Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Okay, mean recording going.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Let me put on some office mood lighting for Cortex.

00:00:05 ◼   ► - I didn't know you did that.

00:00:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, gotta put on some mood lighting for Cortex.

00:00:10 ◼   ► How do you Cortex?

00:00:11 ◼   ► Not with full bright office lights, shortly.

00:00:13 ◼   ► - Yep, big overheads.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Hate them, but you know, no choice really.

00:00:17 ◼   ► - That's terrible.

00:00:18 ◼   ► You wanna have something a bit more chill for Cortex.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Okay, so I'm recording.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Where, okay, my notes.

00:00:24 ◼   ► So I have them.

00:00:26 ◼   ► I put away the script for the nightmare

00:00:28 ◼   ► of that has been my life for the last nine months and open up cortex show notes instead.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Put that away, you don't want that right now.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Let's not think about that.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Do you know why, Gray?

00:00:36 ◼   ► Why?

00:00:37 ◼   ► Because it's time for State of the Apps.

00:00:39 ◼   ► It is time for State of the Apps.

00:00:40 ◼   ► State of the Apps 2023.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Oh no, that's the first time I've thought about 2023.

00:00:50 ◼   ► I know.

00:00:55 ◼   ► So in our state of the apps episode every year, we take stock of the apps and services that we use

00:01:00 ◼   ► on our devices for work, entertainment, just in general. We take a look at the things that we get

00:01:06 ◼   ► value out of, the things that we're enjoying, sometimes maybe the things that we're not,

00:01:10 ◼   ► but we can't get away from them, and we share them with you, the cortex ones. So this is like

00:01:14 ◼   ► the one place you know you can go every year to understand what the tools that we're using to get

00:01:19 ◼   ► our work done. And of course we use this as a new opportunity, the annual opportunity now to share

00:01:24 ◼   ► are our home screens, which I actually think for me,

00:01:28 ◼   ► I have a lot of home screens to share with you, Gray, today.

00:01:31 ◼   ► - Oh, how many home screens do you think you have to share?

00:01:33 ◼   ► - Well, I actually have more lock screens than home screens.

00:01:36 ◼   ► So I have three home screens as I tend to have.

00:01:39 ◼   ► I also have, I think, three separate lock screens

00:01:43 ◼   ► that I wanna show you as well.

00:01:45 ◼   ► 'Cause that's one of the big changes, right?

00:01:47 ◼   ► We have lock screen widgets now,

00:01:48 ◼   ► which is the thing that we didn't have last time

00:01:51 ◼   ► that we did stay at the apps.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Yeah, iOS 16 has brought a ton of visual changes

00:01:56 ◼   ► to home screens and lock screens.

00:01:59 ◼   ► I think I'm mostly loving it.

00:02:01 ◼   ► It's really nice to be able to do

00:02:02 ◼   ► all of these customizations, but yes,

00:02:04 ◼   ► I also had the same thing of like,

00:02:05 ◼   ► oh wait, how many screenshots do I need to take today

00:02:09 ◼   ► before the show?

00:02:10 ◼   ► Ooh, a lot more than I have in the past.

00:02:12 ◼   ► I've got my selection ready.

00:02:14 ◼   ► I think I've got the same thing.

00:02:15 ◼   ► I've got like three, three and a half

00:02:18 ◼   ► like different ones to show.

00:02:20 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:22 ◼   ► - How do you have half?

00:02:24 ◼   ► How do we say half?

00:02:25 ◼   ► Maybe I'll see when we get there, you know what I mean?

00:02:29 ◼   ► Maybe we'll see.

00:02:29 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:02:30 ◼   ► - Should we start with home screens?

00:02:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess, yeah.

00:02:32 ◼   ► We should start with home screens and focus modes

00:02:35 ◼   ► and what's going on there, 'cause I feel like

00:02:37 ◼   ► that's sort of the broadest way of how are we using

00:02:42 ◼   ► our phones now after a big change to this entire system

00:02:47 ◼   ► on Apple's side.

00:02:48 ◼   ► I would say the focus mode stuff I'm really pleased about.

00:02:51 ◼   ► I really love what they did with focus modes this year.

00:02:55 ◼   ► Just making them so easy to set up now

00:02:58 ◼   ► because this is my main issue last time.

00:03:01 ◼   ► You should set up a focus mode

00:03:02 ◼   ► and you had to manually include every app and or person

00:03:07 ◼   ► that could break through the focus mode.

00:03:10 ◼   ► And for me, that's good for some stuff

00:03:12 ◼   ► but not good for everything.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Like I didn't wanna create say like a recording focus mode

00:03:17 ◼   ► because I would set it up, say, one time,

00:03:20 ◼   ► but then over time as the apps that I use change,

00:03:23 ◼   ► I would need to remember to manually include

00:03:25 ◼   ► the ones that I wanted to break through.

00:03:28 ◼   ► So now what I love is that with iOS 16,

00:03:31 ◼   ► you get to choose Opt-In and Opt-Out,

00:03:33 ◼   ► so you can say everyone and everything can contact me

00:03:37 ◼   ► except these things.

00:03:38 ◼   ► And so like having that optionality has been great for me

00:03:42 ◼   ► in setting up a couple of different focus modes.

00:03:44 ◼   ► I use some where it's Opt-In and some where it's Opt-Out.

00:03:47 ◼   ► It's actually made me use focus modes a lot.

00:03:49 ◼   ► I'm using them a lot now,

00:03:51 ◼   ► which is not a thing I was doing before.

00:03:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel like you really lucked out

00:03:54 ◼   ► as like Apple addressed almost every single one

00:03:57 ◼   ► of your issues directly, whatever the last time is

00:03:59 ◼   ► that we discussed this.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And also like with this whole focus mode system,

00:04:03 ◼   ► I was just thinking about how this is what happens

00:04:05 ◼   ► when like you introduce a new feature,

00:04:08 ◼   ► but like Apple often takes a while to introduce a feature.

00:04:11 ◼   ► And when they come out with it,

00:04:12 ◼   ► like, oh, it's actually pretty good.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And then we all fear, like, will they not touch it now for five years because they think it's good enough?

00:04:19 ◼   ► And with this system, it's really nice to see that they've actually repeatedly touched the way that it works

00:04:26 ◼   ► and made improvements every year.

00:04:28 ◼   ► And cumulatively, that stuff really, like, it really adds up into smoothing out even just the smaller things.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Like your complaints about having everything be opt-in or opt-out.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Just changing that little thing can really encourage users to pick up a system, so.

00:04:43 ◼   ► I'm very encouraged and very happy to see that it's been continually improved every year

00:04:48 ◼   ► and it's like this year suddenly a bunch of stuff has really come together

00:04:52 ◼   ► and made it very very useful to people. So what are your focus modes Myke?

00:04:56 ◼   ► So my main focus modes that I have now I have travel, recording, and I also have weekend and

00:05:05 ◼   ► sleep. So I'll start with the weekend and sleep ones because at the moment all I'm doing with

00:05:12 ◼   ► with those is just to basically just remove Slack

00:05:16 ◼   ► and Discord from there and I just have another widget

00:05:19 ◼   ► in place instead.

00:05:20 ◼   ► It just removes a couple of apps.

00:05:22 ◼   ► It's not really that exciting.

00:05:23 ◼   ► And it also locks me to just the one home screen.

00:05:26 ◼   ► And I have these really set up as a notifications

00:05:31 ◼   ► focused stuff rather than home screen

00:05:34 ◼   ► and lock screen stuff at the moment.

00:05:36 ◼   ► So the key thing for me is email, Slack, Discord,

00:05:41 ◼   ► all of those notifications get suppressed.

00:05:43 ◼   ► So it's more about just de-emphasizing those applications.

00:05:46 ◼   ► I don't remove my ability to access them,

00:05:50 ◼   ► but I don't have them on my home screen anymore.

00:05:52 ◼   ► And any notifications that I get,

00:05:54 ◼   ► they get collected up into the like,

00:05:56 ◼   ► while in weekend focus thing.

00:05:58 ◼   ► So if I pull my notifications down,

00:06:01 ◼   ► I don't even see those immediately.

00:06:02 ◼   ► I have to like actively go in to look at them.

00:06:05 ◼   ► And it's more just about reminding me

00:06:08 ◼   ► that when I've got weekend running,

00:06:10 ◼   ► which is obviously every weekend,

00:06:11 ◼   ► and when I've got sleep running, which sets in every night,

00:06:14 ◼   ► that I should be using those apps and services less.

00:06:18 ◼   ► So that's pretty simple for me, like as a thing.

00:06:22 ◼   ► And I think I do want to set up some specific lock screens

00:06:25 ◼   ► and home screens for these that are more focused,

00:06:28 ◼   ► but I just haven't done that yet.

00:06:29 ◼   ► It's really like the main thing for me there

00:06:32 ◼   ► is just removing some work apps from my lock screen

00:06:34 ◼   ► and de-emphasizing the notifications.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And I also am sleep tracking now.

00:06:39 ◼   ► So it's something I started doing in the past month or so.

00:06:42 ◼   ► And so I've wanted to set up the sleep focus

00:06:44 ◼   ► to kind of get my devices in shape for that as well.

00:06:47 ◼   ► So I'm using the Apple Watch to do the sleep tracking.

00:06:49 ◼   ► - Right, so you're giving the weekend come on automatically

00:06:52 ◼   ► and the sleep come on automatically?

00:06:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't use the like,

00:06:56 ◼   ► they have that like sleep alarm thing.

00:06:59 ◼   ► I don't use that because I wanna be able

00:07:01 ◼   ► to manually set my alarms.

00:07:02 ◼   ► And so they still make sound on my phone and my watch.

00:07:06 ◼   ► So if you set the alarms manually, it will still do that.

00:07:08 ◼   ► If you use Apple's bedtime alarm thing,

00:07:10 ◼   ► it will only buzz the watch,

00:07:11 ◼   ► which is not enough for me to wake up, I need both.

00:07:14 ◼   ► But I do really like having the both,

00:07:16 ◼   ► like I think I'm being woken up more easily

00:07:19 ◼   ► because the watch is an additional thing to help wake me up.

00:07:23 ◼   ► I've been enjoying that,

00:07:24 ◼   ► and I still wanna go a little bit further, I think,

00:07:26 ◼   ► into setting up some specific stuff.

00:07:28 ◼   ► Like I saw, as of the time of this recording,

00:07:31 ◼   ► 16.2 is in beta,

00:07:34 ◼   ► and the new medications feature of health,

00:07:37 ◼   ► I really like, so I just put my medications in there.

00:07:40 ◼   ► And they are making a lock screen medications widget

00:07:44 ◼   ► to note the things that you have got left to take.

00:07:48 ◼   ► So I think that that might be really nice

00:07:50 ◼   ► for a sleep-focused lock screen,

00:07:53 ◼   ► because it will be there and will be as a good reminder

00:07:56 ◼   ► of you need to take your pills before you go to bed.

00:07:58 ◼   ► It's like a secondary thing, so I might set that one up

00:08:01 ◼   ► when that feature becomes available.

00:08:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I might give that a try too,

00:08:04 ◼   ► because I actually just, I just use the medications one

00:08:07 ◼   ► for reminding me to take my vitamins.

00:08:09 ◼   ► I thought like, oh, let me just put this

00:08:11 ◼   ► in this little system here,

00:08:12 ◼   ► because for some reason, like,

00:08:13 ◼   ► take my vitamins is the to-do list item

00:08:17 ◼   ► that I will like blow off the most.

00:08:19 ◼   ► I don't like, it's just so funny.

00:08:20 ◼   ► My brain's like, yeah, sure, we'll do that.

00:08:22 ◼   ► We'll just like check this off now

00:08:23 ◼   ► and we'll get it in a second.

00:08:25 ◼   ► And then we never do.

00:08:26 ◼   ► So I thought like, oh, maybe if I try to put it

00:08:27 ◼   ► in a completely different system,

00:08:29 ◼   ► this will like help me.

00:08:31 ◼   ► And it mostly does,

00:08:32 ◼   ► but I still feel like the medications one,

00:08:35 ◼   ► like I was thinking about someone

00:08:36 ◼   ► who might actually have difficulty remembering to take medications as opposed to me who's

00:08:41 ◼   ► just being like lazy and weird about it. I do feel like it it needs to get turned up

00:08:47 ◼   ► one notch in terms of aggressiveness and remindingness and maybe the lock screen one is something

00:08:53 ◼   ► interesting to try there and just in terms of prominence. Yes before you go to bed like

00:08:58 ◼   ► here's a here's a visual nudge like you did not log taking your vitamins today and you

00:09:05 ◼   ► should do that. So that's interesting. I'll definitely give that a try when it comes around.

00:09:08 ◼   ► - The medications feature in its current iteration works best for people that stay on top of their

00:09:14 ◼   ► notifications like I do. So it works well for me because Adina hasn't enjoyed it very much because

00:09:19 ◼   ► she doesn't manage her notifications like a wild person like I do. Like people don't manage their

00:09:25 ◼   ► notifications the way that I do. Like I look at them all, I remove the ones that I don't want,

00:09:29 ◼   ► I leave the ones that I want to deal with. That is not how most people deal with their notifications.

00:09:34 ◼   ► So the medicine can get lost in there.

00:09:36 ◼   ► I think they should be pinning it.

00:09:37 ◼   ► I think it should be pinned to the top of the lock screen

00:09:39 ◼   ► until you do something to it.

00:09:41 ◼   ► - Yep, I completely agree.

00:09:42 ◼   ► That's why I wanted to give it a test.

00:09:43 ◼   ► It's like, ooh, how does this separate system work?

00:09:45 ◼   ► And it does feel like this should not get lost

00:09:49 ◼   ► in the list along with everything else.

00:09:51 ◼   ► There should be some kind of higher priority status

00:09:55 ◼   ► for this one in particular.

00:09:56 ◼   ► But hopefully that is also a feature

00:09:58 ◼   ► that Apple continues to return to

00:10:00 ◼   ► and make small improvements on.

00:10:01 ◼   ► It can make a big difference.

00:10:02 ◼   ► - They do that all the time now.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Yeah. All right. So the focuses that I've done the most with are travel and recording.

00:10:10 ◼   ► So I've got some screenshots for you here in the show notes. So my travel lock screen,

00:10:15 ◼   ► I had previously had a travel home screen set up that we've mentioned before that it basically

00:10:21 ◼   ► gives me a bunch more widgets, right? Like I use like a flighty widget and a fantastic L widget

00:10:25 ◼   ► and a tripsy widget, uh, as well as just like bringing the airline that I'm using. I put their

00:10:31 ◼   ► app on the home screen and the wallet app stuff like that right so that's like my travel home

00:10:36 ◼   ► screen. I'll take a screenshot of that and put it in the show notes just for reference too because

00:10:40 ◼   ► I actually think that's a pretty good one but I thought I would build a travel lock screen to go

00:10:46 ◼   ► alongside it and so what we've got is I'm using one of Apple's pre-built lock screen options that

00:10:54 ◼   ► they have now so they use this they have this called earth detail yes yes there's a couple of

00:11:00 ◼   ► different options you can choose, but it's basically like an animated globe as such,

00:11:05 ◼   ► right? Like I think it's using like the Apple Maps globe kind of thing, and you can choose to like

00:11:09 ◼   ► have a zoom level on it. And what it's showing you at all times is where you are in the world.

00:11:14 ◼   ► And I thought that that was pretty cool. There's like a travel lock screen because

00:11:18 ◼   ► I would be somewhere else and my little dock would be in another place. So I thought that

00:11:24 ◼   ► looked pretty cool. And then I've got some specific lock screen widgets to go alongside it.

00:11:29 ◼   ► So we've got the flighty widget, like the flighty lock screen widget, carrot weather,

00:11:34 ◼   ► and a widget Smith based step counter along with fantastic out across the top.

00:11:40 ◼   ► And I thought that they were just like good at a glance things for my travel.

00:11:45 ◼   ► Lock screen.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Wait, so I'm very intrigued.

00:11:47 ◼   ► What's the 44 days until which one, which widget is that?

00:11:50 ◼   ► That is flighty.

00:11:52 ◼   ► Oh, this is like a funny thing where I took these screenshots like a month ago.

00:11:57 ◼   ► We were going to talk about this in our previous episode, but we went

00:12:01 ◼   ► around way too long, so I just have reused the screenshots.

00:12:04 ◼   ► I didn't realize that Flighty will do the call down thing because of course, Myke,

00:12:09 ◼   ► I'm with you, this is obviously the best lock screen to use for any kind of travel

00:12:13 ◼   ► mode, so I've done the exact same thing and I put Flighty on the top as well.

00:12:17 ◼   ► It's like, yes, obviously that's the one you should pick.

00:12:20 ◼   ► Like I think that they basically made this one to be for a travel focus

00:12:25 ◼   ► mode. Like, it's gotta be, right? That's what someone put it there for.

00:12:28 ◼   ► It's perfect.

00:12:29 ◼   ► I have Flighty on it as well, but I just didn't know that there was a countdown because I

00:12:34 ◼   ► just booked my flights to America like two days ago and I haven't actually put them into

00:12:38 ◼   ► Flighty yet, so I didn't realize that it does like a cool countdown days until flight thing.

00:12:42 ◼   ► So that's really nice, I didn't know that. Can I ask what's the thing that you blurred

00:12:45 ◼   ► out on the very top? That's the Fantastic Hal one that's blurred out of like what the

00:12:49 ◼   ► next event is?

00:12:50 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the next event. Whatever it was, I didn't want everyone to know what it was.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Right, but it's too long ago now, you can't remember.

00:12:58 ◼   ► I can send you mine so you can see that we've basically done the exact same thing for the

00:13:03 ◼   ► travel screens because I think it's just obviously the most sensible one to do.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Oh yeah, look at that.

00:13:08 ◼   ► Alright, so you've got, oh that's a good idea, you've got your AirPods Max battery

00:13:14 ◼   ► on there.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:16 ◼   ► Mmm, I might steal that.

00:13:17 ◼   ► Because that's when I care about the battery for those things the most, is when I'm travelling.

00:13:22 ◼   ► Yeah, for me, the lock screen widget that is the battery

00:13:27 ◼   ► where it automatically picks which thing to show you,

00:13:30 ◼   ► to me is like clearly the best lock screen widget

00:13:33 ◼   ► and should be by default in like every single one of them.

00:13:36 ◼   ► I think it's like the most sensible place

00:13:38 ◼   ► to show battery status for something

00:13:41 ◼   ► that you probably care about.

00:13:42 ◼   ► I don't know quite what their algorithm is

00:13:44 ◼   ► for rotating between things.

00:13:46 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like perfect, but it's good enough.

00:13:49 ◼   ► And I love it for keeping an eye on like,

00:13:52 ◼   ► "Oh, my headphones in my office are unplugged

00:13:55 ◼   ► and I can see now that, like, they run low

00:13:57 ◼   ► 'cause, like, that's the one that starts showing up."

00:14:00 ◼   ► So, yeah, and I feel like especially when you're traveling,

00:14:03 ◼   ► I need to keep track of how charged everything is,

00:14:06 ◼   ► is, like, super high priority and feels like it just has

00:14:08 ◼   ► to be on a lock screen for travel.

00:14:10 ◼   ► -You know you can choose, though, right?

00:14:12 ◼   ► -Okay, so, we can get to that in a second.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Yes, I know that you can force an item,

00:14:17 ◼   ► but I think leaving it on auto is mostly the sensible decision.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Okay, I'm gonna try on auto

00:14:23 ◼   ► 'cause my AirPods Max are not here

00:14:24 ◼   ► and they're not paired to my phone right now it seems.

00:14:26 ◼   ► So let me make the change,

00:14:28 ◼   ► but I'm gonna use that.

00:14:31 ◼   ► I did have a little complaint

00:14:32 ◼   ► that I wanted to levy for focus modes,

00:14:35 ◼   ► which is the switching between focus modes.

00:14:38 ◼   ► So let's imagine I am traveling on the weekend.

00:14:43 ◼   ► So I have my weekend focus mode automatically enabled

00:14:47 ◼   ► and I want to manually switch to my travel focus mode,

00:14:52 ◼   ► right, because I'm in transit.

00:14:54 ◼   ► But then when I arrive at my destination,

00:14:56 ◼   ► I would like to turn off that focus mode,

00:14:59 ◼   ► but I would like it to go to the previously enabled

00:15:02 ◼   ► focus mode rather than the default.

00:15:05 ◼   ► 'Cause this also happens that like,

00:15:07 ◼   ► if I have my travel focus mode on

00:15:09 ◼   ► and the weekend comes around during the travel,

00:15:11 ◼   ► it's gonna flip over to weekend,

00:15:13 ◼   ► which is not what I want, right?

00:15:15 ◼   ► So I would like to be able to,

00:15:16 ◼   ► once you enable a focus mode, once it turns off,

00:15:20 ◼   ► even if it's turning off by an automation of some kind,

00:15:23 ◼   ► then it goes back to the previous one.

00:15:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, we're slightly jumping ahead

00:15:27 ◼   ► to the app recommendation section of the show,

00:15:30 ◼   ► but there's an app which I've been trialing

00:15:34 ◼   ► with shortcuts just a little bit,

00:15:36 ◼   ► but it's called Data Jar, and it's an app

00:15:38 ◼   ► that lets you store information permanently,

00:15:42 ◼   ► like as a little variable outside the shortcut system,

00:15:45 ◼   ► And I have actually been trying to solve this exact problem with that.

00:15:50 ◼   ► And I think it should be--you should be able to have Data Jar remember

00:15:55 ◼   ► not what is the current focus mode, but what is the last focus mode.

00:15:59 ◼   ► I've already set it up so it's like, "Oh yes, I can definitely have this little app

00:16:04 ◼   ► remember what the previous one was."

00:16:06 ◼   ► And I'm just now trying to work through the--

00:16:09 ◼   ► Okay, so when I turn something off, I want you to check with Data Jar

00:16:13 ◼   ► for what the last one was and then go to that instead of by default opening up the phone.

00:16:19 ◼   ► That sounds like it's going to be really complicated to set up.

00:16:22 ◼   ► No, DataJar is actually really simple.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Like I just came across it so I haven't had a huge chance to play with it but I think

00:16:29 ◼   ► it's like it is exactly for these kinds of problems where there's some sort of automation

00:16:34 ◼   ► that it depends on what was something like a little while ago not just what is the current

00:16:41 ◼   ► state of everything now.

00:16:42 ◼   ► So I've been kind of toying around with it, but it's like one of my, "Ooh, this can be

00:16:46 ◼   ► a really interesting app for automation going forward in 2023," and this feels like exactly

00:16:51 ◼   ► the kind of problem that I think could be able to be solved for it.

00:16:55 ◼   ► I'll mention that now as a little preview for the app section.

00:16:58 ◼   ► - A bit by Simon Stovering.

00:16:59 ◼   ► He made Scriptable, which I know is an app that's very popular.

00:17:02 ◼   ► - Oh, they're the same people who made Scriptable.

00:17:04 ◼   ► Okay, that makes sense.

00:17:05 ◼   ► That makes sense.

00:17:06 ◼   ► I didn't realize.

00:17:07 ◼   ► - My recording lock screen in focus mode is the one that I use the most.

00:17:12 ◼   ► I had a recording focus mode set up for a while and it basically turns off all

00:17:17 ◼   ► notifications when I'm recording a show and I usually enable this. I have a

00:17:21 ◼   ► shortcut that turns on my recording focus for X amount of hours and sets a

00:17:26 ◼   ► timer for me for the specific show that I'm doing. I was using that before but

00:17:31 ◼   ► now I get to tie in a lock screen to it which has been really good because of

00:17:36 ◼   ► the always-on display. So when I'm recording I put my phone in a dock I

00:17:41 ◼   ► I have a material doc from Studio Neat.

00:17:43 ◼   ► I put it in there, it just stands there.

00:17:45 ◼   ► So it's just off to the side.

00:17:48 ◼   ► And so I thought, well, what kind of information

00:17:50 ◼   ► might I want when I'm recording a show?

00:17:53 ◼   ► And so I have a couple of widgets there.

00:17:56 ◼   ► I have the calendar one again.

00:17:58 ◼   ► I have my Timery, lock screen widgets.

00:18:01 ◼   ► And then I have a world clock built with Widgetsmith

00:18:05 ◼   ► with a few different locations.

00:18:06 ◼   ► - Oh, that's how you, okay, that's how you did it.

00:18:08 ◼   ► I was looking at that thinking like,

00:18:10 ◼   ► This layout of the widgets is a little bit funny,

00:18:12 ◼   ► but you're using Widgetsmith to show the three different ones.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Ah, OK, right.

00:18:17 ◼   ► So it's two two-sized ones.

00:18:20 ◼   ► It's not four, right?

00:18:21 ◼   ► OK.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Yeah, but the way that Widgetsmith actually do it,

00:18:24 ◼   ► you can have more locations than that.

00:18:25 ◼   ► But I felt like three looked visually good.

00:18:27 ◼   ► And that's what I need the most.

00:18:29 ◼   ► It's just like the American time zones.

00:18:32 ◼   ► And then for this one, I'm using the Photo Shuffle lock screen.

00:18:36 ◼   ► So it's a lock screen that basically--

00:18:39 ◼   ► and I've one that Apple made where every time you lock the phone or unlock the

00:18:43 ◼   ► phone, it changes the image and you can do people, places,

00:18:48 ◼   ► and buildings for this.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Why not dogs? Dogs, Apple, come on.

00:18:52 ◼   ► Let me see, do they have a dogs one? I'd be surprised if they didn't.

00:18:56 ◼   ► But you have some customization for how the photo shuffle works.

00:19:01 ◼   ► It's people, nature, and cities. They're your categories.

00:19:05 ◼   ► But with the people one, you can choose specific people.

00:19:10 ◼   ► - Ah, that's good, okay.

00:19:12 ◼   ► - So I set my own up to just be pictures of my wife.

00:19:14 ◼   ► And so it just cycles through the faces album

00:19:18 ◼   ► or whatever that I have of her there.

00:19:20 ◼   ► I enjoy that.

00:19:20 ◼   ► And it's also visually different enough

00:19:22 ◼   ► that I realize kind of like that I'm in my recording focus,

00:19:25 ◼   ► which I also just like as like a visual.

00:19:27 ◼   ► So that one's a really good one too.

00:19:28 ◼   ► - Can you select multiple people under the people option

00:19:31 ◼   ► or is it just one person at a time?

00:19:32 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:19:33 ◼   ► I think you can set multiple people,

00:19:34 ◼   ► which will probably help with the dog's thing.

00:19:36 ◼   ► 'Cause I think you could set animals.

00:19:38 ◼   ► Or am I remembering iPhoto?

00:19:41 ◼   ► I think I might be remembering iPhoto.

00:19:42 ◼   ► - You're remembering what I told you iPhoto used to do

00:19:45 ◼   ► 10 years ago, and still would be in my bonnet.

00:19:47 ◼   ► - There you go, that's why that's in my mind.

00:19:48 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:19:50 ◼   ► - I put that there, right?

00:19:51 ◼   ► You're having like implanted memories now.

00:19:53 ◼   ► But no, I was thinking for your recording lock screen, Myke,

00:19:55 ◼   ► you should obviously, I mean, like your wife is lovely,

00:19:58 ◼   ► but you should have it rotate through photos

00:20:00 ◼   ► of all of your co-hosts for the recording ones.

00:20:02 ◼   ► Like that's what you should be doing, right?

00:20:04 ◼   ► You know what, that's actually not a bad idea.

00:20:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you should do that.

00:20:09 ◼   ► It should be all the people that you co-host podcasts with.

00:20:11 ◼   ► That's why I wanted to know if it can do multiple ones.

00:20:13 ◼   ► I could be smiling at you right now from your long screen.

00:20:16 ◼   ► I do have a few photos of you smiling, that is true.

00:20:19 ◼   ► It would be extra good if it could just pick out the specific people that I'm recording

00:20:25 ◼   ► with at any one time, but then I would need an obscene amount of focus moves to be set

00:20:29 ◼   ► up to do that.

00:20:30 ◼   ► And there's actually a limit of 10, I don't know if you knew that.

00:20:32 ◼   ► I did not know that.

00:20:34 ◼   ► This is like a small thing that I bumped into, which I do find slightly infuriating, but

00:20:39 ◼   ► pre-iOS 16 there wasn't a limit on focus modes.

00:20:44 ◼   ► And iOS 16, they introduced a limit of 10, which is actually a little bit tighter than

00:20:50 ◼   ► you think because it includes the two ones that are there by default, or the three that

00:20:55 ◼   ► are there by default.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Do Not Disturb, Driving, and Sleep.

00:20:58 ◼   ► So it's really a limit of 7 that you can choose.

00:21:02 ◼   ► I kind of wonder if that was like,

00:21:05 ◼   ► oh, this is there because of two people,

00:21:07 ◼   ► Federico Vitici and me,

00:21:09 ◼   ► like sending in like a million focus modes

00:21:11 ◼   ► and they're like, no, no, no, right?

00:21:13 ◼   ► This is too many.

00:21:14 ◼   ► But yeah, it was actually confirmed by Apple

00:21:16 ◼   ► that that was not a bug.

00:21:17 ◼   ► Like that was an engineering decision that they had made

00:21:19 ◼   ► that they were going to limit it to 10.

00:21:20 ◼   ► - It's wild because you can set up

00:21:22 ◼   ► 200 custom lock screens.

00:21:24 ◼   ► So why can't you only do 10 focus modes?

00:21:27 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:21:28 ◼   ► - There must be some UI issue

00:21:29 ◼   ► that like there's an area of the UI

00:21:31 ◼   ► that like maybe the control center thing

00:21:34 ◼   ► where they don't wanna scroll?

00:21:35 ◼   ► - No, but that doesn't make sense

00:21:36 ◼   ► 'cause I already scroll on there.

00:21:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, most of the reason.

00:21:38 ◼   ► - I find this stuff super frustrating

00:21:40 ◼   ► and it's extra frustrating when it used to be one way

00:21:43 ◼   ► and then it goes the other way.

00:21:44 ◼   ► It kind of reminds me of a thing

00:21:46 ◼   ► that they did eventually remove

00:21:47 ◼   ► but there used to be a limit of 100 VIPs on mail.

00:21:51 ◼   ► And it was like, again, it's like clear

00:21:52 ◼   ► that someone just like picked a number

00:21:54 ◼   ► that they thought was really big that no one would surpass.

00:21:57 ◼   ► And I think like me and Gruber were complaining about that.

00:22:00 ◼   ► Like, oh, depending on how you run your email, like that's extremely frustrating to have this limit for absolutely no reason.

00:22:05 ◼   ► So anyway, just like FYI to anyone out there who's like, I'm going to do a focus mode for everything.

00:22:10 ◼   ► No, you're not like you're going to pick seven.

00:22:12 ◼   ► That's what you're going to pick.

00:22:13 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you can do everything if you have 10 things.

00:22:15 ◼   ► Right. Yeah. If you have seven things.

00:22:17 ◼   ► Can't you change the like because I don't have the driving one.

00:22:21 ◼   ► Are you sure you want to take a look like I thought that was like hard coded in there that you couldn't get rid of the driving one.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Do not disturb fitness, recording, sleep, travel, weekend.

00:22:30 ◼   ► - That's so weird, have you never driven?

00:22:33 ◼   ► - I remember removing it, but that was probably last year.

00:22:37 ◼   ► - Oh, that's interesting, okay, all right,

00:22:39 ◼   ► so I'm just looking now.

00:22:41 ◼   ► So, I mean, driving I will leave on there,

00:22:43 ◼   ► 'cause when I'm in America, I do drive,

00:22:45 ◼   ► and I do find it useful to have.

00:22:47 ◼   ► But the driving one is different,

00:22:49 ◼   ► so you can delete that focus mode.

00:22:51 ◼   ► - Right.

00:22:52 ◼   ► - But do not disturb and sleep are hard coded in.

00:22:56 ◼   ► You can't get rid of those.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Okay, that's interesting.

00:22:59 ◼   ► Okay, so if you don't drive, you can have eight.

00:23:02 ◼   ► I didn't realize that, interesting.

00:23:04 ◼   ► - The last one I have to show you, lock screens,

00:23:06 ◼   ► is just my regular lock screen.

00:23:07 ◼   ► It's not too dissimilar from the other ones that I have.

00:23:11 ◼   ► I have FantasticOwl as the main on the top, right?

00:23:14 ◼   ► It's like the one big one on the top,

00:23:17 ◼   ► along with Carrotweather, Timery,

00:23:19 ◼   ► and a step counter in Widgetsmith.

00:23:21 ◼   ► That's my kind of like main lock screen,

00:23:23 ◼   ► which is not tied to focus modes.

00:23:25 ◼   ► - Okay, so that's the default open one there.

00:23:27 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right, okay.

00:23:28 ◼   ► - So I wanna see yours now.

00:23:30 ◼   ► Do you wanna show me focus mode ones first?

00:23:33 ◼   ► I've seen the travel one.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Do you have any others?

00:23:36 ◼   ► - Yes, I'm also having a funny situation in my office.

00:23:40 ◼   ► So I've been really trying to do home automation this year

00:23:43 ◼   ► and partly with the lights and things.

00:23:45 ◼   ► But for this show, while I keep flipping through

00:23:47 ◼   ► the focus modes to look at things while we're talking,

00:23:49 ◼   ► the lights in my office are going crazy, right?

00:23:51 ◼   ► So it's like, I wanted all of these like chill,

00:23:55 ◼   ► I wanted like the chillest version of the lights

00:23:57 ◼   ► where it's like, I have everything real down low

00:23:59 ◼   ► and I pick these like blues and greens and it's very lovely.

00:24:03 ◼   ► But then every time it's like, oh, I went into sleep mode,

00:24:05 ◼   ► the office is completely dark.

00:24:06 ◼   ► No, I didn't want that.

00:24:07 ◼   ► Oh, I went to travel mode.

00:24:08 ◼   ► The lights went completely white and bright.

00:24:11 ◼   ► - I'm flicking around taking screenshots on my Mac

00:24:14 ◼   ► 'cause like, you're traveling.

00:24:15 ◼   ► I'm like, I'm not, I'm not traveling Mac, stop it.

00:24:18 ◼   ► That's funny.

00:24:19 ◼   ► I guess if I've done that stuff and I don't remember,

00:24:22 ◼   ► things are flying off the handle all over the place.

00:24:25 ◼   ► That's really funny.

00:24:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it's just like, automation is great,

00:24:28 ◼   ► but it's like when you are talking about automation

00:24:31 ◼   ► and rapidly flipping through a bunch of things,

00:24:33 ◼   ► like it starts to get weird.

00:24:34 ◼   ► And every time the office lights either completely go away

00:24:37 ◼   ► or turn all the way on, it's like,

00:24:38 ◼   ► oh, you're a real mood killer here, office lights.

00:24:41 ◼   ► But that is also part of the thing I'm trying to do

00:24:42 ◼   ► with DataJar, is to like smooth that stuff out.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Like don't just look at the state of things right now.

00:24:48 ◼   ► remember like what were things like five minutes ago

00:24:51 ◼   ► and maybe chill out and don't change things

00:24:52 ◼   ► if you don't need to.

00:24:53 ◼   ► Okay, so let me send you some of my stuff.

00:24:55 ◼   ► I already sent you my sleep lock screen and home screen,

00:25:00 ◼   ► which I just basically have as empty as possible

00:25:03 ◼   ► and just pick it as like dark red for go to sleep now,

00:25:07 ◼   ► like this is time to go to bed.

00:25:08 ◼   ► - Oh, that's what they are.

00:25:09 ◼   ► 'Cause okay, a minute ago I saw

00:25:12 ◼   ► that I had two images from Grey.

00:25:14 ◼   ► One was a blank lock screen with a couple of widgets on,

00:25:19 ◼   ► and one was a completely blank home screen,

00:25:22 ◼   ► and I was like, oh, here we go again.

00:25:24 ◼   ► Maybe I'm gonna find out later on

00:25:26 ◼   ► that your actual lock screen is like this again,

00:25:28 ◼   ► but I didn't wanna react to it in the moment

00:25:31 ◼   ► because it would have destroyed the flow of the episode,

00:25:34 ◼   ► but maybe we'll get back to that later on.

00:25:36 ◼   ► So this is your, so it's not black, it's like a red,

00:25:40 ◼   ► 'cause that's good for eyes, right?

00:25:41 ◼   ► I've learned recently.

00:25:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I think red, like a very dark red just works well at night.

00:25:47 ◼   ► And I actually picked a little real dark red because it sort of makes the contrast with

00:25:52 ◼   ► the icons on the bottom less like the icons on the bottom seem brighter if there's absolutely

00:25:57 ◼   ► no color on the home screen.

00:25:59 ◼   ► So that's just why I have it kind of set as this like gradient red that they allow.

00:26:04 ◼   ► So my like sleep lock screen and home screen are super boring.

00:26:08 ◼   ► There's a thing that's happening there though.

00:26:09 ◼   ► So if you look at the sleep lock home screen, there's a funny bug that happens with this

00:26:16 ◼   ► little battery meter, the automatic battery one.

00:26:20 ◼   ► If you pick the lock screen widget to be the little circle battery, but like I do, it's

00:26:26 ◼   ► like, you know what I want?

00:26:27 ◼   ► One of them I want to be the watch.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Like I always want to know the watch before I'm going to bed just to keep an eye on it.

00:26:34 ◼   ► Like ooh, do I need to charge it up a little bit before I go to sleep?

00:26:37 ◼   ► But if you have one of them manually set to the watch, the automatic one, I think it's

00:26:43 ◼   ► like built in by default that it kind of like always goes to the watch if it doesn't know

00:26:47 ◼   ► what to do.

00:26:48 ◼   ► And so you end up with these two little watches.

00:26:50 ◼   ► I was gonna ask why you had two watch batteries.

00:26:53 ◼   ► Like you just want to back up like check like what is going on here.

00:26:57 ◼   ► Yeah and it like it creates this little like the phone is looking at you kind of look on

00:27:05 ◼   ► it.

00:27:06 ◼   ► There's a face in there.

00:27:07 ◼   ► And it's extremely hard to screenshot.

00:27:10 ◼   ► So I'm gonna send you something that I was trying to catch

00:27:13 ◼   ► like just while we're recording,

00:27:15 ◼   ► while we're talking about this like funny bug.

00:27:18 ◼   ► So here is just like the top of my work home screen

00:27:22 ◼   ► where I have the same thing where it's like,

00:27:24 ◼   ► this is like how the phone would look for me in the morning.

00:27:27 ◼   ► There's two battery icons,

00:27:29 ◼   ► one of which I wanna set to the watch in the morning

00:27:31 ◼   ► so I always know if to charge it

00:27:32 ◼   ► and one is the automatic other one.

00:27:35 ◼   ► But it very often, like when the phone is just sitting there, defaults to having both

00:27:39 ◼   ► of them.

00:27:40 ◼   ► And I put the activity thing in the center and then it really creates this like little

00:27:45 ◼   ► face going "Ooh!" like looking at me all day.

00:27:48 ◼   ► This lock screen has got like a rectangle.

00:27:53 ◼   ► This is like the mouth to me.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:27:57 ◼   ► The activity in the center is like a funny thing.

00:28:01 ◼   ► Like Apple dims the circles on the activity meter in a way that I find really frustrating.

00:28:07 ◼   ► It's like performative privacy of like, "Ooh, if your phone is locked, we don't want anyone

00:28:12 ◼   ► to know how active you've been today if they found the phone," which is like, "Please,

00:28:16 ◼   ► Apple.

00:28:17 ◼   ► Like no one cares about this.

00:28:18 ◼   ► This is just you like going out of your way to show me how much you care about my privacy."

00:28:24 ◼   ► When like, "I'd much rather prefer that you encrypted my iCloud messages even if I

00:28:28 ◼   ► I used iCloud backup and like not you know prevented people from knowing if I exercised

00:28:33 ◼   ► this morning or not?

00:28:34 ◼   ► Can I just double down and say because you brought that up and that's like one of my

00:28:37 ◼   ► big bug bears and I 100% agree with you and I think it's absolutely ridiculous that they

00:28:41 ◼   ► have not made that a thing. So like you can look into this maybe you didn't know call

00:28:46 ◼   ► Texans but if you use iMessage in the cloud it's called like backs up your iMessages

00:28:51 ◼   ► syncs them across you're no longer end to end encrypted there is an encryption key that

00:28:57 ◼   ► Apple holds. And there is a bunch of technical reasons as to why they do this, but I don't

00:29:04 ◼   ► care. I want the encryption. Like if you want to have encryption, you can't have iMessage

00:29:10 ◼   ► backup. And this isn't the case for a bunch of other things. With health, that's not

00:29:15 ◼   ► the case. They don't hold the keys for that. But they hold the keys for iMessage, and I

00:29:20 ◼   ► want them to change that. So thank you for bringing that up.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, since this is a very Apple-focused episode, that to me is...

00:29:28 ◼   ► I think it's kind of the worst thing that Apple does, and I think it makes all of their

00:29:34 ◼   ► messaging about privacy sound like a lie to me, which is the thing that everyone cares

00:29:41 ◼   ► the most about.

00:29:44 ◼   ► I mean, I bet a lot of people would care way more about their iMessages than their photos,

00:29:48 ◼   ► right?

00:29:49 ◼   ► Like, those have got to be the top two.

00:29:50 ◼   ► But I think there are a lot of people who it's like,

00:29:52 ◼   ► "Hey, you have to pick one of these two

00:29:54 ◼   ► to be leaked to the world, your iMessages or your photos."

00:29:57 ◼   ► I think a lot more people would rather

00:29:59 ◼   ► have their photos leaked than their iMessages leaked.

00:30:01 ◼   ► - I think so, I would.

00:30:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, but yeah, so when I found out,

00:30:04 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, Apple doesn't actually end to end

00:30:07 ◼   ► encrypt your iMessages if you use iCloud backup,

00:30:10 ◼   ► which they extremely push you to do for good reasons."

00:30:14 ◼   ► I was like, "That is appalling.

00:30:16 ◼   ► Like, I'm totally appalled by this."

00:30:18 ◼   ► And it really gets under my skin every time Apple talks about how they care about privacy.

00:30:24 ◼   ► And it's like, yeah, you're not saying out loud the one thing that people care about the most.

00:30:31 ◼   ► So when I first found out about it, I was like, Oh my God.

00:30:34 ◼   ► Right.

00:30:34 ◼   ► And I turned off iCloud backup on all of my devices and I was using just like the local backup on your computer.

00:30:39 ◼   ► But then I realized, Oh, it doesn't matter at all because if the person I'm talking with uses iCloud backup, like it hasn't prevented anything here.

00:30:48 ◼   ► So great, like I'm just, so I went back to using iCloud backup and I just live with it,

00:30:52 ◼   ► but I really hate it.

00:30:53 ◼   ► But it is also why like I call the activity ring hiding on the lock screen,

00:30:59 ◼   ► like performative privacy.

00:31:01 ◼   ► It's a thing that absolutely no one cares about, but I think Apple does because

00:31:06 ◼   ► it's like, look at us keeping an eye on your privacy.

00:31:09 ◼   ► We'll keep this private health data, how many times you've stood up today, you

00:31:14 ◼   ► know, hidden on your lock screen until it is unlocked.

00:31:17 ◼   ► And I find it annoying because then every time I look at the lock screen, like the little circles then color in

00:31:23 ◼   ► and I would like the whole purpose of having it there is I just want to see the information.

00:31:27 ◼   ► I don't only want to see the information when the screen is unlocked.

00:31:30 ◼   ► But so anyway, complaining about Apple privacy aside, here is what that actual lock screen looks like.

00:31:34 ◼   ► So to me, this is the like the most important how my phone looks mode.

00:31:40 ◼   ► And this is what I call core, which is my like morning work.

00:31:44 ◼   ► And this is the most, I mean, I guess aside from sleep,

00:31:47 ◼   ► this is the most lockdown mode of like,

00:31:50 ◼   ► I don't wanna get messages from anybody.

00:31:53 ◼   ► This is how the phone should default on any of my work days.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Nothing gets through,

00:31:59 ◼   ► and I just wanna have it be entirely work focused.

00:32:02 ◼   ► So I just have the couple of battery icons there

00:32:04 ◼   ► 'cause I wanna keep an eye on like the headphones.

00:32:06 ◼   ► And like I said, I wanna have the watch

00:32:08 ◼   ► to know how charged it is.

00:32:09 ◼   ► I do like having activity there

00:32:11 ◼   ► because I often do most of my actual exercise in the morning,

00:32:15 ◼   ► so I feel like that's kind of part of what I'm doing

00:32:19 ◼   ► for the core stuff.

00:32:20 ◼   ► And then on my home screen, I don't use a bunch of apps.

00:32:23 ◼   ► I just have the widgets for OmniFocus

00:32:26 ◼   ► to show me the top-level stuff that I should be doing.

00:32:29 ◼   ► And then I have Timery, which is giving me a report

00:32:32 ◼   ► for today and the last X days,

00:32:35 ◼   ► so I can just kind of keep an eye on,

00:32:37 ◼   ► "Ooh, how am I actually doing in terms of work,

00:32:40 ◼   ► both for now and over the recent past.

00:32:42 ◼   ► So this is how I'm setting up like my core focus mode.

00:32:45 ◼   ► - So this is core focus mode.

00:32:47 ◼   ► Okay, so this is a focus mode, it's a pairing of the two.

00:32:50 ◼   ► Is that like your mind, Spaceship U?

00:32:52 ◼   ► Is that what this is?

00:32:54 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, it's not really on purpose.

00:32:56 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:32:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, the lock screen is just like,

00:32:58 ◼   ► it is from NASA and I think it's the inside of a satellite.

00:33:01 ◼   ► I just kind of think it looks cool

00:33:03 ◼   ► and I just strongly associate blue

00:33:06 ◼   ► with like all the important work.

00:33:09 ◼   ► So yeah, it wasn't intentionally Spaceship U,

00:33:11 ◼   ► but it's like Spaceship U adjacent.

00:33:13 ◼   ► - I couldn't personally use this image

00:33:14 ◼   ► because it doesn't line up, that line from the top.

00:33:18 ◼   ► - I know.

00:33:19 ◼   ► - Okay. - Yeah, I know, I know.

00:33:20 ◼   ► I've actually-- - I couldn't do it.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I couldn't do it.

00:33:23 ◼   ► 'Cause it's too close, that's the problem.

00:33:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, for listeners, there's a little bit

00:33:26 ◼   ► of like a vertical line, which is like very close,

00:33:29 ◼   ► but not quite lined up.

00:33:30 ◼   ► It has been on my mind at some point,

00:33:32 ◼   ► I'm gonna like get this from,

00:33:34 ◼   ► there was like NASA's Instagram or whatever,

00:33:36 ◼   ► and like load it into Photoshop and actually adjust it,

00:33:38 ◼   ► Because I do like it enough that it's worth fixing around, but I originally

00:33:44 ◼   ► just set this when I was, when I was like starting to play around with the focus

00:33:47 ◼   ► modes and feeling like, Ooh, what am I going to use?

00:33:49 ◼   ► What am I not going to use?

00:33:50 ◼   ► And this one has just kind of stuck, but yes, I will at some point fix that

00:33:55 ◼   ► alignment issue because you're not wrong.

00:33:56 ◼   ► It's super annoying that it doesn't quite go right down the center.

00:33:59 ◼   ► And I also feel like with the new dynamic island at the top, it like extra highlights

00:34:04 ◼   ► it, like when I first set this up, it wasn't there, but now the dynamic island

00:34:08 ◼   ► is really like letting you know, like, hey buddy,

00:34:11 ◼   ► you can see how not in the middle this is.

00:34:13 ◼   ► - That's really rough.

00:34:16 ◼   ► - So you have just the one home screen here.

00:34:18 ◼   ► Yeah, Timery, Onif, Executor.

00:34:21 ◼   ► - Executor, that's the way I think of it.

00:34:23 ◼   ► - Is that a project name?

00:34:24 ◼   ► - No, that's just like the word that I have used

00:34:27 ◼   ► for a subset of OmniFocus tasks,

00:34:29 ◼   ► which are not project specific.

00:34:32 ◼   ► They are just the, this is what you should do,

00:34:34 ◼   ► ideally every morning.

00:34:36 ◼   ► So there are things like, okay, here's me running through, like, getting the office

00:34:41 ◼   ► set up every morning, and then it just lists, depending on what day it is, which thing I

00:34:46 ◼   ► should be doing.

00:34:47 ◼   ► So it's like, okay, this is the day where you should be walking on the treadmill for

00:34:51 ◼   ► an hour and a half while you talk the script out loud.

00:34:53 ◼   ► And then, like, after that, you should exercise for this amount of time, and then you should

00:34:57 ◼   ► do another draft at the computer sitting down for this amount of time, and then it's like,

00:35:02 ◼   ► take a 20 minute break, and then it's admin.

00:35:05 ◼   ► It's sort of like running through what is the theoretical best list of things to do

00:35:10 ◼   ► without being project specific on any one of them.

00:35:13 ◼   ► So it's like nudging me in the correct order of the routine.

00:35:17 ◼   ► And so I don't like I feel like it's like executive like the top level of tasks is kind

00:35:23 ◼   ► of why I named it that way.

00:35:24 ◼   ► But I've been using this for years and years as a non project specific reminder list for

00:35:30 ◼   ► what you should be doing first thing in the morning.

00:35:34 ◼   ► So like you, that alternates for me with like a weekend focus.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Here's the other one.

00:35:42 ◼   ► Oh, very leafy.

00:35:43 ◼   ► Yeah, so I want to have like two strong colors to again just like set up environmentally,

00:35:50 ◼   ► like how should the day feel like I'm just a big believer in trying to like make everything

00:35:55 ◼   ► kind of go along with a certain way and so for me green has always been really associated

00:35:59 ◼   ► with like, oh, this is the personal time.

00:36:01 ◼   ► And so I have it set up with the home automation stuff and with a bunch of shortcuts.

00:36:06 ◼   ► If it's Wednesday or I'm now doing Saturday as my other weekend day, like this is the

00:36:10 ◼   ► way the phone starts in the morning, which again is just like a nice visual reminder

00:36:14 ◼   ► of like this should be a day off.

00:36:17 ◼   ► And again I like to keep the lock screen reasonably simple, but I feel like for days off I'm

00:36:20 ◼   ► much more likely to go outside, so I just have a couple of weather widgets on there.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Mainly knowing for like if I'm going to take a bike ride I want to know what like the chance

00:36:28 ◼   ► of rain is going to be like for the day. And that's also why on my actual home screen,

00:36:33 ◼   ► I have a carrot weather thing like big and on the top because that's also just useful

00:36:38 ◼   ► for or like my wife and I are we going to go out to the park? Are we going to go somewhere?

00:36:42 ◼   ► Is it going to be an indoor sort of day? So I just like to have the weather big and prominent.

00:36:46 ◼   ► And again, it's also there to kind of nudge me in the remind direction that like it's

00:36:52 ◼   ► the weekend. Maybe you should go outside because you often don't on work days. If carrots

00:36:58 ◼   ► saying it's a beautiful day dude you should take advantage of that.

00:37:01 ◼   ► I mean and who wouldn't want to jump in this bush that you've got here on the home screen?

00:37:04 ◼   ► Big green bush with like I will say the thing about this bush it's like beautiful and green

00:37:11 ◼   ► on the top but there is like the abyss beneath it. Do you feel slightly threatened by my lock

00:37:18 ◼   ► screen image is that what you're saying? I don't like how dark it is between the leaves

00:37:22 ◼   ► on this image. Well nature is very scary Myke even when it's beautiful it's terrifying.

00:37:26 ◼   ► I guess it's like this home screen is like go outside but beware you know yeah I want

00:37:32 ◼   ► you to go like you should go outside but just be careful you know I get that it's a good

00:37:38 ◼   ► bounce. I will question I guess it's not for you right like that you have on the home screen

00:37:48 ◼   ► that you sent me there are two time re-widgets and what my initial thought was like do you

00:37:52 ◼   ► want to be tracking your time that much on the weekend but then I remembered you're always

00:37:56 ◼   ► tracking your time, right? Like that's the difference between me and you, so.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Yeah, so I have it slightly differently set up, like it's not as prominent,

00:38:03 ◼   ► but it's this thing of, yeah, I do always track my time, and that's partly, again,

00:38:10 ◼   ► because I am using it as like a reminder for how I should be, and so the two timer retrackers on my

00:38:17 ◼   ► weekend home screen are the same thing where I have one that's set up to track how is today doing,

00:38:23 ◼   ► and then the bottom one tracks like this a certain x number of past days.

00:38:28 ◼   ► And what I'm always trying to do is like approach a theoretical optimal thing.

00:38:34 ◼   ► And so what I want to see is, oh as the day is going on,

00:38:37 ◼   ► on the weekend day my today timer should be filling up with stuff

00:38:43 ◼   ► that it doesn't fill up with during the weekday.

00:38:46 ◼   ► So it's like, oh there's actually, I've added something this year,

00:38:49 ◼   ► this is again jumping ahead but I'll just mention it now,

00:38:52 ◼   ► where I track how much time I spend with my wife,

00:38:54 ◼   ► but this year I realized, oh, you know what?

00:38:57 ◼   ► I'm gonna break out a separate category,

00:38:59 ◼   ► which is like with wife, but outside of the house

00:39:03 ◼   ► as a little timer.

00:39:05 ◼   ► And so I really like having this

00:39:07 ◼   ► as like a separate kind of thing to track.

00:39:09 ◼   ► It's like tracking a kind of high quality time.

00:39:12 ◼   ► And so I just wanna see like, ooh,

00:39:15 ◼   ► if in the past 10 days, the time with wife time

00:39:19 ◼   ► has like racked up very high,

00:39:21 ◼   ► but none of it has been outside of the house.

00:39:24 ◼   ► It's just like a little nudge on the weekend.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Like, hey, maybe we should get out of here

00:39:27 ◼   ► and go do something.

00:39:28 ◼   ► So that's why I do have the timer retimers

00:39:31 ◼   ► like really prominent because I'm always trying to match

00:39:34 ◼   ► like the last X days is getting affected

00:39:38 ◼   ► by time recorded today.

00:39:40 ◼   ► And you wanna always try to like approach the optimal

00:39:44 ◼   ► of how things should be.

00:39:46 ◼   ► So the weekend days should be adding

00:39:47 ◼   ► like different weekend activities

00:39:49 ◼   ► like reading or going outside or taking a bike ride.

00:39:53 ◼   ► And then the workdays should be adding workday stuff.

00:39:55 ◼   ► And so that's why I do keep it around there.

00:39:58 ◼   ► - Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

00:40:00 ◼   ► - And then I just have an OmniFocus one,

00:40:01 ◼   ► which is like available tasks,

00:40:03 ◼   ► because sometimes there's like just stuff

00:40:05 ◼   ► that you need to do that's like not work stuff

00:40:07 ◼   ► and weekend days are days that it makes sense to do that.

00:40:10 ◼   ► So that's why I have OmniFocus available there.

00:40:12 ◼   ► We went through the travel one, that's the work one.

00:40:15 ◼   ► I got a couple others that are not interesting

00:40:17 ◼   ► to talk about just because it's like admin it's basically the same thing. I do have a

00:40:22 ◼   ► I didn't screenshot it because it's not visually interesting but I'm trying to have the phone

00:40:28 ◼   ► be always in a focus mode I feel like this is probably the best way to think about stuff

00:40:34 ◼   ► and so one thing I did set was a focus mode that I call open where it is the phone is

00:40:40 ◼   ► open to all messages from everyone.

00:40:43 ◼   ► - Wow, you enable that like for 20 minutes once a year.

00:40:46 ◼   ► - Yes, so that's like, oh, I'm expecting a call

00:40:50 ◼   ► from someone who's not in my phone book or whatever.

00:40:53 ◼   ► And so that's like, I can throw it into the open mode.

00:40:56 ◼   ► - I see, that makes more sense.

00:40:57 ◼   ► - Because that is a thing that comes up

00:40:59 ◼   ► every once in a while of like,

00:41:00 ◼   ► oh, you're expecting someone to contact you,

00:41:03 ◼   ► but for whatever reason, you don't know

00:41:05 ◼   ► in advance their contact information or whatever.

00:41:08 ◼   ► So I've gotten kind of caught out by that sometimes.

00:41:10 ◼   ► And so it's like, okay, I have an open mode.

00:41:12 ◼   ► like you're waiting for a call back from your internet prod or whatever, right?

00:41:16 ◼   ► It's like you don't know exactly that exactly that kind of thing.

00:41:20 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, like oh there's a plumber coming to the house maybe and he might call you,

00:41:24 ◼   ► who knows that that kind of thing and I just I just use Apple's like default moon they

00:41:28 ◼   ► have a picture of the moon because it feels like oh my god if it's open you're just like

00:41:33 ◼   ► floating in space vulnerable to anyone at any point in time so that's the image that

00:41:37 ◼   ► I use for that.

00:41:38 ◼   ► But the other one that I think you might enjoy, I'll send this through, is I have a focus

00:41:45 ◼   ► mode called holiday.

00:41:49 ◼   ► He's born receding baby!

00:41:52 ◼   ► Now this is fun!

00:41:53 ◼   ► So the thing about holidays is that they should be novel, right?

00:41:57 ◼   ► Things should feel different when you're on a holiday than they feel normally.

00:42:00 ◼   ► You with a little love heart on the holiday name there, that's cute.

00:42:05 ◼   ► Yeah well it's also because like that's usually I'm spending that with my wife and so it's

00:42:08 ◼   ► like, "We're off somewhere!" And the holiday one, it's set basically so that it's like,

00:42:13 ◼   ► my wife can contact me, family can contact me, and if I'm traveling with friends, like,

00:42:18 ◼   ► those friends can contact me, but I specifically turn off, like, everything that's work-related

00:42:23 ◼   ► for the holiday stuff. And so, in the screenshot that I have for Myke here, I have like a fun

00:42:28 ◼   ► sort of pink sand background, which I've just used as the default, like, "This looks really different

00:42:35 ◼   ► for my wife and I have done a couple of weekends away this year and so just like flip it into

00:42:39 ◼   ► holiday mode and then for the couple of trips that I've done this is pre-focus mode but I was

00:42:45 ◼   ► still using shortcuts to do it I had the holiday mode like pick a wallpaper that matches the trip

00:42:51 ◼   ► so when I was in Hawaii like I had a very Hawaii shirt kind of background and when I was in Norway

00:42:57 ◼   ► I had like a snowy icy background and I don't know like this may sound dumb but I really think

00:43:03 ◼   ► there's a lot of value in even just like silly novelty on devices that are with you all the time.

00:43:09 ◼   ► And so like when I've done a weekend away and my phone is ridiculously pink, it somehow helps make

00:43:16 ◼   ► that little mini trip like feel more different during the time. And it's again like a visual

00:43:21 ◼   ► reminder of like this is how you're spending your time. You're focused on this this weird holiday.

00:43:25 ◼   ► It's even why I picked like this strange font for the time. It's like I just want everything

00:43:29 ◼   ► different. I probably should change the little battery widgets which is on the home screen.

00:43:33 ◼   ► that's not useful anymore, but I just haven't had the system come in since focus came out,

00:43:36 ◼   ► so that'll get swapped out with something. There's the weather, because that's what you want to know

00:43:40 ◼   ► on holidays. I have the maps on the bottom, which I've completely blacked out because obviously it

00:43:44 ◼   ► shows your exact current location, but that's super useful when you're on holidays. And then

00:43:48 ◼   ► I've mentioned this before, but I do find it really useful that when you're on a trip with

00:43:54 ◼   ► someone, it just feels like you end up with a bunch of these weird little like, "Oh, we need to pick

00:43:59 ◼   ► up some aspirin from Booth's kind of errands that like the two of you have while you're

00:44:04 ◼   ► on like this little trip. And so my wife and I have a like shared errands list that gets

00:44:09 ◼   ► used a lot during holidays of like, "Oh, let's not forget when we go here to pick up that

00:44:14 ◼   ► thing." And so I just like to have that on the reminders list. And it's just like, as

00:44:18 ◼   ► soon as we started doing it, it's crazy how much it gets used and also just how much nicer

00:44:23 ◼   ► it can make the trip that like, "Oh, both of us, we can remember to do this thing."

00:44:27 ◼   ► or she can add something to the list for me to do.

00:44:29 ◼   ► So it's not always pink.

00:44:31 ◼   ► It'll be different if I go somewhere else.

00:44:33 ◼   ► But this is my holiday focus mode.

00:44:36 ◼   ► I thought you might appreciate this one, Myke.

00:44:38 ◼   ► - I do. I like it a lot.

00:44:39 ◼   ► I like how bright it is.

00:44:41 ◼   ► The shared errands is smart too.

00:44:43 ◼   ► I guess maybe it's just luck

00:44:45 ◼   ► that it matches up color-wise with the home screen.

00:44:47 ◼   ► - No, no, you can pick it.

00:44:48 ◼   ► You can pick reminder list colors.

00:44:50 ◼   ► - But like, do you change it to like thematically work

00:44:53 ◼   ► with the current home screen for that trip?

00:44:55 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah, I did that when we were in Hawaii.

00:44:58 ◼   ► The Hawaii lock screen was largely green,

00:45:00 ◼   ► so I just changed the little thing to be green.

00:45:02 ◼   ► - I love it.

00:45:02 ◼   ► - So you gotta color coordinate, Myke.

00:45:03 ◼   ► - I love how aesthetic you are here.

00:45:05 ◼   ► It's great, this is awesome.

00:45:07 ◼   ► Look at you go.

00:45:08 ◼   ► - Well, it's interesting because I think

00:45:10 ◼   ► with this focus mode system that Apple's introduced,

00:45:13 ◼   ► I also try to have my watch match all of this stuff.

00:45:16 ◼   ► And I used to do this with shortcuts,

00:45:19 ◼   ► where when you change focus modes,

00:45:21 ◼   ► you could have shortcuts sort of change stuff for you.

00:45:24 ◼   ► But boy was that a giant pain in the butt.

00:45:26 ◼   ► And I just, like Apple's made it 100 times easier now

00:45:29 ◼   ► to do this and so it feels like,

00:45:30 ◼   ► why not take advantage of it?

00:45:32 ◼   ► And I really do think it makes the phone much better.

00:45:35 ◼   ► And for me, this also feels a bit like,

00:45:38 ◼   ► almost validation of years ago,

00:45:41 ◼   ► I was just talking about how like,

00:45:42 ◼   ► I think this is really important for devices

00:45:45 ◼   ► that you have with you, like all the time

00:45:47 ◼   ► to try to make them different.

00:45:49 ◼   ► And you know, in early episodes of Cortex,

00:45:52 ◼   ► I know I got a lot of flack from people thinking I was crazy for having like, oh, there's two

00:45:56 ◼   ► iPads like a work iPad and a personal iPad and people like, what are you doing that for?

00:46:01 ◼   ► And now like software wise, Apple has made this possible more and more on your devices.

00:46:07 ◼   ► And I just like, I love it.

00:46:09 ◼   ► I think it's great.

00:46:10 ◼   ► And I can't wait for this to get rolled out, presumably to the iPad, I don't know, maybe

00:46:14 ◼   ► next year and like max the year after or something.

00:46:17 ◼   ► But it's so good.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Like I'm just so happy that Apple has has introduced this.

00:46:22 ◼   ► It's really nice to be able to have the home screens themselves change.

00:46:25 ◼   ► Like that's a feature I was never even really asking for.

00:46:28 ◼   ► And it was sort of around in the last version, but again, it was like.

00:46:32 ◼   ► Fiddly and hard to do, but now with the focus modes, being able to switch

00:46:36 ◼   ► the actual home screens themselves, it's great.

00:46:38 ◼   ► I love it.

00:46:39 ◼   ► Two thumbs up for this whole system.

00:46:40 ◼   ► And if listeners haven't tried focus modes, you should totally try it.

00:46:45 ◼   ► Like just, I think the very basic one of like, what's a workday like,

00:46:49 ◼   ► and what's a weekend day like and then what's you know the afternoon like those

00:46:53 ◼   ► are the basic ones and set them up and give them a try and you know pick

00:46:58 ◼   ► different fun lock screens so that it just looks visually different I think it

00:47:01 ◼   ► really adds something to your life and doubly so now that there's like an

00:47:04 ◼   ► always on screen for the phones like it's just increasingly present in this

00:47:08 ◼   ► way so shall we do home screens themselves now I don't really have home

00:47:13 ◼   ► screens to show you right because what like what we've gone through here is

00:47:16 ◼   ► is basically everything on my home screens.

00:47:19 ◼   ► - Okay, so there are no apps anymore.

00:47:21 ◼   ► It's either widgets or nothing, right?

00:47:25 ◼   ► Okay, so I've seen them all.

00:47:26 ◼   ► I understand, I understand.

00:47:28 ◼   ► So like, if you're, I get it now, right?

00:47:29 ◼   ► - You've seen everything, Myke.

00:47:31 ◼   ► - If you're always in a focus mode,

00:47:34 ◼   ► there is no home screen anymore.

00:47:36 ◼   ► It's always what is relevant.

00:47:38 ◼   ► All right, that makes sense.

00:47:39 ◼   ► - Yes, so that's what I've done.

00:47:41 ◼   ► I've kind of simplified away the home screen stuff,

00:47:44 ◼   ► And I'm just really using my phone to display whatever relevant

00:47:49 ◼   ► information is in whatever mode.

00:47:51 ◼   ► Like we can cover my home screen in three seconds, which is that I have

00:47:54 ◼   ► three little buttons in my dock that I've slightly changed from last year.

00:47:59 ◼   ► And those buttons are make a new note in notes.

00:48:03 ◼   ► The center one is for OmniFocus, which opens up a general list of I have a

00:48:09 ◼   ► reminder and then it asks me a couple of questions like, is this a due date

00:48:12 ◼   ► reminder? Is this a flag reminder?

00:48:14 ◼   ► - Oh, it's an ad, it's to add to a list.

00:48:16 ◼   ► - Yes, so it's to add to a list, yeah.

00:48:19 ◼   ► The three on the bottom are purely input.

00:48:22 ◼   ► So the middle one is for OmniFocus

00:48:24 ◼   ► and then it asks a bunch of questions

00:48:25 ◼   ► so it knows properly where to sort things.

00:48:27 ◼   ► And then the microphone one is for Cortex.

00:48:31 ◼   ► Like I've just found it like a thing this year

00:48:34 ◼   ► to really try to streamline,

00:48:36 ◼   ► oh, if I have a random thought,

00:48:37 ◼   ► just add it to the Cortex list.

00:48:39 ◼   ► And I use it enough that I thought,

00:48:41 ◼   ► oh, it makes sense just to put on the dock.

00:48:43 ◼   ► So that's it.

00:48:44 ◼   ► Like that's the entirety of my home screen.

00:48:46 ◼   ► A bunch of widgets and three input methods.

00:48:49 ◼   ► Notes, OmniFocus and Cortex,

00:48:52 ◼   ► which is going to a reminders list.

00:48:53 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:48:54 ◼   ► - Well, speaking on behalf of Cortex brand,

00:48:57 ◼   ► Cortex brand is on it.

00:48:59 ◼   ► Cortex, the podcast will occupy one of three buttons.

00:49:02 ◼   ► Here doc.

00:49:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, occupying the most limited real estate.

00:49:07 ◼   ► All right, what's your home screen look like, Myke?

00:49:08 ◼   ► - All right, so I have an image for you.

00:49:10 ◼   ► It's of my three home screens that are like my typical.

00:49:14 ◼   ► These are what I use.

00:49:16 ◼   ► This is how I usually order my phone

00:49:18 ◼   ► when it's not in a focus mode.

00:49:19 ◼   ► And most of my focus modes

00:49:21 ◼   ► are still pulling from this in some way.

00:49:24 ◼   ► So like I mentioned, I had like a travel lock screen earlier

00:49:27 ◼   ► the travel lock screen just takes over

00:49:30 ◼   ► the first of these three lock screens.

00:49:31 ◼   ► And then I have the other two still enabled.

00:49:34 ◼   ► It's just changing out one or the other, right?

00:49:37 ◼   ► So I think a lot of this will be mostly unchanged

00:49:40 ◼   ► from how it's been in past years, to be honest.

00:49:43 ◼   ► So I don't know if there's much excitement in here for you

00:49:47 ◼   ► to pick apart, but who knows what you might find.

00:49:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel like this is pretty similar to last time.

00:49:52 ◼   ► You still got that fantastic wallpaper, which I always like,

00:49:55 ◼   ► which is from the hotel in California?

00:49:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, Beverly Hills Hotel.

00:49:58 ◼   ► - Right, okay, very fancy.

00:50:00 ◼   ► - In the little diner down there, which I love.

00:50:02 ◼   ► - I think it, what is the Cortex brand widget?

00:50:04 ◼   ► - That's Kraft.

00:50:05 ◼   ► - That is Kraft, okay.

00:50:06 ◼   ► - That's where I keep all my notes,

00:50:07 ◼   ► and I'm gonna talk about Kraft later on,

00:50:09 ◼   ► but that is how I can quickly get into notes.

00:50:13 ◼   ► I don't have the, you notice I don't have the craft icon

00:50:16 ◼   ► anywhere on my home screens,

00:50:18 ◼   ► and this kind of serves double duty of like,

00:50:21 ◼   ► one, letting me launch the app quickly,

00:50:24 ◼   ► or two, there's like the four most recently used notes,

00:50:28 ◼   ► and they tend to be the ones that I need most often,

00:50:30 ◼   ► like little things that I'm keeping track of,

00:50:32 ◼   ► or the current project that we're working on,

00:50:33 ◼   ► and then I can just jump into that specific note very easily.

00:50:37 ◼   ► Why activity as a gigantic widget on the third screen?

00:50:41 ◼   ► That seems like a strange decision.

00:50:42 ◼   ► - The fitness one.

00:50:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah, the fitness one.

00:50:44 ◼   ► - I had a space available,

00:50:45 ◼   ► and so sometimes I remove the fitness one

00:50:48 ◼   ► if I have something that's going on at a certain time.

00:50:52 ◼   ► When we were doing the St. Jude fundraiser,

00:50:54 ◼   ► I had the St. Jude fundraiser widget.

00:50:56 ◼   ► - Ah, okay.

00:50:57 ◼   ► - And then otherwise I use fitness.

00:50:59 ◼   ► But I do actually quite like the graphs

00:51:02 ◼   ► that fitness produces.

00:51:04 ◼   ► I was finding myself looking in the app on the phone

00:51:07 ◼   ► quite a bit and so this was good to just get some of that information immediately available

00:51:12 ◼   ► to me. Because sometimes it's like, oh I'm already at say like, say it's like 20 minutes,

00:51:17 ◼   ► 30 minutes of activity in my day when I haven't worked out yet. And I'm like, where did that

00:51:22 ◼   ► come from? And sometimes just looking at the time chart of exercise will answer that for

00:51:28 ◼   ► me, which is kind of interesting. It's like, oh it recorded that walk that I did today,

00:51:34 ◼   ► which sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it does.

00:51:35 ◼   ► So like, I just find that to be an interesting thing.

00:51:38 ◼   ► I like having it there.

00:51:39 ◼   ► And there's a couple of stacks going on, right?

00:51:41 ◼   ► So there's Carrot is underneath the Fantastic Owl widget.

00:51:46 ◼   ► I have a shortcut widget,

00:51:47 ◼   ► which is for some time tracking stuff

00:51:49 ◼   ► underneath the Timery widget.

00:51:51 ◼   ► And the Widgetsmith widget of the time zones that I have,

00:51:56 ◼   ► underneath that is a countdown timer,

00:51:59 ◼   ► which is usually my next vacation.

00:52:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:02 ◼   ► and that like switches over on its own.

00:52:04 ◼   ► So if I have a vacation coming up,

00:52:05 ◼   ► I'll put the countdown timer there

00:52:07 ◼   ► and that will sometimes flip over

00:52:08 ◼   ► and show me that instead of the time zone stuff.

00:52:11 ◼   ► - What are you using as the countdown app for that?

00:52:12 ◼   ► - It's also WidgetSmith.

00:52:13 ◼   ► - Oh, it's also WidgetSmith, okay, okay.

00:52:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I think this is good.

00:52:16 ◼   ► I don't have anything to make fun of.

00:52:17 ◼   ► I feel like you have a really solid system here.

00:52:19 ◼   ► So yeah, I think this is good.

00:52:21 ◼   ► And let's talk about the apps.

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00:54:15 ◼   ► So let's start with productivity apps.

00:54:17 ◼   ► Yeah, into the meat of state of the apps.

00:54:20 ◼   ► I read this into last year's episode

00:54:22 ◼   ► and I'm noticing already a change in you

00:54:25 ◼   ► because last year- - In me?

00:54:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, you had given up on To Do

00:54:29 ◼   ► and we spoke last year.

00:54:30 ◼   ► You were like, "Ah, I'm not using To Do app anymore."

00:54:34 ◼   ► But already in this episode,

00:54:35 ◼   ► I've seen visual proof that you're using OmniFocus.

00:54:38 ◼   ► So it seems like you've gotten that part

00:54:41 ◼   ► of your working life back in order again in 2022.

00:54:44 ◼   ► - Okay, yeah.

00:54:45 ◼   ► So yeah, last year must've been the nadir

00:54:47 ◼   ► of my lockdown time of life.

00:54:50 ◼   ► - You were just like, "Who needs it?"

00:54:52 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:54:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:55 ◼   ► I just do whatever the wind tells me.

00:54:57 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah, that was not a great period of time, no.

00:55:01 ◼   ► We can talk about part of that

00:55:05 ◼   ► in a little bit of a later section, but yes,

00:55:08 ◼   ► I've gotten much better about being back in the habit

00:55:10 ◼   ► of using OmniFocus.

00:55:13 ◼   ► And I think part of it is I've pulled out a subset of tasks,

00:55:18 ◼   ► which will not be going in OmniFocus anymore.

00:55:23 ◼   ► They're gonna go somewhere else,

00:55:24 ◼   ► which we'll talk about later.

00:55:25 ◼   ► But I think this is, a lot of times,

00:55:29 ◼   ► you wanna have real clarity

00:55:30 ◼   ► about what are you using a thing for.

00:55:33 ◼   ► And I was trying to use OmniFocus

00:55:35 ◼   ► for something that just never really was quite working

00:55:37 ◼   ► and always put in a bit of a resistance.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And so now it's much more clear of like,

00:55:41 ◼   ► Okay, I have reminders that are for how the day should be going.

00:55:46 ◼   ► And then there's like the specific kind of traditional to-do tasks of like,

00:55:50 ◼   ► "Oh, you need to pay this bill on this day" or whatever.

00:55:54 ◼   ► So I've got all that kind of stuff in there.

00:55:55 ◼   ► And then OmniFocus is just working for me much better.

00:55:58 ◼   ► And for a couple of things, I use shared reminders with my wife, as I mentioned

00:56:03 ◼   ► on the lock screen stuff earlier.

00:56:04 ◼   ► And that's basically it.

00:56:06 ◼   ► Like I'm back using OmniFocus.

00:56:08 ◼   ► I'm very happy about it.

00:56:09 ◼   ► I am wondering what on earth is taking so long about the next version of OmniFocus.

00:56:14 ◼   ► Like I think that they might be running into some trouble there, but like,

00:56:18 ◼   ► for me looking around for apps, it is still the same case of if an app

00:56:23 ◼   ► does not have defer dates, it's just like a total deal breaker for me.

00:56:27 ◼   ► Like I can't use it.

00:56:28 ◼   ► So I think Reminders is a really interesting app.

00:56:31 ◼   ► Like I think it's gotten so much better over the years and it's another

00:56:35 ◼   ► thing where they keep adding features.

00:56:38 ◼   ► And I could actually imagine being tempted by reminders in the future,

00:56:43 ◼   ► but until and if they ever add something that is like defer dates,

00:56:47 ◼   ► it's just totally out of the picture for me.

00:56:49 ◼   ► So I'm back on OmniFocus and I'm very happy about it.

00:56:52 ◼   ► - I'm still using Todoist and I have kind of committed to myself

00:56:56 ◼   ► that I'm not gonna change anymore.

00:56:58 ◼   ► No more changing, no more switching.

00:56:59 ◼   ► - Good.

00:57:00 ◼   ► - It's too disruptive and ultimately not helpful for me.

00:57:04 ◼   ► You know, like I remember, I think during our WWDC episode,

00:57:08 ◼   ► I was like, you know,

00:57:09 ◼   ► Reminders I think has everything that I want now.

00:57:12 ◼   ► I might move to Reminders.

00:57:13 ◼   ► And I played around with it and it actually does.

00:57:16 ◼   ► Like Reminders has, I think at this point,

00:57:19 ◼   ► everything I would need that I use in Todoist,

00:57:21 ◼   ► 'cause I'm trying still to use the system simply.

00:57:26 ◼   ► Like for me, it's a task name and a due date and a project.

00:57:31 ◼   ► Everything gets that piece of information.

00:57:33 ◼   ► Sometimes I use some features that Todoist has,

00:57:35 ◼   ► but a lot of apps have, like subtasks,

00:57:37 ◼   ► or adding little notes or comments to a task.

00:57:40 ◼   ► But I try to use the system simply in that way,

00:57:45 ◼   ► which means that I kind of could use basically anything,

00:57:48 ◼   ► but at this point I have no desire

00:57:50 ◼   ► and I'm kind of making a rule with myself

00:57:52 ◼   ► to just stop moving around.

00:57:54 ◼   ► My only frustration with Todoist is nothing to do with them,

00:57:58 ◼   ► which is how much stuff I have in Todoist

00:58:01 ◼   ► on how much I'm putting in to my to-do manager,

00:58:04 ◼   ► but that feels more like a yearly themes problem

00:58:06 ◼   ► than a state of the apps problem, right?

00:58:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have too much to-do

00:58:10 ◼   ► is not your to-do apps problem.

00:58:12 ◼   ► That's totally a year.

00:58:14 ◼   ► - When I wrote that down, I did feel like

00:58:16 ◼   ► this is an interesting kind of app to make.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Like a lot of these apps, like to-do apps, email apps,

00:58:22 ◼   ► calendar apps, because it is very easy

00:58:24 ◼   ► for your customer base to be frustrated with you

00:58:27 ◼   ► for reasons that's got nothing to do with you.

00:58:28 ◼   ► It's just like being in that application makes them angry

00:58:32 ◼   ► because of the stuff that's in there

00:58:33 ◼   ► or makes them sad because of how much is in there.

00:58:36 ◼   ► And like they take it out on the app, you know what I mean?

00:58:38 ◼   ► Like, oh, I hate Todoist.

00:58:40 ◼   ► There's too much stuff in there all the time.

00:58:42 ◼   ► So it's like, it's just like a funny little aside

00:58:44 ◼   ► I came to as I was writing down,

00:58:45 ◼   ► like what do I like about Todoist?

00:58:47 ◼   ► What do I not like?

00:58:48 ◼   ► Oh, I don't like how many things are in there.

00:58:49 ◼   ► It's like, well, they didn't make that happen.

00:58:51 ◼   ► I did that.

00:58:52 ◼   ► - I resent my obligations.

00:58:53 ◼   ► So I resent you.

00:58:55 ◼   ► - But I'm perfectly happy with Todoist.

00:58:58 ◼   ► They continue to refine the app in ways that I like.

00:59:00 ◼   ► Like they've been making some visual tweaks

00:59:02 ◼   ► over the last year, which is nothing major,

00:59:05 ◼   ► but just like stuff that I think has made the app

00:59:07 ◼   ► look a little cleaner.

00:59:09 ◼   ► One of the things that I will always love,

00:59:11 ◼   ► and this is like a thing for me

00:59:12 ◼   ► of a lot of productivity apps,

00:59:14 ◼   ► where there's data entry involved,

00:59:16 ◼   ► natural language processing is incredibly important to me.

00:59:19 ◼   ► And you know, this app and Fantastical,

00:59:23 ◼   ► which is like the king of this for me,

00:59:24 ◼   ► of their natural language stuff,

00:59:26 ◼   ► it's just so important.

00:59:27 ◼   ► when I'm sitting on my Mac, I hit a keyboard command

00:59:29 ◼   ► and just start writing what I'm looking to do.

00:59:32 ◼   ► I will hit, for me, it's a command option space,

00:59:36 ◼   ► and that will pop up on my Mac, the todoist quick entry,

00:59:40 ◼   ► and I will just start writing whatever the task is,

00:59:42 ◼   ► and I'll use, you know, you learn the language

00:59:44 ◼   ► for organization, right?

00:59:46 ◼   ► So I can type in like, do this task at 2 p.m.,

00:59:50 ◼   ► and it works that out, but then if I wanna add,

00:59:52 ◼   ► like into a project, then I will just hit the hash key,

00:59:57 ◼   ► and then start typing the name of the project

00:59:59 ◼   ► and it will start doing autocomplete stuff for me, right?

01:00:01 ◼   ► So you learn some little tricks

01:00:03 ◼   ► with all of these natural language things.

01:00:04 ◼   ► But for me, that is so valuable

01:00:06 ◼   ► that I can just hit that and just go for it.

01:00:09 ◼   ► I wish there was something as simple on iOS,

01:00:12 ◼   ► but it's just, as you have done,

01:00:14 ◼   ► and I have done in the past,

01:00:15 ◼   ► you can just set up a shortcut for these things.

01:00:17 ◼   ► But for me, really, the Todoist app

01:00:20 ◼   ► is really easy to add stuff to,

01:00:22 ◼   ► so I just open the app and go for it.

01:00:24 ◼   ► But I really wish there was some way

01:00:26 ◼   ► that I could do this in Spotlight, say.

01:00:29 ◼   ► Like, you know, like I just pull down Spotlight

01:00:31 ◼   ► and just start typing.

01:00:32 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:00:33 ◼   ► - And that there's some way that that can go into Todoist.

01:00:36 ◼   ► You know, I'm sure that there's something

01:00:37 ◼   ► that it can do for reminders,

01:00:39 ◼   ► but I don't want it to go into reminders.

01:00:40 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:00:41 ◼   ► So I wish there was a way to do this.

01:00:43 ◼   ► I know you can kind of do it with Siri,

01:00:45 ◼   ► but I don't like the way you do it with Siri

01:00:47 ◼   ► because you have to like say, in Todoist,

01:00:50 ◼   ► I don't want to do that.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Like I don't want to add that information.

01:00:53 ◼   ► So with all of these things,

01:00:54 ◼   ► I would then just prefer to just open the app and do it.

01:00:57 ◼   ► But there's just nothing that is as easy as the way

01:00:59 ◼   ► that I can add this stuff when I'm at my Mac,

01:01:01 ◼   ► which is just with a couple of keyboard commands.

01:01:03 ◼   ► - The Siri integration for other to-do apps,

01:01:05 ◼   ► like I'm glad it's there, but I also don't use it

01:01:08 ◼   ► because it's just annoying.

01:01:10 ◼   ► And I don't use the natural language stuff in Fantastic Cal.

01:01:14 ◼   ► And I think that's also why in Todoist,

01:01:16 ◼   ► it's just never really appealed to me

01:01:17 ◼   ► 'cause it's not the way my brain works.

01:01:19 ◼   ► But I do, like the closest I get to that,

01:01:21 ◼   ► which is why I also use reminders,

01:01:24 ◼   ► I feel like Reminders is really great for like one-off things where I just have to go like,

01:01:30 ◼   ► "Oh hey, the next time I'm here, remind me to do that."

01:01:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is so cool. - Right?

01:01:34 ◼   ► Or, "Tomorrow afternoon, I need to do this."

01:01:37 ◼   ► Then Reminders is totally killer for that.

01:01:40 ◼   ► And it's like, "Sure, I could use OmniFocus,

01:01:43 ◼   ► but that's where now the friction is in a different way."

01:01:47 ◼   ► And Reminders is just like so good for,

01:01:51 ◼   ► I casually need to be reminded to do a thing at a time or at a place or the next time I

01:01:57 ◼   ► leave the house.

01:01:59 ◼   ► That's like the best use for me of Siri and integrated tools.

01:02:03 ◼   ► But I'm guessing this sort of is answering a question that I was having, which is when

01:02:07 ◼   ► you say no more switching and you were interested in reminders, I presume that the reason that

01:02:11 ◼   ► you went with todoist is that natural language stuff.

01:02:13 ◼   ► Like that's the thing that makes the difference for you for why you wouldn't use reminders.

01:02:16 ◼   ► It always pulls me back.

01:02:17 ◼   ► It's the, in my opinion, it's the best one at it.

01:02:20 ◼   ► You know, Reminders has it, I think OmniFocus has it,

01:02:24 ◼   ► but none of it is as good as the way that Todoist does it.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Like Todoist is so good.

01:02:28 ◼   ► Like with Todoist, you can set up really weird repeating

01:02:32 ◼   ► tasks with natural language.

01:02:34 ◼   ► - Like give me an example of that.

01:02:36 ◼   ► - So like I could say, remind me to take out the trash

01:02:40 ◼   ► on the first Monday of every month.

01:02:41 ◼   ► - That's pretty good that you could just type it like that.

01:02:44 ◼   ► - And you can just say first Monday,

01:02:46 ◼   ► and it knows what that means.

01:02:48 ◼   ► And I've added tasks that way.

01:02:51 ◼   ► - That's interesting, yeah.

01:02:52 ◼   ► I just had to do something in OmniFocus,

01:02:54 ◼   ► which was the same thing where it's like,

01:02:55 ◼   ► oh, remind me, it was like,

01:02:58 ◼   ► remind me the third Monday of every October about a thing.

01:03:03 ◼   ► And it's like, it's doable,

01:03:05 ◼   ► but it was like a bunch of clicks.

01:03:06 ◼   ► So it's interesting that you can do that kind of stuff

01:03:07 ◼   ► just by typing it.

01:03:08 ◼   ► - And Todoist has, and also has had

01:03:10 ◼   ► a really good help document, which like details,

01:03:12 ◼   ► like these are the commands you can use

01:03:15 ◼   ► to do some of this stuff.

01:03:17 ◼   ► So sometimes it is easiest to do it with the text

01:03:19 ◼   ► even than the UI.

01:03:21 ◼   ► And it also handles this stuff in a very graceful way,

01:03:24 ◼   ► which I enjoy.

01:03:25 ◼   ► So I have some tasks that are like first Monday,

01:03:28 ◼   ► but if I move them to the next week,

01:03:32 ◼   ► when I then complete them,

01:03:35 ◼   ► it will go to the next first Monday.

01:03:38 ◼   ► Like I've used apps where like at that point,

01:03:40 ◼   ► I've used apps that have done this in the past.

01:03:44 ◼   ► I wish I could remember which,

01:03:45 ◼   ► but it was a long time ago now.

01:03:46 ◼   ► that if you throw it off that schedule,

01:03:49 ◼   ► it just removes the repeating.

01:03:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've seen that, I know what you're talking about.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I've seen that kind of thing happen.

01:03:54 ◼   ► - Where it's like, you dared to disrupt this,

01:03:56 ◼   ► now you don't get to use it at all.

01:03:59 ◼   ► I'll show you.

01:04:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:04:00 ◼   ► - And that is the kind of stuff where

01:04:03 ◼   ► I then feel like I can't trust the system.

01:04:06 ◼   ► And if I feel like I can't trust the system,

01:04:08 ◼   ► then it's just too much of a weight on my brain

01:04:11 ◼   ► that I worry that every complicated task

01:04:13 ◼   ► I'm adding to the system is ultimately gonna let me down.

01:04:16 ◼   ► And this is never a way that I felt was to do this.

01:04:19 ◼   ► It is rock solid with this stuff.

01:04:22 ◼   ► And that's one of the things that has made me

01:04:24 ◼   ► come back to it time and time again.

01:04:26 ◼   ► And now why I'm like, no, I'm good.

01:04:28 ◼   ► I'm staying here.

01:04:29 ◼   ► This is the app that works the way that my brain works

01:04:33 ◼   ► and has literally never let me down

01:04:36 ◼   ► in the way that some other apps have.

01:04:38 ◼   ► I am using reminders more now for shared lists especially.

01:04:43 ◼   ► So very general stuff like grocery lists, home project lists, that kind of stuff.

01:04:49 ◼   ► Things that I don't really want in Todoist, which is by and large all work

01:04:55 ◼   ► with some personal tasks, but personal tasks that tend to have some kind of

01:05:00 ◼   ► like work relation to them if that makes sense.

01:05:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I get it.

01:05:03 ◼   ► But like the lists and reminders, they're all shared at the moment, all shared with Adina.

01:05:07 ◼   ► So it's just stuff that we're working on together or you know things like that.

01:05:11 ◼   ► And I think reminders is pretty good for that because it's also most of these things. They don't have due dates

01:05:17 ◼   ► They're just lists of things and for me

01:05:19 ◼   ► That can't work like for todoist everything goes in with a due date

01:05:24 ◼   ► That's how I work in todoist. Like I don't have tasks that don't have due dates

01:05:28 ◼   ► So if I need to have a list of tasks or reminders that won't have due dates

01:05:34 ◼   ► They need to go somewhere else for it to work within the mental model of my system, right?

01:05:39 ◼   ► So I've been using reminders for that and it is really good.

01:05:42 ◼   ► Like reminders has gotten really good.

01:05:43 ◼   ► And I think for me, it's going to become a,

01:05:47 ◼   ► you've got a shared list of someone,

01:05:48 ◼   ► reminders is where it goes.

01:05:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, it feels like that has to be the default tool

01:05:52 ◼   ► for that kind of thing.

01:05:54 ◼   ► It's just the best at it.

01:05:55 ◼   ► It's the easiest at it.

01:05:56 ◼   ► In past years, I've tried different things

01:05:58 ◼   ► for little shared reminders and ultimately it's like,

01:06:00 ◼   ► no, no, no, just use reminders.

01:06:02 ◼   ► It's so much better.

01:06:03 ◼   ► It's just baked into everything.

01:06:05 ◼   ► It's yeah.

01:06:06 ◼   ► If you're using shared reminders with someone

01:06:07 ◼   ► and it's not a reminders list,

01:06:09 ◼   ► I feel like you need a really good reason why you're not doing it this way.

01:06:12 ◼   ► When it comes to note taking, my systems have remained basically the same.

01:06:16 ◼   ► So Apple Notes is my central place for where I put all my personal notes,

01:06:23 ◼   ► notes that are shared with people.

01:06:24 ◼   ► Because again, Apple Notes does a good job with that.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Not very good at real time, but good for like mostly asynchronous sharing.

01:06:31 ◼   ► Like I'm going to add something later on.

01:06:33 ◼   ► Somebody else might add something, you know, that kind of thing, which is fine.

01:06:36 ◼   ► So before you go any further though, what exactly do you mean by a note?

01:06:40 ◼   ► Like, like how would you define a note?

01:06:42 ◼   ► I will not do this with you.

01:06:43 ◼   ► I won't do this with you.

01:06:45 ◼   ► I mean, like what is it?

01:06:47 ◼   ► I don't put like individual sentences.

01:06:50 ◼   ► Like they are typically lists of the text, paragraphs of text.

01:06:55 ◼   ► I can't, I can't do this.

01:06:57 ◼   ► No, leave me alone.

01:06:58 ◼   ► I just, I'm just asking like, what kind of things are you saving in notes?

01:07:02 ◼   ► All right.

01:07:02 ◼   ► So the main things...

01:07:04 ◼   ► - I genuinely always want to know.

01:07:06 ◼   ► - The main things for me that go in,

01:07:08 ◼   ► like my most important notes are the individual notes

01:07:12 ◼   ► that I have for each of my shows.

01:07:14 ◼   ► So I have an upgrade follow-up note,

01:07:16 ◼   ► connected follow-up note,

01:07:17 ◼   ► Cortex follow-up note, et cetera.

01:07:19 ◼   ► And in those notes goes links that I wanna share,

01:07:23 ◼   ► like to talk about on a show.

01:07:24 ◼   ► So like if I see something online, I'll add it to that.

01:07:26 ◼   ► And one of the reasons I've always loved notes

01:07:28 ◼   ► is how good the share extension is from anywhere in iOS

01:07:31 ◼   ► to just add it.

01:07:32 ◼   ► If I have an idea for a topic, I might start writing an outline in that note as well.

01:07:37 ◼   ► So there's like lots of things in each note.

01:07:40 ◼   ► In my Cortex note, I have like ideas for topics going back years that we've just not gotten

01:07:45 ◼   ► to yet, but they're all in there.

01:07:47 ◼   ► So I know that if I want to get some ideas for an episode of Cortex, I will go to my

01:07:51 ◼   ► Cortex follow up note and it's all going to be in there.

01:07:54 ◼   ► But I also have notes that are preparation for a show.

01:07:58 ◼   ► So when I was like, got my iPhone 14 Pro,

01:08:00 ◼   ► I was writing all of my thoughts in there for it.

01:08:02 ◼   ► So if I had to pull anything out for an episode,

01:08:05 ◼   ► I could do that.

01:08:06 ◼   ► So like me and Irina have in here,

01:08:07 ◼   ► like some notes for like our new home

01:08:09 ◼   ► and like things that we wanna keep an eye on.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Like we have all of the various pieces of information

01:08:15 ◼   ► we have amassed about how the house works, right?

01:08:19 ◼   ► Like stuff that the previous owner said,

01:08:21 ◼   ► stuff that we worked out on our own, you know,

01:08:23 ◼   ► like, so all just going in there as like a central hub

01:08:26 ◼   ► where we could search later on

01:08:28 ◼   ► and it would bring us to that note.

01:08:30 ◼   ► I have a note that I made called Smart Home,

01:08:33 ◼   ► which has a bunch of things in it.

01:08:34 ◼   ► There's some, what kind of products

01:08:36 ◼   ► do I want to add to the home?

01:08:38 ◼   ► Here's some links.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Here's a photo of like kind of flow chart

01:08:43 ◼   ► that I drew on a piece of paper of like,

01:08:45 ◼   ► this is how I want the security system to work.

01:08:47 ◼   ► So it's all kinds of stuff goes in here.

01:08:50 ◼   ► But I think one of the things

01:08:51 ◼   ► that makes me and you different

01:08:53 ◼   ► is related items are all within one note.

01:08:57 ◼   ► They're not like multiple notes that are then drawn together by something.

01:09:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:01 ◼   ► So I actually just realized something while you were talking again on

01:09:05 ◼   ► notes and how people use them.

01:09:07 ◼   ► No, no, but I, I, I'm going to say this out loud because I never realized this was a

01:09:13 ◼   ► feature, but it just dawned on me why and how you could use this in the way that

01:09:17 ◼   ► you're doing.

01:09:18 ◼   ► I never realized that if you're on a webpage and you go to share that with

01:09:23 ◼   ► notes that there's an option at the top to add it to a specific note so it will append at the bottom.

01:09:30 ◼   ► - I've been talking about this for like six years. Every year I mention this.

01:09:34 ◼   ► This is how this works for me. - No, no, but you've never like

01:09:39 ◼   ► said it this way and it's like I never realized this was a feature.

01:09:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, so this is so like the magic. - You've always talked about like having

01:09:48 ◼   ► a cortex note, like I get it, but I just, I think I always thought that the process

01:09:53 ◼   ► of adding like a link to the bottom of a page was more clunky than it actually was.

01:10:00 ◼   ► Oh no, it's so easy.

01:10:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I just had my mind blown, like I went into Safari and had shared with the notes

01:10:05 ◼   ► and like, oh at the top I can just pick something and it goes at the bottom.

01:10:08 ◼   ► I never knew that.

01:10:10 ◼   ► And then it does the little preview too, which I really enjoy.

01:10:13 ◼   ► And so like if somebody sends me a tweet and I add it via the share extension, it gives

01:10:17 ◼   ► me a preview of the tweet in notes so I don't even have to click the link right

01:10:21 ◼   ► to know if it's something that I want for that episode so this is why like

01:10:25 ◼   ► Apple Notes is is I'm this is such a part of my system for how I produce my

01:10:31 ◼   ► shows I've tried other apps and other apps have really good features and they

01:10:36 ◼   ► have like interesting things that they do which is like art but none of them do

01:10:40 ◼   ► this kind of like collecting of links like Apple notes does yeah it's like

01:10:45 ◼   ► It's so ingrained in how I work now.

01:10:48 ◼   ► Yeah, the way they do a little preview of whatever the link actually is, is quite killer.

01:10:52 ◼   ► It's a really nice feature.

01:10:55 ◼   ► And I can see that it can make, say, scrolling a long list of ideas for things to talk about

01:11:00 ◼   ► on any of your podcasts much easier, where you can also just visually see what it is.

01:11:04 ◼   ► There you go.

01:11:04 ◼   ► I never knew and no one ever told me that you could append to the bottom of a note.

01:11:08 ◼   ► I just didn't realize. That's quite interesting.

01:11:10 ◼   ► This is bullying.

01:11:12 ◼   ► No, it's genuinely not bullying.

01:11:14 ◼   ► - I have mentioned this every year.

01:11:17 ◼   ► - I know, I don't think you have ever said the words,

01:11:21 ◼   ► like when you share, it appends to the bottom of a note.

01:11:25 ◼   ► I don't think you've said that.

01:11:26 ◼   ► - I'm also still using Kraft.

01:11:30 ◼   ► I use Kraft for everything related to Cortex Brands.

01:11:33 ◼   ► So it's a lot of the same kinds of stuff,

01:11:35 ◼   ► but it's all siloed within Kraft.

01:11:38 ◼   ► You know, it's good for me for brainstorming,

01:11:40 ◼   ► it's good for mixed media, it's very good for sharing.

01:11:44 ◼   ► So if I have a note, I can share it with someone.

01:11:46 ◼   ► It's usually I'll share it with you, right?

01:11:48 ◼   ► Where I could be like, hey, look at this table

01:11:51 ◼   ► that I've got going on, like of this information.

01:11:53 ◼   ► And it's very good for like creating these links

01:11:55 ◼   ► that you can share with other people, which I really enjoy.

01:11:58 ◼   ► One of the things that they've added in the last few months,

01:12:01 ◼   ► which is awesome for me, is calculations to tables.

01:12:05 ◼   ► So they added tables last year,

01:12:07 ◼   ► but it was basically just, you could draw a table

01:12:09 ◼   ► and you could write in each box,

01:12:10 ◼   ► but now they've added functions and calculations

01:12:13 ◼   ► that you can apply to what's on those tables.

01:12:15 ◼   ► Because one of the things that I use Kraft for

01:12:17 ◼   ► is tracking sales for our products.

01:12:20 ◼   ► So I will go in every week and like write down

01:12:23 ◼   ► what our current sales totals are.

01:12:25 ◼   ► And now Kraft will automatically calculate

01:12:28 ◼   ► how many have been sold in the last week

01:12:30 ◼   ► based on our current total sales number.

01:12:32 ◼   ► And I like to have that.

01:12:33 ◼   ► It's just like an ongoing piece of information

01:12:35 ◼   ► so I can kind of try and draw out some trends over time.

01:12:38 ◼   ► Before I was having to open PCALC

01:12:40 ◼   ► and do the calculations myself.

01:12:42 ◼   ► But now I have it all in Kraft.

01:12:44 ◼   ► So it's very easy now to me to do that.

01:12:47 ◼   ► The formulas are represented really nicely

01:12:49 ◼   ► and I'm so happy that they added that

01:12:51 ◼   ► because for a while I was like,

01:12:53 ◼   ► "Should I be doing this in numbers?"

01:12:54 ◼   ► But then it's breaking the idea

01:12:56 ◼   ► of this stuff all being in Kraft

01:12:58 ◼   ► and I was like going backwards and forwards.

01:13:00 ◼   ► And then they finally added this feature.

01:13:02 ◼   ► So it's given me the one little last piece

01:13:05 ◼   ► that I was missing from my Kraft setup for Cortex brand.

01:13:08 ◼   ► - That's really nice.

01:13:09 ◼   ► I'm a big proponent of numbers.

01:13:11 ◼   ► I really like it as an app,

01:13:12 ◼   ► but it feels like it's too heavyweight for like,

01:13:15 ◼   ► I just want to add up a list of numbers

01:13:17 ◼   ► in this thing automatically.

01:13:18 ◼   ► So it's really nice that they added that.

01:13:20 ◼   ► - You're still using Obsidian, right?

01:13:23 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:13:24 ◼   ► No, well look, if we're talking about notes,

01:13:27 ◼   ► well,

01:13:30 ◼   ► what is a note, Myke?

01:13:33 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:13:35 ◼   ► I feel like I don't know when you want to talk about Obsidian.

01:13:42 ◼   ► Obsidian to me is like a whole other universe of things.

01:13:45 ◼   ► I would say what most people mean

01:13:47 ◼   ► when they're talking about notes is,

01:13:50 ◼   ► I use the Notes app as an individual list of things

01:13:54 ◼   ► where it's like, oh, I just wanna remember this,

01:13:56 ◼   ► and then every couple of weeks,

01:13:58 ◼   ► I just go through everything in Notes

01:13:59 ◼   ► and like sort it into some other place where it belongs,

01:14:02 ◼   ► or it just acts as a reminder.

01:14:03 ◼   ► - So that, you said earlier that you had a thing,

01:14:06 ◼   ► a button on your home screen that you can press, right?

01:14:10 ◼   ► and it lets you add something,

01:14:12 ◼   ► a thought that you have for cortex.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Where is that going?

01:14:16 ◼   ► - Okay, so currently it's going into reminders.

01:14:21 ◼   ► And the reason it was--

01:14:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:14:24 ◼   ► - Of course it was.

01:14:25 ◼   ► Why wouldn't it?

01:14:26 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:14:26 ◼   ► What is a note?

01:14:27 ◼   ► It's also a to-do.

01:14:28 ◼   ► - I mean, can I explain myself like this?

01:14:32 ◼   ► - I would love you to.

01:14:33 ◼   ► Like, no, you need to,

01:14:35 ◼   ► but I first have to get out my emotions.

01:14:38 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:14:40 ◼   ► So this year for all of Cortex,

01:14:43 ◼   ► I've been using Reminders as my show notes.

01:14:47 ◼   ► And the reason I've been doing it that way

01:14:49 ◼   ► is because, sure, Reminders is a Reminders app,

01:14:53 ◼   ► but it's also kind of like the most simple possible version

01:14:58 ◼   ► of an outliner app.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Each item can be a little thing

01:15:02 ◼   ► and you can drag them up and down

01:15:04 ◼   ► and you have one level of sorting.

01:15:07 ◼   ► So you can have one little sub-level.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And so when I add a little note for Cortex,

01:15:13 ◼   ► it then shows up as like this individual line

01:15:16 ◼   ► on my Cortex list in Reminders.

01:15:19 ◼   ► And I, at the top, just have a couple of categories.

01:15:22 ◼   ► So I've got like state of the app.

01:15:24 ◼   ► So as the year went along,

01:15:26 ◼   ► if I was using some clever little app that I knew like,

01:15:28 ◼   ► oh, six months from now, when I'm not in Hawaii,

01:15:31 ◼   ► I'm never gonna remember that I ever used this thing.

01:15:35 ◼   ► I can just make a note of that.

01:15:36 ◼   ► And then I like fold it under that one heading, which is state of the apps.

01:15:40 ◼   ► And it's the same thing with the themes.

01:15:42 ◼   ► Like, oh, I had a thought about themes.

01:15:44 ◼   ► I can just fold this under that one level of themes.

01:15:47 ◼   ► And it's nice because in Reminders, you can also toggle that little triangle to

01:15:50 ◼   ► actually hide it so I don't actually see it.

01:15:53 ◼   ► So Reminders for me has been kind of the perfect level of organization for

01:15:59 ◼   ► Cortex Notes, for like the Cortex Show Notes stuff.

01:16:02 ◼   ► And then it's also nice because when we go through the show, I can just tick off,

01:16:06 ◼   ► "Oh, these are the things that we've discussed," and then they go away.

01:16:10 ◼   ► And the things that we haven't discussed can stay on that list of, "Oh, like,

01:16:14 ◼   ► oh, maybe this makes sense in the future."

01:16:16 ◼   ► And I can throw that into another little folder, which is like possible future stuff.

01:16:21 ◼   ► I actually really like this as a system for Cortex.

01:16:24 ◼   ► I do want to trial next year, possibly doing this in Obsidian instead for just

01:16:31 ◼   ► like a couple of very small reasons, but Reminders has been working great for this.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Like, and I'm very happy with it as a system for keeping track of stuff

01:16:40 ◼   ► that I want to talk about in Cortex.

01:16:41 ◼   ► And it's also just nice.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Like it's a clear, like here's this individual list.

01:16:45 ◼   ► Honestly, my biggest problem with Reminders is that for some incredibly

01:16:50 ◼   ► annoying reason, you can't like make the text bigger on the Mac app.

01:16:55 ◼   ► And it's infuriating, like sitting on my computer now, I'm like, I want

01:16:58 ◼   ► these words twice as big while I'm here recording the show, but Reminders is like,

01:17:02 ◼   ► "Oh no, no, no, we only want teeny tiny letters and teeny tiny sentences in our

01:17:07 ◼   ► Reminders app," which is genuinely like the thing that I find the most

01:17:10 ◼   ► frustrating about it. So that's where everything is going when I'm talking

01:17:13 ◼   ► about Cortex.

01:17:14 ◼   ► I can see how you got there, right? And like the way that you're describing it,

01:17:19 ◼   ► that does make a lot of sense of like, you have these pieces of information that

01:17:23 ◼   ► are short and you're just like adding to them. But like the way that that wouldn't

01:17:26 ◼   ► like what for me is I actually like to write in outlines and you can't do that right like you can

01:17:33 ◼   ► add the initial thing but if you want to add some context to it reminders won't let you do that and

01:17:39 ◼   ► so like that's what I do in the notes app right so like I'll open my cortex note and I might add

01:17:45 ◼   ► a sentence and then later on I'm going to come back and fill that out a little bit more in an

01:17:50 ◼   ► outline format so I have more like thorough thinking and thorough notes for

01:17:55 ◼   ► the show. So I can see how you got there but it really does feel like you've

01:18:00 ◼   ► established to me like an idea of how you want to track this information, give

01:18:05 ◼   ► you somewhere to over time add this stuff which I think is really good. I

01:18:09 ◼   ► wished that I would have thought that of that earlier for state of the apps

01:18:12 ◼   ► especially. I've had to do a lot of work over the last couple of weeks like

01:18:16 ◼   ► combing through my devices to find the apps that I like,

01:18:19 ◼   ► where I could have actually been adding them the whole time.

01:18:22 ◼   ► But reminders wouldn't work for me in this way

01:18:26 ◼   ► because I then wouldn't be able to do anything

01:18:29 ◼   ► with that initial information once it's in there,

01:18:31 ◼   ► in that application, I'd have to then take it somewhere else.

01:18:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that thing about being able to add sub layers,

01:18:38 ◼   ► like in an outline, that is the main reason

01:18:41 ◼   ► I've been thinking of maybe switching the system over

01:18:43 ◼   ► to Obsidian, which would allow me to do that more easily.

01:18:47 ◼   ► That is the main limitation of it.

01:18:50 ◼   ► But even if Reminders had just a single additional layer,

01:18:55 ◼   ► if it was a three-layer hierarchy

01:18:57 ◼   ► instead of a two-layer hierarchy,

01:18:59 ◼   ► I might be totally fine with just using it like this forever

01:19:01 ◼   ► because one subheading is all I ever need

01:19:04 ◼   ► for the Cortex Notes.

01:19:05 ◼   ► Whereas I do see in our Google Doc

01:19:07 ◼   ► that you often have boom-a-boom, five sublayers

01:19:10 ◼   ► of here's all the things

01:19:11 ◼   ► that I want to talk about with the thing.

01:19:13 ◼   ► That's what my Cortex Notes look like.

01:19:16 ◼   ► And just in a similar way, I think I mentioned it before,

01:19:20 ◼   ► but just in case I haven't,

01:19:21 ◼   ► I do also find reminders really great

01:19:23 ◼   ► for two watch lists and two read lists.

01:19:26 ◼   ► So when someone recommends something,

01:19:28 ◼   ► I have a little shortcut that will add the book or the movie

01:19:32 ◼   ► to the two watch list or the two read list.

01:19:34 ◼   ► And I also, this is really key,

01:19:36 ◼   ► in the shortcut that I have set up to do that,

01:19:39 ◼   ► It also asks me who's recommending this.

01:19:42 ◼   ► And I always really like to be able to remember like,

01:19:45 ◼   ► oh, this person recommended me the show.

01:19:48 ◼   ► And so like the reminders has a like notes section.

01:19:51 ◼   ► What are you laughing at there, Myke?

01:19:53 ◼   ► - This is how you keep track

01:19:56 ◼   ► of all the bad recommendations I give you.

01:19:58 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, look--

01:19:58 ◼   ► - This is why I've been on the knife's edge.

01:20:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:20:03 ◼   ► - Listeners, behind the scenes,

01:20:07 ◼   ► that have recently teased Myke

01:20:08 ◼   ► as having one of the worst batting averages

01:20:11 ◼   ► for recommending media for me.

01:20:13 ◼   ► - I think I've, have I saved myself a little bit

01:20:17 ◼   ► with severance?

01:20:18 ◼   ► - No, severance was really good.

01:20:20 ◼   ► Severance was really good.

01:20:21 ◼   ► - So I've got one in the good column.

01:20:24 ◼   ► I've got like, there is an army of debt,

01:20:27 ◼   ► right in the bad column.

01:20:28 ◼   ► It's terrible back there.

01:20:29 ◼   ► It's like the 300 back there, but.

01:20:32 ◼   ► - It is terrible, it is terrible back there.

01:20:34 ◼   ► You did save yourself a little bit with severance,

01:20:36 ◼   ► Especially because, we'll just say,

01:20:39 ◼   ► Severance had one of the most stressful,

01:20:42 ◼   ► nail-biting hours of television

01:20:44 ◼   ► I've ever watched in my life.

01:20:46 ◼   ► - Right. - I was like, wow!

01:20:47 ◼   ► - Good, it's the final episode, right?

01:20:50 ◼   ► Unbelievable. - Listen, I'm not saying

01:20:51 ◼   ► anything, look, no, don't spoil anything for people, right?

01:20:53 ◼   ► But it's like, I was literally sweating.

01:20:56 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:20:56 ◼   ► I'm like this, and this is like, that's amazing.

01:20:58 ◼   ► Like, it's amazing that I was able to do that, so.

01:21:01 ◼   ► So, yes, Myke, you've had a terrible batting average,

01:21:04 ◼   ► but like, wow, is that a real peak

01:21:06 ◼   ► that I would have totally missed otherwise?

01:21:08 ◼   ► - I had hoped that severance would be the thing to save me.

01:21:11 ◼   ► I knew it was like, and I took a real sweet,

01:21:15 ◼   ► 'cause you told me, I believe when I recommended it,

01:21:18 ◼   ► like, if this one's bad, I'm done.

01:21:21 ◼   ► Like that's the end, no more recommendations.

01:21:24 ◼   ► But like, so I thought if anything is gonna save me

01:21:27 ◼   ► on this one, it was severance.

01:21:28 ◼   ► I'm pleased you enjoy it.

01:21:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, listeners, in your life,

01:21:31 ◼   ► you'll eventually find that some people become

01:21:34 ◼   ► excellent anti-recommenders,

01:21:35 ◼   ► that when they recommend something, you're like,

01:21:37 ◼   ► "Okay, great, this goes on the Do Not Watch list."

01:21:39 ◼   ► And then Myke was like, I was just telling Myke,

01:21:42 ◼   ► like he's real close to getting on that Do Not Watch list.

01:21:46 ◼   ► You had some phrase at dinner where you're like,

01:21:50 ◼   ► "I'm all in on severance,

01:21:51 ◼   ► "like I bet my entire reputation on it."

01:21:54 ◼   ► - I did say that, I said I will stake my,

01:21:57 ◼   ► I think you offered that as an option to me,

01:21:59 ◼   ► of like, I will watch this,

01:22:01 ◼   ► if you stake your reputation on it.

01:22:03 ◼   ► And I was willing to stake my reputation on severance.

01:22:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a bit like, you know,

01:22:09 ◼   ► you're in the old West gambling hall

01:22:10 ◼   ► and it's like double or nothing, right?

01:22:12 ◼   ► I got, and you're like, I'm all in.

01:22:14 ◼   ► - I went all in? - So yeah,

01:22:15 ◼   ► that worked out well.

01:22:16 ◼   ► But yes, listeners, that's why you wanna keep a record

01:22:19 ◼   ► of who recommended you to thing.

01:22:21 ◼   ► And so you can like build up associations

01:22:23 ◼   ► with who recommends what.

01:22:24 ◼   ► And also genuinely, 'cause I'm just like super bad

01:22:28 ◼   ► at keeping up with friends.

01:22:30 ◼   ► It's also nice that when you finish something,

01:22:33 ◼   ► it kind of gives you an excuse to be able to tell someone,

01:22:36 ◼   ► like, "Oh, hey, I just finished this book

01:22:37 ◼   ► that you recommended, and I enjoyed it."

01:22:40 ◼   ► And it's just like,

01:22:41 ◼   ► it can be a nice little touch point as well.

01:22:43 ◼   ► - You didn't do that with "Severance."

01:22:44 ◼   ► You didn't text me and say that was great.

01:22:47 ◼   ► - Didn't I?

01:22:48 ◼   ► No, I told you.

01:22:49 ◼   ► No, I updated you at some point that it was going well.

01:22:52 ◼   ► - We spoke last week, and you said,

01:22:56 ◼   ► "I'm enjoying it so far,

01:22:57 ◼   ► but we'll see how it goes to the end."

01:23:00 ◼   ► And this is the first I've heard about it.

01:23:02 ◼   ► - Oh, did I leave you hanging until now?

01:23:04 ◼   ► I didn't realize. - I just didn't know

01:23:05 ◼   ► you finished it, right?

01:23:06 ◼   ► I didn't know what speed you were on.

01:23:08 ◼   ► - I mean, look, look, we're getting on a bit of a tangent here

01:23:10 ◼   ► but I do have a real asterisk of like,

01:23:15 ◼   ► I think they've written themselves

01:23:16 ◼   ► in a real dangerous position for season two, so we'll see.

01:23:19 ◼   ► But I'm still totally giving it to you as a win for season two.

01:23:21 ◼   ► - I believe, this is no spoilers, right?

01:23:24 ◼   ► But I've read something, if I'm remembering rightly,

01:23:28 ◼   ► that this was supposed to be one season.

01:23:30 ◼   ► And I think it was,

01:23:33 ◼   ► 'cause Ben Stiller's production company

01:23:35 ◼   ► kind of made this happen, which is like a fun thing.

01:23:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know why.

01:23:39 ◼   ► Every time at the end of the episode,

01:23:41 ◼   ► it flashes, like it ends and it goes to custom black

01:23:43 ◼   ► and it says like directed by Ben Stiller.

01:23:45 ◼   ► I don't know, it just like made me laugh every show.

01:23:48 ◼   ► I feel a little bad about that,

01:23:49 ◼   ► but I was like, oh, Zoolander made this?

01:23:50 ◼   ► - 'Cause I remember when the first trailers came out,

01:23:52 ◼   ► because it was said that this show was happening.

01:23:54 ◼   ► It was like Ben Stiller is directing, producing,

01:23:57 ◼   ► and it has Adam Scott from Parks and Rec.

01:24:00 ◼   ► And I was like, "Oh, okay, this is gonna be fun."

01:24:02 ◼   ► And then the first trailer came out and I was like,

01:24:04 ◼   ► "Oh boy, what is going on?"

01:24:07 ◼   ► But I believe it was supposed to be one season

01:24:09 ◼   ► and the production company,

01:24:12 ◼   ► like Ben Stiller's production company

01:24:13 ◼   ► kind of realized what they had and they're like,

01:24:15 ◼   ► "No, no, this is gonna be more than one season."

01:24:18 ◼   ► And they stretched out that final episode to,

01:24:21 ◼   ► but yes, I don't know what happens after this episode.

01:24:25 ◼   ► Like I can't envision how it continues.

01:24:27 ◼   ► I'm really intrigued though,

01:24:28 ◼   ► 'cause I love the first season, so I can't wait for more.

01:24:30 ◼   ► They are making more, so.

01:24:31 ◼   ► - If that's true, that there was a coherent story

01:24:35 ◼   ► which was turned into multiple seasons,

01:24:37 ◼   ► that gives me a lot more faith.

01:24:39 ◼   ► But yeah, with a lot of TV, it's like,

01:24:41 ◼   ► yeah, you can write something interesting and mysterious,

01:24:45 ◼   ► but that's not the hard part.

01:24:46 ◼   ► Like, the hard part is closing the sale

01:24:49 ◼   ► on your interesting and mysterious premise, so.

01:24:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would just be happy to have more understanding

01:24:54 ◼   ► of the world at large,

01:24:56 ◼   ► so they can just go in that direction,

01:24:57 ◼   ► and I'm intrigued, right?

01:24:58 ◼   ► 'Cause there's just like so much stuff,

01:24:59 ◼   ► it's like I don't even understand how this world is.

01:25:02 ◼   ► Which is lost vibes, you get a bit lost vibes from it,

01:25:04 ◼   ► so I hope that they do a better job.

01:25:07 ◼   ► I mentioned FantasticOwl earlier on

01:25:09 ◼   ► as my calendar of choice, it's still the one for me.

01:25:11 ◼   ► I will say though, like,

01:25:13 ◼   ► starting to notice a little jankiness of FantasticOwl.

01:25:17 ◼   ► - Oh yeah?

01:25:18 ◼   ► - Which is a thing I've never noticed,

01:25:19 ◼   ► like never had before.

01:25:21 ◼   ► And this is especially happening to me on the iPhone,

01:25:24 ◼   ► where the app seems to be haunted sometimes.

01:25:29 ◼   ► - Oh, that sounds bad.

01:25:31 ◼   ► - It's scrolling on its own in a way

01:25:34 ◼   ► that I'm not asking it to do.

01:25:36 ◼   ► I will say, hit a date, right?

01:25:39 ◼   ► So I'm looking at it and I wanna see it next Thursday

01:25:41 ◼   ► and I tap it and I'm looking at it

01:25:43 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden it jumps back to another day.

01:25:46 ◼   ► - Ooh, spooky.

01:25:47 ◼   ► - Or sometimes I'll be scrolling

01:25:50 ◼   ► and it will say, oh, you're on the 10th,

01:25:53 ◼   ► but it's on the little calendar view.

01:25:55 ◼   ► But then on the list, it's showing me a different day.

01:25:58 ◼   ► I found this to be weird in the last little while.

01:26:01 ◼   ► It's a thing I've not experienced with the app before.

01:26:03 ◼   ► It's always been really rock solid,

01:26:05 ◼   ► but it's moving around.

01:26:07 ◼   ► The app seems to be moving on its own

01:26:09 ◼   ► in a way that I don't like.

01:26:10 ◼   ► But Fantastic Cal, still the best.

01:26:13 ◼   ► Calendars, it's the way that I work,

01:26:14 ◼   ► natural language and all that kind of stuff,

01:26:16 ◼   ► and I love it.

01:26:17 ◼   ► But bugs get into systems, who knows?

01:26:19 ◼   ► This might be just me.

01:26:20 ◼   ► Maybe I'm the only woman for haunted Fantastic Cal.

01:26:23 ◼   ► Who can tell?

01:26:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:26:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, I never really use it on iOS.

01:26:27 ◼   ► I'm only ever using it on my computers,

01:26:29 ◼   ► and I can't report that I have any hauntedness

01:26:31 ◼   ► in my fantastical.

01:26:33 ◼   ► But yes, we mention it every year,

01:26:35 ◼   ► but I also every year really feel the need to reemphasize.

01:26:38 ◼   ► It is such a stupidly good calendar app.

01:26:40 ◼   ► You're crazy if you're not using it.

01:26:42 ◼   ► - There's no better.

01:26:43 ◼   ► - The thing that is just the amazing

01:26:44 ◼   ► is the calendar groups and being able to just say,

01:26:47 ◼   ► okay, show me all the work stuff.

01:26:49 ◼   ► Show me all the stuff that I need to see

01:26:51 ◼   ► If I'm planning traveling and social engagements or like, it's just unbelievably good.

01:26:58 ◼   ► So yeah, I can't recommend Fantastical well enough.

01:27:00 ◼   ► Are you using the calendar sets with focuses?

01:27:04 ◼   ► No, I didn't know that was a feature, but I also feel like that does not wildly matter

01:27:11 ◼   ► for me.

01:27:12 ◼   ► That's a much more important feature for you.

01:27:14 ◼   ► But can you do that?

01:27:16 ◼   ► Tie that in with when the focus modes change?

01:27:19 ◼   ► So there's a new feature, a new API called focus filters that apps can tie into and allow

01:27:25 ◼   ► you to, when you're in a certain focus mode, only show you certain information.

01:27:30 ◼   ► So you can set this up that like when you're in a certain focus, iMessage will only show

01:27:35 ◼   ► you conversations from certain people and you can choose who you want it to show you.

01:27:40 ◼   ► In Fantastic

01:27:40 ◼   ► In Fantastic How you can have it show you in the app just certain calendar sets.

01:27:45 ◼   ► Timery has it that certain sets of timers will only be viewable to you in certain focus

01:27:51 ◼   ► modes.

01:27:52 ◼   ► I haven't played around with that yet.

01:27:55 ◼   ► It says I don't do any of these.

01:27:57 ◼   ► I don't do it because it took a while for them and now there's only really apps that

01:28:00 ◼   ► are starting to happen now.

01:28:02 ◼   ► But it's in the focus mode, it's called Focus Filters and you can tap it and it gives you

01:28:05 ◼   ► all of the apps that you might use

01:28:08 ◼   ► that will give you this functionality.

01:28:12 ◼   ► So you can configure a bunch of apps

01:28:13 ◼   ► to show you certain information

01:28:15 ◼   ► when you're in certain focuses.

01:28:16 ◼   ► I thought that could be interesting for you

01:28:18 ◼   ► as someone who's running these focuses all the time,

01:28:20 ◼   ► but this isn't something that I have used myself.

01:28:24 ◼   ► - I didn't realize that's where,

01:28:26 ◼   ► 'cause I remember them talking about this,

01:28:28 ◼   ► and I just always assumed this would show up

01:28:30 ◼   ► as a setting in the app, but it doesn't.

01:28:32 ◼   ► It's at the way bottom of the focus settings themselves.

01:28:37 ◼   ► Interesting, I did not know that.

01:28:41 ◼   ► Ah, so that's where it shows you that you can pick stuff.

01:28:44 ◼   ► Okay, I'll have to take more of a, oh Safari tab group.

01:28:48 ◼   ► How intriguing.

01:28:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, so if you had like a research tab group

01:28:52 ◼   ► and a research focus mode, time together.

01:28:55 ◼   ► - Research, like there's just gonna be one tab group

01:28:58 ◼   ► under that, that's madness, Myke.

01:29:00 ◼   ► - Research, zed, zed, zed.

01:29:02 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, my research tab group.

01:29:06 ◼   ► Oh no, my lights just switched again

01:29:08 ◼   ► 'cause I did touch the focus modes.

01:29:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:29:12 ◼   ► - Not the only one with a ghost.

01:29:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, let me go back to chill mode.

01:29:17 ◼   ► Okay, all right, I will investigate that later,

01:29:19 ◼   ► but that's very cool, I didn't realize that

01:29:21 ◼   ► and thank you for telling me where it actually is

01:29:23 ◼   ► 'cause I might not have found it all year

01:29:25 ◼   ► if you hadn't mentioned that.

01:29:26 ◼   ► - And another good piece of follow up

01:29:27 ◼   ► from last year's state of the apps

01:29:29 ◼   ► that needs to be mentioned.

01:29:30 ◼   ► We spoke last time, you said you were still using

01:29:32 ◼   ► Calzones by David Smith.

01:29:34 ◼   ► And we both wished that he would just copy and paste

01:29:38 ◼   ► Calzones into Widgetsmith, which he has actually done

01:29:42 ◼   ► in the intervening year.

01:29:43 ◼   ► So Widgetsmith now has the time zone functionality

01:29:48 ◼   ► of Calzones inside of it, which I love.

01:29:51 ◼   ► And so now, this is especially good for me, which I enjoy,

01:29:54 ◼   ► I have the time zones widget on my lock screen, right?

01:29:58 ◼   ► When I tap that, it opens WidgetSmith in the Calzones view,

01:30:02 ◼   ► so I can move stuff around and see time zones

01:30:05 ◼   ► over a scrolling period of time.

01:30:07 ◼   ► So very happy that that's in WidgetSmith now.

01:30:10 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah, very happy about that.

01:30:12 ◼   ► We wished/bullied and begged,

01:30:16 ◼   ► underscored him to put that into the app.

01:30:18 ◼   ► And yes, he was very nice to do it, and I really love it.

01:30:21 ◼   ► That's the only thing that I use on that,

01:30:24 ◼   ► I forget what they call it, the Today View,

01:30:25 ◼   ► I think is the language for it.

01:30:27 ◼   ► when you slide over to the left,

01:30:28 ◼   ► like I have that as a list there,

01:30:30 ◼   ► which is just real handy to check.

01:30:31 ◼   ► And it was very satisfying to be able to switch,

01:30:34 ◼   ► 'cause I think Calzones was the last thing

01:30:37 ◼   ► that was using like the super old,

01:30:39 ◼   ► original widgets interface.

01:30:41 ◼   ► And it had to exist in like this janky bubble

01:30:44 ◼   ► that felt like, oh, they must be running a virtual machine

01:30:46 ◼   ► to run this widget on this system.

01:30:48 ◼   ► So it was real nice to be like,

01:30:49 ◼   ► ah, here's the updated one from Calzones.

01:30:52 ◼   ► For anyone who does the time zone stuff,

01:30:54 ◼   ► let me just reemphasize.

01:30:56 ◼   ► The killer feature of this and what makes it so good is not that it shows you the time in different cities, but that when you tap on it, it opens up this like scroll-y view.

01:31:09 ◼   ► So you can look at say, like I've got six cities listed and you can scroll left and right and very easily see, oh, as the day moves on where I am, what are all the times everywhere else?

01:31:22 ◼   ► And it's just like, I've never found any interface

01:31:25 ◼   ► that is as good for quickly figuring out

01:31:28 ◼   ► when you're gonna do a call with someone

01:31:29 ◼   ► in a different time zone.

01:31:31 ◼   ► So it's not just the clocks, it's what it opens up to.

01:31:34 ◼   ► And that's why we were like,

01:31:35 ◼   ► please put calzones in the modern system.

01:31:38 ◼   ► And so it's great.

01:31:38 ◼   ► If you do time zones, like you need to get this for sure.

01:31:41 ◼   ► - I would just need to know, 'cause I checked this, right?

01:31:43 ◼   ► Four hours after we published last year's episode,

01:31:47 ◼   ► David sent us a video of him having added it

01:31:50 ◼   ► into WidgetSmith.

01:31:51 ◼   ► - Four hours.

01:31:52 ◼   ► - I believe he is the fastest developer in the West.

01:31:55 ◼   ► - It took him longer before he actually put it in

01:31:58 ◼   ► 'cause he actually added a bunch of stuff to Widgetsmith,

01:32:00 ◼   ► like a bunch of, I think they're called tools in the app,

01:32:02 ◼   ► where there's now just like a lot more functionality

01:32:05 ◼   ► in the app that you can tie to some widgets

01:32:07 ◼   ► that when you tap them, they open up.

01:32:09 ◼   ► So there's like weather in there now,

01:32:11 ◼   ► there's like a full weather app inside of it now.

01:32:13 ◼   ► There's activity and step stuff,

01:32:15 ◼   ► there's reminders, functionality,

01:32:17 ◼   ► there's tons of new tools in the app.

01:32:19 ◼   ► I will just note something where it took you six months

01:32:23 ◼   ► to respond to that message, which is hilarious.

01:32:25 ◼   ► - Oh, right, that did.

01:32:27 ◼   ► (both laughing)

01:32:29 ◼   ► Listeners, that is evidence.

01:32:33 ◼   ► When I say, when you hear me say things like,

01:32:36 ◼   ► "I am bad at getting back to people,"

01:32:38 ◼   ► that's the kind of thing that I mean.

01:32:40 ◼   ► It's like, a message is sent

01:32:43 ◼   ► and half a year later I respond.

01:32:47 ◼   ► I am not proud of this.

01:32:49 ◼   ► I don't wish that I was this way.

01:32:51 ◼   ► Like if I could wish myself better than this,

01:32:53 ◼   ► I would be better than this.

01:32:54 ◼   ► But like sometimes you have to live with the person