving across a Mac and an iPad, I think it's going to be easier than before.

00:33:59 ◼   ► From the perspective of multitasking, like you've got the tiling, you've got the split view, or you've got the fluid resizing, you've got stage manager that now works the same way, right?

00:34:07 ◼   ► So the windowing is unlimited, the positioning is unlimited, just stage manager acts as a, you know, to let you focus on specific workspaces, exactly like on the Mac.

00:34:21 ◼   ► Keyboard shortcuts are the same, the menu bar is right there at the top, just some minor visual differences in how, for example, the traffic light buttons are displayed on macOS.

00:34:32 ◼   ► They're always shown on the iPad, you kind of need to go on hover to make them interactive, which is something that I personally would like to see as a setting.

00:34:41 ◼   ► Like, let me always see the fully expanded traffic light buttons, but overall, yeah, I think it's very, very similar at this point.

00:34:51 ◼   ► Which is great for even a user like me, where I feel so much more natural using this version of windowing on the iPad, because I don't feel like I'm having to get used to a second thing.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Like, I just very easily transitioned from my Mac to my iPad back again now, like, and I'm, man, I'm loving it.

00:35:13 ◼   ► I love this new, they've just, they just crushed it.

00:35:16 ◼   ► Like, it's perfect.

00:35:16 ◼   ► I haven't found something that I dislike about it.

00:35:19 ◼   ► The one thing I disliked, you fixed it for me, just use stage manager.

00:35:23 ◼   ► It's like, oh, it's exactly what I want.

00:35:25 ◼   ► It's like, it's so funny that I have used stage manager on the Mac since it came out, but I, I never used it on the iPad because I hated it.

00:35:34 ◼   ► And, and it's like, it was, should have been the same system, now is the same system.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Like, yeah, it's incredibly good.

00:35:41 ◼   ► Like, it's, it's unbelievable how good a job they have done with iPadOS 26.

00:35:45 ◼   ► Like, it is, you know, you always have, we always have these things at WWDC, we mention it every year, right?

00:35:51 ◼   ► Where it's like, you see a thing and you're like, wow, that looks amazing.

00:35:54 ◼   ► And then you use it in like, oh, it's constrained in all these ways.

00:35:57 ◼   ► Like, Federico, you just had one, right?

00:35:58 ◼   ► That like, one of the shortcut actions for sending a prompt, like something out to chat GPT.

00:36:02 ◼   ► It's like an old version of the model, right?

00:36:05 ◼   ► It's not the current version.

00:36:06 ◼   ► So you always have these things, but like, I haven't found that with the windowing system.

00:36:09 ◼   ► It's like, it's as good as I want it to me.

00:36:11 ◼   ► In fact, it's better.

00:36:12 ◼   ► It's good.

00:36:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:14 ◼   ► And I, and I, like in the story of, I wanted to focus on iPad multitasking.

00:36:20 ◼   ► I didn't even get to touch the stuff like the local audio capture, the background tasks, the improvements to files.

00:36:28 ◼   ► Like, there's actually a lot that they're doing here.

00:36:31 ◼   ► And just this realization, I think it's very welcome to hear an executive say, we realized that our power users want to have as much control as they can have it.

00:36:42 ◼   ► And we're going to give it to them and we're not going to get in the way.

00:36:45 ◼   ► Like, that is refreshing to hear, you know, after all these years of these sort of half steps with iPadOS.

00:36:52 ◼   ► It's just, it's, it's nice to, it's just nice.

00:36:56 ◼   ► I haven't seen any complaints about iPadOS really.

00:36:59 ◼   ► And it's been over, you know, more, 10 days after the keynote almost.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:03 ◼   ► And it's just, everybody's just like, yeah, they did it.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Good job.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Which is strange.

00:37:08 ◼   ► I gotta say as a reaction, I'm not used to it.

00:37:12 ◼   ► Especially for iPadOS.

00:37:12 ◼   ► Especially for iPadOS.

00:37:14 ◼   ► I'm not used to it.

00:37:15 ◼   ► No.

00:37:16 ◼   ► I have a semi-related question.

00:37:21 ◼   ► Okay.

00:37:22 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure the preparation that went into this was intense, right?

00:37:26 ◼   ► You're trying to figure out what you're going to ask.

00:37:28 ◼   ► You have limited time.

00:37:29 ◼   ► How do you prioritize them?

00:37:30 ◼   ► I'm sure you were already thinking about the article and I'll echo what Mike said.

00:37:35 ◼   ► Using the history of iPadOS changes as the backbone for the interview is just next level good.

00:37:41 ◼   ► Did you, in all of that, happen to ask him about the Finder icon?

00:37:49 ◼   ► Uh-huh.

00:37:50 ◼   ► Why?

00:37:50 ◼   ► Yes, sir.

00:37:51 ◼   ► In fact, I did.

00:37:52 ◼   ► Let me pull up.

00:37:55 ◼   ► Yes.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Let me pull up my transcript, which I'm not supposed to share a full-on transcript, but this is just a small quote.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Where are you?

00:38:07 ◼   ► I did mention you as a friend.

00:38:10 ◼   ► So we were talking about the differences between Mac users and iPad users, right?

00:38:15 ◼   ► And at some point I said, you mentioned Mac users who are obviously very passionate.

00:38:21 ◼   ► And I said, I have a friend of mine.

00:38:23 ◼   ► I have to mention this because otherwise you will be upset with me.

00:38:28 ◼   ► He's very annoyed by the Finder icon and having the colors flipped.

00:38:32 ◼   ► And Federico said, uh-huh, I've been told about that.

00:38:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:36 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:38:38 ◼   ► Joe!

00:38:39 ◼   ► Joe, he did it!

00:38:40 ◼   ► Wow, that's wild.

00:38:42 ◼   ► It got to him.

00:38:43 ◼   ► Somebody felt it was important that they had to share that piece of information.

00:38:47 ◼   ► Oh, you should know about this.

00:38:48 ◼   ► Within a day or two of my writing.

00:38:52 ◼   ► Yeah, because this was on Wednesday morning, this interview.

00:38:55 ◼   ► Oh, that's so good.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Oh, man, I love you.

00:38:58 ◼   ► It got to the top.

00:39:00 ◼   ► Now, I'm not sure the conversation moved on after that.

00:39:05 ◼   ► I can share some other tidbits from the interview for the show.

00:39:10 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:39:11 ◼   ► For example, when we moved on the topic of criticism, right?

00:39:18 ◼   ► I started, like, I tried to contextualize a lot of my questions because I really wanted to have good answers instead of the yes and no PR answer.

00:39:29 ◼   ► And so I started talking about, like, the journey of iPadOS, the ups and downs over the years.

00:39:36 ◼   ► And I said, of course, you have received criticisms over the years, right?

00:39:41 ◼   ► And he looks at me and says, from at least one person in this room.

00:39:45 ◼   ► Do you see the blogger in the room with you?

00:39:50 ◼   ► Or does he turn to a specific PR person and point at them and be like, you?

00:39:55 ◼   ► He's like, Jimmy, you're the problem.

00:39:59 ◼   ► And everybody in the room kind of started laughing.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And I said, but I said, I believe something along the lines of, for me, it always comes from a place of passion.

00:40:08 ◼   ► And he chuckled and said, I tell myself that.

00:40:11 ◼   ► That's fantastic.

00:40:14 ◼   ► I mean, I know if he said, if I'm in your shoes, I would feel pretty embarrassed.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Me?

00:40:22 ◼   ► Embarrassed?

00:40:23 ◼   ► Oh, no.

00:40:24 ◼   ► I said, if it's me in your shoes, I know my face would go red in that moment.

00:40:28 ◼   ► Oh, no, no, no.

00:40:29 ◼   ► I went along with it.

00:40:31 ◼   ► Like, I started laughing.

00:40:31 ◼   ► I was like, yeah, I criticized you.

00:40:33 ◼   ► I'll make a joke about it, but I would feel a bit awkward, I think.

00:40:36 ◼   ► No, no.

00:40:37 ◼   ► It was lovely.

00:40:38 ◼   ► It was actually really nice.

00:40:40 ◼   ► I mean, they are fully.

00:40:41 ◼   ► Here's the thing that I got, like, big picture, outside of this interview, based on other folks at Apple that I talked to.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Like, they are, and I keep repeating this over and over.

00:40:51 ◼   ► And I think I was talking about this last week with someone.

00:40:56 ◼   ► They read our stuff and listen to our stuff more than we usually think they do, is my impression.

00:41:04 ◼   ► And my sense is that they really do have, like, some of those fights about, like, very specific things.

00:41:15 ◼   ► Like, should you be able to, I don't know, have a better context menu in the file zappers?

00:41:21 ◼   ► Like, very specific stuff.

00:41:22 ◼   ► I do think that they read everything, they listen to everything, which is kind of concerning.

00:41:31 ◼   ► And, you know, obviously we try not to think about that stuff because our audience is not Apple.

00:41:36 ◼   ► Our audience is our listeners and our readers.

00:41:38 ◼   ► And if you think about that too much, like, oh, is there a PR person listening to this?

00:41:41 ◼   ► Then you start having an unnatural conversation.

00:41:44 ◼   ► You start second-guessing yourself.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:41:46 ◼   ► So, you shouldn't do that.

00:41:47 ◼   ► I love Vision Pro.

00:41:48 ◼   ► But they do.

00:41:48 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Favorite computer.

00:41:52 ◼   ► I use it every day.

00:41:54 ◼   ► But, that was good.

00:41:57 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:41:57 ◼   ► I love the device.

00:42:01 ◼   ► I use the device.

00:42:02 ◼   ► I can't wait to do it.

00:42:03 ◼   ► But, I think there's a way to criticize Apple.

00:42:07 ◼   ► That is, to go on your blog or to go on your podcast and just run down the list of really popular arguments.

00:42:18 ◼   ► Craig Federighi should be fired.

00:42:20 ◼   ► Tim Cook should be fired.

00:42:21 ◼   ► Everything sucks.

00:42:22 ◼   ► This sucks.

00:42:24 ◼   ► It used to be better when Steve Jobs was alive.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Like, it's very...

00:42:28 ◼   ► There's a way to do that, right?

00:42:30 ◼   ► And there's a way to say, I like these things about this product.

00:42:35 ◼   ► I don't like these things about this product.

00:42:37 ◼   ► You're a giant corporation.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Here's my feedback.

00:42:40 ◼   ► I hope you can make it better.

00:42:42 ◼   ► Right?

00:42:42 ◼   ► And the first way gets you in the door with your audience a lot more quickly.

00:42:51 ◼   ► Because everybody loves a creator who's fired up.

00:42:56 ◼   ► And, you know, I don't know, curses on video.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Everybody loves drama.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Drama is like, you know, it's the perfect bait for a lot of people.

00:43:09 ◼   ► And whereas the nuance or just not taking any sort of extra misposition, I don't know, it doesn't pay well a lot of the time.

00:43:21 ◼   ► But my sense is that the things that we've been saying on Connected, the things that Jason has been writing on Six Colors, the things that Chris Lawley has been saying in his videos, they are taken on board as actually useful criticism.

00:43:39 ◼   ► And that was sort of my question, like, how do you handle the criticism that maybe takes you somewhere or lets you see things in a different perspective versus how do you handle the criticism that you maybe are slightly upset about because you don't think it's fair?

00:43:58 ◼   ► And I don't know, that was a good conversation.

00:44:00 ◼   ► And I'm glad I got to ask that question specifically toward the end.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I did just want to, before we move on, just to touch on what you were talking about there because I think it's really interesting as a point of view.

00:44:10 ◼   ► Like, it is something that I try to remember.

00:44:13 ◼   ► Like, having, in a previous life, worked in a very, very large corporation for, like, 10 years, that there are things that everybody would like to do, but there are reasons outside of your control that you can't do them.

00:44:28 ◼   ► It's allocation of people, like, global business needs rather than the local business needs.

00:44:36 ◼   ► Like, and that can be, like, for Apple, right?

00:44:38 ◼   ► Like, you might want to do something on the iPad, but how does it fit in with the overall ecosystem?

00:44:42 ◼   ► Like, and if you can't stretch that out, you can't do it here, like, that kind of stuff.

00:44:45 ◼   ► And that they then still have to position to the world that the thing that they're doing is the best possible thing because you can't say, like, here, buy this.

00:44:55 ◼   ► It's not what we would have shipped, ideally, but, like, could you just do it?

00:44:59 ◼   ► And so you have to, like, there is, like, a massaging of the message even though there is still a desire to maybe want to make things better.

00:45:06 ◼   ► And it's a thing that I try and remember.

00:45:08 ◼   ► And it's, like, it is actually one of the reasons why the stuff that came out of the Discovery and the Epic lawsuit upset me in the way that it did because you could see how the conversations inside of the company were pushing them in a bad direction, not just in a good direction, right?

00:45:23 ◼   ► But I do, like you're saying, Federico, it's, like, I think it is helpful to try and keep in mind that there are a group of people who are trying to push things forward so you don't get too animated at times.

00:45:38 ◼   ► But similarly, balance that with, like, yeah, but that isn't my responsibility, though.

00:45:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:44 ◼   ► Right?

00:45:44 ◼   ► As a, however you call yourself, journalist, commentator, pundit.

00:45:49 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it's, yes.

00:45:51 ◼   ► It's not my responsibility to look out for them, but it's helpful to keep perspective.

00:45:56 ◼   ► No, I just think personally that there's a way to have a conversation about computers and there's a way to have it with a little more class.

00:46:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:07 ◼   ► That's just my point of view.

00:46:09 ◼   ► I agree.

00:46:09 ◼   ► And, I mean, I went back, before doing this interview, I was, obviously, as you can imagine, like, I was very nervous, I was very kind of, at some point I was very self-conscious about the story that I published last year about iPadOS.

00:46:21 ◼   ► But I went back and read it, I was like, you know what, I actually stand by all of this, like, you know, aside from what they announced, obviously, on the Monday.

00:46:30 ◼   ► But, like, at this story, like, I'm not offending anybody.

00:46:34 ◼   ► I'm just saying that things are in a poor state.

00:46:38 ◼   ► And at the time, it was true.

00:46:40 ◼   ► Right?

00:46:41 ◼   ► So, and that was a harsh story.

00:46:43 ◼   ► But, I don't know.

00:46:46 ◼   ► I guess, you know, between, I think, I really do think that they, that the feedback that they get from people serves a purpose at some point.

00:47:00 ◼   ► Right?

00:47:00 ◼   ► And I don't think these things happen in a vacuum.

00:47:03 ◼   ► I don't think Frederici wakes up one day and says, guys, we need to do windowing.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Right?

00:47:09 ◼   ► I don't think it's like that.

00:47:10 ◼   ► I think it's a combination of, obviously, the hardware that they have, the engineers that they have, but also the feedback they've got from people.

00:47:17 ◼   ► And so, yeah, it's not our job to make sure, oh, let's not offend anybody there, because, like, we got to look out for, you know, hug the engineers.

00:47:29 ◼   ► And, you know, we're not, like, we're not, like, I'm not, I'm not anybody's babysitter at Apple.

00:47:35 ◼   ► But, you know, you can still, you can still do things in a certain more classy, more constructive way.

00:47:41 ◼   ► And I think it's really cool that you're now, like, it is publicly shown that you were part of the feedback loop.

00:47:48 ◼   ► And I think that's amazing.

00:47:49 ◼   ► I think that's so cool.

00:47:50 ◼   ► And I'm very proud of you.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Well, thank you.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:47:53 ◼   ► But, yeah.

00:47:53 ◼   ► That's not, I'm just glad I got to do this, you know, because I interviewed Federighi twice, but it was always for the podcast.

00:48:02 ◼   ► And just, this was a different muscle to flex for me, like, to work on this kind of story.

00:48:10 ◼   ► I don't usually do this kind of story.

00:48:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:12 ◼   ► And so, I'm happy that this wasn't a podcast, actually.

00:48:14 ◼   ► Yeah, me too.

00:48:16 ◼   ► Me too.

00:48:16 ◼   ► At first, I was like, oh, I want to hear it.

00:48:18 ◼   ► And, of course, I want to hear it.

00:48:19 ◼   ► But it wouldn't have allowed you to do what you did in the way that you did it.

00:48:23 ◼   ► And so, like, I'm actually happy that you got to do something a little bit different.

00:48:25 ◼   ► And the questions that you ask can be different if it's not a podcast, I think, because it's, like, easier for them to say, like, oh, we can't talk about that or whatever, you know.

00:48:33 ◼   ► So, yeah.

00:48:34 ◼   ► Very cool.

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00:50:44 ◼   ► Speaking of the power of blogging, we have a new contender.

00:50:49 ◼   ► Somebody else realized that blogging is good?

00:50:52 ◼   ► Watch out, boys.

00:50:54 ◼   ► The enthusiast himself.

00:50:56 ◼   ► Yep.

00:50:57 ◼   ► Michael.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Here I am.

00:50:59 ◼   ► Jay Hurley.

00:50:59 ◼   ► What's up?

00:51:00 ◼   ► What are you doing?

00:51:01 ◼   ► It's not DJ.

00:51:02 ◼   ► Okay, so a bunch of things happened kind of all at the same time.

00:51:10 ◼   ► I came to the realization a little while ago that I don't have a creative project that's just my own.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Like, I work with people in all areas of my life, which is my preferred way of working, right?

00:51:29 ◼   ► Like, I prefer to work with people.

00:51:31 ◼   ► It's why I've formed my creative endeavors the way that they have.

00:51:36 ◼   ► But at the same time, it's also interesting as, like, an exercise to not have to convince someone or not have to work with someone on their time frame as well as your own.

00:51:49 ◼   ► So I was thinking about that and, like, you know, remembering what it was like to do things on my own and, like, when I used to do interviews and stuff like that and kind of have that as, like, a thing that I did when I started doing podcasting.

00:52:03 ◼   ► And then kind of decided, no, I much prefer to work with people, which is the case.

00:52:06 ◼   ► But I was also thinking about, like, what would it be like to do something on my own again?

00:52:10 ◼   ► Like, to have something that's fully my own, it's detached from everybody else that I work with, right?

00:52:16 ◼   ► Like, if I did a solo relay podcast, it's still a relay podcast, right?

00:52:21 ◼   ► Like, there's still other people involved in it.

00:52:23 ◼   ► And I was like, what would that be?

00:52:25 ◼   ► What would that look like?

00:52:26 ◼   ► And I don't know what it was that exactly drew me down the road of I should start a blog.

00:52:38 ◼   ► But I ended up in I should start a blog.

00:52:41 ◼   ► And I thought about it for a bit and was noodling the idea around.

00:52:48 ◼   ► And then I started, what I knew I wasn't going to do was be like, hey, everyone, I want to start a blog.

00:52:56 ◼   ► Here's my first blog post.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Because that quickly turns into there was, and there was never another blog post.

00:53:02 ◼   ► You come back and say, I'm back.

00:53:04 ◼   ► I'm doubling down.

00:53:05 ◼   ► Right.

00:53:05 ◼   ► We've all seen those posts.

00:53:06 ◼   ► Yes.

00:53:08 ◼   ► And so I decided I would start writing.

00:53:12 ◼   ► And I started writing some stuff that didn't find its way to the blog.

00:53:17 ◼   ► And then I started the blog and started writing.

00:53:20 ◼   ► And I think maybe after a week, my original plan was to actually launch this after WWDC.

00:53:26 ◼   ► But then I YOLO'd it one day and just did it instead.

00:53:31 ◼   ► And this has also happened at a good time for me in a couple of ways where most of the stuff that I have written so far, I am writing when I am holding a sleeping baby, when I am essentially trapped underneath a child.

00:53:49 ◼   ► And so I am restricted in the things that I can do in that time.

00:53:53 ◼   ► And it's actually turned out to be nice, quiet time when I can be creative.

00:53:58 ◼   ► And the majority of the stuff that I have written has just been on my iPhone for that reason.

00:54:02 ◼   ► The other thing that I realized, I was talking to Jason Snow about this and we were going backwards and forwards about it.

00:54:12 ◼   ► And I came to the realization that this is also a consequence of me taking social media off my iPhone.

00:54:17 ◼   ► Yes.

00:54:18 ◼   ► Because I am sitting there otherwise bored, right?

00:54:23 ◼   ► Like I've, you know, I've got this time on my hands, which can in the evening can be like two hours that I'm just like there.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And like, I don't want to move and can't move because you don't want to sleep the awake, the sleeping baby.

00:54:38 ◼   ► And so I would otherwise just be scrolling, you know, just like scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.

00:54:44 ◼   ► And this is something that I'm doing that is more outwardly creative rather than like just consuming of content.

00:54:53 ◼   ► However, I've always wanted to be a blogger.

00:54:57 ◼   ► I've wanted to be a blogger for like 15 years.

00:55:00 ◼   ► In fact, before I was podcasting, I tried blogging.

00:55:03 ◼   ► I actually had a website once called AppleFanboy.com.

00:55:08 ◼   ► Oh.

00:55:10 ◼   ► That has gone, that has gone, that was before I knew any of you, right?

00:55:15 ◼   ► That has gone away a long time ago.

00:55:19 ◼   ► One thing that I remember that I got right on that blog is like a very strange thing that I thought was cool, but I realized it, but nobody else did.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Which was, I once was able to predict that Apple was going to do an event of some kind based on the fact that the Apple Music, sorry, the iTunes Music Store did not update with the daily releases.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Wow.

00:55:44 ◼   ► Or weekly releases.

00:55:45 ◼   ► That's like, that's like hacker level.

00:55:47 ◼   ► That's German.

00:55:47 ◼   ► That's German stuff.

00:55:49 ◼   ► They used to refresh the music store, I think on a Tuesday or something.

00:55:52 ◼   ► Yes, yes, that is correct.

00:55:54 ◼   ► And a Tuesday rolled around and nothing happened.

00:55:56 ◼   ► And I was like, the last time this happened was because they were announcing an iPod or something.

00:56:01 ◼   ► And then they did, I don't remember what it was, but then the next day, the Wednesday, they actually had an announcement.

00:56:07 ◼   ► So they put it on the iTunes Music Store.

00:56:09 ◼   ► So they couldn't update because of web objects, I guess.

00:56:12 ◼   ► They couldn't update the store.

00:56:14 ◼   ► Like their stuff is still in search, but they couldn't update the store main page.

00:56:17 ◼   ► And I wrote up, I was like, something's going to happen.

00:56:19 ◼   ► And I remember that I sent it to people.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Federica, I may send it to you.

00:56:23 ◼   ► Who could tell?

00:56:23 ◼   ► You know, I like emailed it to people, like tip lines and stuff.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Like, look what I found out.

00:56:27 ◼   ► Like, no one cared because ultimately it wasn't that interesting anyway.

00:56:30 ◼   ► I feel like that would get more play today.

00:56:33 ◼   ► I feel like that's the thing that people do today more than they were doing then.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Because it wasn't, the media wasn't so fast.

00:56:40 ◼   ► Like the rumor sites weren't so quick that they, that there was, there was a genuine value in, in, in being able to be like, something is going to happen tomorrow.

00:56:50 ◼   ► Like it wasn't, you know, anyway, so I always wanted to blog, but I, I find editing, written work to be one of the most boring things a human being can do.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Like rereading over and over and over again to find errors, I find so tedious.

00:57:16 ◼   ► Even rereading for content is fine, but for finding errors is terrible.

00:57:22 ◼   ► Plus I'm not very good at finding them.

00:57:23 ◼   ► My grammar's bad.

00:57:25 ◼   ► My punctuation's bad.

00:57:27 ◼   ► Most of the time my spelling is bad.

00:57:28 ◼   ► This is just the thing I know about myself.

00:57:30 ◼   ► It's who I am, but it means I don't, what I don't want to do is just like publish my raw text for the world.

00:57:38 ◼   ► Sure.

00:57:39 ◼   ► You know, what's coming next.

00:57:41 ◼   ► This is what AI is good at.

00:57:43 ◼   ► AI, baby.

00:57:44 ◼   ► The LLMs are really good at dealing with text and it's very doable with a lot of models to be able to get them to proofread stuff for you, including the inbuilt Apple intelligence models without it actually changing your text.

00:57:58 ◼   ► And it's just making suggestions.

00:58:00 ◼   ► I am very happy with it, with this as a system because it, it takes away a nervousness for me of being, of looking silly online, which if I published the text as it was, I don't think I would look very smart.

00:58:26 ◼   ► A lot of the time, Stephen, you see my raw writing a lot more than anyone, I think.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:32 ◼   ► There are a lot of errors, right?

00:58:33 ◼   ► Like it's a thing.

00:58:34 ◼   ► It's how I am.

00:58:35 ◼   ► It's how I write.

00:58:36 ◼   ► It could be timed up.

00:58:37 ◼   ► But look, we're, you know.

00:58:38 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:58:39 ◼   ► So the AI does it, either the AI does it or Stephen does it.

00:58:43 ◼   ► And I'm not going to send him all my drafts.

00:58:46 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:58:46 ◼   ► I can't do that.

00:58:48 ◼   ► So I'm getting the AI to do it.

00:58:50 ◼   ► And yeah, I, I'm, I'm really, I'm very pleased with it.

00:58:52 ◼   ► I'm enjoying it.

00:58:53 ◼   ► And I've been, the amount of good, like positive feedback that I've gotten from people has been very heartwarming.

00:59:01 ◼   ► People seem excited about it and they're like, they're happy that I'm doing it.

00:59:05 ◼   ► And, and that makes me happy too.

00:59:07 ◼   ► Cause it's like, you know, you publish things for people.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:10 ◼   ► Um, and so, and people seem to like it.

00:59:12 ◼   ► Uh, I said about that.

00:59:13 ◼   ► I don't have any analytics on the website and that's, that's purposeful.

00:59:17 ◼   ► I don't want to know how many people are reading.

00:59:19 ◼   ► It's like, that's not helpful to me right now.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Um, I, I don't think that that would be good or bad.

00:59:26 ◼   ► So I've decided just not to do it.

00:59:27 ◼   ► Um, I know that what I want, I wanted to be able to have these as, um,

00:59:34 ◼   ► like a web site and also email.

00:59:37 ◼   ► So I'm using ghost, which was also an opportunity for me to like,

00:59:41 ◼   ► try out these tools that people use now.

00:59:43 ◼   ► Like I was just like intrigued.

00:59:44 ◼   ► Like, what is that like?

00:59:45 ◼   ► Um, I'll tell you, it's not a very user-friendly experience.

00:59:49 ◼   ► Oh boy.

00:59:50 ◼   ► Like I have so many problems with the ghost operations,

00:59:54 ◼   ► like such a way that I do not find to be very good.

00:59:56 ◼   ► Um, like the way that it wants you to add images to every post,

01:00:01 ◼   ► but also has terrible tools for dealing with images.

01:00:04 ◼   ► Like, it's like, it's not a very good system.

01:00:07 ◼   ► There's a bunch of things that I would tweak about it.

01:00:09 ◼   ► My understanding from talking to people that also use it is like,

01:00:12 ◼   ► you can fix a lot of this by having a custom theme.

01:00:15 ◼   ► And it's like, so maybe in my future, one day I would do that.

01:00:18 ◼   ► Similarly, I don't have any branding.

01:00:19 ◼   ► Like there's no logo or anything yet.

01:00:21 ◼   ► This is just, I'm not getting ahead of myself on this.

01:00:25 ◼   ► It's like, I just want to start writing and then over time we'll find a place of it.

01:00:30 ◼   ► But I should say, the only stats that I know is how many people sign up for email.

01:00:33 ◼   ► Cause Ghost has that.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Um, and that's what they tell you, but they, they don't have any inbuilt analytics.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Uh, at least not that I found.

01:00:40 ◼   ► And, and I'm happier with that right now.

01:00:42 ◼   ► Um, so yeah.

01:00:43 ◼   ► Uh, and yeah, so that's, that's, that's, that's where I am.

01:00:47 ◼   ► I'm writing.

01:00:48 ◼   ► I'm blogging now.

01:00:49 ◼   ► I love that you're doing it.

01:00:51 ◼   ► I really enjoy it because you're a blogger.

01:00:53 ◼   ► So it's a long time.

01:00:55 ◼   ► It's a long time coming.

01:00:57 ◼   ► And yeah, you know, uh, so the name, oh, I should say the name, the enthusiast, right?

01:01:04 ◼   ► So like, it's cause it's what I see myself as like, I am, I, you know, I, I, I, in all

01:01:12 ◼   ► of the shows that I do, I never, I, I do not consider myself as the most knowledgeable

01:01:16 ◼   ► person, uh, in those shows.

01:01:19 ◼   ► That is not a way of putting myself down.

01:01:22 ◼   ► I think it is just factual, right?

01:01:24 ◼   ► Look at the pen addict.

01:01:24 ◼   ► I don't know as much about pens as Brad.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Uh, you look at, uh, upgrade.

01:01:28 ◼   ► I don't know as much about, I've not been around the amount of experience Jason Snell has.

01:01:33 ◼   ► And it's similarly for both of you two, right?

01:01:35 ◼   ► Like, uh, and, and I, but I think I'm good at what I do because I, I care deeply about the

01:01:42 ◼   ► things that I like.

01:01:43 ◼   ► And so I consider myself to be very enthusiastic about them.

01:01:46 ◼   ► Um, it is also a, a dig at the way that people talk about people like me, right?

01:01:57 ◼   ► And I actually own enthusiast.website and enthusiast.blog.

01:02:04 ◼   ► I bought those domains, uh, and, you know, and, and I will probably use those cause I actually

01:02:09 ◼   ► think they're better URLs than the, I don't like the double E and the enthusiast.

01:02:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:13 ◼   ► It's like the enthusiast.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:14 ◼   ► I don't like it.

01:02:15 ◼   ► So at some point I will probably change the main URL, but like, I don't even know if that

01:02:20 ◼   ► would be a disaster now.

01:02:21 ◼   ► It probably would be.

01:02:21 ◼   ► And I shouldn't do that, but like, who knows?

01:02:23 ◼   ► We'll find out as we go.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Hey, it's no fork bomber, you know, you're, you're, you're above that.

01:02:28 ◼   ► That's true.

01:02:29 ◼   ► Uh, but cause I, I've found in the past that like people who didn't take the traditional

01:02:37 ◼   ► route to be in New York based publishing look down on people like us, uh, and have done

01:02:44 ◼   ► so in many written forms.

01:02:47 ◼   ► Like I have a, uh, I have an Apple note, um, which is like a, a blog post I'd like to write.

01:02:54 ◼   ► And this is one of them that at some point I will write of like chronicling the way, but

01:03:00 ◼   ► maybe I might write, I'm not sure, but like, I have some screenshots of like people using the

01:03:05 ◼   ► word enthusiast in a derogatory way.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Um, but I do can just, I think that it's a phrase that should, that people should be

01:03:14 ◼   ► proud of.

01:03:14 ◼   ► I think you should be proud to be an enthusiast and that you care and that you, that you're

01:03:21 ◼   ► not a journalist, but you care so much and you have things to say that people want to listen

01:03:27 ◼   ► to them and that you're able to build a, what is now 15 year career on the fact that you just

01:03:36 ◼   ► really like the computers, like, and that's all it is.

01:03:40 ◼   ► Like, I, and I think that's something to be proud of it.

01:03:43 ◼   ► I know why Federico, I know why you found it as a put down.

01:03:49 ◼   ► Uh, I know why Chase found it as a put down when it happened to nine to five.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Um, I, I get why people would feel that way.

01:03:57 ◼   ► I mean, for you and your one specifically, they were also just not even naming the website,

01:04:03 ◼   ► which was worse.

01:04:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:04 ◼   ► What did they call you like an enthusiast website, right?

01:04:08 ◼   ► Instead of even referencing Mac stories.

01:04:10 ◼   ► What was that?

01:04:11 ◼   ► Like the Wall Street Journal or something?

01:04:12 ◼   ► No, it was all things D.

01:04:14 ◼   ► All things D.

01:04:15 ◼   ► That's it.

01:04:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:17 ◼   ► Which I don't, was that, was that part of the Wall Street Journal at one point?

01:04:20 ◼   ► It was part of the Wall Street Journal at one point.

01:04:23 ◼   ► Yes.

01:04:23 ◼   ► Okay.

01:04:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:24 ◼   ► Um, but yeah, like I, I, I think that it's something to be proud of.

01:04:28 ◼   ► And so that's why I'm, uh, uh, building my, my new little home on the internet around it.

01:04:34 ◼   ► You could really expand this brand.

01:04:37 ◼   ► Please.

01:04:38 ◼   ► You could have a parenting blog at enthusiast.dad.

01:04:41 ◼   ► That's $18.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Okay.

01:04:43 ◼   ► Oh, so this is like a media empire.

01:04:45 ◼   ► If you want to help other people become enthusiast, enthusiast.guru is this $45.

01:04:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:51 ◼   ► I mean, I hope that the website does make people, so that's what I, I'm also, my plan

01:04:58 ◼   ► for this is, block, is to be good vibes.

01:05:00 ◼   ► Like that's the plan for this.

01:05:02 ◼   ► Um, I have enough outlets to talk about everything.

01:05:05 ◼   ► I don't need to talk about everything there.

01:05:07 ◼   ► Sure.

01:05:08 ◼   ► Right.

01:05:09 ◼   ► So like, for example, I don't think I would have posted anything about the Epic lawsuit

01:05:15 ◼   ► on my website if it was running them.

01:05:17 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:05:17 ◼   ► Because it's just not what I want to put there.

01:05:20 ◼   ► I will talk about that on this show.

01:05:22 ◼   ► I'll talk about it on Upgrade.

01:05:23 ◼   ► I don't need a third place to talk about the same stuff.

01:05:27 ◼   ► Right.

01:05:27 ◼   ► Like I wouldn't be able to come up with something unique that I wouldn't have used in one of

01:05:32 ◼   ► these two spots.

01:05:32 ◼   ► Right.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Um, so my plan is like, I, and it's not just going to be talking about Apple.

01:05:37 ◼   ► Like I, I, I want to talk about all of the things that I like.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Um, it's WWDC season right now.

01:05:43 ◼   ► So it's been very easy to, to just focus on that.

01:05:46 ◼   ► It's also been super helpful for me that this is a good WWDC.

01:05:49 ◼   ► Like, great.

01:05:50 ◼   ► So it's helping me kind of find my rhythm, but yeah, I'm, I'm excited about it.

01:05:56 ◼   ► Um, I'm happy to have it as a thing that I'm doing.

01:05:59 ◼   ► Uh, and, uh, I want to thank you both for the, uh, public and private, um, uh, encouragement

01:06:06 ◼   ► that you've given me.

01:06:07 ◼   ► I think it's great for, for lots of reasons.

01:06:11 ◼   ► We spoke about this a couple of years ago now, maybe where, you know, after Twitter broke

01:06:19 ◼   ► up and it's like the, all this stuff is scattered.

01:06:22 ◼   ► And I said this on backstage when we were talking about this, like, I still believe short form

01:06:27 ◼   ► text based social media is probably a bad idea, but what it, what that period of time did for

01:06:35 ◼   ► me was it changed the way that I think about five, 12 pixels.

01:06:41 ◼   ► Like, yes, I still, you know, cover Apple news and like, you know, weird service program for

01:06:48 ◼   ► M two Mac mini power supplies, right?

01:06:50 ◼   ► Like I'm, I'm still going to do that stuff, but also things like the, going back to the

01:06:55 ◼   ► finder icon again, there is a period of time.

01:06:58 ◼   ► And in fact, I did it live during WC.

01:07:02 ◼   ► I put a mask and I'm like, Oh no, what do they do to this poor finder icon?

01:07:05 ◼   ► But there was a time where like, I would have, that thing would have, would have been a tweet,

01:07:10 ◼   ► right?

01:07:10 ◼   ► It'd be like, here's three finder icons over the years.

01:07:13 ◼   ► And this one is bad and they should fix it.

01:07:16 ◼   ► And it would have gotten some traction, right?

01:07:19 ◼   ► Like this did on social media after I posted the blog post, but it would have done nothing

01:07:23 ◼   ► in terms of views compared to what the blog post has done.

01:07:26 ◼   ► And more importantly to me, it's part of something that I own a control and Twitter going away.

01:07:36 ◼   ► I think for a lot of people, not just us, like taught us, like there's value in owning where

01:07:42 ◼   ► you put your stuff and now you have that, right?

01:07:46 ◼   ► And even if ghosts were to go away, you can export it, right?

01:07:49 ◼   ► Like, or you end up like me and Federico, like with, you know, almost two decades of stuff

01:07:54 ◼   ► in WordPress.

01:07:54 ◼   ► What I knew is I didn't want to use WordPress.

01:07:57 ◼   ► My starting point was not that.

01:08:01 ◼   ► I mean, realistically, what I wanted was Substack, but I don't want to use Substack.

01:08:05 ◼   ► But like, it was, I wanted something, what is like that?

01:08:08 ◼   ► And that was when I found ghosts.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Yeah, no, you made a good choice there, I think, having not used it.

01:08:13 ◼   ► But, and so I'm glad that you started this out of at least partially that mindset.

01:08:20 ◼   ► Like I have a single place I can put things and they can be short or long or serious or

01:08:26 ◼   ► funny or whatever it is.

01:08:27 ◼   ► And then you can share those from there.

01:08:31 ◼   ► And I still, a couple years into that sort of rethinking about my own site, still really

01:08:38 ◼   ► value that idea.

01:08:39 ◼   ► And I think, I think you're going to find that to be important.

01:08:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm sharing more.

01:08:44 ◼   ► I'm sharing things that I would have wanted to share on social media and didn't, like just

01:08:49 ◼   ► decided not to.

01:08:50 ◼   ► Because writing a blog post and sharing the link is better for me than sharing the social

01:09:01 ◼   ► media post and getting the replies.

01:09:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:04 ◼   ► Like, I just find that to be a better loop.

01:09:05 ◼   ► Sure.

01:09:07 ◼   ► And the feedback that I have had about the things that I have written has been more considered

01:09:13 ◼   ► because people are actually like deciding to go read it rather than just like react to

01:09:18 ◼   ► it.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:19 ◼   ► It's hard, it's much harder to dunk on a blog post.

01:09:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:23 ◼   ► Although I'm sure at some point I'll get the things where people react to what they think

01:09:28 ◼   ► the blog post is about.

01:09:29 ◼   ► Yes.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Having not read it.

01:09:31 ◼   ► I know that this is a thing that you will, we will talk about privately sometimes, but I'm

01:09:38 ◼   ► happy to, this is, I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, thank you for giving me the space to talk about

01:09:42 ◼   ► on the show today.

01:09:43 ◼   ► I, I, and, and I want to keep it up and I have lots of ways that I think I could, um,

01:09:51 ◼   ► I, at some point I want to look into dictation because I think at a certain point it might

01:09:55 ◼   ► be faster for me to dictate.

01:09:56 ◼   ► Um, I just want to see what that's like too.

01:10:00 ◼   ► Like there are things that I can try out now.

01:10:02 ◼   ► I'm using Ulysses by the way, to write everything.

01:10:04 ◼   ► Ah, I was getting ready to ask.

01:10:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:07 ◼   ► It's, it's really nice and it, and it works, it works well with ghost.

01:10:11 ◼   ► The reason I started using it is because you could publish directly to ghost from Ulysses.

01:10:15 ◼   ► Right.

01:10:15 ◼   ► But it turns out if you do that, because ghost is weird, things can get a bit odd.

01:10:19 ◼   ► Uh, so what I actually end up, oh, the, what the real reason is, uh, so ghost, you have email

01:10:26 ◼   ► and, and this is a good example of like things that are weird about ghost, right?

01:10:30 ◼   ► When you publish on the ghost website, like on the kind of web app, uh, the lot, you, you

01:10:37 ◼   ► kind of press publish and it's like, Hey, we're going to send this to, we're going to

01:10:41 ◼   ► put this on the website.

01:10:42 ◼   ► We're going to send this to email subscribers.

01:10:43 ◼   ► Like, do you want to confirm?

01:10:44 ◼   ► So that they, you know, they give you the opportunity to like, read it back over again, if you want

01:10:48 ◼   ► to, and you press confirm and it sends to the, it sends to the email, publishes on the website.

01:10:53 ◼   ► If you publish via an app, even though it uses like the, like the API, the publishing

01:10:59 ◼   ► system that goes to provided to third parties, it will not send the email.

01:11:03 ◼   ► Oh, oh.

01:11:06 ◼   ► And so what you have to do is you publish your website, you then log into ghost, you duplicate

01:11:12 ◼   ► the post and send it as email only.

01:11:14 ◼   ► What?

01:11:15 ◼   ► No, I'm not going to do that.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Uh, so I think cause Ulysses know this is a problem.

01:11:20 ◼   ► They actually have a good system where you publish it as a draft.

01:11:24 ◼   ► And when you press publish, it then opens the ghost interface to your post.

01:11:29 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's good.

01:11:30 ◼   ► Okay.

01:11:31 ◼   ► And then you can press publish.

01:11:32 ◼   ► And so what I actually do there is you can attach an image in the Ulysses, uh, I think

01:11:37 ◼   ► cause it has like feature images.

01:11:38 ◼   ► Again, like ghost templates are kind of built that every article should have an image, which

01:11:43 ◼   ► I don't love cause I don't always want to do that.

01:11:45 ◼   ► But like, you know, it's making me be creative in another way.

01:11:48 ◼   ► I'm like, I gotta find an image for this.

01:11:50 ◼   ► I keep taking screenshots.

01:11:51 ◼   ► It's just like, I'll just use this.

01:11:53 ◼   ► I've started doing that too.

01:11:54 ◼   ► And I don't show the feature photo in my WordPress theme, but it's so that on Macedon threads

01:12:00 ◼   ► and blue sky, there's like a nice image.

01:12:03 ◼   ► That's not just the site logo, but yes, I've been.

01:12:05 ◼   ► That's probably why they do it right for social.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:08 ◼   ► That makes sense.

01:12:08 ◼   ► Cause they really want you to connect to your social accounts too, which I also don't

01:12:11 ◼   ► want to do cause it doesn't support all of the services I use.

01:12:13 ◼   ► So I just do it using croissant.

01:12:15 ◼   ► I think I post, then I share it using croissant to all of the services that I want to share

01:12:19 ◼   ► it too.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Um, yeah.

01:12:21 ◼   ► So then now I just, I add the image when I'm on the website cause it's, it is better for

01:12:26 ◼   ► that.

01:12:27 ◼   ► Like, even though their tools are limited, you can sometimes at least crop something or

01:12:30 ◼   ► whatever.

01:12:30 ◼   ► Um, but like the, you know, for, I'll say like it did, if I make just another complaint there,

01:12:36 ◼   ► just to kind of give you an example of the things that I find that are weird about it.

01:12:39 ◼   ► Uh, there aren't any tools to wrap text around imagery in, you can, you can add images to

01:12:46 ◼   ► a blog post, right?

01:12:47 ◼   ► Like to actually to the body of the post, but they just go full width, no matter what size

01:12:53 ◼   ► they are.

01:12:54 ◼   ► Right.

01:12:54 ◼   ► So if you want to add something square, it's massive, it's just massive.

01:12:59 ◼   ► Like there's no text wrapping.

01:13:01 ◼   ► It's like, again, but I know you can do this.

01:13:04 ◼   ► If you build your own ghost template, uh, dad, dad, dad, dad, I have also thought about

01:13:09 ◼   ► vibe coding one, but I'm terrified.

01:13:11 ◼   ► I might just do it for fun one day and just like see what happens.

01:13:16 ◼   ► Uh, but realistically I'm going to, cause I found a template that I liked and then I put

01:13:21 ◼   ► it on the website and then again, it's like, ah, this is still not what I want.

01:13:24 ◼   ► And so like, I just went and wanted a standard one to change the colors to something that was

01:13:28 ◼   ► pleasing to me and published it.

01:13:30 ◼   ► Can I understand something that, that is not totally clear to me?

01:13:33 ◼   ► Um, yeah.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Are you blogging with one hand?

01:13:36 ◼   ► Sometimes, yeah.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Ah, so this is a one handed.

01:13:40 ◼   ► Uh, sometimes I can, sometimes I can put like my iPad with the keyboard on my lap.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Oh, so this is happening on the iPad.

01:13:48 ◼   ► It's iPad and iPhone.

01:13:50 ◼   ► iPad and iPhone.

01:13:52 ◼   ► Okay.

01:13:52 ◼   ► I have published the majority of things to my blog from a hundred percent on my iPhone,

01:13:57 ◼   ► written on my iPhone, published on my iPhone, by and large, swipe typing.

01:14:03 ◼   ► That's why I need the AI, man.

01:14:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:07 ◼   ► Meanwhile, I'm over here with like 400 Dev and Think Windows open and Mars edit and a Mac.

01:14:14 ◼   ► I'm publishing what the kids do, you know?

01:14:17 ◼   ► It's all on the iPhone.

01:14:19 ◼   ► It's like, I'm that version of like the people making videos using CapCut or whatever, right?

01:14:25 ◼   ► Like just everything is all on the iPhone.

01:14:27 ◼   ► Like that's, that's me blogging.

01:14:28 ◼   ► Well, welcome to the future of media.

01:14:32 ◼   ► Yeah, man.

01:14:34 ◼   ► It's good to have you.

01:14:35 ◼   ► Welcome, welcome to text.

01:14:36 ◼   ► And welcome to the end of the show.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Oh, wow.

01:14:42 ◼   ► Did you have anything else?

01:14:44 ◼   ► No, no, no.

01:14:45 ◼   ► I just like the welcome to the end of the show.

01:14:47 ◼   ► Welcome to the end of the show.

01:14:50 ◼   ► If you want to find links to the stuff we spoke about, they're in your podcast player.

01:14:54 ◼   ► They're also on the web at relay.fm slash connected slash 557.

01:15:00 ◼   ► You can leave us feedback or follow up.

01:15:03 ◼   ► There's a link in the show notes or you can go to connectedfeedback.com.

01:15:06 ◼   ► Join and get Connected Pro, which is the longer ad-free version of the show that we do each and every week at 123membership.com.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Is that right?

01:15:16 ◼   ► Is that what you said?

01:15:17 ◼   ► I think so.

01:15:17 ◼   ► Yes, that is correct.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Thank you to our members who have supported us.

01:15:23 ◼   ► A lot of you have been there since the beginning five years ago.

01:15:25 ◼   ► So thank you.

01:15:26 ◼   ► We love you all, but we love our members a little bit more.

01:15:31 ◼   ► You can find Federico's work at maxstories.net.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Y'all go read his interview.

01:15:36 ◼   ► What are you doing?

01:15:37 ◼   ► It is so good.

01:15:38 ◼   ► Read it on an iPad, obviously.

01:15:41 ◼   ► Here's what you're going to do.

01:15:42 ◼   ► You're going to get home.

01:15:45 ◼   ► You're going to see your family for a second.

01:15:48 ◼   ► You're going to get something to eat.

01:15:49 ◼   ► You're going to run the bath.

01:15:51 ◼   ► You're going to get your iPad and you're going to read this in the bath with your iPad.

01:15:56 ◼   ► Okay.

01:15:57 ◼   ► Okay.

01:15:57 ◼   ► Light a few candles.

01:15:59 ◼   ► Light a few candles.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Get a bath bomb going.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:03 ◼   ► Relay FM LLC does not take any responsibility if an iPad is dropped in a bath.

01:16:07 ◼   ► Yeah, no, obviously.

01:16:08 ◼   ► Yeah, and obviously that's John's fault.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Kate says, what if I don't have an iPad?

01:16:14 ◼   ► Go buy an iPad.

01:16:15 ◼   ► Go buy an iPad.

01:16:16 ◼   ► Steal an iPad.

01:16:16 ◼   ► Buy or steal an iPad.

01:16:18 ◼   ► That's step one if you don't have an iPad.

01:16:20 ◼   ► We also don't take responsibility for the stealing of electronics.

01:16:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:25 ◼   ► We're just saying things, essentially.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:29 ◼   ► Mike hosts many other shows here on Relay.

01:16:32 ◼   ► Check out his work at Cortex Brand.

01:16:34 ◼   ► And go subscribe to his blog, theenthusiast.net.

01:16:38 ◼   ► Yes.

01:16:40 ◼   ► I got to add that to my template here at the end of the show.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Got a lot of things now.

01:16:44 ◼   ► You really do.

01:16:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:46 ◼   ► You can find my writing at 512pixels.net, and I co-host Mac Power users here on Relay each

01:16:52 ◼   ► and every Sunday.

01:16:53 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week, Squarespace and Terminal.

01:16:57 ◼   ► Thank you for listening.

01:16:58 ◼   ► Until next week, guys, say goodbye.

01:17:00 ◼   ► Adios.

01:17:02 ◼   ► Cheerio.

01:17:03 ◼   ► Bye, y'all.