Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► All right.

00:00:00 ◼   ► So welcome back to Development Perspective.

00:00:02 ◼   ► And one of the things that I when I sort of restarted the show,

00:00:05 ◼   ► I think I've mentioned this a few times, is I wanted to have a

00:00:08 ◼   ► slightly more flexible format, something where I can do things that I c don't

00:00:12 ◼   ► fit into just like a short kind of 15-ish minute, you know, monologue format.

00:00:17 ◼   ► I want to do other things.

00:00:18 ◼   ► And the first instance of this I'm super excited for because I'm going to

00:00:22 ◼   ► do an interview and I'm talking to my good friend Rafa, who I've been

00:00:25 ◼   ► working with on our updates for The d the iPhone Duo.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Uh we've been working on this, it's like sort of since the beginning of

00:00:32 ◼   ► the summer when it was resizability for the uh i iPhone mirroring.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Um, but more you know, since September specifically, specifically actually knowing what the iPhone

00:00:41 ◼   ► Duo is.

00:00:41 ◼   ► And I think the design side of that, which is absolutely Rafa's sort of

00:00:45 ◼   ► specialty, is I think really interesting to want to unpack and talk about.

00:00:49 ◼   ► There's a few things sort of on the technical side that are unique and

00:00:51 ◼   ► interesting about that, but the design side is where I think the duo really

00:00:55 ◼   ► comes into its own.

00:00:56 ◼   ► And so I'm able to do that.

00:00:58 ◼   ► And I appreciate you coming on and talking to me about this.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Hello.

00:01:02 ◼   ► It's a pleasure.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Honor even.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:05 ◼   ► And so I think the the first place to start.

00:01:07 ◼   ► And this is I think something that you and I have gone back and

00:01:09 ◼   ► forth on so many times

00:01:12 ◼   ► in the duo.

00:01:13 ◼   ► And I think we just have to sort of get it out of the

00:01:15 ◼   ► way, is talk about centering and content overflowing in on the duo, which I

00:01:20 ◼   ► think is the, from a design perspective, the most infuriating and impossible thing about

00:01:25 ◼   ► it because no content is actually centered, or if you center it, then it

00:01:29 ◼   ► looks weird because then there's content on the sidebar because that.

00:01:32 ◼   ► Or should your content overflow into the sidebar?

00:01:34 ◼   ► And sometimes that looks good and sometimes it doesn't.

00:01:36 ◼   ► And so like I I think I have enough of a design sense to

00:01:40 ◼   ► for it to drive me to to annoy me, but I think it's been

00:01:43 ◼   ► driving you actually crazy.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it's it's nuts.

00:01:47 ◼   ► It like centering stuff

00:01:49 ◼   ► uh usually it's not something hard or like something that requires nuance.

00:01:53 ◼   ► You know, it's like it's centered or not.

00:01:55 ◼   ► And the container usually for phones, especially, or like just app I don't know,

00:02:00 ◼   ► software, usually.

00:02:01 ◼   ► The the container where you're centering stuff to is usually very very obvious and

00:02:07 ◼   ► clear.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Uh but here it's not.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And like sometimes I even wish that Apple did the thing for like if

00:02:14 ◼   ► your app doesn't support the duo, you got the black bar on the side,

00:02:18 ◼   ► right?

00:02:18 ◼   ► And it looks like not a Not updated and it doesn't look nice, but

00:02:22 ◼   ► it makes it simpler and things look uh centered.

00:02:25 ◼   ► I saw that Rivian Rivian's iOS app that you know I don't know if

00:02:28 ◼   ► it's they used to do their own black bar.

00:02:30 ◼   ► Yeah, they decided to to have their own black bar and they still put

00:02:34 ◼   ► like controls and stuff there.

00:02:35 ◼   ► So it's not like a just a a empty void in there.

00:02:38 ◼   ► But like it is a a choice in a a good choice in a

00:02:44 ◼   ► lot of ways.

00:02:45 ◼   ► But because Apple decided to do this way, like that's it just it's not

00:02:50 ◼   ► an option if you wanna if you want your app to feel like it

00:02:52 ◼   ► belongs there.

00:02:53 ◼   ► So it's really, really hard.

00:02:55 ◼   ► Um there's a lot of a lot of nuance to it.

00:02:58 ◼   ► I've we've spoke this before.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Some you know, uh like I I I I've mentioned that I like my

00:03:03 ◼   ► I live in Amsterdam at a very, very old building from the seventeen hundreds.

00:03:07 ◼   ► And so nothing is centered, nothing is aligned, like the the wall is like

00:03:10 ◼   ► at an angle, the ceiling and is a different angle than the the the

00:03:14 ◼   ► floor.

00:03:15 ◼   ► So if you're trying to put up a frame or something on the wall,

00:03:17 ◼   ► like you kinda have to decide am I gonna align this to with the

00:03:22 ◼   ► ceiling or with the floor or with gravity itself if I use a level

00:03:25 ◼   ► like all of these are different decisions.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Nothing matches.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Um and I feel that it's very similar here in the phone.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Like what do you wanna align it with?

00:03:35 ◼   ► Uh and it's kinda like use your own intuition, what feels best.

00:03:40 ◼   ► But more often than not, there's no right like answer.

00:03:44 ◼   ► You know, it's like what do you decide to align it with?

00:03:47 ◼   ► Um so And I think even there, like the crazy thing is how your

00:03:52 ◼   ► what you align it with.

00:03:53 ◼   ► So in your example, like is variable based on the pose and context of

00:03:59 ◼   ► the phone as well?

00:04:00 ◼   ► Like in a way that it can be really weird, where should it like

00:04:04 ◼   ► what makes sense on the outer screen in Portrait may not make sense on

00:04:08 ◼   ► the inner screen in landscape just visually or sort of logically, or how should

00:04:14 ◼   ► your content scroll or look in these different things as you move it around?

00:04:17 ◼   ► And then you get into the question of like, does it should that change?

00:04:21 ◼   ► You should you have a consistent thing.

00:04:22 ◼   ► So say like for example you're always centered centering inside of the sort of

00:04:27 ◼   ► content area, avoiding the safe area.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And like if you do that, but then you flip it into inner screen

00:04:33 ◼   ► portrait where the safe area goes all the way to the side, does that

00:04:36 ◼   ► is that weird that you on the in on the outside, you know, once

00:04:38 ◼   ► in one version it's looks this way in another version it looks that way.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And in your example, it's like here I'm centering to the you know I'm

00:04:44 ◼   ► leveling my photo to the floor.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Here I'm centering it to the ceiling.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Here I'm changing it to with you know based on this other thing.

00:04:49 ◼   ► And that in I think you're there's like I've had to just let go

00:04:53 ◼   ► of the fact that there should be a correct way.

00:04:55 ◼   ► There should be an actual like there's a it's like, no, no, it there

00:04:58 ◼   ► is no correct.

00:04:59 ◼   ► And there's what is the least worst is probably variable based on which of

00:05:04 ◼   ► the poses you're thinking about or looking at.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Yeah, it does feel like every single pose you have to look at it

00:05:10 ◼   ► and design it as if it was its own device.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Like it it's hard to come up with solutions that scale across different poses,

00:05:18 ◼   ► across different orientations.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Um even more so like iPhones always had portrait and landscape mode, but depending

00:05:26 ◼   ► on the type of app you're building, it was pretty easy to ignore landscape.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Like it doesn't it didn't make much sense and also the way you use

00:05:33 ◼   ► your phone, you know, it's almost certainly in a portrait orientation.

00:05:38 ◼   ► And then iPad became a bit more muddy, like okay.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Certain people prefer to use the iPad in different orientation, but i they were

00:05:45 ◼   ► both large enough that felt similar.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Like I think the a certain layout would scale well between the two.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Uh and now, like the phone just got over time just got taller and

00:05:55 ◼   ► taller and taller.

00:05:56 ◼   ► So we've been pushing in the this this direction of being like things are

00:05:59 ◼   ► just vertical stack of content, right?

00:06:02 ◼   ► Uh and now the duo we flip it in both opposite directions at the

00:06:08 ◼   ► same time.

00:06:09 ◼   ► We went w to like actually this is the smallest screen ever and it's

00:06:12 ◼   ► like this square ish thing and now your controls go on the side.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And also it's the biggest screen ever and the contents like the controls go

00:06:20 ◼   ► on the side in one orientation, but not on the other.

00:06:24 ◼   ► It's like it's just the difficulty level just uh grew exponential and that like

00:06:30 ◼   ► like I think in other platforms in the past, developers

00:06:35 ◼   ► had like two two like uh scape hatches.

00:06:40 ◼   ► You could some platforms you could ignore completely.

00:06:43 ◼   ► Say Vision Pro comes out It might not make sense for you to you

00:06:47 ◼   ► know port your app to it.

00:06:49 ◼   ► You could choose to like this is not something I, you know, I want

00:06:52 ◼   ► to deal with right now.

00:06:54 ◼   ► And it would like keep your existing apps like isolated, right?

00:06:57 ◼   ► The fact that the Vision Pro came out won't affect your iOS app.

00:07:01 ◼   ► Kind of similar to the iPads as well, like you can not have an

00:07:04 ◼   ► iPad like app, right?

00:07:06 ◼   ► Sometimes it doesn't make sense.

00:07:07 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:07:08 ◼   ► That's one escape hatch.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Like you can ignore it and it won't affect your main product.

00:07:11 ◼   ► But second escape hatch is like, all right, say you do want to support

00:07:15 ◼   ► it, say you do want to build a a Vision Pro app, you can

00:07:19 ◼   ► still just make it look like an iPad app, right?

00:07:21 ◼   ► Like you don't have to go 3D, you don't have to go full environment

00:07:24 ◼   ► stuff.

00:07:25 ◼   ► You can just make it look like an iPad app.

00:07:27 ◼   ► So that was easy.

00:07:28 ◼   ► But with this phone, it was like it's still an iPhone.

00:07:30 ◼   ► So we will affect your main app.

00:07:32 ◼   ► Assuming your main app is an iPhone app in this case, but you will

00:07:35 ◼   ► affect it.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Uh it will have a lot of users in the beginning, like enthusiasts, like

00:07:39 ◼   ► you know, the nerdy users who will jump on the new device and fancy

00:07:43 ◼   ► stuff.

00:07:44 ◼   ► And they will be the ones complaining that your app hasn't been updated.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Uh and and so you don't have that escape patch of like ignore.

00:07:51 ◼   ► You cannot like ignore the the duo.

00:07:53 ◼   ► Your app will run in it.

00:07:55 ◼   ► Um and you don't have the second escape patch of like just just make

00:07:59 ◼   ► it just stretch it.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Right?

00:08:00 ◼   ► You don't even have that.

00:08:02 ◼   ► Like if you do nothing or do the the easy path, it just still

00:08:06 ◼   ► looks broken and odd.

00:08:08 ◼   ► So it's like the hardest job from a design point of view of like

00:08:12 ◼   ► the new platform or new device.

00:08:14 ◼   ► And it's a hard job that you cannot ignore or avoid.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Um and and yeah, and the choices that Apple made with their own apps,

00:08:24 ◼   ► it it's not that I disagree with them, but they're not like obvious sometimes.

00:08:30 ◼   ► And uh so you and I we we we we had the the a

00:08:33 ◼   ► chance to to go to visit one of the labs and so we spent

00:08:36 ◼   ► some time with it before it came out with a device.

00:08:39 ◼   ► And we spent some time just like looking at other like Apple apps because

00:08:42 ◼   ► the simulator came out and like you only had settings in Safari I think.

00:08:45 ◼   ► So it was even hard for us to study how Apple

00:08:49 ◼   ► you know, adopted this new device with their own apps.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Um so that that was one of the first things we we explore.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Like, all right, how does FineMite work here?

00:08:58 ◼   ► How does maps work here?

00:09:00 ◼   ► We were working on Check the Weather.

00:09:01 ◼   ► So those were relevant.

00:09:03 ◼   ► But you know, and even when you see them, some of the decisions they

00:09:07 ◼   ► made, they're not obvious.

00:09:08 ◼   ► And like this doesn't look right.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Why would you do it this way?

00:09:11 ◼   ► And if you keep pulling that thread, eventually you realize why?

00:09:15 ◼   ► Like there's a reason there.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Not saying sometimes it doesn't feel like the best reason or the best choice,

00:09:21 ◼   ► but there's there's a reason.

00:09:22 ◼   ► It's not arbitrary.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Um but it's still like you have to do a lot of thinking to

00:09:27 ◼   ► arrive at that decision.

00:09:28 ◼   ► You look at the app and it doesn't mat like, yeah, this makes sense.

00:09:31 ◼   ► That's That's how it should be.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Um and even Apple's own guidelines are like the most wishy washy I think

00:09:39 ◼   ► for any other device.

00:09:41 ◼   ► I remember we were like, Okay, so controls go on the right.

00:09:44 ◼   ► Got it.

00:09:45 ◼   ► That's the rule.

00:09:46 ◼   ► And they're like, well, but if you only only have one control, like one

00:09:50 ◼   ► toolbar button say, or two, maybe you can also put it on the top.

00:09:55 ◼   ► So you don't do the vertical thing.

00:09:57 ◼   ► There's APIs for that.

00:09:58 ◼   ► You can say, no, I want my controls at the top.

00:10:00 ◼   ► And you're like okay, but wait, so is so is the rule is they

00:10:03 ◼   ► go on the side, but if there's only one or two buttons, they go

00:10:07 ◼   ► on the top well.

00:10:08 ◼   ► No, they can go on the top.

00:10:10 ◼   ► So you still have to make the decision.

00:10:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:12 ◼   ► It's all like what should I do here?

00:10:14 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:10:16 ◼   ► And a lot of those things too, like there's these weird conditions where like

00:10:19 ◼   ► like and when you like a UI that I think often looks good on

00:10:22 ◼   ► say the outer screen of this device is you have like a a like

00:10:28 ◼   ► a hero image or some kind of content that can go all the full

00:10:31 ◼   ► width.

00:10:31 ◼   ► And then you have left aligned uh sort of title content kind of a

00:10:36 ◼   ► thing.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Like say you imagine like a recipe card.

00:10:37 ◼   ► You'd have the the photo of the food on the top and then the

00:10:40 ◼   ► title and the left aligned, which is great until you open the phone and

00:10:44 ◼   ► put it into side by side mode and you put that app into left

00:10:47 ◼   ► side, where suddenly now the it it's overflowing backwards into an area where now

00:10:53 ◼   ► the buttons are on the left side and not the right side.

00:10:55 ◼   ► And so this this UI then looks really potentially weird or unbalanced that you

00:10:59 ◼   ► don't have the balance of like the text on the left and the buttons

00:11:02 ◼   ► on the right.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Now you have both of them on the left.

00:11:04 ◼   ► So it's unweighted in an ungainly way.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And I think there's like I think i in some ways it's been a

00:11:11 ◼   ► relief in the sense of I feel like there's a certain amount on the

00:11:16 ◼   ► traditional, I don't know, like the standard iPhone layouts where you can look at

00:11:20 ◼   ► it and definitely say, like, this is not a good layout.

00:11:23 ◼   ► There's something about this that is not symmetric, it isn't balanced, it has a

00:11:27 ◼   ► sense of like proportion to it.

00:11:30 ◼   ► There are certain like I I know enough design to sort of be dangerous

00:11:33 ◼   ► in a lot of this where I don't really know why, but I know

00:11:36 ◼   ► that I can look at something and be like, that's there's that's not right.

00:11:40 ◼   ► There's something not quite right there.

00:11:41 ◼   ► Whereas on this, I feel like there's it's almost it's so it's so variable

00:11:47 ◼   ► and it's there's so many choices that there is no right answer.

00:11:50 ◼   ► There is no sense of like you've you you're sort of working towards this

00:11:53 ◼   ► platonic ideal of what a layout would look like, which in the o on

00:11:58 ◼   ► the other one I feel like you really could see.

00:12:00 ◼   ► Or you like this is I mean this is an experience you and I

00:12:02 ◼   ► have had a bunch where you do we do a redesign on a screen

00:12:06 ◼   ► that I made.

00:12:07 ◼   ► And I immediately when I see it, know that it's better.

00:12:10 ◼   ► I immediately because you, you know, you you've you've applied some sense of symmetry,

00:12:15 ◼   ► balance, design, aesthetic to it that is just like, yes, this is definitely better.

00:12:19 ◼   ► And the number of times on the duo, I feel like the experience is

00:12:22 ◼   ► like I look at and it's like, it's

00:12:24 ◼   ► probably better.

00:12:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:26 ◼   ► But it's not like there isn't this sense of just like straightforward clear clearliness.

00:12:31 ◼   ► Or you immediately then have the thought of this is pro this is better

00:12:35 ◼   ► in this situation, but what happens when you do something else to it?

00:12:39 ◼   ► Does it, you know, and like it's just all these strange choices that like

00:12:44 ◼   ► and I think it's probably gonna be a question of I don't know, like

00:12:47 ◼   ► months, years before we really can settle into a place.

00:12:51 ◼   ► And like I kind of worry a little bit about kind of what the

00:12:54 ◼   ► next version of iOS is gonna look like, like next June.

00:12:59 ◼   ► Is there going to be a new set of guidelines, a new set of

00:13:01 ◼   ► learnings?

00:13:02 ◼   ► Because hopefully Apple is learning from this as they're seeing it go out into

00:13:05 ◼   ► the into the world with developers, with it, with designers, having a sense of

00:13:09 ◼   ► like, okay, what actually worked?

00:13:11 ◼   ► Because they, you know, they only had their own set of apps to be

00:13:14 ◼   ► using against.

00:13:15 ◼   ► And I think we had a lot of this in Liquid Glass, that from

00:13:17 ◼   ► the first version of Liquid Glass to the one we got last year, there

00:13:20 ◼   ► were some improvements, some changes, some things that were based on, you know, sort

00:13:25 ◼   ► of the the the contact with the world.

00:13:27 ◼   ► And hopefully we're going to get those.

00:13:28 ◼   ► But I also don't want to commit too far down any too path until

00:13:32 ◼   ► we get to that point where I feel like we may end up needing

00:13:35 ◼   ► to work back or change how we've structured things based on, you know, what's

00:13:41 ◼   ► coming down the road.

00:13:43 ◼   ► And there's also this tension that it's not clear, to me at least, that

00:13:48 ◼   ► this is the future of phones.

00:13:49 ◼   ► So there's also that sense of It's not like this is gonna be the

00:13:53 ◼   ► future.

00:13:54 ◼   ► So yes it's weird.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Say like when the it was not the dynamic Allen.

00:13:58 ◼   ► The like the notch, the first notch on iPhone ten.

00:14:01 ◼   ► It's like okay, this is kinda weird, right?

00:14:03 ◼   ► It's like it doesn't look as pleasing as like just a you know, nothing

00:14:06 ◼   ► in the screen cutting into the screen.

00:14:08 ◼   ► But we were like, but this is probably the future.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Like it feels nice.

00:14:11 ◼   ► So let's explore that.

00:14:12 ◼   ► Let let's push that front.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Of like how can we make this you know work better?

00:14:16 ◼   ► And then eventually the dynamic islands of like you didn't make it's not just

00:14:20 ◼   ► like a black void actually content can flow from it or whatever.

00:14:24 ◼   ► So but but in this case it's not like it's not like, oh yes,

00:14:28 ◼   ► the now this is the aspect ratio going forward.

00:14:30 ◼   ► So of course controls need to go on a little sidebar.

00:14:33 ◼   ► So let's let's keep improving that to the detriment perhaps of the main normal

00:14:38 ◼   ► phones.

00:14:39 ◼   ► So that is not clear.

00:14:40 ◼   ► So that's also like it's a weird one.

00:14:43 ◼   ► Is it gonna remain to be like the weird one?

00:14:46 ◼   ► Like the duo is the weird iPhone where like iOS looks kinda weird sometimes.

00:14:51 ◼   ► Or is this a future and we're like, well, let's just embrace it.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Um like there's certain decisions that it's always hard to look like

00:15:01 ◼   ► look back and try to apply meaning to certain decisions that Apple did like

00:15:06 ◼   ► oh see the Remember when they did like the large titles that navigation title

00:15:11 ◼   ► like left align and pretty large?

00:15:14 ◼   ► I think that's way too far back.

00:15:15 ◼   ► That's what like eight years, ten years?

00:15:17 ◼   ► I don't even know.

00:15:18 ◼   ► But we're not like, oh, left a line titles maybe because of the duo.

00:15:21 ◼   ► Like probably not.

00:15:23 ◼   ► But there's certain decisions that like recently they've left a line alert boxes and

00:15:27 ◼   ► stuff, or maybe it's just out of a Mac.

00:15:29 ◼   ► I'm maybe I'm getting confused.

00:15:30 ◼   ► There's some decisions that like maybe this was because of the duo.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Um

00:15:36 ◼   ► uh like I mean I think the tab bar is definitely that, right?

00:15:39 ◼   ► Like the whole thing where the floor in in liquid glass where the tab

00:15:42 ◼   ► bar became a floating element that was separate from your content rather than being

00:15:47 ◼   ► this hard rectangle at the bottom was clearly done so that on the duo

00:15:52 ◼   ► they can flip it sideways and put it on the side.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Like it's it's this thing that they're changing for that reason.

00:15:58 ◼   ► And I whether that looks better or is better, like it has all kinds

00:16:02 ◼   ► of problems on regular iPhones that we now just have to live with.

00:16:05 ◼   ► But it was done, I think, in service of the duo.

00:16:08 ◼   ► I do wonder if they'd if we were on living on this alternate universe

00:16:13 ◼   ► where we did not go with floaty controls and everything has a clear separator

00:16:17 ◼   ► line and maybe perhaps a different background even crazy to think.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Uh if that wouldn't make this feel less awkward.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Because like UIs with sidebars exist

00:16:29 ◼   ► as old as UIs go.

00:16:30 ◼   ► Like look at your Mac, a Finder window, there's a sidebar and then there's

00:16:34 ◼   ► a content.

00:16:36 ◼   ► But people aren't freaking out like, oh, how do I center things?

00:16:39 ◼   ► Like no, because there's a clear d separator.

00:16:42 ◼   ► Like this is a sidebar, there's content here, and there's this other content on

00:16:46 ◼   ► this side.

00:16:46 ◼   ► And so the containers are clear and your eyes can like you know align

00:16:51 ◼   ► things and and get that.

00:16:52 ◼   ► But here we're freaking out about a sidebar because that sidebar is actually not

00:16:57 ◼   ► a separate area.

00:16:59 ◼   ► It flows in sometimes there's things there.

00:17:03 ◼   ► Like if you don't have tab bars like that bottom side on the it's

00:17:09 ◼   ► probably empty.

00:17:10 ◼   ► Then if it's empty and you have like a bottom control on your UI,

00:17:13 ◼   ► then if that's not aligned like your eyes try to look for the boundaries

00:17:19 ◼   ► of certain containers to like make sense of things and align things.

00:17:22 ◼   ► And b it's because there's nothing there

00:17:25 ◼   ► and if you only align it with a content view, then your eyes will

00:17:29 ◼   ► it's gonna look off center.

00:17:30 ◼   ► Like this is not centered.

00:17:31 ◼   ► It looks wrong.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Um so so in this alternate universe where maybe they did go with like

00:17:37 ◼   ► a separator and uh like this is a a sidebar, right?

00:17:41 ◼   ► 'Cause I never call it a sidebar, but then maybe that would actually make

00:17:45 ◼   ► it feel a little bit I don't know if better, but at least like

00:17:48 ◼   ► tidier.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Um Yeah.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:50 ◼   ► And I think our our job would have definitely been a lot easier in

00:17:53 ◼   ► that way.

00:17:53 ◼   ► I mean, I was thinking one of the crazy examples I had in Check

00:17:57 ◼   ► the Weather was these such as a a sheet that you can pull up,

00:18:00 ◼   ► you know, from the buff all the way in the bottom to all the

00:18:02 ◼   ► way on the top.

00:18:03 ◼   ► And it's this we we don't have a tab bar in it in the

00:18:07 ◼   ► same way.

00:18:07 ◼   ► So there's sometimes there's you can have situations where like I had things inside

00:18:13 ◼   ► of the sheet that were jumping left and right to avoid the camera or

00:18:17 ◼   ► not.

00:18:17 ◼   ► But when it it which looks looked weird when it was in the bottom

00:18:22 ◼   ► if it was shifted over by the width of the sidebar, because then there's

00:18:26 ◼   ► just this empty space.

00:18:27 ◼   ► But as you move it up, it has has it like encounters other things

00:18:30 ◼   ► and has to sh you know bounce around and like that doesn't feel great

00:18:34 ◼   ► either.

00:18:34 ◼   ► But I mean even just in general, where do the buttons go is a

00:18:37 ◼   ► strange question.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Like I feel like I still don't

00:18:41 ◼   ► love the way that that is a choice that we have to keep making

00:18:45 ◼   ► over and over again of where do the buttons are where do the toolbar

00:18:49 ◼   ► buttons go.

00:18:49 ◼   ► And if you have a tab bar and a set of toolbar buttons, like

00:18:53 ◼   ► even just a very standard, like say you have a you know a a

00:18:56 ◼   ► tab bar with five items and two items in your what would be like

00:19:01 ◼   ► your nav, you know, your nav top left, your nav top top right.

00:19:05 ◼   ► Like that very standard setup.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Even that can get really strange where I think I saw this in uh

00:19:11 ◼   ► Marco's Marco's app uh Unforgetful where you know if if the keyboard comes up

00:19:15 ◼   ► in the wrong way, like suddenly your nav bars collapse into an ellipse menu.

00:19:20 ◼   ► It's like that's weird.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Why is it doing that?

00:19:22 ◼   ► It's like in that case they should probably be on the top.

00:19:23 ◼   ► But if they're top then they're smooshing it even more.

00:19:26 ◼   ► So then maybe you don't want the buttons on the top, but where do

00:19:29 ◼   ► you want the buttons?

00:19:30 ◼   ► Like I feel like it's this game we had to keep playing of like

00:19:33 ◼   ► where should the button go?

00:19:34 ◼   ► And it's a a strange thing to have to navigate and decide that there

00:19:38 ◼   ► isn't an obvious sort of choice where where you know where where should it

00:19:43 ◼   ► go.

00:19:43 ◼   ► If you have if you have two you know right in a lot of

00:19:46 ◼   ► our apps we have a top toolbar, a bottom toolbar as well.

00:19:49 ◼   ► And so should those all be collapsed together should they be kept separate somehow

00:19:53 ◼   ► where you put some on the side, some on the top?

00:19:55 ◼   ► Like it's we're We're mixing con uh controls that historically has never been they

00:20:02 ◼   ► never live in the same place so they didn't have to compete.

00:20:04 ◼   ► Like a a tab bar and toolbar items, they were separate.

00:20:09 ◼   ► And with liquid glass, Apple

00:20:12 ◼   ► m muddied this a little bit where like you can have the search button

00:20:16 ◼   ► which historically has been not even a toolbar, right?

00:20:19 ◼   ► But it was at the top, and now actually can can live around a

00:20:23 ◼   ► a tab bar sometimes and then they expand and stuff like like with music,

00:20:27 ◼   ► for example.

00:20:28 ◼   ► Like okay, you this is a bit messier.

00:20:31 ◼   ► It hasn't been this way historically, so that's a new thing now, I guess.

00:20:34 ◼   ► But now with the duo, the tab bar and the control like the toolbars,

00:20:39 ◼   ► they're they live in the same place, they share the same space, so they

00:20:42 ◼   ► have to compete in because it's a it's a very limited like space depending

00:20:46 ◼   ► on especially how many controls you might have there, many buttons.

00:20:49 ◼   ► They have to compete.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And now so now you have APIs w to be like set priority levels

00:20:55 ◼   ► on these controls.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Like which one is the most important?

00:20:58 ◼   ► Well well Yeah.

00:21:00 ◼   ► The pins, I guess, maybe on users.

00:21:02 ◼   ► But but we found that say say reminders.

00:21:06 ◼   ► Like the I think the most the primary toolbar item is new item, right?

00:21:11 ◼   ► The plus I think it's prominent, like blue.

00:21:14 ◼   ► So that's the the main one.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And the duo is like where does the main toolbar button go?

00:21:20 ◼   ► It's at the bottom right.

00:21:22 ◼   ► Right, the bottom.

00:21:23 ◼   ► So that's the that's the prime real estate.

00:21:26 ◼   ► That's the the the most important thing.

00:21:28 ◼   ► But then if you have a tab bar, tab bars actually take part.

00:21:32 ◼   ► No no no.

00:21:32 ◼   ► Tab bars go there and now I pushed your primary button to the top.

00:21:37 ◼   ► But not if you have a back button, that's the topmost one.

00:21:41 ◼   ► You know?

00:21:42 ◼   ► You know how this is one minute in trying to explain the the logic

00:21:46 ◼   ► behind it, it already gets confusing.

00:21:48 ◼   ► And for us, um I don't think we're ready to to spoil this, but

00:21:54 ◼   ► but we've been working on on a UI where it has a bottom sheet

00:21:58 ◼   ► and a part of the app.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And and as we were still at the labs early on, we're like, All

00:22:03 ◼   ► right, it's a bottom sheet.

00:22:04 ◼   ► We do not have any toolbar buttons here, except for one back button, I

00:22:08 ◼   ► believe, or maybe one or two.

00:22:10 ◼   ► So they wouldn't overflow they wouldn't go to the bottom.

00:22:13 ◼   ► Uh and we have a bottom sheet.

00:22:15 ◼   ► So it made sense for us at the time to make that bottom sheet

00:22:19 ◼   ► expand all the way like the full width.

00:22:20 ◼   ► So because there's no buttons there.

00:22:22 ◼   ► Again, if there's nothing there The sheet just looks like awkward.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Like why aren't you taking up the full width?

00:22:28 ◼   ► So we decided to go full width.

00:22:30 ◼   ► And it's a short enough sheet that it's okay.

00:22:33 ◼   ► It doesn't need that like the vertical space.

00:22:35 ◼   ► It was okay.

00:22:36 ◼   ► That felt better.

00:22:37 ◼   ► And then we tried it at the labs and I was like, yep, this

00:22:41 ◼   ► feels like the right decision.

00:22:43 ◼   ► Um and then I finally got my own device and I'm using it at

00:22:48 ◼   ► my desk.

00:22:49 ◼   ► And guess what I didn't test at the labs?

00:22:52 ◼   ► Freaking uh live activities.

00:22:54 ◼   ► Sure.

00:22:54 ◼   ► Yeah, and then it pushes it down.

00:22:56 ◼   ► Push everything down.

00:22:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:58 ◼   ► So what before felt like yes, there's no controls here, the sheet should go

00:23:02 ◼   ► full width.

00:23:03 ◼   ► Now the the live activities in the dynamic island are just push pushing the

00:23:07 ◼   ► controls down, like the back button and stuff, they get pushed down and now

00:23:11 ◼   ► they go now they they're competing with the sheet.

00:23:13 ◼   ► Now they're actually they were like behind the sheet or something.

00:23:15 ◼   ► It it was broken.

00:23:16 ◼   ► Like, okay, here we go.

00:23:17 ◼   ► Another thing, like another thing you have to account for is the yeah, don't

00:23:22 ◼   ► forget y'all.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Account for a super tall dynamic island that can push stuff down.

00:23:27 ◼   ► Um so it is like you have to use it, you have to just

00:23:31 ◼   ► use your intuition.

00:23:33 ◼   ► Be okay.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Like it it's actually kind of freeing to know that there's no right and

00:23:38 ◼   ► wrong decisions.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Like you know, I think there's a couple of things that we've seen and

00:23:43 ◼   ► I think I'm confident saying that they work best on this device at least.

00:23:48 ◼   ► Things like

00:23:50 ◼   ► overflowing like background um

00:23:55 ◼   ► like imagery stuff.

00:23:57 ◼   ► So so you you use the example of like a recipe app or something.

00:24:01 ◼   ► Having a full picture photo of the of the thing that can be extend

00:24:06 ◼   ► you know over the the safe area so that background feels feels nice.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Um especially if it's like background that there's there's no obvious center, say maps,

00:24:17 ◼   ► like the work we did for Check the Weather.

00:24:20 ◼   ► Maps is great 'cause it's visually rich, it's colorful.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Um even if you use like the maps map kit like a map oh

00:24:27 ◼   ► Apple Zone maps, they do some really clever things where like labels and and

00:24:33 ◼   ► stuff UI over the map, they automatically like get blurred out if you go

00:24:38 ◼   ► into the safe area.

00:24:39 ◼   ► So it doesn't be clipped or something, but it's just it's really nice.

00:24:43 ◼   ► And there's no obvious center in the map.

00:24:45 ◼   ► The map has no center.

00:24:47 ◼   ► So say even if you have like a like a background header heather that

00:24:52 ◼   ► you decide to expand

00:24:54 ◼   ► um behind the the the thing then then you're like all right if this

00:24:58 ◼   ► picture has a clear center should I align it still with like the content

00:25:03 ◼   ► maybe or more decisions you have to make.

00:25:06 ◼   ► But anyway something like maps works really well, some kind of like pattern app

00:25:09 ◼   ► uh background that works really well.

00:25:11 ◼   ► And then I think Apple's been pushing hard for like if you have scrollable

00:25:15 ◼   ► content that can go behind the the controls and the dynamic island and whatever

00:25:20 ◼   ► because you can always scroll to reveal more, right?

00:25:23 ◼   ► I think that's preferable over clipping it or something.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Um so I think one of the apps that looks the best, like one

00:25:30 ◼   ► of the native apps that looks best on duo, is the T V app.

00:25:34 ◼   ► Because that's it's a little bit of everything I just mentioned.

00:25:36 ◼   ► It's like you have beautifully rich videos and imagery that extends over the safe

00:25:42 ◼   ► areas.

00:25:42 ◼   ► And then as you scroll, like the content is just like scroll horizontal scrollable

00:25:47 ◼   ► lists that can still go behind you know the the the the safe area.

00:25:52 ◼   ► Like there's nothing I'm just looking at the app.

00:25:54 ◼   ► There's nothing that gets contained to the you know like the main con content

00:26:00 ◼   ► area.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Everything flows in a way that doesn't feel wrong or awkward.

00:26:06 ◼   ► Um and then if you will have to have the main content, um, like

00:26:12 ◼   ► something that can't just overflow, I f I think Two things that work I

00:26:17 ◼   ► think best.

00:26:18 ◼   ► One is if you have somehow like a clear container that users' eyes can

00:26:24 ◼   ► like follow in like, okay, my brain understands that this is the content area.

00:26:29 ◼   ► So stuff like sheets and cards like I think work well.

00:26:33 ◼   ► And I think with iOS 7 and all the flat stuff we went we

00:26:36 ◼   ► got away of like container and dividers and stuff.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Everything flows.

00:26:40 ◼   ► And I think here that that that approach doesn't.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Uh and third, like lead a line, like left a line your text.

00:26:50 ◼   ► That is gonna be easier.

00:26:53 ◼   ► Cause then you don't have to make that decision of like where do I

00:26:56 ◼   ► center with.

00:26:57 ◼   ► If it's a line, luckily the left edge of the screen like is it's

00:27:03 ◼   ► always the same.

00:27:04 ◼   ► We don't have weird notches in there.

00:27:06 ◼   ► Uh I mean don't give Apple any ideas.

00:27:09 ◼   ► But But uh so that's uh one of my uh silly side project apps

00:27:14 ◼   ► I've done I've done it had a very, very simple UI where like one

00:27:18 ◼   ► element, like a crystal in the middle, and then I had like a little

00:27:21 ◼   ► like a pill centered at the bottom in a left and right arrow, right?

00:27:26 ◼   ► Uh on a normal iPhone, that's all centered because it makes sense.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Everything's centered.

00:27:30 ◼   ► But on the duo, I found that I could not make that work.

00:27:33 ◼   ► No matter how much I try, like should I align this with a container

00:27:37 ◼   ► or not?

00:27:38 ◼   ► Um so I I ended up just left aligning, which looks odd.

00:27:41 ◼   ► So instead of being like left arrow, uh label right arrow, I put label

00:27:46 ◼   ► and then left and right arrow.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Sure.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Left align.

00:27:50 ◼   ► It doesn't look great, but I think in that context it was the best

00:27:54 ◼   ► decision.

00:27:55 ◼   ► But yeah, it's hard.

00:27:57 ◼   ► It's hard.

00:27:58 ◼   ► I I have been like rethinking some UI approaches

00:28:03 ◼   ► to like to like include more imagery or something that could extend or like

00:28:07 ◼   ► lead more into lean more into horizontal scroll views or something.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:13 ◼   ► Um yeah.

00:28:14 ◼   ► 'Cause I think there is definitely something that like in my mind as I've

00:28:17 ◼   ► been trying to think through this is the Is that there's like different categories

00:28:21 ◼   ► of I don't know, UI elements, content, whatever you want they are.

00:28:25 ◼   ► And they fall sort of how you deal with them is different.

00:28:28 ◼   ► Where there are some like the easiest are the things that are sort of

00:28:32 ◼   ► inherently expandable.

00:28:34 ◼   ► So like in your example, like photos, maps, things like that, which are intrinsically

00:28:39 ◼   ► sort of infinitely scalable.

00:28:41 ◼   ► You can just fill the space with that and it fills in a way

00:28:44 ◼   ► that is sort of logical.

00:28:46 ◼   ► And like with a map, you have a little bit of the tricky question

00:28:48 ◼   ► of like where should you center it in.

00:28:49 ◼   ► So I can check the weather we have a you know the selected location

00:28:53 ◼   ► is what gets centered.

00:28:54 ◼   ► And so we have a little bit of decision, you know, is it actually

00:28:57 ◼   ► centered for the whole screen or is it centered in the non-safe area screen?

00:29:02 ◼   ► But it overall it won't be it'll be fine because either one of those

00:29:05 ◼   ► is visually probably okay because the content spills out um fully.

00:29:10 ◼   ► And so those are easiest ones to do.

00:29:12 ◼   ► And in some ways that was like the input like the the seed of

00:29:15 ◼   ► the idea for Check the Weather was this UI that was like, how can

00:29:20 ◼   ► I make an app that has this sense of expandability that can look good

00:29:25 ◼   ► in every single pose on a duo.

00:29:28 ◼   ► Um and that's right.

00:29:29 ◼   ► And it's like, well, if you had a a weather app that has a

00:29:31 ◼   ► a really good radar map, but like that actually works really well rather than

00:29:35 ◼   ► trying to have a UI that has to keep shifting and changing.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Like the sheet itself that shows the forecast is more static.

00:29:42 ◼   ► And so like you have those kind of contents.

00:29:43 ◼   ► Then you have content that is like better if you can change its size.

00:29:49 ◼   ► So like as you open the phone, for example, this is where a lot

00:29:52 ◼   ► of this is coming in where some things naturally are better being larger.

00:29:57 ◼   ► So, like a scrollable, most scrollable content works really well in this.

00:30:01 ◼   ► Like in the check the weather case, this is the like you can scroll

00:30:03 ◼   ► horizontally to see your hourly and daily forecasts.

00:30:06 ◼   ► So making that wider or in pedometer plus plus, where you show like the

00:30:09 ◼   ► step count graphs, like that graph works if you if rather than showing a

00:30:13 ◼   ► week, it shows two weeks.

00:30:15 ◼   ► Great.

00:30:15 ◼   ► Like there's a logical way to expand and grow that.

00:30:19 ◼   ► Um, and so like those things sort of work naturally.

00:30:21 ◼   ► But like where things get weird is there's definitely also a third category of

00:30:25 ◼   ► things which have kind of a natural maximum size where it starts falling apart.

00:30:32 ◼   ► Like our settings screens were a nightmare for this, where some settings you can

00:30:37 ◼   ► sort of naturally make bigger and smaller.

00:30:40 ◼   ► So we have a list of like pre- you know alternative icons you can

00:30:43 ◼   ► choose between and that's a grid.

00:30:44 ◼   ► So that grid can naturally, you know, it on a narrow screen, maybe it

00:30:48 ◼   ► shows four wide.

00:30:49 ◼   ► On a wide screen, it shows eight wide.

00:30:51 ◼   ► But there's also things where it's just like a switch, you know, it has

00:30:55 ◼   ► a label and a switch.

00:30:56 ◼   ► And there's a certain width where that becomes com comedic.

00:30:59 ◼   ► If you open your iPhone Duo and the label is all the way on

00:31:02 ◼   ► the left and the switch is all the way on the right, it would

00:31:04 ◼   ► just look silly.

00:31:05 ◼   ► It would just be completely sort of pointless there.

00:31:07 ◼   ► And so there you have these weird sort of you have to create kind

00:31:10 ◼   ► of arbitrary caps on things.

00:31:13 ◼   ► And so like we ended up sort of on some of those screens, we're

00:31:16 ◼   ► pushing the content a bit towards the middle just to make it not, you

00:31:20 ◼   ► know, look strange in that context.

00:31:22 ◼   ► But like those were the ones that I found really hard.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And I think to your point, it's ideally in a lot of ways, if

00:31:28 ◼   ► you can make those in a container, you can push them in slightly, but

00:31:31 ◼   ► visually still kind of make sense, um, that's where the best thing is.

00:31:36 ◼   ► But like ideally, it's like if if if ideally you'll be in the first

00:31:39 ◼   ► two categories where it's something that either is sort of intrinsically infinitely scalable or

00:31:44 ◼   ► has a sort of natural uh expansion mode.

00:31:48 ◼   ► But if your doesn't, you're just kind of stuck and you end up with

00:31:50 ◼   ► these like, well, we'll kind of center it in or maybe we'll put it

00:31:52 ◼   ► in a box.

00:31:53 ◼   ► And then maybe if they fold it halfway, it shifts over to the side

00:31:56 ◼   ► and goes half width.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Like that's a thing you can sort of do.

00:32:00 ◼   ► But it's like those that third category I yeah got got really frustrated with

00:32:05 ◼   ► in several of our screens where it's just like there's no, there is no

00:32:08 ◼   ► naturally a wider version of this because it needs to sort of naturally go

00:32:12 ◼   ► from the outside screen to the inside screen.

00:32:15 ◼   ► You want it to feel reasonable that there's a con a a continuity between

00:32:19 ◼   ► those two experiences.

00:32:20 ◼   ► And something's just there is no logical way to go from, you know, sort

00:32:24 ◼   ► of half width to full width.

00:32:26 ◼   ► It's in a way it's a similar challenge uh back when if you were

00:32:32 ◼   ► trying to port your app your iPhone app to an iPad, like okay now

00:32:35 ◼   ► we have a lot more space.

00:32:37 ◼   ► What make sense here.

00:32:40 ◼   ► Um

00:32:41 ◼   ► but except except here, first we're not making the decision to port this app

00:32:46 ◼   ► to an iPad.

00:32:47 ◼   ► This is like, no, this is your iPhone app.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Like it looks like this now.

00:32:51 ◼   ► To do something, please.

00:32:53 ◼   ► Uh so you're forced into it.

00:32:55 ◼   ► And and like it's exactly what he said.

00:32:58 ◼   ► Like some you have more space.

00:32:59 ◼   ► Well again, now when when the duo is open.

00:33:02 ◼   ► It feels like it's a whole different conversation because a whole different device but

00:33:05 ◼   ► now.

00:33:05 ◼   ► Same thing, about okay, but now it's open in let's say this landscape orientation.

00:33:10 ◼   ► Um can now have a lot of horizontal space.

00:33:13 ◼   ► Uh what how can I make use of this space in an interesting and

00:33:18 ◼   ► useful way to my app?

00:33:19 ◼   ► And sometimes like moving stuff around, showing more things, right?

00:33:23 ◼   ► Or whatever.

00:33:25 ◼   ► Um but in the case of like like your point, settings, there's nothing else.

00:33:29 ◼   ► Like it's I have a list.

00:33:31 ◼   ► What else can I show here to like make use of the space and

00:33:37 ◼   ► and like well I'll try to make what Apple's own settings app makes just

00:33:41 ◼   ► like a two-pane, you know, like navigation views.

00:33:46 ◼   ► Um but that doesn't like if your app It's a simple app.

00:33:50 ◼   ► I don't have multiple levels of navigation in settings.

00:33:54 ◼   ► Maybe to your point I have like three toggles and like a thing.

00:33:57 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Um what can am I I can't force like multiple levels.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Like I'll I'll I'll add a ch a child navigation to this does that

00:34:07 ◼   ► make sense?

00:34:07 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:34:08 ◼   ► Like sometimes it it just doesn't make sense.

00:34:09 ◼   ► It doesn't work that way.

00:34:11 ◼   ► So I think it just like looks odd right now and I'll think about

00:34:15 ◼   ► it later.

00:34:15 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:34:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:16 ◼   ► I mean and I think to that point, it's the problem of like some

00:34:19 ◼   ► of the settings, you could even if you could make it work in a

00:34:23 ◼   ► split view with that, where you have like categories on the left and then

00:34:26 ◼   ► sort of children on the side, it's like, well, what happens if you're navigating

00:34:30 ◼   ► inside of that and then you fold your you close the phone.

00:34:33 ◼   ► And then you have this weird question of like are should you be showing

00:34:38 ◼   ► the child you were in?

00:34:40 ◼   ► Should you be going back to the top?

00:34:41 ◼   ► Should it now not have the concept of sort of like parent and child?

00:34:45 ◼   ► And now just be one consolidated vertical list, which is sort of what we've

00:34:49 ◼   ► previously been doing, where a lot of those UIs would be just one continuous

00:34:53 ◼   ► list.

00:34:53 ◼   ► But that like that's an even that feels strange, or you could lose state,

00:34:57 ◼   ► or if you're halfway through changing something you definitely don't lose user data when

00:35:02 ◼   ► they do that.

00:35:03 ◼   ► So you don't be doing some kind of thing where if the user is

00:35:06 ◼   ► typing some value in and then you change the oh it's like, oh you

00:35:11 ◼   ► know they're they're typing it in in one place and they're like, oh actually

00:35:13 ◼   ► I prefer the keyboard on the outside because it's more tradition, you know, more

00:35:17 ◼   ► of a traditional keyboard.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Great, let me close it.

00:35:19 ◼   ► Well, I need to ideally keep you know your insertion point where it was

00:35:23 ◼   ► in that view, and that's really hard if you don't if you're gonna have

00:35:27 ◼   ► any amount of sort of dyn dynamism within those within that UI.

00:35:30 ◼   ► And so it's just really

00:35:33 ◼   ► awkward.

00:35:34 ◼   ► And I think, yeah you end up in these places where I think

00:35:38 ◼   ► so often, at least right now, I think my solution to it like the

00:35:41 ◼   ► best that we have is to do the sort of like straightforward thing and

00:35:45 ◼   ► be

00:35:47 ◼   ► do like rather than trying to get too clever, trying to be too s

00:35:51 ◼   ► sort of smart with a lot of the stuff So like something that is

00:35:54 ◼   ► generally straightforward and kind of works seems to be the best way to do

00:35:58 ◼   ► it.

00:35:58 ◼   ► So like a setting screen is a great example.

00:36:00 ◼   ► Like in Parameter Plus Plus, what we ended on is sort of a slightly

00:36:03 ◼   ► inset from the sides version version of the traditional of the current settings because

00:36:07 ◼   ► it just didn't make sense to try and partition it.

00:36:10 ◼   ► And then that can collapse if you fold the phone in half it sort

00:36:13 ◼   ► of partway in like book book fold, it'll shift over to the right side.

00:36:17 ◼   ► And if you close it all the way, the same thing.

00:36:18 ◼   ► It's on the right side equivalent of the phone.

00:36:21 ◼   ► And that seems to work very like it isn't beautiful, but it is workable.

00:36:26 ◼   ► And I think that is a lot of places where that's the best you

00:36:29 ◼   ► can do.

00:36:30 ◼   ► That's what I'm striving for.

00:36:32 ◼   ► Couldn't Can this just work?

00:36:34 ◼   ► Uh yeah, you mentioned the the book pose.

00:36:36 ◼   ► That's another one that like as soon as we as I got my hands

00:36:41 ◼   ► on a device and I tried it, uh immediately was like, Yeah, no one's

00:36:46 ◼   ► gonna use this.

00:36:46 ◼   ► Like I I don't think it's worth optimizing

00:36:51 ◼   ► any UIs for it.

00:36:52 ◼   ► Unless the UI is about that.

00:36:53 ◼   ► Like I don't know.

00:36:54 ◼   ► Uh but but yeah, that was clear.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Because even when I saw like the when they first announced the phone and

00:37:00 ◼   ► I saw I think they used it as a marketing shot, like a the

00:37:02 ◼   ► a book, right?

00:37:04 ◼   ► Uh so you would have yeah, it's like a book, two pages.

00:37:07 ◼   ► And I even thought like that's a this feels like a nice way to

00:37:11 ◼   ► read, like say in bed and is it feels like it's easier to hold

00:37:14 ◼   ► the phone.

00:37:15 ◼   ► Um it's nice.

00:37:16 ◼   ► And then I tried that and immediately like, No, I don't know like I

00:37:20 ◼   ► can't have it that center in front of me 'cause then both screens are

00:37:24 ◼   ► like at an angle.

00:37:25 ◼   ► It's not comfortable, pleasant to look at a screen at an angle.

00:37:28 ◼   ► So am I just gonna like move the phone so that one of the

00:37:31 ◼   ► screen is facing me straight on and the other one isn't.

00:37:33 ◼   ► So am I just anyway, clearly that was this is nonsense.

00:37:36 ◼   ► No one's gonna do this.

00:37:38 ◼   ► Um but for a while that was something we were Trying to and we

00:37:42 ◼   ► still do certain screens we try to adapt like all right if you do

00:37:46 ◼   ► put the phone in that pose, let's try not to have any important tap

00:37:51 ◼   ► targets in the fold in the crease.

00:37:53 ◼   ► But other than that, like yeah, don't spend too much time on it.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:56 ◼   ► No, I I think it feels like one of these things where yeah, it

00:38:00 ◼   ► is weird that I think Apple in their guidance, that there's a lot of

00:38:04 ◼   ► there's a lot of t both like at a technical level as well as

00:38:07 ◼   ► in a like a guidance perspective, talking about that position where things go into

00:38:12 ◼   ► the middle and then there's this avoidance area where they're telling you to move

00:38:15 ◼   ► content out of it and shift things around.

00:38:18 ◼   ► And like I in practice, since I've you know like I've it's not had

00:38:22 ◼   ► in my mind for a huge amount of time, but it's like nearly a

00:38:24 ◼   ► week.

00:38:25 ◼   ► I I never that is never how I want to hold my phone.

00:38:28 ◼   ► It's it's only ever in that state halfway between being open or closed.

00:38:32 ◼   ► And I think weirdly then the only reason that particular like pose is I

00:38:37 ◼   ► think going to come up in a lot of sort of places is it's

00:38:41 ◼   ► really good for screenshots because it gives you a sense that it is a

00:38:45 ◼   ► folding phone and not just an iPad.

00:38:46 ◼   ► Like if you just take a regular screenshot and like and put that, you

00:38:50 ◼   ► know, put that somewhere, it just looks like an iPad.

00:38:53 ◼   ► It doesn't have the sense of foldiness to it that in some ways you're

00:38:57 ◼   ► trying to communicate.

00:38:57 ◼   ► So in a marketing image, it works really well.

00:38:59 ◼   ► And I think that may be why in a lot of Apple's marketing, because

00:39:03 ◼   ► they were trying to emphasize the fact that it does fold, they show it

00:39:07 ◼   ► in that way.

00:39:08 ◼   ► But yeah, in practice, it just doesn't seem useful.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Like if I'm trying to actually read what I found like the best the

00:39:15 ◼   ► this is it's amazing for it's a great device for reading, but portrait is

00:39:18 ◼   ► how you I I f at least for me, I find I actually want

00:39:21 ◼   ► to like hold it.

00:39:22 ◼   ► I'll hold it, open the open it up, put it in portrait, and then

00:39:25 ◼   ► it's just a nice like it's a it's a hardback book.

00:39:27 ◼   ► Like it looks it's a good size, it's really comfortable in your hand.

00:39:32 ◼   ► Like that actually is how I would read in terms of the you know,

00:39:35 ◼   ► I'm not gonna pretend that it's a book that I'm folding in half where

00:39:40 ◼   ► that just doesn't actually make sense in practice.

00:39:43 ◼   ► And so I think yet broadly the kind of valley avoidance stuff that is

00:39:47 ◼   ► built in, great.

00:39:49 ◼   ► But I think there were some, I mean some terrible UIs uh we tried

00:39:53 ◼   ► where like in the pedometer graph where we have like a horizontal bar graph

00:39:58 ◼   ► that scrolls.

00:39:59 ◼   ► I was like, well, should the content avoid that middle thing?

00:40:03 ◼   ► Because it says like avoid.

00:40:04 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:40:05 ◼   ► And so it's like I had a version of it where as you scrolled,

00:40:08 ◼   ► the bars would jump across the chasm essentially as you go.

00:40:12 ◼   ► And it's like it was I mean it was wild.

00:40:14 ◼   ► It was comedic, but it was not good.

00:40:16 ◼   ► And I think you very quickly get the sense of it's yeah don't don't

00:40:20 ◼   ► go out of your way to to do stuff there.

00:40:23 ◼   ► Especially for the b but that kind of pose.

00:40:25 ◼   ► Maybe a little bit the laptop pose where you can have that sense of

00:40:29 ◼   ► like there's something on the bottom and something on the top.

00:40:31 ◼   ► And usually it's going to be some form of like buttons work better on

00:40:36 ◼   ► the down screen where you're pushing whereas buttons on the top aren't gonna work

00:40:40 ◼   ► quite as well.

00:40:41 ◼   ► So you may need to adjust your UI because tapping the top screen you're

00:40:44 ◼   ► just gonna knock your laptop over, essentially.

00:40:46 ◼   ► And so I think better to keep the if you have a button, like

00:40:49 ◼   ► push it down into the into into the content.

00:40:51 ◼   ► But yeah, in some ways that was one like one little thing that I

00:40:55 ◼   ► was nice that we just see be able to say, you know what?

00:40:57 ◼   ► I don't think that's going to be as important.

00:40:59 ◼   ► I don't think that's something that people are going to um deal with as

00:41:03 ◼   ► as often.

00:41:03 ◼   ► And so in the like eight different poses we're trying to optimize for, we

00:41:09 ◼   ► can push that one down very low on the list and not give it

00:41:13 ◼   ► as much weight.

00:41:13 ◼   ► So that if if we can do something cool there, great, awesome.

00:41:17 ◼   ► But if that if whatever the thing that we have that is better for

00:41:20 ◼   ► the other poses doesn't, that's totally fine.

00:41:23 ◼   ► I think in that I think I feel comfortable with that so far, like

00:41:27 ◼   ► a week into having my own device, that that's just not really what I

00:41:31 ◼   ► want.

00:41:31 ◼   ► And if anything, like there's a weird behavior where I if someone is folding

00:41:36 ◼   ► their phone, you don't necessarily also have this weird sort of have things move

00:41:42 ◼   ► into it sort of in this intermediate state.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Um Um in some ways it feels better if it just is static as

00:41:48 ◼   ► it's closing rather than trying to shift itself around it.

00:41:51 ◼   ► Apple's uh it's it's been pretty good at that, like knowing if you're closing

00:41:56 ◼   ► or if you're actually like adjusting the angle.

00:41:58 ◼   ► 'Cause like if you're so if your f if your duo is open and

00:42:02 ◼   ► you just uh like start closing, I think they they kinda measure the velocity

00:42:06 ◼   ► of it, but instead of having the UI adapt to it, you just see

00:42:10 ◼   ► you just see that animation, the the whole like open and close animation they

00:42:13 ◼   ► do uh over the UI.

00:42:15 ◼   ► So if you want your app to actually adjust, uh you kinda have to

00:42:19 ◼   ► open or close slowly.

00:42:21 ◼   ► It's yeah.

00:42:22 ◼   ► I know 'cause I've been doing the silly accordion thing and I know that

00:42:25 ◼   ► if I do it too fast the UI actually won't won't adapt.

00:42:29 ◼   ► You get the the Apple zone animation.

00:42:32 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't know.

00:42:34 ◼   ► Uh do you also f find that this is so buggy sometimes?

00:42:36 ◼   ► Like with a closing in Yeah.

00:42:38 ◼   ► I mean and and I think it's it's the the nat the natural state

00:42:41 ◼   ► of I think any

00:42:44 ◼   ► any system that involves thresholds and kind of heuristics is naturally going to have

00:42:50 ◼   ► those kinds of things where there are times where it yeah, it it it

00:42:55 ◼   ► has to interpret what you're doing, but without necessarily, you know, it it uh

00:42:59 ◼   ► this is the classic thing of like as soon as you add a double

00:43:01 ◼   ► tap to a button, now the button can feel slow because it has to

00:43:05 ◼   ► wait to see if it's the second taps coming kind of thing.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And I feel like there's similar things to like what you're saying there.

00:43:11 ◼   ► Of there's this the heuristic of when does it think you're actually folding or

00:43:16 ◼   ► fully folding, or like where it can bring in that cool frosted glass effect

00:43:20 ◼   ► that it does between the hole, but then it like has to back it

00:43:23 ◼   ► out quickly because it thought you were closing, but you actually weren't closing.

00:43:26 ◼   ► And so it'll sorry sort of put it'll it'll just come in for a

00:43:29 ◼   ► second and then jump back.

00:43:31 ◼   ► Which it to some degree they can there's only so much you can do

00:43:34 ◼   ► for the same reason that in the double tap button problem, you can't solve

00:43:39 ◼   ► that problem necessarily because that's the ni you have to wait however long it

00:43:43 ◼   ► would be until you know if there's a second tap before you give the

00:43:46 ◼   ► first tap event, just because that's inherent to that problem.

00:43:50 ◼   ► And so there's definitely things that I think they will refine there, but I

00:43:54 ◼   ► think some of those problems are just unsolvable.

00:43:56 ◼   ► And they've they've done the great job, I think, for a one point oh.

00:43:59 ◼   ► But yeah, that like uh I was on my f a FaceTime call with

00:44:03 ◼   ► my mom, uh and she wanted to talk to the kids and stuff.

00:44:05 ◼   ► And then I I try to I try to like open it partially just

00:44:10 ◼   ► to prop it up, right?

00:44:11 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:44:12 ◼   ► And the phone was like, Oh, you wanna go on the inside screen?

00:44:15 ◼   ► Like, No, no, no.

00:44:16 ◼   ► Um and I try to do it slowly, like slowly.

00:44:19 ◼   ► Uh like no no no.

00:44:20 ◼   ► I'm just I'm still on that outer screen.

00:44:22 ◼   ► I just and then switch screens and then you get the thing on the

00:44:25 ◼   ► like swipe to change cameras or whatever.

00:44:28 ◼   ► Like there's this and I did that, but that was buggy anyway.

00:44:30 ◼   ► I was like fiddling with this phone, like trying to no no go to

00:44:33 ◼   ► this camera, like trying to tell the phone what I wanted.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Um and that that's that was like the buggiest experience I think over with

00:44:41 ◼   ► this phone is just FaceTime and cameras and stuff.

00:44:43 ◼   ► 'Cause there's like what there's three cameras on this thing.

00:44:47 ◼   ► Like not three like different lenses and cam like there's three places where the

00:44:51 ◼   ► cameras are.

00:44:52 ◼   ► Um so yeah, it's it's a hard challenge for them.

00:44:56 ◼   ► Um and I So I I've been thinking about like a lot about how

00:45:01 ◼   ► the experience of developers trying to adopt to this.

00:45:04 ◼   ► And like like you mentioned at the at the top of this conversation, like

00:45:10 ◼   ► you would I would maybe work on a UI and then you would see

00:45:14 ◼   ► it and you were like, Yeah, this is better.

00:45:16 ◼   ► Even though you worked on it, like it I think all of us designers,

00:45:22 ◼   ► or like none if you don't consider yourself a designer, like developer developers.

00:45:26 ◼   ► I uh I I always struggle like separating these two things like separate things.

00:45:31 ◼   ► Anyway, but like I think we all share that final destination of like I

00:45:38 ◼   ► can look at something and tell you if it's good or not.

00:45:41 ◼   ► So even if you have incredible taste or you you consider yourself like I

00:45:46 ◼   ► I'm I don't know any design uh design stuff.

00:45:48 ◼   ► I I'm good at this, I don't know anything.

00:45:50 ◼   ► I think you still can look at something and appreciate like this feels nice

00:45:56 ◼   ► or not.

00:45:57 ◼   ► The difference is then like knowing what makes it good in how can I

00:46:04 ◼   ► make it good.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Like so I worked on a UI,

00:46:09 ◼   ► we both looked at it, I guess, and then we were both like, Yeah,

00:46:12 ◼   ► this is this is good, like this, like this is better.

00:46:14 ◼   ► But maybe uh like I because I'm a designer by trait, like I I

00:46:20 ◼   ► I know how to get it there

00:46:23 ◼   ► and I can see the end result before getting there.

00:46:27 ◼   ► You know what I mean like I can see it and I can work

00:46:29 ◼   ► towards it.

00:46:30 ◼   ► And maybe sometimes um if you're not a designer, you cannot see it.

00:46:35 ◼   ► Like you don't know exactly where to aim.

00:46:38 ◼   ► But if you see it, you know, oh yeah, this is this is it.

00:46:42 ◼   ► Um And so that usually that's like a that's like the the main difference

00:46:46 ◼   ► between someone who's been working as a designer and someone who hasn't it's like

00:46:50 ◼   ► I kinda know what to tweak and know what what kind of buttons to

00:46:54 ◼   ► push.

00:46:55 ◼   ► Maybe you don't.

00:46:56 ◼   ► Um but hopefully we'll both be very happy at the end.

00:47:00 ◼   ► With this phone, I feel like I'm at I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm in

00:47:06 ◼   ► the place of like a non-designer where

00:47:10 ◼   ► hopefully if I see the end result I can say if it's feels good

00:47:14 ◼   ► or not.

00:47:15 ◼   ► But right now, oftentimes I don't know where to go.

00:47:19 ◼   ► Like I don't know what buttons to push.

00:47:22 ◼   ► Uh so there's a lot of experimentation.

00:47:25 ◼   ► Like what about this?

00:47:26 ◼   ► Nah, what about that?

00:47:28 ◼   ► I guess better in this way but worse in that other way.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Like it's a lot of like trying things and and and just trust your

00:47:36 ◼   ► own judgment, trust your own feels and vibes, like this is this better or

00:47:41 ◼   ► not?

00:47:41 ◼   ► And and I haven't it's very rare that I see uh design like a

00:47:46 ◼   ► UI uh I don't know pattern or something that I'm like, yep, this is

00:47:51 ◼   ► better in every way.

00:47:53 ◼   ► This is the correct answer.

00:47:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:55 ◼   ► There's trade offs.

00:47:56 ◼   ► Like, okay, yeah, I see it.

00:47:57 ◼   ► It's better, maybe in this context, but it wouldn't work in my context or

00:48:01 ◼   ► whatever.

00:48:02 ◼   ► Um and luckily we're also in a phase uh you know in in a

00:48:06 ◼   ► time and place where with LLMs it's very easy to experiment.

00:48:11 ◼   ► So luckily we can quickly like see different layouts, see different designs, and then

00:48:18 ◼   ► make the judgment call there.

00:48:20 ◼   ► Um but yeah like I feel very

00:48:24 ◼   ► well not powerless.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Like I just feel like

00:48:28 ◼   ► you stripped out all the tools that I have.

00:48:30 ◼   ► Like I don't have my tool belt.

00:48:31 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:48:32 ◼   ► So like I have to work, you know, in this thing without any of

00:48:35 ◼   ► my tools that I've been crafting and practicing with for s for years and

00:48:39 ◼   ► years.

00:48:39 ◼   ► So I feel like a novice again, like an amateur.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Sure.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Which is kind of fun.

00:48:44 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:48:45 ◼   ► Um but yeah, it's I think if if someone listening to this and maybe

00:48:49 ◼   ► you're struggling 'cause you don't really know how to adapt things and then usually

00:48:53 ◼   ► we just look at Apple's apps and like that's that's a great starting point.

00:48:58 ◼   ► But even Apple's apps are like, well, depends on the app.

00:49:01 ◼   ► And and they tried a bunch of stuff.

00:49:03 ◼   ► And I think if you were to ask Apple's designers, like, hey, do you

00:49:06 ◼   ► is this good?

00:49:07 ◼   ► Do you are you happy with where we are right now?

00:49:10 ◼   ► I would guess they were like, well no, I mean we did our best,

00:49:13 ◼   ► but we're also learning, right?

00:49:15 ◼   ► I think we're all learning.

00:49:17 ◼   ► Um So yeah, don't don't don't feel discouraged or like don't feel terrible about

00:49:23 ◼   ► your own sense of design skills because hey, even me as a designer, I

00:49:27 ◼   ► feel like my design skills are not helping me right now.

00:49:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:31 ◼   ► And I in some ways what you said there, it made me almost gave

00:49:34 ◼   ► me this feeling of like I think there is a it's it's a different

00:49:37 ◼   ► in like in in the fancy like like like designy artwork, it's like it's

00:49:41 ◼   ► a different medium.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Like it it in things you've learned from other mediums, like if you were

00:49:45 ◼   ► a painter and now you're trying to do sculpture or you were sculpture and

00:49:48 ◼   ► now you're trying to do painting, like there are parts of that that I

00:49:51 ◼   ► think are sort of transferable that there are certain universal

00:49:56 ◼   ► things that are always going to be sort of part of that.

00:49:58 ◼   ► But there's also an element of

00:50:01 ◼   ► the medium is different.

00:50:03 ◼   ► And if the medium changes, then you're inherently going to have to apply apply

00:50:07 ◼   ► those skills differently and learn and pick up a bunch of new skills that

00:50:11 ◼   ► you just didn't have otherwise.

00:50:14 ◼   ► And that's very much how I feel like coming into this.

00:50:16 ◼   ► Like I I generally would consider myself a d a developer, not a designer,

00:50:20 ◼   ► just because that's not my background.

00:50:22 ◼   ► My background was computer science and coding and things like that.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And I've learned design the hard way of sort of like picking it up.

00:50:30 ◼   ► But it is very much something where I I totally in some ways I

00:50:33 ◼   ► enjoy that the duo.

00:50:35 ◼   ► It I don't feel as sort of out of my depth because I think

00:50:39 ◼   ► everyone's out of their depth.

00:50:40 ◼   ► And so we're all kind of struggling through this and kind of working our

00:50:43 ◼   ► way there collectively and together.

00:50:46 ◼   ► So there's a little bit of comfort in that.

00:50:47 ◼   ► But I I appreciate the sort of uh um yeah, the reassurance that it

00:50:52 ◼   ► is not i if you feel a bit lost on this, that that is

00:50:56 ◼   ► a natural feeling rather than a uh impossible feeling or something that you should

00:51:01 ◼   ► feel like a bit weird about where it's like under traditional iPhone development, like

00:51:05 ◼   ► the rules are more established.

00:51:06 ◼   ► If you want to learn how to do it well, there's so many great

00:51:09 ◼   ► examples that you can imitate and copy and get good at by looking at.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Like there's design, you know, other some there's designers who have made like the

00:51:17 ◼   ► platonic ideal of almost every general style of app at this point.

00:51:22 ◼   ► And so optimizing and trying to copy one of those, I think, is so

00:51:26 ◼   ► much more of a sort of viable and reasonable.

00:51:28 ◼   ► Whereas here it's the you know it's completely open.

00:51:31 ◼   ► It's this whole new medium that no one really knows what they're doing with

00:51:34 ◼   ► that uh that reminds me of like um like uh uh I used to

00:51:39 ◼   ► play music uh in a band and stuff and I I use I played

00:51:43 ◼   ► bass mostly.

00:51:45 ◼   ► And I know how to play guitar and stuff.

00:51:47 ◼   ► I know just acoustic guitar, I'll play some chords, it's fine.

00:51:50 ◼   ► But uh recently I've realized that actually I never I I wanna actually learn

00:51:54 ◼   ► how to be a good guitar player.

00:51:56 ◼   ► So uh my thinking was like now with uh a agentic coding and uh

00:52:02 ◼   ► there's a lot of dead spots.

00:52:05 ◼   ► Like there's a lot of like five minutes here, eight minutes here, ten minutes

00:52:08 ◼   ► here, where you're waiting for a prompt.

00:52:10 ◼   ► And the way I've been me and I assume a lot of us in

00:52:13 ◼   ► the industry, the way we've been trying to fill in these spots is just

00:52:16 ◼   ► by working on something else.

00:52:18 ◼   ► And so I end up finding myself working on three, four different things at

00:52:23 ◼   ► the same time.

00:52:24 ◼   ► And that is just my brain is like not keeping up.

00:52:26 ◼   ► Like it's just mushy all the time.

00:52:28 ◼   ► So I I I was like, these five minutes here and there, I'll just

00:52:33 ◼   ► practice guitar.

00:52:34 ◼   ► Like instead of working on four things at the same time, I'll work on

00:52:37 ◼   ► two.

00:52:38 ◼   ► And then with those five minutes here and there, I'll just practice the craft,

00:52:41 ◼   ► an instrument.

00:52:42 ◼   ► But that was thing of like I know how to play an instrument really

00:52:46 ◼   ► well.

00:52:47 ◼   ► Some of that knowledge transfers over to a different instrument, like

00:52:53 ◼   ► Chords, notes, you know, like there's there's but then a lot of it also

00:52:58 ◼   ► doesn't transfer, right?

00:52:59 ◼   ► Like if I know if I'm a guitar player, I can't pick up a

00:53:02 ◼   ► saxophone and play.

00:53:03 ◼   ► Um so that that feels like similar to this, like yes, if you're a

00:53:08 ◼   ► designer, if you've worked or if you've been working on this a long time

00:53:12 ◼   ► on iPhone, Apple platforms, there's knowledge that is very much transferable, but some of

00:53:18 ◼   ► it it's not.

00:53:19 ◼   ► And it's like a brand new thing, a brand new instrument that now you

00:53:21 ◼   ► have to learn how to play.

00:53:23 ◼   ► Um yeah.

00:53:24 ◼   ► No, I think that's a g an excellent analogy actually.

00:53:27 ◼   ► Just in the sense of like

00:53:29 ◼   ► both are playing music, but and some of the things apply the same in

00:53:33 ◼   ► the same in both ways.

00:53:34 ◼   ► Like if you learned to read music and you're changing instrument, well, like the

00:53:38 ◼   ► you know, the the staff and where the notes go and what the different

00:53:42 ◼   ► symbols mean, those things carry through.

00:53:44 ◼   ► But being being a good had to playing a new instrument is gonna be

00:53:49 ◼   ► different.

00:53:50 ◼   ► Is not this natural like, oh well, because you could play the flute, you

00:53:54 ◼   ► could absolutely play the bassoon.

00:53:56 ◼   ► Like, no, you it just that isn't the way this works.

00:53:58 ◼   ► Even though the music's the same, you know exactly what the note is supposed

00:54:02 ◼   ► to be, you have to actually sort of get good at that.

00:54:05 ◼   ► And and I think it's probably a good place to just sort of wind

00:54:09 ◼   ► the the thought of down.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Like it's the sense of, yeah, like this is the messy part.

00:54:14 ◼   ► And I think it is going to be messy for a while.

00:54:18 ◼   ► And I think that's in some ways I find very reassuring that it isn't

00:54:23 ◼   ► just like as someone who has a lot of like the like imposter syndrome

00:54:27 ◼   ► about the being a did not a designer kind of feeling.

00:54:29 ◼   ► But like it's nice in some ways for this device where it's like, I'm

00:54:32 ◼   ► just I'm just I'm just enjoying having fun, exploring stuff, trying things out, seeing

00:54:37 ◼   ► how they work.

00:54:38 ◼   ► And the messiness is inherent rather than a sign of like a deficiency or

00:54:45 ◼   ► a problem or something that like the like every every app I've looked at

00:54:49 ◼   ► from you know there are apps that are from you know like I mean

00:54:52 ◼   ► our apps we were just you know designed by one of my favorite designers

00:54:55 ◼   ► to the all the all the apps, Apple's apps, every app, like it there's

00:55:00 ◼   ► always these trade-offs and these weird things that we're having to kind of wrestle

00:55:03 ◼   ► with.

00:55:03 ◼   ► And I enjoy the space for that.

00:55:06 ◼   ► Like it feels like we're we're much in the practice room if we're going

00:55:09 ◼   ► to extend the music metaphor still.

00:55:11 ◼   ► And we haven't gotten to something that is like the you know, the symphony

00:55:15 ◼   ► that you can perform yet.

00:55:17 ◼   ► And I don't know when that will be or if that's even possible.

00:55:20 ◼   ► Like some of the things that we've talked about feel somewhat intractable, but they

00:55:25 ◼   ► are inherent to trying to have a device that is like five different things

00:55:30 ◼   ► at once, that it can that it you're never going to have something that

00:55:33 ◼   ► is per you know perfect in all five.

00:55:36 ◼   ► But we may just find that in the end, like the perfect way to

00:55:39 ◼   ► do that is you just don't that in the end, people will use this

00:55:42 ◼   ► device in like two different modes, and a lot of them will just fall

00:55:46 ◼   ► away, like we were saying, like the book folds, the tent mode, like the

00:55:49 ◼   ► standing up book mode, like maybe those just really aren't in practice.

00:55:53 ◼   ► That re in practice people use the outside screen and you never landscape uh

00:55:57 ◼   ► open.

00:55:58 ◼   ► And that's a much easier problem to solve than trying to have something that

00:56:02 ◼   ► is expansive and works everywhere.

00:56:04 ◼   ► But this missy this messy sort of initial point.

00:56:07 ◼   ► It's like it is exciting in a way, but it is also, yeah, I

00:56:11 ◼   ► think it is a good I feel I I l I appreciate the sort

00:56:14 ◼   ► of like uh the that that reassurance that the sort of slight incompetence I

00:56:19 ◼   ► feel on this device is an i is natural.

00:56:22 ◼   ► It is it is to be expected and is not something that uh you

00:56:26 ◼   ► know, I think is gonna go away quickly, but it is interesting because I

00:56:30 ◼   ► it is a like with so many of these things, like you were saying

00:56:33 ◼   ► with like the Vision Pro, you could just avoid it if you didn't touch

00:56:35 ◼   ► it or you didn't if it's an iPad, you just didn't want to, you

00:56:37 ◼   ► know, you didn't have to deal with it.

00:56:39 ◼   ► But this is an iPhone.

00:56:41 ◼   ► Like the the iPhone is always going to be a platform that we have

00:56:46 ◼   ► to take care of if you're if you're an Apple developer.

00:56:49 ◼   ► Like it is so big.

00:56:50 ◼   ► It is such going to be the crux.

00:56:52 ◼   ► And I have no idea how successful this device will ultimately be in the

00:56:56 ◼   ► market, whether it will be like, you know, the iPhone minis or something like

00:57:00 ◼   ► that, where it had a very small dedicated group of people, or the iPhone

00:57:04 ◼   ► Air, even from like last year, where like the iPhone, there are people who

00:57:07 ◼   ► love and adore their iPhone Airs, but there are very few of them in

00:57:12 ◼   ► in proportion.

00:57:12 ◼   ► And so you could kind of get away with um not like ignoring in

00:57:16 ◼   ► a mean way, but like it was not a thing that you had to

00:57:18 ◼   ► really consider.

00:57:19 ◼   ► And I don't know if the duo will take that path and it ends

00:57:23 ◼   ► up at just like one or two percent maybe of total users.

00:57:26 ◼   ► And so if you had a reasonable experience, like just sort of like the

00:57:30 ◼   ► build and run, it kind of does whatever, you know, you UI kit or

00:57:34 ◼   ► Swift UI want to do naturally.

00:57:36 ◼   ► Um, maybe that would be reasonable.

00:57:38 ◼   ► But I think there's definitely gonna be opportunities to do things that are are

00:57:42 ◼   ► cool and interesting.

00:57:44 ◼   ► And I think I enjoy that opportunity.

00:57:47 ◼   ► I it feels it's fun.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Like I I part of the things I enjoy about being an app developer

00:57:51 ◼   ► is thinking of new and interesting things that isn't just like dealing with solved

00:57:57 ◼   ► problems where you know I know exactly how to display the certain kinds of

00:58:01 ◼   ► displays, like we're saying, I know exactly what that should look like.

00:58:04 ◼   ► And so now it's fun to be on a platform where it's no one

00:58:07 ◼   ► knows.

00:58:07 ◼   ► And we're all finding it out together.

00:58:09 ◼   ► And I think that's just gonna be we'll have to be patient with that.

00:58:13 ◼   ► But I think it's a thing that I'm trying to do is just look

00:58:16 ◼   ► what other people do, whose you know, whose design sense I admire and trying

00:58:20 ◼   ► out lots of different.

00:58:21 ◼   ► And that's like reminds me of the old days of, you know, as someone

00:58:24 ◼   ► who's been making apps on the app on the app store since the very

00:58:27 ◼   ► beginning, I used to do exactly the same thing I would just go and

00:58:30 ◼   ► look for inspiration, kind of pick up the little trip tips and tricks and

00:58:33 ◼   ► like, ooh, I like the way they did that thing there.

00:58:37 ◼   ► And it may not be that their whole app structure works in one of

00:58:40 ◼   ► our apps, but it could be like, ooh, that little bit, that little nudge

00:58:45 ◼   ► or item or element, that could work well.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Um and that's just an exciting sort of place to be in this whole

00:58:51 ◼   ► thing.

00:58:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:53 ◼   ► It it is a source of creativity for a lot of developers right now.

00:58:57 ◼   ► Because you can do things that you couldn't.

00:59:00 ◼   ► And even you have new sensors and APIs, or actually not sensors, but uh

00:59:03 ◼   ► new APIs.

00:59:04 ◼   ► You have the hinge stuff, right?

00:59:05 ◼   ► Um

00:59:07 ◼   ► uh and we we we we haven't seen that in a while 'cause the

00:59:10 ◼   ► iPhone has been so mature.

00:59:12 ◼   ► And even like yes, iPhone minis and iPhone Airs, they're nice 'cause they were

00:59:16 ◼   ► like slightly different than the main iPhone, but iOS behaved exactly the same.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Like it it's not like, oh now I can make an app for iPhone

00:59:24 ◼   ► Air that I couldn't before.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Like that that that is not the case.

00:59:27 ◼   ► Even though if maybe market share might be a similar device or story, in

00:59:32 ◼   ► the sense that like it is a niche well, I think we'll still have

00:59:37 ◼   ► to see right how it ends up because right now people want the phone

00:59:41 ◼   ► still can't get the phone, so we'll see when that, you know, evens out.

00:59:45 ◼   ► But but so there's that there's that comparison of like yes, it might be

00:59:50 ◼   ► a niche iPhone and not the main thing you should focus on.

00:59:53 ◼   ► But in terms of like platform and device, it is a whole new beast

00:59:57 ◼   ► that can create we we have seen a lot of the like new novelty

01:00:02 ◼   ► apps that developers are y making for this phone that would not be possible

01:00:07 ◼   ► on any other iPhone uh or iPad or any other device really.

01:00:11 ◼   ► So it's been fun fun to see and yes, it does remind me of

01:00:13 ◼   ► like early App Store days.

01:00:15 ◼   ► And you know, like pull the refresh, it's always like the go to look

01:00:19 ◼   ► at this innovation and UI from a third party developer that now became a

01:00:23 ◼   ► standard.

01:00:23 ◼   ► That was what, Tweety Two?

01:00:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And I forget how many years that was into the App Store, but like

01:00:29 ◼   ► maybe two years.

01:00:31 ◼   ► It was still early.

01:00:32 ◼   ► It was a it was early but still like it was a few years

01:00:35 ◼   ► into it before.

01:00:35 ◼   ► I think it's like iOS six or five that introduced that in mail, like

01:00:39 ◼   ► w so but uh but Tweety came out before.

01:00:42 ◼   ► So anyway, even if it's like three years, which would put it at iPhone

01:00:47 ◼   ► four, I think.

01:00:49 ◼   ► Even if it was three years, that's nothing.

01:00:52 ◼   ► Like th you know th that's nothing.

01:00:55 ◼   ► Yeah, we're four days in, not four uh four years into this.

01:00:58 ◼   ► So we've got a long way to go.

01:01:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:01 ◼   ► But the these these following years are if if you like this stuff, if

01:01:04 ◼   ► you like software, if you like apps, if you like these devices, it's fun,

01:01:08 ◼   ► like to your point.

01:01:09 ◼   ► It's fun and it'll be a creative period and because there's no solution to

01:01:14 ◼   ► these problems like we have to come up with solutions.

01:01:18 ◼   ► Apple probably's gonna do the heavy lifting here 'cause it's their responsibility in a

01:01:22 ◼   ► way, but hey, we came up we can come up with uh the next

01:01:25 ◼   ► pool refresh on f that only makes sense on foldables or something.

01:01:29 ◼   ► Um so that's exciting for me at least.

01:01:32 ◼   ► That's fun.

01:01:32 ◼   ► Absolutely.

01:01:33 ◼   ► Well, thank you so much for yeah, for chatting to me about this.

01:01:37 ◼   ► And yeah, yeah, it's a I think yeah, it's a fun time and I

01:01:39 ◼   ► look forward to exploring it with you as we kind of keep adapting our

01:01:42 ◼   ► apps and kind of seeing where this goes.

01:01:44 ◼   ► It'll be a a wild ride, I suspect