Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar,

00:00:01 ◼   ► a show about independent iOS app development.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm Mark Orment.

00:00:05 ◼   ► - And I'm David Smith.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes,

00:00:08 ◼   ► so let's get started.

00:00:10 ◼   ► So we are both back from WWDC, or at least from San Jose.

00:00:15 ◼   ► - I think we can call it WWDC.

00:00:16 ◼   ► I mean, I was there.

00:00:17 ◼   ► - Sure, sure.

00:00:18 ◼   ► You were there, I just, I didn't wanna--

00:00:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, you had a ticket, but I didn't.

00:00:23 ◼   ► And honestly, I have to say,

00:00:24 ◼   ► this was the first time I've ever not had a ticket,

00:00:27 ◼   ► but gone anyway.

00:00:29 ◼   ► And I gotta say, it went really well.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Now, this isn't to say this will be for everybody.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I think one, like, it took me eight years of going

00:00:38 ◼   ► before I was comfortable enough

00:00:40 ◼   ► to go without a ticket myself.

00:00:42 ◼   ► You know, you kinda have to, on some level,

00:00:45 ◼   ► build up like a social graph there,

00:00:48 ◼   ► and I don't mean in the Facebook sense, I can't say.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Like, you have to have like a social net

00:00:52 ◼   ► that you're walking into,

00:00:53 ◼   ► so that like, you can be outside of the conference

00:00:56 ◼   ► and run into people you know, and say hi,

00:00:58 ◼   ► and have something else to do.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Otherwise, you'll just like, you know,

00:01:02 ◼   ► sit in your hotel room all day.

00:01:03 ◼   ► And so for most people,

00:01:04 ◼   ► I still do recommend getting conference tickets,

00:01:06 ◼   ► whether it's to WDC, or Layers, or AltConf,

00:01:10 ◼   ► or any of the other conferences that are around there.

00:01:12 ◼   ► I suggest having something to anchor you,

00:01:14 ◼   ► as like the main thing you're doing

00:01:17 ◼   ► during the day that you're there.

00:01:19 ◼   ► So I wouldn't recommend the ticketless route to everybody,

00:01:22 ◼   ► but I will say that if you have other things you can do,

00:01:26 ◼   ► or people there to see, it's really nice.

00:01:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think it's probably too,

00:01:30 ◼   ► is just having a good, clear understanding

00:01:32 ◼   ► of what your goals are for being out there.

00:01:35 ◼   ► If your goal is to meet people,

00:01:37 ◼   ► and to spend time in those kind of contexts,

00:01:41 ◼   ► where it's more of the like,

00:01:43 ◼   ► in the hotel bar, hanging out kind of context,

00:01:45 ◼   ► or having meals, or like, networking kind of stuff,

00:01:49 ◼   ► it makes a lot more sense.

00:01:51 ◼   ► So certainly then, like, if your goal is to deeply learn

00:01:55 ◼   ► about technology stuff, then having a ticket to some event

00:02:00 ◼   ► that makes sense for you.

00:02:02 ◼   ► Yeah, like you said,

00:02:02 ◼   ► I mean, there's so many different events,

00:02:04 ◼   ► and who knows if it's gonna,

00:02:05 ◼   ► it'll be more or less next year.

00:02:09 ◼   ► 'Cause I mean, it seemed like this year,

00:02:12 ◼   ► every year it seems to be expanding,

00:02:14 ◼   ► the number of different events, and conferences, and things.

00:02:16 ◼   ► And in some ways I wonder if being in San Jose,

00:02:19 ◼   ► it'll actually even continue to grow,

00:02:21 ◼   ► because from what I understood anyway,

00:02:23 ◼   ► like the costs were much less crazy

00:02:26 ◼   ► than in downtown San Francisco to like rent a ballroom

00:02:30 ◼   ► in a hotel or something, was a little less crazy.

00:02:34 ◼   ► So who knows, it may continue to expand.

00:02:36 ◼   ► But I mean, it was definitely a good week, and I enjoyed,

00:02:39 ◼   ► I mean, I would definitely thank you to all the listeners

00:02:41 ◼   ► who introduced themselves, like that is,

00:02:43 ◼   ► one of the highlights of the week for me

00:02:45 ◼   ► is always just to interact with people

00:02:48 ◼   ► who listen to the show, because each week

00:02:51 ◼   ► we just sit down and record,

00:02:53 ◼   ► we're just talking to each other,

00:02:54 ◼   ► and we just like put a file on a web service,

00:02:57 ◼   ► and then it's like, it goes and gets downloaded,

00:03:00 ◼   ► and there's not a lot of,

00:03:01 ◼   ► it's nice to interact with people

00:03:04 ◼   ► who are on the other side of that,

00:03:06 ◼   ► and who enjoy the show, and honestly,

00:03:08 ◼   ► even just to hear why you would like the show.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Not to say that there are no reasons for you

00:03:13 ◼   ► to like the show, but it's nice to actually

00:03:15 ◼   ► hear what they are. (Bridget laughs)

00:03:17 ◼   ► And so it's helpful to know where to sort of tailor the show

00:03:21 ◼   ► and to understand at least why people like it.

00:03:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, and to wrap up the WBCC Experience section here,

00:03:29 ◼   ► I will also say that it is, I really am enjoying that.

00:03:32 ◼   ► So one of the downsides of not having a ticket

00:03:35 ◼   ► and not going to the conference is that when you go,

00:03:39 ◼   ► you have blocked out these days, this week,

00:03:43 ◼   ► that your only job is to watch those sessions officially.

00:03:47 ◼   ► You know, and you can do other stuff at night,

00:03:48 ◼   ► but like, your job during the day

00:03:50 ◼   ► is to watch those sessions.

00:03:51 ◼   ► The rest of your life is hopefully

00:03:53 ◼   ► not going to interfere on that time.

00:03:55 ◼   ► There's nothing else you're there to do.

00:03:56 ◼   ► You're there to do that.

00:03:57 ◼   ► So as a result, you tend to watch a lot of sessions.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And you know, it's always harder when you're at home

00:04:03 ◼   ► or when you're at a different conference,

00:04:05 ◼   ► it's harder to block out that time

00:04:08 ◼   ► to actually go and watch the session videos.

00:04:10 ◼   ► 'Cause Apple makes them all available almost immediately.

00:04:12 ◼   ► Like usually by the next day, the videos are up.

00:04:15 ◼   ► And so you can, you know, go home

00:04:19 ◼   ► or even be home at the same time and like live stream them.

00:04:22 ◼   ► Like you can watch them without going to the conference.

00:04:25 ◼   ► But I find I always have a very hard time

00:04:27 ◼   ► actually motivating myself to do that.

00:04:29 ◼   ► So I've actually taken the last couple days

00:04:31 ◼   ► and what I did was I went through the session list

00:04:35 ◼   ► and I wrote down the numbers of every session

00:04:39 ◼   ► I was interested in or that even might be interesting to me.

00:04:42 ◼   ► And I used, there's a wonderful script called WWDC Downloader

00:04:46 ◼   ► that's on GitHub that usually gets updated

00:04:48 ◼   ► every year for every new thing.

00:04:49 ◼   ► And it can download all of the videos for you

00:04:52 ◼   ► and all the session slides, PDFs and everything else.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Or and you can specify certain ones to download.

00:04:58 ◼   ► So I fed that list of session numbers

00:05:01 ◼   ► as an argument to this WWDC Downloader script.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And so now I have a giant folder full of

00:05:07 ◼   ► something like 40 sessions, something like that,

00:05:11 ◼   ► that I'm watching.

00:05:12 ◼   ► And this is my to-do folder.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Like when I watch something and then I take notes on it

00:05:16 ◼   ► and I'm watching it and when it's done I delete it.

00:05:18 ◼   ► And my goal is to get through this folder

00:05:19 ◼   ► in the next few days.

00:05:21 ◼   ► And like you said, yesterday I watched

00:05:22 ◼   ► like probably six or seven sessions.

00:05:24 ◼   ► And so one of the best things about doing this at home

00:05:28 ◼   ► and not watching them in person in the conference

00:05:32 ◼   ► is that you can skip around, you can watch them

00:05:35 ◼   ► in whatever order you want to.

00:05:37 ◼   ► Within the videos you can skip around

00:05:39 ◼   ► and you can play them faster than 1X.

00:05:42 ◼   ► And this is a massive time saver

00:05:45 ◼   ► because the WWDC sessions are understandably

00:05:50 ◼   ► given at a fairly slow pace with pretty low

00:05:53 ◼   ► information density for most of their time

00:05:56 ◼   ► that they're spending.

00:05:57 ◼   ► There's the big introduction at the beginning,

00:05:59 ◼   ► there's the wrap up at the end.

00:06:00 ◼   ► They have like, oh here's the four things

00:06:02 ◼   ► we're gonna cover today.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And so there's often times demos that you might

00:06:07 ◼   ► be able to skip if it's not that relevant.

00:06:10 ◼   ► So like there's a lot of padding in those talks.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And there's reasons why they do it.

00:06:15 ◼   ► A lot of people they are beginners

00:06:17 ◼   ► or it's their first time at WWDC at least.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Or they might even be entirely new to iOS programming

00:06:22 ◼   ► or programming in general.

00:06:23 ◼   ► A lot of people their English isn't their first language

00:06:25 ◼   ► so it helps to talk a little bit more slowly

00:06:27 ◼   ► to help more people understand them.

00:06:29 ◼   ► And so there's lots of reasons why they do it

00:06:31 ◼   ► the way they do.

00:06:32 ◼   ► But if you want things at a faster pace

00:06:35 ◼   ► you can download the videos.

00:06:36 ◼   ► And a lot of people don't know this,

00:06:37 ◼   ► in QuickTime Player you can play them faster than 1X.

00:06:40 ◼   ► It's totally hidden.

00:06:41 ◼   ► But if you hold down option and click

00:06:44 ◼   ► the fast forward button as it's playing,

00:06:46 ◼   ► it increments it by .1X increments

00:06:49 ◼   ► and it keeps playing with the audio.

00:06:51 ◼   ► And I think you can play up to 2X before it mutes the audio.

00:06:55 ◼   ► So I can burn through these at like 1.5, 1.6X

00:06:59 ◼   ► and be totally understandable because they're taking

00:07:01 ◼   ► such a slow pace for the people in the room.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And you can burn through a lot of sessions

00:07:05 ◼   ► and get all the information you really want out of them

00:07:09 ◼   ► in far less time than actually attending the conference.

00:07:12 ◼   ► So I find it actually incredibly nice

00:07:14 ◼   ► to watch the sessions this way

00:07:16 ◼   ► as long as you have the discipline

00:07:18 ◼   ► to actually block out time to do it.

00:07:20 ◼   ► And there's no better time than right now to do that

00:07:23 ◼   ► because as the summer goes on you're gonna get

00:07:24 ◼   ► more and more things that you're supposed to be doing

00:07:26 ◼   ► or the iOS 11 ship date to customers

00:07:31 ◼   ► is going to get ever closer.

00:07:32 ◼   ► And so if you're gonna do this

00:07:34 ◼   ► the best time to do it is right now.

00:07:36 ◼   ► And I think the best way to do it

00:07:37 ◼   ► is by using that W2C Downloader script,

00:07:40 ◼   ► downloading all the videos that you're interested in

00:07:41 ◼   ► and making it an actual to-do folder

00:07:44 ◼   ► to just get through these.

00:07:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do the exact same thing.

00:07:47 ◼   ► And I even downloaded quite a bunch of them

00:07:52 ◼   ► before I even left San Jose.

00:07:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's great on the plane home.

00:07:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like using the ridiculously fast internet

00:08:00 ◼   ► in the conference center was a great place.

00:08:01 ◼   ► I just set it off, it downloaded a whole bunch

00:08:04 ◼   ► and I started watching them on the flight home

00:08:06 ◼   ► 'cause I find the exact same thing.

00:08:09 ◼   ► It is so much more productive of a use of time

00:08:12 ◼   ► to go through it that way.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Like I went to a variety of the sessions.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Really, if there wasn't a lab that I needed to be in

00:08:20 ◼   ► then I would go and watch a session

00:08:22 ◼   ► because it's nice just from like the experience perspective

00:08:26 ◼   ► which I've talked many times about.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Part of why I love going to W2C

00:08:29 ◼   ► is that it's motivating and exciting

00:08:32 ◼   ► and it kind of gets me jazzed for working this summer.

00:08:36 ◼   ► And which is part of what you get from being in the room.

00:08:39 ◼   ► But from a information transfer perspective,

00:08:43 ◼   ► that is tremendously powerful.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And I would also recommend taking advantage of the slides.

00:08:50 ◼   ► So the same script that I'm sure we'll have a link to

00:08:53 ◼   ► in the show notes, lets you also,

00:08:55 ◼   ► you can download the PDFs of all of the session slides

00:08:58 ◼   ► which I also find really helpful

00:09:00 ◼   ► because then they are searchable.

00:09:02 ◼   ► Eventually, they'll probably,

00:09:04 ◼   ► this year will probably end up on the site Eski WWDC

00:09:09 ◼   ► which is a site where someone made

00:09:10 ◼   ► where they take the closed captioning values

00:09:13 ◼   ► that are embedded in the videos

00:09:16 ◼   ► and they transform them into something searchable.

00:09:18 ◼   ► But even just having the PDFs and searching those directly,

00:09:21 ◼   ► I often find is really helpful

00:09:23 ◼   ► over the course of the summer.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Like I just have a folder,

00:09:25 ◼   ► I can just go search in folder

00:09:26 ◼   ► and then I put in whatever term that I'm looking for

00:09:29 ◼   ► and I'll find all the talks that are relevant to it

00:09:32 ◼   ► or the bit of sample code or whatever I need.

00:09:35 ◼   ► So yeah, definitely the more efficient way right

00:09:38 ◼   ► at this point is to just sit down and it filters out.

00:09:41 ◼   ► And I think it is, you're right too,

00:09:43 ◼   ► that it's a good discipline to do.

00:09:45 ◼   ► And every year, I've been doing this long enough,

00:09:48 ◼   ► it's like some years I do better than others

00:09:49 ◼   ► but the thing that you gain from WWDC sessions

00:09:54 ◼   ► is often Apple is telling you something but not directly.

00:10:01 ◼   ► They're often hinting at things

00:10:02 ◼   ► and the only way you'll kind of get those,

00:10:05 ◼   ► you'll never get those hints out of the documentation

00:10:07 ◼   ► but you can kind of get them out of the way they're talking

00:10:12 ◼   ► about things in a session,

00:10:15 ◼   ► sometimes even with their inflection

00:10:16 ◼   ► or like you can kind of,

00:10:17 ◼   ► if they're being a bit more obvious about it

00:10:19 ◼   ► but even just you kind of get a sense

00:10:21 ◼   ► of when they say something two or three times

00:10:24 ◼   ► during a session that may or may not like superficially,

00:10:27 ◼   ► maybe doesn't justify that amount of emphasis,

00:10:29 ◼   ► it's like, huh, why are they saying that?

00:10:31 ◼   ► What are they trying to tell me?

00:10:33 ◼   ► And often there'll be some new hardware

00:10:36 ◼   ► down coming out this fall

00:10:39 ◼   ► that would make a lot more sense with that

00:10:42 ◼   ► or they're indicating something that like,

00:10:43 ◼   ► this is a path that you should go down

00:10:46 ◼   ► or like don't go down this path anymore,

00:10:48 ◼   ► like we really mean it this time, that kind of thing.

00:10:51 ◼   ► So definitely the way at this point to kind of,

00:10:53 ◼   ► now that the experience in the event of WWDC is done,

00:10:57 ◼   ► like now it is just there's this giant bucket of information

00:11:00 ◼   ► for us to go digging around in

00:11:02 ◼   ► to understand what we're gonna work on this summer.

00:11:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, and two more app shout outs before,

00:11:06 ◼   ► sorry, I keep adding through to this topic,

00:11:08 ◼   ► two more app shout outs.

00:11:09 ◼   ► One, the official WWDC app from Apple

00:11:11 ◼   ► gets better every year, it's really good now

00:11:13 ◼   ► and it also supports downloading the videos.

00:11:16 ◼   ► So you can like watch them offline on the plane,

00:11:18 ◼   ► like if you have an iPad or something,

00:11:19 ◼   ► that's a great use of it.

00:11:21 ◼   ► And then finally there's a WWDC Mac app,

00:11:24 ◼   ► it's made by just developers,

00:11:25 ◼   ► third party, not associated with Apple.

00:11:27 ◼   ► At WWDC.io, and it's a pretty good app

00:11:30 ◼   ► and it actually supports the display of the captions

00:11:34 ◼   ► live as you're watching the videos,

00:11:36 ◼   ► which is really helpful,

00:11:37 ◼   ► especially if you're playing it faster than 1X,

00:11:38 ◼   ► which it also supports in a much nicer interface

00:11:40 ◼   ► than QuickTime Player does.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And it has this whole integration, it has search,

00:11:44 ◼   ► so it's a really good app too,

00:11:45 ◼   ► I recommend checking that out as well.

00:11:47 ◼   ► - And the benefit from that one too is that it goes,

00:11:49 ◼   ► it has all of the years as well,

00:11:52 ◼   ► and so sometimes it is helpful to go back to

00:11:57 ◼   ► last year's WWDC and try to be like,

00:11:59 ◼   ► is this new, did this change?

00:12:01 ◼   ► Or even sometimes they'll in 2017 videos,

00:12:04 ◼   ► like in the sessions, they reference a past year,

00:12:08 ◼   ► 'cause sometimes the canonical talk about a particular topic,

00:12:13 ◼   ► it's like for something that is fairly stable

00:12:14 ◼   ► and isn't like a brand new thing,

00:12:16 ◼   ► it's like if you're trying to understand basic auto layout,

00:12:19 ◼   ► like here is the canonical one to go to,

00:12:21 ◼   ► or scroll views or whatever it is,

00:12:24 ◼   ► 'cause most of this year's talks are about what's new,

00:12:27 ◼   ► what's different, and so it's nice to be able to also,

00:12:30 ◼   ► and I have the same app and I use it for,

00:12:32 ◼   ► it's nice to be able to quickly jump back

00:12:34 ◼   ► and not go digging through the developer portal website.

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00:15:00 ◼   ► - So I think what we're gonna be doing for the,

00:15:04 ◼   ► at least in the next couple of weeks,

00:15:07 ◼   ► is we're trying to unpack what are the new announcements,

00:15:10 ◼   ► what are the new interesting things,

00:15:11 ◼   ► what are the, essentially,

00:15:13 ◼   ► what we're gonna be spending our summer working on.

00:15:16 ◼   ► And I think we're gonna start

00:15:19 ◼   ► by talking about what's new in WatchOS

00:15:21 ◼   ► and then over the subsequent weeks,

00:15:22 ◼   ► we can talk about iOS and the iPad

00:15:24 ◼   ► and there's a lot of other places

00:15:26 ◼   ► where there's much more bigger changes,

00:15:27 ◼   ► but WatchOS seemed like a good fit for the first one

00:15:30 ◼   ► 'cause there's a lot of cool stuff in here

00:15:32 ◼   ► and especially as somebody who works

00:15:34 ◼   ► in the health and fitness space,

00:15:36 ◼   ► there's a lot of really, really cool stuff,

00:15:39 ◼   ► but a lot of that's more specific and narrow,

00:15:42 ◼   ► so a bit less to dive into.

00:15:44 ◼   ► But at a high level,

00:15:46 ◼   ► what it seemed like this year on the technology side

00:15:49 ◼   ► with WatchOS was there was a lot of under the hood

00:15:53 ◼   ► kind of cleanup stuff that they were doing

00:15:55 ◼   ► to make the apps more performant.

00:15:59 ◼   ► And the cool thing about this is there's a lot of it

00:16:01 ◼   ► that has nothing to do with code changes,

00:16:02 ◼   ► that they just made it better.

00:16:05 ◼   ► And most specifically, the biggest change,

00:16:07 ◼   ► which you'll know, you definitely notice

00:16:09 ◼   ► if you install WatchOS 4 onto a testing watch.

00:16:13 ◼   ► And if you're anything like me,

00:16:14 ◼   ► you'll actually, I will spend the entire summer

00:16:16 ◼   ► wearing two watches, one wearing,

00:16:18 ◼   ► one wearing WatchOS 3, one wearing WatchOS 4,

00:16:20 ◼   ► but I'm probably strange by doing that.

00:16:23 ◼   ► - I mean, we're all strange somehow.

00:16:24 ◼   ► - Yes, like that's how I do it.

00:16:26 ◼   ► That's my weird thing is that I'll have

00:16:27 ◼   ► two watches all summer.

00:16:28 ◼   ► But you notice this improvement.

00:16:31 ◼   ► And basically what they did is WatchKit 1,

00:16:33 ◼   ► the UI ran on the watch and the code logic

00:16:38 ◼   ► ran on the companion phone.

00:16:41 ◼   ► And then WatchOS 2, they unified those together.

00:16:44 ◼   ► And so they ran on the same watch,

00:16:47 ◼   ► but they still were communicating from separate processes.

00:16:51 ◼   ► And then WatchOS 3, they improved a lot of the background

00:16:56 ◼   ► modes with the whole thing where your apps

00:16:58 ◼   ► can now be docked.

00:16:59 ◼   ► And if they're docked, they don't get killed and so on.

00:17:01 ◼   ► So they made things a lot faster there.

00:17:03 ◼   ► And then this year they took the next big step forward.

00:17:05 ◼   ► And now the WatchOS has a single process architecture,

00:17:10 ◼   ► which doesn't actually change anything about the way

00:17:13 ◼   ► you have to write your app or the way you code things.

00:17:15 ◼   ► Like they've done all the magic underneath,

00:17:17 ◼   ► but there's less latency going between,

00:17:22 ◼   ► you tap a button and your logic gets that event

00:17:25 ◼   ► just a bit quicker because it isn't doing it over

00:17:27 ◼   ► inter-process communication.

00:17:29 ◼   ► It's doing it directly now, which is nice.

00:17:31 ◼   ► And it's just one of those things where I love,

00:17:34 ◼   ► I mean, one of my favorite things at W3DC

00:17:37 ◼   ► is when they have a slide that's basically like,

00:17:38 ◼   ► here's this thing, your app is gonna be better,

00:17:41 ◼   ► your customers are gonna like it better,

00:17:42 ◼   ► and you didn't have to do anything.

00:17:44 ◼   ► Like just recompile and off you go.

00:17:46 ◼   ► - Well, and this, you don't even need to recompile

00:17:48 ◼   ► to get this.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Like my app is, like any app that's already out there,

00:17:52 ◼   ► if it was written for WatchOS 2 or greater,

00:17:55 ◼   ► you just get this performance gain.

00:17:57 ◼   ► You don't even have to recompile, it's awesome.

00:17:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so like there's things,

00:18:01 ◼   ► and there seems to be, there's a lot of just like stuff

00:18:03 ◼   ► like that they changed.

00:18:05 ◼   ► It's interesting too with WatchOS, I think,

00:18:08 ◼   ► they've also did a bit of refining on the,

00:18:11 ◼   ► I don't really like, the interface and structure

00:18:13 ◼   ► of the watch.

00:18:15 ◼   ► So like, I mean, there's a little,

00:18:16 ◼   ► some of the changes like the dock is now scrolls vertically

00:18:18 ◼   ► rather than side to side.

00:18:21 ◼   ► You can now optionally not have the honeycomb screen

00:18:23 ◼   ► when you tap the home, you get like a list

00:18:26 ◼   ► if you want it now.

00:18:27 ◼   ► And there's a few like changes to like,

00:18:29 ◼   ► there's a new concept of being a foremost app

00:18:32 ◼   ► that is a bit more explicit where previously

00:18:35 ◼   ► the user could optionally set it so that, you know,

00:18:37 ◼   ► once you launch, if they launch your app,

00:18:39 ◼   ► you had, I think it was eight minutes

00:18:41 ◼   ► where your app would still be there rather than the time,

00:18:44 ◼   ► but then after eight minutes, it would go away.

00:18:45 ◼   ► And then this, in WatchOS 4, they changed it around

00:18:47 ◼   ► so that it's two minutes, but you can optionally ask

00:18:50 ◼   ► to be eight minutes instead.

00:18:53 ◼   ► And so they're doing a lot of these kind of these changes,

00:18:55 ◼   ► it seems, where they're not so much about

00:18:58 ◼   ► enabling new capabilities.

00:19:00 ◼   ► They're just trying to refine the existing experience

00:19:04 ◼   ► of using an Apple Watch to make it a bit more seamless

00:19:08 ◼   ► and work a little bit more intuitively,

00:19:10 ◼   ► which is certainly, you know, very much appreciated.

00:19:13 ◼   ► And I mean, it's weird wearing two watches,

00:19:16 ◼   ► going back and forth.

00:19:17 ◼   ► Like you start to very quickly get used to the way

00:19:20 ◼   ► that some of the things work on the new version.

00:19:22 ◼   ► And it's definitely better.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Like I'm immediately got used to

00:19:26 ◼   ► the vertically scrolling doc and, you know,

00:19:28 ◼   ► the changes like that where it's like, yeah,

00:19:30 ◼   ► they probably should have done it that way before.

00:19:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, it looks like a really solid update

00:19:36 ◼   ► for watch apps that try to be non-trivial.

00:19:40 ◼   ► You know, watch apps have had this, you know,

00:19:44 ◼   ► long stand, this long problem of like people

00:19:47 ◼   ► just trying to figure out how to use them correctly.

00:19:49 ◼   ► And you have to put a lot of thought and consideration

00:19:52 ◼   ► into a good watch app.

00:19:53 ◼   ► But what WatchOS 4 does is not massive user changes

00:19:58 ◼   ► or even massive developer changes.

00:19:59 ◼   ► It's actually relatively small developer changes

00:20:01 ◼   ► from things that we can actually do now.

00:20:04 ◼   ► But it, or at least for most app types.

00:20:07 ◼   ► But what it does is it gives people who want to make

00:20:10 ◼   ► a really great watch app experience

00:20:13 ◼   ► a few more tools to do that.

00:20:15 ◼   ► And I like that kind of improvement.

00:20:16 ◼   ► You know, it would be nice, you know,

00:20:19 ◼   ► every release shouldn't be that type.

00:20:21 ◼   ► You know, it's nice to have more feature releases more often.

00:20:25 ◼   ► But this is kind of like what WatchOS 2 was.

00:20:27 ◼   ► It was like, you know, architecture improvements,

00:20:28 ◼   ► performance improvements, and a few new features.

00:20:30 ◼   ► And then WatchOS 3 was the one that brought in

00:20:32 ◼   ► the major user changes.

00:20:34 ◼   ► So then maybe, you know, WatchOS 4,

00:20:36 ◼   ► maybe it's like a TikTok cycle.

00:20:37 ◼   ► You know, WatchOS 4 is now like more under the hood stuff.

00:20:40 ◼   ► And then maybe OS 5 will be more user stuff, who knows?

00:20:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause I mean, like there's a couple of new things

00:20:47 ◼   ► that are definitely like totally new

00:20:48 ◼   ► that are beyond those refinements.

00:20:49 ◼   ► And it's probably worth saying there's a two,

00:20:51 ◼   ► like kind of interesting UI refinements that they added.

00:20:55 ◼   ► So you can now overlap UI elements,

00:20:58 ◼   ► which previously was just, you couldn't do,

00:21:00 ◼   ► or you could only do like if you kicked out into SpriteKit

00:21:03 ◼   ► and like are rendering your UI more programmatically.

00:21:08 ◼   ► So it's kind of cool that you can now

00:21:09 ◼   ► have overlapping UI elements.

00:21:11 ◼   ► So it gives you a bit more flexibility

00:21:13 ◼   ► for probably things like animations.

00:21:15 ◼   ► And they also have a kind of an interesting mode now too,

00:21:17 ◼   ► where you can choose, tell your watch that you want to

00:21:21 ◼   ► essentially be rotated upside down.

00:21:24 ◼   ► And when you're in that upside down rotated mode,

00:21:26 ◼   ► the screen lock mechanism gets disabled.

00:21:31 ◼   ► And so I think this is primarily geared towards things like,

00:21:34 ◼   ► if you have an app that is a like a store companion

00:21:39 ◼   ► or something like that, where you may have a barcode

00:21:41 ◼   ► or some value that you want the person to,

00:21:44 ◼   ► display on their wrist and then scan on a reader.

00:21:48 ◼   ► And so you can have it flip upside down and then not dim

00:21:50 ◼   ► so that when they turn their wrist to show it to somebody

00:21:55 ◼   ► or to poke or to have it scanned,

00:21:57 ◼   ► that you can now do that yourself,

00:21:58 ◼   ► which is just kind of this like, huh, that's cool.

00:22:00 ◼   ► Like I don't think any of my apps

00:22:02 ◼   ► have a particular use for it,

00:22:03 ◼   ► but it's nice to have these,

00:22:06 ◼   ► yeah, it's again, these are lots of little refinements.

00:22:08 ◼   ► And then the big changes from a like capability perspective,

00:22:12 ◼   ► there's things like there's now core Bluetooth

00:22:14 ◼   ► available on the watch.

00:22:15 ◼   ► So again, it's like, it's a very niche thing,

00:22:18 ◼   ► but like if you, for whatever reason,

00:22:19 ◼   ► wanted to connect the watch directly to a,

00:22:23 ◼   ► another Bluetooth device, you can do that now.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Like you have the nice Bluetooth stack,

00:22:28 ◼   ► you can now do a background audio recording,

00:22:32 ◼   ► which previously was a bit like you had much,

00:22:34 ◼   ► you weren't really running or interactive in the same way

00:22:37 ◼   ► during audio recording.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Now you are, and if you are building an app

00:22:41 ◼   ► that would record audio,

00:22:42 ◼   ► you have a lot more capabilities there.

00:22:45 ◼   ► And now you also have navigation and related capabilities

00:22:50 ◼   ► where you can now sort of do turn by turn directions

00:22:52 ◼   ► in sort of the way that the Apple Maps app does,

00:22:56 ◼   ► which I've never used, is actually really fun.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Like I love it when I'm walking around a new city,

00:23:03 ◼   ► it's a really cool way to be told where to go

00:23:07 ◼   ► because the Apple Watch just, you know,

00:23:09 ◼   ► has these varying sequences of taps that you get,

00:23:13 ◼   ► you know, depending on when it's time to turn left

00:23:15 ◼   ► or when it's time to turn right,

00:23:17 ◼   ► which once you, it takes a few times

00:23:19 ◼   ► before you know what it's actually telling you to do,

00:23:21 ◼   ► but I found it was really awesome to not be conspicuous.

00:23:25 ◼   ► You know, when I'm in a new place,

00:23:26 ◼   ► I don't really know where I'm going.

00:23:28 ◼   ► It's a bit conspicuous to be like walking around

00:23:29 ◼   ► with my phone, constantly checking maps

00:23:31 ◼   ► versus my, you know, my watch just being like,

00:23:33 ◼   ► hey, you know, turn left, oh, here you are, turn right.

00:23:37 ◼   ► So now like third-party apps

00:23:38 ◼   ► can do that kind of stuff as well.

00:23:40 ◼   ► And so like, those are really cool.

00:23:42 ◼   ► Like these are these fun little things that like,

00:23:44 ◼   ► I don't think, even as somebody who's just spent

00:23:47 ◼   ► a lot of time making watch apps,

00:23:48 ◼   ► like most of those capabilities aren't things

00:23:50 ◼   ► that I expect to take advantage of.

00:23:52 ◼   ► We'll get into the ones that I'm excited about

00:23:54 ◼   ► on the workouts and fitness side in a minute,

00:23:56 ◼   ► but it's cool to see them opening up, you know,

00:23:58 ◼   ► things like core Bluetooth,

00:24:01 ◼   ► I think is exciting to me mostly because of, you know,

00:24:05 ◼   ► it's like the thing that I couldn't predict

00:24:07 ◼   ► that is now going to be possible as a result

00:24:10 ◼   ► or the continuous background and location stuff.

00:24:13 ◼   ► You know, there's inevitably going to be these apps

00:24:16 ◼   ► that come out this summer that are like, huh,

00:24:18 ◼   ► that's really cool because they're, you know,

00:24:20 ◼   ► as they continue to expand what's possible on the watch,

00:24:23 ◼   ► and you know, the watches are so much more capable now

00:24:26 ◼   ► from a hardware perspective.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Like, I mean, a series two and a series one watch

00:24:30 ◼   ► is pretty capable compared to at least

00:24:32 ◼   ► the first generation hardware.

00:24:34 ◼   ► So I think people will, you know,

00:24:35 ◼   ► there's interesting opportunities to be had there.

00:24:38 ◼   ► I don't really know what they are,

00:24:39 ◼   ► but I have this strong feeling that they exist.

00:24:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, definitely.

00:24:43 ◼   ► - And then on the workout stuff,

00:24:45 ◼   ► and this is the stuff that I'm excited about

00:24:46 ◼   ► because, you know, like the, you know,

00:24:47 ◼   ► my business at this point is mostly just health and fitness,

00:24:50 ◼   ► but it's all these cool things.

00:24:52 ◼   ► Like we can now programmatically enable the water lock.

00:24:55 ◼   ► So like, if you were to, if you were perhaps

00:24:57 ◼   ► to be making a workout app that dealt with swimming,

00:25:02 ◼   ► let's say, now you can programmatically do that.

00:25:06 ◼   ► Whereas before it was really awkward

00:25:07 ◼   ► and I actually haven't shipped the swimming integration

00:25:11 ◼   ► in Workouts++ because it was really awkward

00:25:15 ◼   ► and it didn't seem like a good user experience

00:25:17 ◼   ► to be like, start a workout,

00:25:19 ◼   ► and then before you actually start your workout,

00:25:22 ◼   ► you need to--

00:25:23 ◼   ► - Leave my app.

00:25:24 ◼   ► - Leave my app, swipe up, tap a button,

00:25:27 ◼   ► and then the other really awkward thing too

00:25:29 ◼   ► is when you enable water lock,

00:25:31 ◼   ► the screen turns off essentially.

00:25:32 ◼   ► Like, I mean, it's still, this lights up,

00:25:34 ◼   ► but the whole point is that it's not touch interactive

00:25:37 ◼   ► anymore and so you can't, it's like you can't

00:25:40 ◼   ► directly dismiss what you were just in,

00:25:43 ◼   ► like you get back into the app.

00:25:45 ◼   ► And so it was awkward, but now it's like,

00:25:47 ◼   ► nope, totally fine.

00:25:48 ◼   ► You can just programmatically say turn it on.

00:25:51 ◼   ► They also added the ability for us to get,

00:25:53 ◼   ► resume and pause events from,

00:25:57 ◼   ► if you press the crown and side button key together,

00:26:01 ◼   ► which is really kind of a cool thing too,

00:26:04 ◼   ► where previously we've had very limited access

00:26:06 ◼   ► to those kind of, any presses.

00:26:09 ◼   ► So like in Workouts++, I got around that by like,

00:26:11 ◼   ► if you wanna pause the workout,

00:26:12 ◼   ► I have you scroll the digital crown up

00:26:16 ◼   ► and if you wanna end the workout, you can scroll it down.

00:26:18 ◼   ► 'Cause that was previously the only interaction

00:26:19 ◼   ► we had with physical controls.

00:26:21 ◼   ► So it was really nice for them to be able to,

00:26:23 ◼   ► we can now get those events more directly,

00:26:27 ◼   ► which is quite cool.

00:26:29 ◼   ► We can interact with the new,

00:26:32 ◼   ► well it was new in watchOS 3, the workout route stuff.

00:26:36 ◼   ► So you can record location data with a workout,

00:26:40 ◼   ► which we now have full access to both for the data

00:26:42 ◼   ► that they collect in the first party app,

00:26:44 ◼   ► or we can collect the data and insert it ourself.

00:26:47 ◼   ► And then the same thing with the turn by turn navigation.

00:26:50 ◼   ► They also, that now means in workout apps,

00:26:52 ◼   ► we can also do location tracking,

00:26:54 ◼   ► which means that I can finally do much more accurate,

00:26:58 ◼   ► speed and distance calculations.

00:27:00 ◼   ► I can record your route.

00:27:01 ◼   ► Like there's a lot of these things that it means that

00:27:04 ◼   ► at this point, the only thing as far as I'm aware of,

00:27:07 ◼   ► that I can't do that the first party workouts app can do,

00:27:12 ◼   ► is show a now playing interface controller,

00:27:15 ◼   ► which of course I follow the radar asking for.

00:27:17 ◼   ► There'll be a link to it in the show notes

00:27:18 ◼   ► if you're an Apple developer who could shuffle that along,

00:27:22 ◼   ► wink, wink.

00:27:23 ◼   ► But it's really cool for that they're not

00:27:27 ◼   ► taking the approach of saying like,

00:27:29 ◼   ► we want people to use our workouts app.

00:27:31 ◼   ► We want them to do all of this fitness

00:27:33 ◼   ► and health stuff in our system.

00:27:35 ◼   ► I love that they are opening that up

00:27:36 ◼   ► and creating opportunities for developers like me

00:27:39 ◼   ► to come in and say, the first party workouts app is great,

00:27:44 ◼   ► but I think it would be better if it did X, Y and Z.

00:27:47 ◼   ► And now I can actually build those capabilities myself

00:27:51 ◼   ► and run them in a native fully capable way

00:27:53 ◼   ► that's fully baked and like I appreciate that.

00:27:57 ◼   ► And I think in general, that's probably a nice thing

00:27:59 ◼   ► about the way that Apple is approaching the watch,

00:28:02 ◼   ► which could have been, they could,

00:28:04 ◼   ► I could have seen them locking it down,

00:28:05 ◼   ► like the original versions kind of were pointing towards

00:28:09 ◼   ► where it was very limited.

00:28:10 ◼   ► And it's lovely for them to be instead saying,

00:28:12 ◼   ► you know, we're gonna open this up

00:28:14 ◼   ► and let a thousand flowers blossom

00:28:16 ◼   ► and just like see what works,

00:28:19 ◼   ► which I very much appreciate it.

00:28:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's kind of just always been the theme of iOS,

00:28:25 ◼   ► which is like the system started out

00:28:27 ◼   ► with these very locked down privileged limitations

00:28:29 ◼   ► that only Apple could do and other apps couldn't do.

00:28:31 ◼   ► And they just slowly added more and more every year

00:28:35 ◼   ► that enable your apps to become more like system app

00:28:39 ◼   ► replacements and to have similar capabilities

00:28:42 ◼   ► as system apps or to integrate better into the system.

00:28:44 ◼   ► And watchOS, you know, they started out, again, very basic,

00:28:47 ◼   ► but they're doing the same progression there.

00:28:48 ◼   ► So it's really nice to see.

00:28:49 ◼   ► I'm very, very happy to see it.

00:28:50 ◼   ► Even if it's still like a very specialized platform

00:28:54 ◼   ► that I think most apps don't really need to be on,

00:28:58 ◼   ► it's still really nice for the ones

00:28:59 ◼   ► that do have a role there to have that kind of progression

00:29:02 ◼   ► and to always have more good stuff to do.

00:29:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you know, it's kind of fun.

00:29:06 ◼   ► It'll be a nice, busy summer for me, I think.

00:29:09 ◼   ► Maybe my watch app's better.

00:29:10 ◼   ► And you have a watch app too now,

00:29:11 ◼   ► so you can take advantage of at least some of the stuff,

00:29:14 ◼   ► if not, at the very least,

00:29:16 ◼   ► take advantage of the underlying benefits.

00:29:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, my app will be faster.

00:29:20 ◼   ► That's probably about all I can do with the new stuff.

00:29:22 ◼   ► But so I still have to explore a little more

00:29:24 ◼   ► of like if there were any more silent updates to the APIs.

00:29:27 ◼   ► But yeah, it's gonna be pretty,

00:29:28 ◼   ► the watch is not gonna be a strong focus for me

00:29:29 ◼   ► in all likelihood this summer.

00:29:30 ◼   ► But for you, there's a lot to do.

00:29:32 ◼   ► - Yep, and we will be talking in the coming weeks

00:29:34 ◼   ► about the other parts of the platform

00:29:36 ◼   ► where you have much to do.

00:29:37 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Well, that's all for this week.

00:29:40 ◼   ► So thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.

00:29:42 ◼   ► - Bye.

00:29:43 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]