00:00:10 ◼ ► So before we dive into our main topic for this week, which is going to be talking about
00:00:14 ◼ ► how our summers went with iOS 13, some sort of last minute rumor roundup things, we just
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00:03:01 ◼ ► event that Apple's going to have this year, which it's widely expected in which they will
00:03:12 ◼ ► And almost certainly giving some indication as to when iOS 13 and watchOS 6 or tvOS and
00:03:30 ◼ ► And it seemed like a good time to both look back and how the summer went, how iOS 13 has
00:03:34 ◼ ► treated us, as well as some of the talk through a little bit of kind of the last minute rumors
00:03:50 ◼ ► Like, you know, what I plan to do this summer, what actually happened this summer was very,
00:04:01 ◼ ► And what I've basically done, which shouldn't be news for our listeners, I've talked about
00:04:24 ◼ ► There's a few tiny bugs that I'm trying to fix, but they're really inconsequential, and
00:04:52 ◼ ► Instapaper too, is I always support the latest version, and when the new OS comes out in
00:05:01 ◼ ► And like, the old versions might continue to work on the old phones, but like, whatever
00:05:17 ◼ ► surface area that I have to do, and I've recommended before, I've recommended to our audience that
00:05:53 ◼ ► And for that, that's for a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of the show, but
00:05:57 ◼ ► so, if I limit myself to only iOS 13 for the latest version, it's more and more limiting
00:06:12 ◼ ► In a few months time, there will be much more adoption of iOS 13, but assuming it's going
00:06:35 ◼ ► I'm choosing not to be there on day one, and that's also in part because most of the new
00:07:00 ◼ ► setting or set it differently, because I think that's the kind of user base I have, that
00:07:07 ◼ ► And so dark mode, I feel like I don't really need to do because it's already super easy
00:07:13 ◼ ► to switch overcast to dark mode and to use a little two finger gesture to switch it back
00:07:25 ◼ ► So dark mode isn't that important to me, but it's also a lot of work to adopt the system
00:07:46 ◼ ► So it's basically a lot of work for something that I don't think is that urgent for my app.
00:07:53 ◼ ► And so what was urgent for my app, what started out as like, I was having a lot of crashes
00:07:59 ◼ ► and bugs and server load issues earlier this year and earlier in the summer, and so I wanted,
00:08:26 ◼ ► I really wanted to make sure the iOS 12 version was solid, and really bring down the crash
00:08:30 ◼ ► rate, because it was getting a little uncomfortable, so bring down the crash rate and make sure
00:08:35 ◼ ► everything was working and redo the sync system so that it was much easier on the server so
00:08:40 ◼ ► that I could support these users for a very long time, because iOS 13 also cuts off some
00:08:59 ◼ ► more solid, and meanwhile I've been maintaining my iOS 13 branch off to the side, and every
00:09:05 ◼ ► time I'm like waiting for a test flight review for my iOS 12 branch, I take that time to
00:09:11 ◼ ► merge in those changes into the iOS 13 branch and make any 13 requests, or make any 13 adjustments
00:09:17 ◼ ► needed, you know, adopt some of the 13 APIs when I can, but I've been mostly working on
00:09:22 ◼ ► the 12 branch all this time, because not only has 13 felt like it wasn't that urgent of
00:09:27 ◼ ► a thing, and not only am I afraid of low adoption at first, so I don't really want to require
00:09:31 ◼ ► it really soon, but also all the iOS 13 stuff has just felt like building on quicksand.
00:09:39 ◼ ► You know, it's been, as we've mentioned, it's been a pretty rough beta season for, like,
00:09:43 ◼ ► you know, stability, quality, change, you know, I guess like, yeah, like changing stuff
00:09:49 ◼ ► under you, and a lot of the new stuff that I thought I was going to adopt really quickly,
00:09:53 ◼ ► like SwiftUI, making a whole new watch out, like, SwiftUI is super young, and I'd rather
00:09:58 ◼ ► wait a little bit, maybe like, maybe a year, I'd rather wait until it's like more stable,
00:10:03 ◼ ► because where it is now takes a lot of effort, and a lot of upkeep and maintenance, because
00:10:08 ◼ ► you have to keep keeping up with all the changes as it matures, and as it changes, just like
00:10:13 ◼ ► Swift was, you know, when it was in its first year, and so I could choose to either build,
00:10:24 ◼ ► with all the churn of that, and all the overhead of that, and the frustration, or I could focus
00:10:30 ◼ ► on the core app and defer a lot of that work until later, and because most of that work
00:10:59 ◼ ► me, I've never done this before in any summer, but I think this was the right move for me
00:11:04 ◼ ► this summer, and this doesn't apply to every app either, but I think for me, I think this
00:11:08 ◼ ► was the right move, and I'm basically going to adopt iOS 13 slowly over the next few months.
00:11:13 ◼ ► - Yeah, and I think, I mean, I ended up doing a very similar thing, and I think this switch
00:11:18 ◼ ► for me was the realization that in some way, like, often there's a sense of urgency about
00:11:25 ◼ ► adopting the new OS over the summer, at least that's a sense of urgency that I put on myself,
00:11:30 ◼ ► where I get this feeling that I need to adopt this by a particular date, because it's like,
00:11:44 ◼ ► almost the inverse sense of urgency was that I need to make the iOS 12 version of my app
00:12:06 ◼ ► probably this year than I have in years past, that I will probably at some point in the
00:12:11 ◼ ► next few months, move to an iOS 13 only requirement for many of my apps, because I think like
00:12:17 ◼ ► you were saying, it is overall a good thing. I think in years past, I've been a bit too,
00:12:28 ◼ ► of just challenged from for me than I need. And so I look forward to doing that. But if
00:12:45 ◼ ► it. And then like that version will be sort of frozen in time for many of my users forever.
00:13:04 ◼ ► more of the things and to see how things shake out. And like that version has runway for
00:13:10 ◼ ► you know, sort of indefinitely into the future, whereas the one that actually is actually
00:13:14 ◼ ► does have an urgent need that actually does have like a hard deadline and situations where
00:13:23 ◼ ► much the same thing, which I think does surprise me to think when I go through, I'm sure if
00:13:27 ◼ ► I go back to listen to our WBC episode, this is not necessarily what we were saying we're
00:13:31 ◼ ► going to do, but it ended up that like, I changed my mindset to, it's make iOS 12 version
00:13:36 ◼ ► really good. I've had a lot of bug fix updates, I've done a lot of features, and a lot of
00:13:57 ◼ ► phones that can't support iOS 13. So like 20% of my user base, unless they all immediately
00:14:08 ◼ ► going to be running iOS 12 for the foreseeable future. And I don't know what that looks like
00:14:12 ◼ ► in terms of, you know, if that's for the next year, for the next two years, three years,
00:14:33 ◼ ► I feel good about it. And then I think doubly so, given the weird complexity we have right
00:14:46 ◼ ► like appears as beta. But we didn't, there's just don't really seem to be changes in the
00:14:51 ◼ ► Xcode version. So Xcode seems to still be sort of targeting what was iOS 13.0. And there's
00:14:58 ◼ ► a lot of complexity and things around that that I think make even like day one support.
00:15:03 ◼ ► I don't even really know what day one support would look like. Yeah, right. Like it, which
00:15:10 ◼ ► is just like there at a certain point, it's like, I'm not going to try to hit a goal that
00:15:14 ◼ ► I can't even like describe. And I'm, you know, it's, it sounds like things have been really
00:15:22 ◼ ► me, but it's like, as on the outside, looking in, it's one of those, like, I don't know
00:15:31 ◼ ► know what I'm supposed to be trying to support. Should I be like, I have one of my testing
00:15:34 ◼ ► devices still stuck on 13.0. But if it was beta seven, I think beta six, and like, I've
00:15:41 ◼ ► turned off like any kind of updating situation for that. To try and make sure that's like,
00:15:47 ◼ ► I'm preserving this, this kind of rare thing that you can't reproduce anymore. And then
00:15:57 ◼ ► because I'm trying to make sure my you know, all my things work on all of those systems,
00:16:01 ◼ ► but like, I don't know what's just the final one, which is the one that's actually going
00:16:08 ◼ ► the like, this was a good idea, like avoiding iOS 13 for right now, waiting till things
00:16:17 ◼ ► Yeah, I didn't even think about it. You're right. Like the whole 13.0 13.1 split, that's
00:16:21 ◼ ► going to also cause headaches for developers. You know, like if something goes weird only
00:16:25 ◼ ► on 13.0 and you can't install it anymore. Yeah, that's man. This is why like, you know,
00:16:43 ◼ ► version will continue to run very well until 13 settles down and like, and by waiting a
00:16:54 ◼ ► of 13.0 as the base target. And that I think, or even 13.2, depending on how long it takes,
00:17:13 ◼ ► well too that I think the mindset that I had previously is coming from a time when each
00:17:20 ◼ ► progressive version of the OS was major, significant, and like essential to adopt right away. That
00:17:43 ◼ ► things changed in the UIs and there's this like sense of these broad, these broad changes.
00:17:49 ◼ ► But like from a user facing perspective, iOS change iOS updates are much more incremental
00:17:53 ◼ ► now and they're much more like there's just less urgency for there on day one. And I think
00:17:59 ◼ ► and like they said, dark mode is the mo main like user facing feature. And honestly, I'm
00:18:11 ◼ ► it takes for the awareness of dark mode to percolate out into the world and be something
00:18:16 ◼ ► that people are looking for. And if you support and how much even there dark mode is going
00:18:21 ◼ ► to be something where people are doing the, like you can have it scheduled to switch back
00:18:25 ◼ ► and forth. Like is that the way people are going to use it where it's like dark at night,
00:18:30 ◼ ► light during the day? Because if that's the case, then like the way we support it in our
00:18:33 ◼ ► apps is much more nuanced. But if people are mostly just going to be like, Oh, I like dark
00:18:37 ◼ ► apps and just like hit dark all the time and just leave it there. Yeah. Then it doesn't
00:18:41 ◼ ► even matter if you support theming currently, then you basically do support iOS 13 dark
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00:20:06 ◼ ► start to come, I think there's an interesting rumor that I just wanted to touch on that
00:20:10 ◼ ► I think is it seems like we finally hit the point where Apple may release their own sleep
00:20:22 ◼ ► up in the rumor mill where now it is not just like something that's coming down the road
00:20:26 ◼ ► that seems to be something that is more eminent. And who knows if that means next Tuesday we
00:20:36 ◼ ► week than it has been for a while. It's fair enough. And that's the same with all these
00:20:40 ◼ ► rumors stuff. And of course that is interesting for me as someone who makes a sleep tracking
00:20:46 ◼ ► application for the Apple Watch. And what's slightly comedic for me is so back in January
00:20:55 ◼ ► of 2017, I wrote a blog post called "Inevitable Sherlocking" where I talked about how I thought
00:21:04 ◼ ► that Apple was likely going to be Sherlocking Sleepless Plus that summer at WWDC. It seemed
00:21:16 ◼ ► things that I was like, "This is coming, this is happening, what do I do about this if I
00:21:20 ◼ ► feel like I'm going to be sort of Sherlocked or replaced by a system function right away?"
00:21:25 ◼ ► Three years later, essentially, this is now finally maybe something that is going to be
00:21:30 ◼ ► coming. So I was a little wrong on the timeline for that, which worked out well. I got to
00:21:35 ◼ ► enjoy the last almost three years of Sleepless Plus without there being a native built-in
00:21:54 ◼ ► time and what does that mean for my application? Because the weird thing, and part of why I
00:22:00 ◼ ► wanted to say it today is because it's easier to say it now than it will be after it's actually
00:22:04 ◼ ► out in the world, is that I am looking forward to Apple Sherlocking my sleep tracking. I
00:22:10 ◼ ► think it will be good overall for Sleepless Plus. My prediction is that it will actually
00:22:15 ◼ ► end up being an overall net positive for me and my users as a result of Apple doing native
00:22:28 ◼ ► because I think in general when Apple is able to bring all of their weight behind a feature
00:22:37 ◼ ► and bring that to a device, it raises awareness of it, it becomes part of the marketing, it
00:22:44 ◼ ► becomes part of the posters in the Apple Store, it becomes part of the onboarding experience,
00:22:49 ◼ ► it becomes this thing that people then start to expect as part of the device. That sleep
00:22:58 ◼ ► for a lot of people that is something that they think about right now. From my experience
00:23:04 ◼ ► of interacting with users, there's a lot of surprise that sleep tracking is even something
00:23:08 ◼ ► that you can do now, even though you've been able to do it for over three years with third
00:23:14 ◼ ► party applications. And so I look forward to that awareness that people will draw people
00:23:20 ◼ ► towards sleep tracking and towards apps like mine. And I think what it means is A, that
00:23:25 ◼ ► people are going to have better data because no matter how robust my system is for doing
00:23:29 ◼ ► and analyzing your night and trying to estimate your sleep, Apple is going to be able to do
00:23:34 ◼ ► a better job because they have all the privileges that I don't, they can run during the night,
00:23:43 ◼ ► And so I think they're going to do a better job, which means that the user's data is going
00:23:46 ◼ ► to be better, which means that the opportunity then becomes for me to make my application
00:23:55 ◼ ► much more about analyzing that data and understanding that data and visualizing that data. And kind
00:24:01 ◼ ► of amusingly, when I started, like, so I'm in the last sort of steps of submitting Sleepless
00:24:13 ◼ ► like about, like I sort of had my first test flight approval come through. And then like,
00:24:27 ◼ ► ultimately, it's like this update is all about trends and visualization and trying to more
00:24:32 ◼ ► clearly show people data. And so presumably, Apple is going to throw their data into health
00:24:39 ◼ ► comes and visualize it to the user. And so ultimately, hopefully, that will make me that
00:24:44 ◼ ► makes Sleepless Plus even more valuable. Because the thing that is ultimately, you know, like,
00:24:50 ◼ ► Oh, ultimately, I think people use Sleepless Plus because of the way I visualize it, not
00:24:54 ◼ ► because of the data that I'm providing, like, you can't use it without the data. So I have
00:25:07 ◼ ► that loop. And I'm finally getting Sherlocked. And I feel good about it. Like it's just slightly
00:25:13 ◼ ► surprising to me in some ways, but is ultimately, you know, let's see how you know, in two weeks
00:25:32 ◼ ► does a big, you know, push maybe this this fall about sleep tracking on the watch could
00:25:37 ◼ ► That's a good way to look at it. I mean, because like, you know, like, when when I first saw
00:25:41 ◼ ► the sleep tracking headline blow by, you know, a few days ago, I was like, Oh, too bad for
00:25:45 ◼ ► too bad for Dave, this is gonna be a problem. But yeah, like, I think you're looking at
00:25:53 ◼ ► such an amazing job visualizing everything that nobody wants your app anymore, it's still
00:25:57 ◼ ► probably gonna work on the latest watch anyway. So you have you have a long time before before
00:26:12 ◼ ► alternate visualizations or alternate layouts or alternate controls of built in functions.
00:26:19 ◼ ► And so it's not really going to destroy this app of yours. If Apple if Apple provides the
00:26:26 ◼ ► data. And in fact, I think you're right, like Apple's data will probably be better than
00:26:34 ◼ ► the ecosystem of third party sleep app because there's like there's a handful of them out
00:26:38 ◼ ► there. And right now, it's up to you of like how you interpret the data to decide where
00:26:42 ◼ ► you asleep or not or whatever. But if Apple is going to make that available through health
00:26:46 ◼ ► kit and a standardized way using, you know, better sensor reading and better algorithms
00:26:50 ◼ ► and everything else, then that kind of that kind of takes away that competitive difference
00:27:05 ◼ ► above that layer. And I think you can compete very well in that area because you already
00:27:13 ◼ ► Yeah. And I think too, I think to your point about the device support, my suspicion, and
00:27:27 ◼ ► the new watch and the series for watch. And that's based on just in there's been a couple
00:27:33 ◼ ► of things in watch OS six where it they only are available on the series for watch, which
00:27:42 ◼ ► makes me think that that may be a way that they are segmenting capability. And my suspicion
00:27:48 ◼ ► is that series four will still be available for sale. When if series five comes out, it
00:27:54 ◼ ► creates this nice, clear marketing message of like any Apple watch you buy now will support
00:28:01 ◼ ► sleep tracking. So you don't have this slight necessity, which is, you know, maybe they're
00:28:05 ◼ ► not getting as much of the potential up sale there. But like, I don't know, there's a clarity
00:28:22 ◼ ► tracking, their friends can do sleep tracking, can I do sleep tracking? It's like, Yeah,
00:28:30 ◼ ► people on the new watches can use the new method. So anyway, it's an interesting opportunity.
00:28:34 ◼ ► And it's like, either I'm slightly out there, I'm just deluding myself, because the day has
00:28:38 ◼ ► finally come that, you know, this this life, this app reaches its end, or hopefully, it's
00:28:44 ◼ ► just it's a positive inflection point. And it's going to kind of hit up from here. Because
00:28:49 ◼ ► I can finally put it, you know, like put put aside the parts that I was never very good
00:28:52 ◼ ► at that, like the deep data analysis is not my is not my strong suit. The visualization
00:29:03 ◼ ► clear. And that was I think what sleep is plus, you know, sort of is and is it all about.
00:29:07 ◼ ► So we'll see. Don't forget confetti. Thank you for listening, everybody. And we'll talk