Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► December is an important time around here.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Cortexmas. Cortexmas season.

00:00:04 ◼   ► It's winter cortexmas, right?

00:00:05 ◼   ► It's both summer and winter cortexmases. They do have important parts to them. Like summer

00:00:12 ◼   ► cortexmas is WWDC time. Winter cortexmas. It's very traditional around here of winter cortexmas.

00:00:21 ◼   ► I like that you're getting on board this idea of seasonal cortexmas. I think last year I finally

00:00:28 ◼   ► broke your will a little bit for Cortexmas is all year long and this this

00:00:32 ◼   ► feels a little bit like you're coming up with a way to frame this for yourself.

00:00:36 ◼   ► This is as far as I am willing to go. There are two Cortexmas seasons.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Oh, there are two Cortexmas seasons. Okay.

00:00:42 ◼   ► But see, okay, so summer Cortexmas, that means there's gonna be a long break.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Right. Winter Cortexmas is just merely the celebration of the original Cortexmas.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Ah, okay. Winter Cortexmas is traditional Cortexmas.

00:00:56 ◼   ► Pretty busy in December. Yes, that is very true. And we start with State of the Apps.

00:01:02 ◼   ► State of the Apps. So in case anybody doesn't know what State of the Apps is, we've been doing this,

00:01:07 ◼   ► this is our third year doing State of the Apps, which was an idea that came from a blog post that

00:01:12 ◼   ► Gray wrote in 2014, where you went through a bunch of applications and categories of applications,

00:01:20 ◼   ► and kind of spoke about your feelings to the stuff that you're using, the things you would like there

00:01:24 ◼   ► to be the things that have surprised you, that kind of stuff, right? Like, these are

00:01:28 ◼   ► the apps that I use, etc. And then over the last couple of years, we've refined it a

00:01:33 ◼   ► little bit. And so we talk about apps that we use for productivity, apps that we use

00:01:38 ◼   ► for writing research, and then do a little lightning round. So that's what kind of what

00:01:42 ◼   ► we've established over the last couple of years. But I want to add a new part in to

00:01:46 ◼   ► state of the apps now, which we will do in years to follow, where we will share our home

00:01:51 ◼   ► screens, which I don't think we've done for quite a while.

00:01:53 ◼   ► That's a good place for it, yeah. That fits into state of the apps.

00:01:56 ◼   ► I figured it's a good time, right? Because we get to show these are the apps that we find that are most important

00:02:02 ◼   ► and then we can dig into some categories that lend themselves nicely to the show.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Yeah, that works really well. The apps that a person has on their home screen, it tells you what they're favoring.

00:02:12 ◼   ► It says a lot about the person.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Yes, it says a lot about the person. We all know that.

00:02:17 ◼   ► So I'm gonna go first because you're gonna have some weird s***, right?

00:02:20 ◼   ► Like it's gonna be some crazy thing you're doing.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Myke, Myke, Myke.

00:02:25 ◼   ► What?

00:02:26 ◼   ► Pro I promise you this.

00:02:28 ◼   ► You can go first.

00:02:29 ◼   ► Okay.

00:02:29 ◼   ► But I promise you.

00:02:31 ◼   ► There's nothing crazy.

00:02:32 ◼   ► It's it's very boring.

00:02:35 ◼   ► It's nothing crazy going on.

00:02:36 ◼   ► So you can, you can relax.

00:02:38 ◼   ► No, I'm going to share mine first.

00:02:39 ◼   ► I'm going to send you my iPhone and my iPad.

00:02:42 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:02:42 ◼   ► I have a lot of similarities, but the iPad does bad differences now, which I thought.

00:02:47 ◼   ► So I've sent those to you.

00:02:49 ◼   ► They're coming through over the wire, over the wire.

00:02:51 ◼   ► There shouldn't be anything surprising here.

00:02:54 ◼   ► I don't think it's always surprising the completeness of your home screen.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Like I forget how many apps a person can shove into one home screen.

00:03:04 ◼   ► And it's a lot.

00:03:04 ◼   ► It's it's it's a lot like this.

00:03:06 ◼   ► They give you the space for it.

00:03:07 ◼   ► The phone is a portal to applications.

00:03:10 ◼   ► That is all it's for.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Not filling up the home screen.

00:03:14 ◼   ► You're just making things more difficult for yourself, you know?

00:03:17 ◼   ► That's my new view on this and going into 2020.

00:03:20 ◼   ► #4homescreen. That's where I'm going in 2020. That's my new campaign.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Yeah, okay, I get it. I get it.

00:03:27 ◼   ► It's just a little shocking, that's all.

00:03:30 ◼   ► I don't normally see a homescreen that is this full.

00:03:32 ◼   ► No, my iPad homescreen isn't full, but that's because it's got tons of folders,

00:03:36 ◼   ► and the second screen is just games from Apple Arcade Games that I haven't tried out.

00:03:40 ◼   ► But my iPad homescreen is as full as I would make it.

00:03:43 ◼   ► The iPad homescreen is a bit of a different situation.

00:03:45 ◼   ► It's a different beast because there's a dock and all that stuff.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Yeah, now that we have iPad OS, the iPad is a very different beast.

00:03:52 ◼   ► So I'm looking at a beautiful grid wallpaper background on your phone there.

00:03:59 ◼   ► It's a cortex wallpaper.

00:04:00 ◼   ► Of course, there will be a link in the show notes to that.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Yeah, it's cortex wallpaper and you have filled every single slot with an app.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Otherwise, there would be empty spaces in a grid.

00:04:09 ◼   ► Who wants that?

00:04:10 ◼   ► No, an animal wants that.

00:04:11 ◼   ► That's right.

00:04:12 ◼   ► You've got four apps in the dock, full grid.

00:04:16 ◼   ► The one that actually, this is silly,

00:04:18 ◼   ► this is the one that catches my attention first,

00:04:21 ◼   ► is Reader at the bottom, R-E-E-D-E-R.

00:04:25 ◼   ► That is the one that immediately drew my attention.

00:04:27 ◼   ► - Well, this is new for Myke of 2019.

00:04:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, you mentioned a long time ago

00:04:32 ◼   ► that you were trying to go back to RSS.

00:04:37 ◼   ► And I think I'm sure past me said something like,

00:04:41 ◼   ► good luck with that, you know, let me know how that works out.

00:04:44 ◼   ► And then we haven't brought it up since.

00:04:47 ◼   ► And so this is why Reader is actually the first one that catches my attention.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Well, this is me letting you know that it is working out fantastically for me.

00:04:55 ◼   ► OK, tell me, tell me.

00:04:56 ◼   ► The main reason I'm using RSS and I use Reader and a service called Ino Reader.

00:05:02 ◼   ► There are a bunch of other services.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I don't even remember why I signed up for this one, but I have a year on it.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Right. So this is the one that I have.

00:05:09 ◼   ► It has reduced my reliance on Twitter as a source of news.

00:05:15 ◼   ► Because that's what I was using it for and that meant that I was using it more than I wanted.

00:05:20 ◼   ► So now I'm more mindlessly browsed Twitter again, which I'm way happier about.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Ah, okay.

00:05:27 ◼   ► And now with Reader, the great thing is, because of the way RSS works compared to trying to get your news from a social network,

00:05:34 ◼   ► the stories don't go away.

00:05:36 ◼   ► They just wait for me until I go to them.

00:05:38 ◼   ► So I may be checking on reader. I will check in on reader on average every couple of days

00:05:43 ◼   ► Unless I'm doing a show like I'm preparing for a show

00:05:47 ◼   ► Then I will go into reader to check that there's no news that I haven't missed. I have a very small subscription list

00:05:54 ◼   ► which just basically is like I have

00:05:58 ◼   ► the blogs of like my friends and colleagues that I want to read and then a couple of

00:06:03 ◼   ► websites for each kind of main topic area that I cover to make sure that I've got the news and I would say that like my I

00:06:11 ◼   ► believe the quality of research that I have been able to do for my shows has improved since going down this method

00:06:19 ◼   ► So I think it's actually making my shows better because I'm finding more

00:06:23 ◼   ► Interesting things to talk about then just what is what is everyone talking about today?

00:06:29 ◼   ► because it's on Twitter, like I find like, oh here's a story that's interesting to

00:06:33 ◼   ► me, let me talk about this one and so I think that that's been of a great

00:06:37 ◼   ► benefit. I do the vast majority of my RSS reading on my iPad, I also have it on the

00:06:43 ◼   ► phone. I like it so you know you got you when you've got those minutes to spare

00:06:47 ◼   ► right you're just like oh what am I gonna do, I'll just open Twitter. Now

00:06:51 ◼   ► sometimes I open Reader instead and I'm happy with that right like every now and

00:06:55 ◼   ► then it will be the thing that like I'm on a train it's like oh well you know

00:06:58 ◼   ► what I can be doing. I can be doing something that's gonna make me feel like

00:07:02 ◼   ► I'm being productive rather than just wasting time. And a lot of the

00:07:06 ◼   ► time it's just triaging the headlines, you know, like I'll find a headline, I'll

00:07:10 ◼   ► read the first paragraph and then I add it to an Apple note, which is like my

00:07:14 ◼   ► research note for each show, which I will then go to to read the article in full

00:07:18 ◼   ► when I'm doing the preparation for say Upgrade or Connected or this show.

00:07:23 ◼   ► That experiment has been a successful one and RSS 2019/2020 is back in my life, baby.

00:07:31 ◼   ► That's interesting to hear.

00:07:32 ◼   ► I think one of my concerns was about the widespread-ness of RSS support.

00:07:38 ◼   ► That was doubtful.

00:07:40 ◼   ► And so obviously that's not something that you've run into.

00:07:42 ◼   ► You feel like the place, whoa, okay, maybe you have, but…

00:07:45 ◼   ► There were some websites where I felt like I had to give them a stranglehold to get their

00:07:50 ◼   ► RSS feed.

00:07:51 ◼   ► there are some websites that I would like to have but I can't get their RSS feed so

00:07:56 ◼   ► I have to kind of just hope that somebody else is going to write up their story.

00:08:02 ◼   ► So like on one of my shows, Upgrade, which is mostly focused on Apple, we do a segment

00:08:06 ◼   ► called Upstream which is to like highlight the changes in streaming media technology

00:08:12 ◼   ► now that all of the major technology companies are getting into streaming video as well,

00:08:17 ◼   ► right?

00:08:18 ◼   ► It's like the next battlefield.

00:08:20 ◼   ► A lot of these outlets that report on this type of thing do not have RSS feeds.

00:08:27 ◼   ► I would like to give a shout out to Variety, which does.

00:08:30 ◼   ► I'm very happy about. Thank you, Variety.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Like the only website in this world that has RSS feeds.

00:08:36 ◼   ► It's also one of my favorite sources for this type of information.

00:08:39 ◼   ► This world is like any kind of news journalism world.

00:08:44 ◼   ► If a story is big enough, everyone will write about it, no matter who broke it.

00:08:48 ◼   ► So I get the majority of information that I need from Variety.

00:08:51 ◼   ► But now a lot of technology websites are also doing this reporting because they

00:08:55 ◼   ► are also realizing, oh,

00:08:56 ◼   ► we should also all be talking about streaming media now because it's where all

00:09:00 ◼   ► the big technology companies are going.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Okay. That's interesting.

00:09:03 ◼   ► This may be a dumb question because I'm now a user of neither of these things,

00:09:07 ◼   ► but why not use Apple News?

00:09:10 ◼   ► What is the reason for using RSS over something like Apple News?

00:09:13 ◼   ► Because Apple News will do all that possibly can to shove stuff that I don't

00:09:16 ◼   ► want to see in front of my face.

00:09:18 ◼   ► Okay, so it's the algorithmic part of it, as opposed to the reverse chronological order.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Okay, alright, that makes perfect sense.

00:09:24 ◼   ► I just want to choose the sources, right, and Apple News wants to give me more.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Plus, I like the user interface of Reader a lot more, it's more customizable.

00:09:34 ◼   ► It's a very nice iOS app, with lots of good gestures and stuff, so I like it for those

00:09:39 ◼   ► reasons as well.

00:09:41 ◼   ► Yeah, that was the last RSS app that I used, was Reader, and I really liked it.

00:09:45 ◼   ► It's really nice. This is version 4. It came out a few months ago, I think. It's really,

00:09:50 ◼   ► really good.

00:09:51 ◼   ► I remember it feeling very iOS-y, which is nice when you have an app that feels like,

00:09:56 ◼   ► "Oh, it's taking advantage of the platform."

00:09:57 ◼   ► It feels more iOS-y than Apple News does to me. At least what I consider a nice iOS app

00:10:03 ◼   ► to be.

00:10:04 ◼   ► I presume that another nice iOS app is Pipedrive there.

00:10:09 ◼   ► That dopamine hit. The tap tick that they have behind the button, you tap when you win

00:10:14 ◼   ► a deal.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Oh boy.

00:10:16 ◼   ► They coded that one just right.

00:10:18 ◼   ► I've said this before, but Pipedrive is a sales management tool.

00:10:22 ◼   ► I do advertising sales.

00:10:23 ◼   ► We track our sales through this tool.

00:10:25 ◼   ► But I will be, say, on my iPad completing a sale and I'll pick up my iPhone to press

00:10:31 ◼   ► the little button to complete the sale because the TapTick feels so good.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Okay, that's good TapTick design then.

00:10:38 ◼   ► That's really good.

00:10:39 ◼   ► It's like a little button and it feels like it has a click when it depresses.

00:10:43 ◼   ► And you know, when you press it down and it depresses is how it feels.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Like it's like a kind of feeling.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Oh, it's so good.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Live for that feeling, man.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Live for it.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Okay.

00:10:53 ◼   ► Wow.

00:10:53 ◼   ► That was, that was a much more positive response that I was actually expecting.

00:10:56 ◼   ► I thought I was mostly joking about your boring sales pipeline app.

00:10:59 ◼   ► It's super boring, right?

00:11:00 ◼   ► It's the same as air table.

00:11:01 ◼   ► We're using that for like tracking some sales stuff.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Like these are just, these are my boring apps, but they live on my home screen

00:11:08 ◼   ► because I use them all the time.

00:11:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Workhorses don't have to be the most exciting apps.

00:11:14 ◼   ► - If anything, a lot of the time,

00:11:15 ◼   ► you don't want them to be.

00:11:18 ◼   ► - So there's a lot of things that either I think

00:11:20 ◼   ► we're gonna talk about more in depth later in the show

00:11:22 ◼   ► or things that we have discussed before.

00:11:23 ◼   ► But another one that catches my eye here

00:11:25 ◼   ► is again at the bottom, right next to Reader, is Moodpath.

00:11:28 ◼   ► - I knew you were gonna ask about Moodpath.

00:11:30 ◼   ► - I don't know this app, and I also,

00:11:33 ◼   ► you don't have an abundance of badges.

00:11:35 ◼   ► You only have four apps that have badges.

00:11:37 ◼   ► messages of course, slack of course, todoist of course, and then there is mood path which

00:11:45 ◼   ► has a little one on top of it.

00:11:47 ◼   ► So that helps it stand out and makes it interesting to me.

00:11:49 ◼   ► So what is this mood path?

00:11:51 ◼   ► It is a mental health app is the easiest way to describe it and what it will do is about

00:11:57 ◼   ► three times a day it prompts me and say hey we have some questions for you and it asks

00:12:01 ◼   ► you some questions to check in on how you are feeling in yourself and it asks like really

00:12:07 ◼   ► probing questions that like, and that they ask them in such a way which is like really

00:12:11 ◼   ► interesting. And you have to answer if something is bothering you or isn't bothering you.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And depending on whether like that is a positive or negative response, dependent on the question,

00:12:21 ◼   ► if you give a negative response, it asks you like, well, how much does this bother you?

00:12:24 ◼   ► And you get to say like, extremely considerably slightly or not at all. So it's like examples of

00:12:29 ◼   ► questions that it could ask like, are you exercising at the moment? Do you have things

00:12:35 ◼   ► that are distracting you from getting your tasks done, all this kind of stuff.

00:12:38 ◼   ► It then analyzes your questions and you can actually write in it like a diary if you want to.

00:12:43 ◼   ► You can tag how you're feeling at certain points, so different emotions, and it then

00:12:48 ◼   ► generates reports for you based on how you've been answering over a week and stuff like that.

00:12:53 ◼   ► I have found it as a very good tool over the last few months to help me keep focused on myself.

00:13:02 ◼   ► because I don't do it three times a day, I do it once or twice a day. It kind of depends on

00:13:07 ◼   ► how busy I am in a day. So I leave the badge there so I will remember to do it. Again,

00:13:13 ◼   ► if I have a minute or two to spare, then I'll open it up and answer the questions.

00:13:16 ◼   ► It kind of analyses your responses and it will give you a report, like this is how we think

00:13:23 ◼   ► you're feeling and these are some things you should consider. And they have, I haven't done

00:13:27 ◼   ► done this stuff yet but they have meditation audio in there like you know

00:13:31 ◼   ► like Headspace mm-hmm it has some of that kind of stuff in there as well I've

00:13:35 ◼   ► really liked it it's not a difficult thing to do and it helps me feel like

00:13:42 ◼   ► I'm doing something for my mental health which I feel like a lot of the time I

00:13:46 ◼   ► have not really felt like I was doing anything unless I explicitly needed to

00:13:51 ◼   ► so this has been a nice application I've been using it for like three or four

00:13:55 ◼   ► months now pretty much every day. I like it. It's good. So you're saying that you

00:14:01 ◼   ► feel like the tracking is good for the mental health or are you doing the more

00:14:06 ◼   ► active stuff that's in the app? For me having the questions asked and me having

00:14:12 ◼   ► to answer them it's just interesting. Right? It's making me realize I'm

00:14:19 ◼   ► feeling things that I wouldn't have thought about unless somebody asked me

00:14:22 ◼   ► the question. I could maybe be like, "Oh, I feel like I can't be bothered to do anything

00:14:27 ◼   ► today. I feel lethargic or whatever." The mood path will pop up and it will say, "Is

00:14:32 ◼   ► how you're feeling affecting the amount of work you can get done?" And I'm like, "Yeah,

00:14:37 ◼   ► it is." So it's stuff like that where it's like, "Hmm, okay." And then answering, "How

00:14:45 ◼   ► much does this thing bother you?" is also interesting because there's some stuff where

00:14:49 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, this is affecting me, but I'm not worried about it because I know I'm having a tough day today or whatever.

00:14:54 ◼   ► So I think it's a very interesting implementation of an app like this.

00:14:59 ◼   ► I've found it to be a nice app to use over the last few months.

00:15:03 ◼   ► That's really interesting. I might actually give that a try because we've discussed journaling on this podcast a few times and

00:15:10 ◼   ► obviously, you know, one of the things about asking yourself questions at the beginning or at the end of a day and

00:15:16 ◼   ► Reflecting on that in writing is a good thing to do.

00:15:19 ◼   ► My questions always tend to be very tactical and explicit

00:15:23 ◼   ► about like, "Did you exercise? Did you not?"

00:15:25 ◼   ► And I've made some vague gestures in the direction of mood tracking,

00:15:29 ◼   ► but I always found it like...

00:15:31 ◼   ► just pointless.

00:15:33 ◼   ► I know that, "Oh, how happy do I feel today?"

00:15:36 ◼   ► "Three happy?" Like, I don't know.

00:15:38 ◼   ► You know, it just...

00:15:39 ◼   ► I've never found a good way to try to think about that.

00:15:43 ◼   ► And I feel like I would just be interested to have an app like that that's asking interesting questions.

00:15:50 ◼   ► Like, you sell it well of here's maybe a way that an app is trying to poke you a little bit about introspection.

00:15:57 ◼   ► It surprises me sometimes. Like, it'll ask me a question, I'll be like, "Oh, I haven't seen that one before.

00:16:03 ◼   ► What an interesting question to ask."

00:16:05 ◼   ► Yeah, see, that's a good sales pitch. Like, an app that can ask an interesting question,

00:16:09 ◼   ► even if it's not a mood tracker, is an interesting thing to bring in your life by definition.

00:16:13 ◼   ► It has mood tracking as well. So once you're finished answering the questions, it's like,

00:16:17 ◼   ► "How do you feel?" And then you tap one of the faces, you know, like, "Good, very good,

00:16:21 ◼   ► moderate, bad, very bad." That's how it ends the question round.

00:16:25 ◼   ► Huh, okay.

00:16:26 ◼   ► I like it.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I might take that and give it a bit of a whirl.

00:16:28 ◼   ► It's free to start, and then you can pay for more features.

00:16:33 ◼   ► I also, you know, a man with so many brightly colored app icons has got to be happy all

00:16:39 ◼   ► the time.

00:16:40 ◼   ► You can't fathom.

00:16:41 ◼   ► I can't help but notice that with things like PCALC, excellent calculator application by

00:16:46 ◼   ► our friend James Thompson, or Carrot, you've chosen the clown vomit options for the color

00:16:54 ◼   ► schemes on those apps.

00:16:56 ◼   ► Very Myke, very on brand, but also just draws my attention.

00:16:59 ◼   ► I have the purple slack icon.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Oh yeah, the purple slack icon.

00:17:01 ◼   ► I don't remember if the purple one is the default or not anymore, but I go for the purple

00:17:05 ◼   ► one.

00:17:06 ◼   ► She can't know what the white one is the default one that sucks.

00:17:09 ◼   ► I didn't know that you could change it.

00:17:11 ◼   ► I think I'll have to change that.

00:17:12 ◼   ► They added that very quietly a while ago.

00:17:15 ◼   ► I think you can do black, white or purple because I noticed, Myke, that you are a beta

00:17:19 ◼   ► tester for some apps here and I saw that you had the purple and I thought maybe that was

00:17:24 ◼   ► a special mic feature.

00:17:25 ◼   ► No, I don't think so.

00:17:27 ◼   ► Okay.

00:17:28 ◼   ► Oh, look at that app icon.

00:17:30 ◼   ► Oh, thank God.

00:17:32 ◼   ► There you go.

00:17:33 ◼   ► You have changed the icon for Slack.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Changing lives over here today.

00:17:37 ◼   ► Honestly, we are.

00:17:38 ◼   ► I have never gotten used to the white Slack icon.

00:17:41 ◼   ► No, I never liked it.

00:17:42 ◼   ► It still throws me off.

00:17:43 ◼   ► It was like--

00:17:44 ◼   ► It's too generic.

00:17:45 ◼   ► Too generic, way too generic.

00:17:47 ◼   ► They're censored, pinwheeled.

00:17:50 ◼   ► It's like, it's too much.

00:17:52 ◼   ► OK, great.

00:17:52 ◼   ► Back to Obrigine for Slack.

00:17:56 ◼   ► Oh, this is great.

00:17:58 ◼   ► Myke, I really appreciate you sharing this home screen with me.

00:18:00 ◼   ► This is amazing.

00:18:01 ◼   ► I'm getting some real wins over here.

00:18:03 ◼   ► Do we want to move on to my iPad now?

00:18:06 ◼   ► Do you have any more questions about my iPhone?

00:18:07 ◼   ► I don't have any questions about your iPhone that I don't think are going to come up later.

00:18:10 ◼   ► I want to talk about your iPad.

00:18:13 ◼   ► Now here's the thing, just as a little bit of comparison.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Your iPhone, while it is shockingly busy, I can say it looks nice.

00:18:23 ◼   ► It's full, but it looks nice.

00:18:26 ◼   ► iPad, I can't quite say the same thing.

00:18:29 ◼   ► It's a visual disaster, I'm aware of that.

00:18:32 ◼   ► Yes, it's not a great look.

00:18:34 ◼   ► Because I actually think with iPadOS it is difficult to make a good looking home screen

00:18:39 ◼   ► now.

00:18:40 ◼   ► Yes.

00:18:41 ◼   ► But I don't care because it's so useful now, so it doesn't bother me.

00:18:45 ◼   ► I just want to get it on record that I can go with you here because iPadOS has increased

00:18:52 ◼   ► utility but any user is struggling with a real uphill battle about trying to make it look good.

00:18:59 ◼   ► The real thing that kills you is the way that folders look in iPadOS. It's just like they're

00:19:06 ◼   ► very busy, there's lots of stuff in them, you just have a bunch of little dots. So your iPad screen

00:19:11 ◼   ► is very ugly but it's not mostly your fault. Well here's the fun thing. So you see my artwork,

00:19:17 ◼   ► right, it's a logo, right, the upgrade logo.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Yes, the upgrade logo.

00:19:20 ◼   ► One of the many wonderful wallpapers available for Relay FM members.

00:19:26 ◼   ► The arrow of the upgrade logo is centered, because it's lining up with the two dots,

00:19:32 ◼   ► but the app icons are not centered.

00:19:34 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:19:35 ◼   ► When you use the widgets, the app icons, they don't have one that runs through the center

00:19:40 ◼   ► of the iPad anymore, slightly to the right.

00:19:43 ◼   ► Okay, so if you did not have the widget on the side, everything would be perfectly centered,

00:19:48 ◼   ► but because you do, it's not.

00:19:50 ◼   ► That's brutal.

00:19:51 ◼   ► That's absolutely brutal.

00:19:52 ◼   ► I try not to think about that one.

00:19:56 ◼   ► But yes, this is visually overwhelming.

00:19:58 ◼   ► It's just too many folders, too many things.

00:20:02 ◼   ► But it is nice to see that, like on iPadOS, you can now have the widgets pinned to the

00:20:08 ◼   ► side, which is such a nice, such like a huge win.

00:20:11 ◼   ► And so it's like, you've got your shortcuts, and you've got your timer-y buttons, and you've

00:20:15 ◼   ► got fantastical on the side.

00:20:18 ◼   ► And I think that this looks good, and it's like, I don't know how much of this you're

00:20:21 ◼   ► going to have blurred or unblurred for the final show, but it's interesting to see what

00:20:25 ◼   ► Myke does frequently, including turning on and turning off his fan through shortcuts.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I have a really nice Dyson fan.

00:20:33 ◼   ► It's like one of their humidifier things.

00:20:36 ◼   ► And you can turn on and off the fan in shortcuts.

00:20:40 ◼   ► Okay.

00:20:41 ◼   ► frequent enough to get real prime center real estate there.

00:20:45 ◼   ► At the moment, I think so. There is a bit of a war about my fan in the household.

00:20:51 ◼   ► Oh really? Yeah, because the fan also heats up, right?

00:20:57 ◼   ► And I don't like the bedroom to be too hot. No, you can't have a bedroom too hot. Bedrooms

00:21:02 ◼   ► should be an icebox. There is another member of my household who

00:21:06 ◼   ► likes the bedroom to be hot. So I have to make sure I can turn that fan off as soon

00:21:14 ◼   ► as I hear it come on. In the general war of it. Because the fan is turned on when I leave

00:21:21 ◼   ► the room or before I come to bed, right? Like I'm tidying up in the kitchen and it goes

00:21:26 ◼   ► on, right? And I've got to make sure I can get that thing turned off.

00:21:29 ◼   ► I can, yeah, I understand the situation.

00:21:32 ◼   ► I think many of us are involved in a war of what is too cold and what is too hot.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and it can be on either way, right?

00:21:40 ◼   ► Like, you may be in the cold side or the hot side, but there's always a war.

00:21:44 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:21:46 ◼   ► Yes, there is always a war.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Okay, well then that makes sense as to why it's right there in shortcuts.

00:21:52 ◼   ► So the moment your perky mic ears pick up the sound of the fan turning on,

00:21:57 ◼   ► You can just click.

00:21:59 ◼   ► I like the office to be warm, the bedroom to be cold.

00:22:03 ◼   ► That's how I am.

00:22:04 ◼   ► That makes sense.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Because you've got a big duvet, you know?

00:22:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:07 ◼   ► That's the point of the duvet.

00:22:08 ◼   ► That's the point of blankets.

00:22:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm with you 100 percent.

00:22:12 ◼   ► I agree. I agree here completely.

00:22:14 ◼   ► OK, a couple of other things are just catching my attention here.

00:22:16 ◼   ► What is Tripsy?

00:22:18 ◼   ► You have a little little icon there.

00:22:20 ◼   ► I don't know what that one is.

00:22:21 ◼   ► Tripsy was going to make my lightning round, but we can talk about it now.

00:22:24 ◼   ► It is a very nicely designed trip itinerary management app.

00:22:31 ◼   ► You think like your Trip-its, right, if you use Trip-it?

00:22:35 ◼   ► Okay, I'm not familiar with Trip-it, so I don't know what you...

00:22:37 ◼   ► When you say trip itinerary, what do you mean?

00:22:39 ◼   ► So with Trip-C, I will create any trip that I'm going on, vacation, work trip,

00:22:44 ◼   ► I will create an entry for it, and inside of that entry, I can add in a bunch of information.

00:22:51 ◼   ► I can add in all my flight information, I can add in the hotel that I'm going to be

00:22:56 ◼   ► at and it also has a catalogue of restaurants, locations, events, bars, points of interest

00:23:05 ◼   ► that I can then add as activities into the trip or the itinerary.

00:23:10 ◼   ► So I can say like, oh I want to make sure I go to this restaurant, I'm going to do that

00:23:13 ◼   ► on this day and it will create an itinerary of the trip.

00:23:17 ◼   ► So then I can have all of the information saved in one place.

00:23:20 ◼   ► So all of the places I might want to visit.

00:23:22 ◼   ► I can also save all of my documents in here like PDFs and stuff.

00:23:26 ◼   ► You can also send forward emails to an email address and Tripsy will suck in that information

00:23:32 ◼   ► for you and put it into the trip.

00:23:33 ◼   ► So like flight info, hotel info, and it will add it all to each individual trip.

00:23:38 ◼   ► I really really like it.

00:23:39 ◼   ► I've used it for a bunch of trips now.

00:23:41 ◼   ► Just as a way to collect up all the information for each trip that I'm going on in one place,

00:23:47 ◼   ► But then also add in any places that I want to visit and it all lives in one little home.

00:23:53 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:23:54 ◼   ► Okay.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Can you explain the benefit of this over a calendar?

00:23:58 ◼   ► I wouldn't put in restaurants I might like to go to as inspiration into a calendar.

00:24:06 ◼   ► Okay.

00:24:07 ◼   ► Okay.

00:24:08 ◼   ► So this is a place where uncertainty can live.

00:24:10 ◼   ► Yes.

00:24:11 ◼   ► As well as certainty.

00:24:12 ◼   ► So you can add something into the like restaurant section, but you don't have to say you're

00:24:17 ◼   ► you're going to it on any specific time.

00:24:19 ◼   ► But then when you're at the place,

00:24:21 ◼   ► I can then open up the app and be like,

00:24:22 ◼   ► what places do we think we might want to go to eat?

00:24:25 ◼   ► - Okay, hmm.

00:24:26 ◼   ► - I was keeping all of this stuff in Apple Notes,

00:24:29 ◼   ► just in like lists.

00:24:31 ◼   ► But this application is much nicer to manage it all,

00:24:36 ◼   ► in my opinion.

00:24:37 ◼   ► - Okay, this might not be the thing.

00:24:38 ◼   ► But does it have like a map feature?

00:24:41 ◼   ► Can you see things on a map?

00:24:42 ◼   ► - Don't think so.

00:24:43 ◼   ► - Hmm, okay.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Okay, so like I can go into each, say like I add a restaurant, I can go into each entry

00:24:50 ◼   ► for the restaurant and see it on a map, but I can't look at a map of everything, right?

00:24:54 ◼   ► That's what I think you're looking for.

00:24:56 ◼   ► Like you would say, show me a map of this location and you have like every point of

00:25:00 ◼   ► interest you've saved beyond that map.

00:25:02 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I can't see a way that you can do that.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Hmm, okay.

00:25:06 ◼   ► But that's, if you're out there, Tripsy developers, that's actually a really nice feature request.

00:25:10 ◼   ► Yeah, this is something I've been looking for for years and I used to do it in Google

00:25:15 ◼   ► And you can sort of do it in Apple Maps if you're willing to clutter up your Apple Maps.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Right, because then every restaurant that I've saved,

00:25:22 ◼   ► I could then open up and be like, "Which one of these is actually near me right now?"

00:25:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:28 ◼   ► Mmm. I like that feature idea.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Yeah, like this is this is what I've been looking for and just have not satisfactorily found.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Allow me to see a map with

00:25:38 ◼   ► everything that I have ever marked as interesting that's in a physical location.

00:25:43 ◼   ► Right.

00:25:43 ◼   ► I realize now I've forgotten to talk about one of the best features of this application.

00:25:48 ◼   ► You can share these itineraries with other people.

00:25:52 ◼   ► And whilst you need the application, I think you get some stuff free, but it's a paid app.

00:25:58 ◼   ► If you share the itinerary with somebody who doesn't pay for the app, they get all of the

00:26:02 ◼   ► benefits inside of the trip that you've shared with them.

00:26:05 ◼   ► Okay.

00:26:06 ◼   ► Share as in sync or share as in send?

00:26:08 ◼   ► Share as in sync.

00:26:11 ◼   ► So let's imagine me and you were planning a trip for our anniversary, which we just

00:26:15 ◼   ► celebrated.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Our friend anniversary.

00:26:17 ◼   ► Our friend-iversary.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Yeah, we celebrated with a text message.

00:26:21 ◼   ► We did do it though.

00:26:23 ◼   ► We observed it.

00:26:24 ◼   ► And so did many cortexes.

00:26:25 ◼   ► We got many messages congratulating us, which is very nice.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Thank you to everybody that did that.

00:26:31 ◼   ► I feel like I'm getting bullied into cementing a thing into being a thing, but okay, yes,

00:26:35 ◼   ► continue onward.

00:26:36 ◼   ► If there's one thing about me that you must know by now is I love a tradition.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Yes, I know you do.

00:26:41 ◼   ► So if we were going to go on a trip, I could create the trip.

00:26:44 ◼   ► I could say like, these are our flights.

00:26:46 ◼   ► This is the lodging and this is the restaurants that I wanted to go to.

00:26:49 ◼   ► I could then share it with you. You don't have to pay for it.

00:26:52 ◼   ► Then you can also add things to that trip and then everything is synced between us.

00:26:56 ◼   ► So you get all the information, I get all the information.

00:26:58 ◼   ► You can say, I want to go to this place. You can put that in.

00:27:01 ◼   ► I can say, I want to go to this place, I put that in.

00:27:03 ◼   ► And then we have a shared itinerary.

00:27:05 ◼   ► This is one of the other main reasons that I use this application

00:27:07 ◼   ► because I take a lot of trips with my wife

00:27:09 ◼   ► and we were able, like when we were going somewhere like for work or vacation or whatever,

00:27:14 ◼   ► I would share an Apple note with her and we always had so many problems with those things.

00:27:18 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:27:19 ◼   ► I don't know why and now it's like we have all that information shared between us and

00:27:23 ◼   ► Adina does like to do a lot of research for places that we go and so she can add

00:27:27 ◼   ► all of that information in and then I get to see it. Oh, it's really great.

00:27:30 ◼   ► Okay, I might try to play around with this because that again is a similar thing of,

00:27:35 ◼   ► I don't have a good place to put that kind of information.

00:27:39 ◼   ► Like if you see an interesting place that you might want to visit, or if my wife sees

00:27:43 ◼   ► an interesting place that she thinks might work for a trip, like where does that go?

00:27:47 ◼   ► Where does that information live?

00:27:48 ◼   ► There's no good place for that right now.

00:27:51 ◼   ► So maybe this makes sense.

00:27:52 ◼   ► And what I also like about this application is that it doesn't actually have to be a trip

00:27:57 ◼   ► for you to want to save information about a place.

00:28:00 ◼   ► So we have a trip in Tripsee for Tokyo because we really want to go to Tokyo one day.

00:28:05 ◼   ► And just as things come up, we save them into the Tokyo trip that we've created.

00:28:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:13 ◼   ► That's why if the Tripsee developers are listening, that's why I feel like I would want a map

00:28:16 ◼   ► as well.

00:28:17 ◼   ► Like that feels like a real killer feature of love.

00:28:19 ◼   ► Let me just see stuff.

00:28:20 ◼   ► A map of all of the points of interest and locations that you've added would be an excellent

00:28:25 ◼   ► feature request.

00:28:26 ◼   ► Boy, I feel you really, you really, you got a good batting average for things that are

00:28:30 ◼   ► new that I'm interested in, Myke.

00:28:31 ◼   ► I've been saving them all up.

00:28:32 ◼   ► I can't help but notice that you still have the white slack icon on your iPad.

00:28:36 ◼   ► I don't know why you haven't changed that.

00:28:37 ◼   ► Because I'm a fool, Gray.

00:28:38 ◼   ► I'm a fool who didn't notice.

00:28:41 ◼   ► I will change that immediately.

00:28:42 ◼   ► Yes, please do.

00:28:44 ◼   ► Just for consistency's sake.

00:28:45 ◼   ► You have Outlook and Spark.

00:28:47 ◼   ► What's going on with the wheel of email?

00:28:48 ◼   ► You've got two email apps here?

00:28:50 ◼   ► Outlook is where all the Cortex email goes to.

00:28:52 ◼   ► The Cortex brand email.

00:28:53 ◼   ► Right, okay.

00:28:54 ◼   ► So you're just using it to physically silo off all the ones.

00:28:56 ◼   ► I can't have that all in my regular email.

00:28:59 ◼   ► Okay. All right. That makes sense.

00:29:01 ◼   ► YouTube Studio?

00:29:03 ◼   ► For...

00:29:05 ◼   ► What are you tracking with YouTube Studio?

00:29:07 ◼   ► An incredibly successful YouTube channel.

00:29:10 ◼   ► Okay. All right.

00:29:12 ◼   ► That's all I wanted to just check in.

00:29:14 ◼   ► I wasn't sure if there was a secret new project

00:29:16 ◼   ► or something that Myke was keeping a real close eye on.

00:29:18 ◼   ► I don't know if we've ever mentioned on this show

00:29:20 ◼   ► the Cortex animated videos.

00:29:22 ◼   ► I'm not sure that we have, but people should go watch them.

00:29:24 ◼   ► go watch them. So every episode has a Cortex animated video which is

00:29:29 ◼   ► animated by the wonderful HeyChamberDay and it's every typically even a few days

00:29:34 ◼   ► I was posting the episode and they will pick out something that they have

00:29:38 ◼   ► enjoyed and they animate it and we put it up on our YouTube channel. So that is

00:29:42 ◼   ► youtube.com/cortexfm but I think you could just search Cortex.

00:29:46 ◼   ► Yeah just search for Cortex. Yeah they're very cute. Yeah they're really

00:29:49 ◼   ► cute. They're very very funny and they're very clever so you should check those out.

00:29:52 ◼   ► Okay, and you can track them in YouTube Studio.

00:29:54 ◼   ► Well, I can. Not everybody can.

00:29:56 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:29:59 ◼   ► That one's just for me.

00:30:00 ◼   ► That one's just for Myke. That's a top tip for Myke, is he can track his own things.

00:30:06 ◼   ► Okay, do you want to tell me about any of these folders?

00:30:09 ◼   ► Because these folders are so overwhelming, I can hardly parse them.

00:30:13 ◼   ► And sometimes they have ambiguous names like just the Apple logo or Pencil.

00:30:17 ◼   ► Pencil is a folder name.

00:30:19 ◼   ► Alright, so the Apple logo is for Apple apps.

00:30:23 ◼   ► You know, like all the stuff you don't want to deal with, but it has to be there somewhere.

00:30:28 ◼   ► Can't you delete all those things now?

00:30:29 ◼   ► Doesn't Apple let you get rid of all of those things?

00:30:31 ◼   ► Yeah, but these are the ones that I don't want to delete, but I don't really have

00:30:34 ◼   ► a good place for them otherwise.

00:30:37 ◼   ► Like GarageBand?

00:30:38 ◼   ► You're busting out GarageBand a bunch on your iPad?

00:30:40 ◼   ► Hey, look, you never know, man.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Okay, right.

00:30:43 ◼   ► It's there because I needed it at some point.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Right, it's there in case of podcast emergencies.

00:30:49 ◼   ► Exactly. Pencil is just apps that I like to play around with that have good Apple Pencil support.

00:30:54 ◼   ► Right, so Procreate is in there, Notability and Good Notes, Linear, Pigment, the Coloring app,

00:31:01 ◼   ► like they all just live in there. Games and Entertainment should be pretty self-explanatory.

00:31:06 ◼   ► And then I have the folder in the Dock, right, which is just like these are the

00:31:11 ◼   ► tools that I tend to find myself needing in Split View a lot. So like Google Docs,

00:31:15 ◼   ► Google Sheets are in there, Things is in there, Word and Excel live in there, Evernote's

00:31:21 ◼   ► in there. We're going to talk about Evernote later on.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Good old Evernote.

00:31:24 ◼   ► Mmmmmm.

00:31:25 ◼   ► Mmmmmm.

00:31:26 ◼   ► We're going to get to Evernote. We're going to get to Evernote. Because this will conclude

00:31:31 ◼   ► one year since I started using Evernote again.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Right. Yes. Yes. The question last year's State of the Apps was, "Is Evernote the

00:31:39 ◼   ► solution to all of your problems with Cortex brand?" And I think we already all know

00:31:44 ◼   ► the answer to that.

00:31:45 ◼   ► you to- well, wow, but like what else would I be using? Right? We'll find out later on.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Maybe you've been sneaky. You've hidden it in plain sight on this home screen.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Maybe.

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00:33:13 ◼   ► All right let's move on to yours. I want to see your home screens.

00:33:17 ◼   ► See what horror will be for me.

00:33:18 ◼   ► You know, Myke, please. Let me send you my iPhone home screen.

00:33:25 ◼   ► Boop. It's coming to you over the wires.

00:33:29 ◼   ► I know because the people don't hear this but I heard your oh my god gray.

00:33:34 ◼   ► Yes, Myke?

00:33:35 ◼   ► My word.

00:33:36 ◼   ► What's the matter?

00:33:38 ◼   ► It's not even worth talking about home screens anymore with you.

00:33:41 ◼   ► You don't even have one.

00:33:43 ◼   ► I don't know what you're talking about.

00:33:48 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:49 ◼   ► What's the problem?

00:33:50 ◼   ► Would you like to do a quick plug for your wallpaper?

00:33:52 ◼   ► Like I did for mine?

00:33:56 ◼   ► I am using one of my Patreon wallpapers, which is the Solar System, which I think happens

00:34:01 ◼   ► to work quite nicely on an iPhone.

00:34:03 ◼   ► That's actually look really nice.

00:34:05 ◼   ► That's that's, that's actually a good wallpaper.

00:34:06 ◼   ► It looks really nice because there's a lot of space on my iPhone.

00:34:10 ◼   ► You might not want to use this if you have a lot of icons on your phone.

00:34:13 ◼   ► So you have used space to show just how much space is on your phone, right?

00:34:19 ◼   ► Like just blank, empty void.

00:34:22 ◼   ► Right.

00:34:23 ◼   ► But hang on a second.

00:34:24 ◼   ► What?

00:34:25 ◼   ► No, wait, nevermind.

00:34:26 ◼   ► Wait, hold on.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Hold on.

00:34:28 ◼   ► Okay.

00:34:28 ◼   ► What's going on here, Myke?

00:34:30 ◼   ► Nevermind.

00:34:31 ◼   ► Doesn't matter.

00:34:32 ◼   ► Ignore me.

00:34:33 ◼   ► I was listening to the second screen and I was like, "No, wait, that's just how phones work now."

00:34:37 ◼   ► The second screen is the first screen.

00:34:39 ◼   ► Yes, Myke, okay, so what Myke is looking at is a home screen.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I've just been simplifying my setup over the years.

00:34:45 ◼   ► Simplifying? There's nothing on it!

00:34:48 ◼   ► Okay, no, that is a slanderous lie.

00:34:50 ◼   ► There are five things on the home screen.

00:34:54 ◼   ► There's the four folders at the top and there's an icon in the dock.

00:34:58 ◼   ► And otherwise, there's nothing else on the screen there.

00:35:01 ◼   ► Myke was thinking I was pulling some kind of trick on him because of course iPhones

00:35:06 ◼   ► now always show these little two dots even if you only have one screen.

00:35:09 ◼   ► But that's just because there's the widget screen as well which just for completeness'

00:35:14 ◼   ► sake I will send over to Myke as well.

00:35:17 ◼   ► I'm sure that's nothing on it.

00:35:19 ◼   ► No, widgets are useful.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Widgets are handy.

00:35:22 ◼   ► Okay, I have a grievance.

00:35:23 ◼   ► Okay, what's your grievance?

00:35:24 ◼   ► We are currently running Cortex preparation as a timer.

00:35:28 ◼   ► We are fully prepared my friend.

00:35:29 ◼   ► We are.

00:35:30 ◼   ► We are in the show.

00:35:31 ◼   ► like we are in it.

00:35:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I understand that.

00:35:34 ◼   ► What time was the screenshot taken?

00:35:36 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:35:38 ◼   ► - This is hours ago, Myke, right?

00:35:40 ◼   ► The screenshot isn't, I'm not live screenshotting.

00:35:44 ◼   ► This was, I took a picture earlier today, so.

00:35:46 ◼   ► - Screenshots aren't actual time, are they?

00:35:48 ◼   ► - Yes, yes.

00:35:49 ◼   ► When you look at a screenshot,

00:35:50 ◼   ► it's not currently the way it looks on the phone.

00:35:53 ◼   ► Otherwise, no one would take or share screenshots

00:35:55 ◼   ► 'cause it should be a window into whatever you're up to.

00:35:56 ◼   ► So that's not how this works.

00:35:58 ◼   ► I'm not trying to pull any tricks here

00:36:00 ◼   ► with this iPhone screen.

00:36:02 ◼   ► This is largely just a byproduct of,

00:36:06 ◼   ► for a ridiculously long time,

00:36:09 ◼   ► there was this bug in iOS.

00:36:12 ◼   ► And the bug was, if you pulled down on the screen

00:36:15 ◼   ► to search, like to type out an app

00:36:18 ◼   ► that you wanted to pull up,

00:36:19 ◼   ► instead of tapping on the icon on the screen,

00:36:23 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe like one in five times,

00:36:26 ◼   ► you would pull down and just nothing.

00:36:28 ◼   ► It wouldn't let you type.

00:36:30 ◼   ► it was, it just like crapped out on you, that like this little search feature didn't work.

00:36:33 ◼   ► It was baffling how long that bug lived.

00:36:36 ◼   ► It's just like, "Oh, this is just the way this works."

00:36:38 ◼   ► You just roll the dice, and if it comes up five, no keyboard for you.

00:36:42 ◼   ► You can't type anything.

00:36:43 ◼   ► So, that seems to have been genuinely fixed in iOS 13.

00:36:48 ◼   ► I seem to get a 100% success rate on that.

00:36:51 ◼   ► And the way I tend to use my phone is very much the way I tend to use my computer,

00:36:56 ◼   ► that I just don't really tap on or click on icons.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Just like on my computer, I'll do Command + Space

00:37:04 ◼   ► and bring up Alfred and launch an app.

00:37:06 ◼   ► On my phone, I'm very much in the habit

00:37:09 ◼   ► of just pulling down.

00:37:11 ◼   ► I have the little Siri suggestion thing

00:37:13 ◼   ► where it happens to recommend,

00:37:14 ◼   ► here's the four apps you're most likely gonna use.

00:37:17 ◼   ► - I find that to be very useful a lot of the time.

00:37:19 ◼   ► I have it expanded so it shows eight apps,

00:37:22 ◼   ► and I feel like a surprising amount of the time,

00:37:25 ◼   ► the app that I want is there.

00:37:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I have it expanded to show the eight as well.

00:37:31 ◼   ► It still drives me crazy that if you start typing,

00:37:34 ◼   ► there's no way to stop iOS from like searching the web

00:37:38 ◼   ► for current headlines of like whatever in the world

00:37:41 ◼   ► might be related to what you're typing.

00:37:43 ◼   ► Which is, it's crazy to me that there's no way

00:37:46 ◼   ► to turn that off, where it's like, you type the letter S

00:37:50 ◼   ► and it's gonna find some headline of something in the world

00:37:53 ◼   ► that like relates to the letter S and it's like,

00:37:54 ◼   ► Is that what I'm looking for or am I looking for Slack?

00:37:57 ◼   ► - I don't get headlines.

00:37:58 ◼   ► - It's like related websites and articles and things.

00:38:01 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, 'cause you can turn off news as an input.

00:38:04 ◼   ► But yeah, it will also search for like random web pages.

00:38:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, and very often it'll pull something from Wikipedia,

00:38:10 ◼   ► which is basically just an article about a current event.

00:38:12 ◼   ► It's like, thanks, thanks Apple, I really appreciate that.

00:38:15 ◼   ► But if you expand the series suggestion

00:38:17 ◼   ► to show you eight apps, it pushes that further down,

00:38:20 ◼   ► so you're less likely to see it, which is what I want.

00:38:22 ◼   ► the system that they're using to guess what are those eight apps is very good.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Like, I think a very large percentage of the time it's one of those apps is like,

00:38:32 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, that is what I want."

00:38:34 ◼   ► And so, the truth of it is, I just...

00:38:36 ◼   ► The way I use my phone, I just don't tend to use a super wide variety of different apps.

00:38:43 ◼   ► Or the way I use it is just very consistent.

00:38:46 ◼   ► I did a little thing a while ago where I was trying to figure out what app should I put on my home screen.

00:38:51 ◼   ► and I had made a bunch of shortcuts that were basically app launchers and time trackers.

00:38:58 ◼   ► Like, I press a thing and it starts a time tracker and it launches an app.

00:39:01 ◼   ► But I was also having them write to a spreadsheet about what is the frequency with which I actually

00:39:06 ◼   ► tap these things. And the truth is, like, the home screen icons, I just don't really tap them that

00:39:13 ◼   ► much. And so I thought, "Oh, the hell with this! Let me just get rid of them and I'll figure out

00:39:17 ◼   ► something later of what setup do I actually want.

00:39:21 ◼   ► And then I just never bothered.

00:39:22 ◼   ► Like, I've been really busy for the past few months and I just never sat down and really,

00:39:27 ◼   ► after iOS 13, decided, "Let me figure out exactly what needs to go on the home screen."

00:39:31 ◼   ► So this is what I've ended up with.

00:39:34 ◼   ► It's just four folders to hold four different kinds of things.

00:39:38 ◼   ► To-dos, messages, business-related stuff, and then everything else.

00:39:43 ◼   ► And that's how I organize my iPhone.

00:39:46 ◼   ► So there we go.

00:39:47 ◼   ► and simple. I knew there was going to be something. It's not, no but it's not, this

00:39:51 ◼   ► it's not something, it's nothing. So you actually just don't have a home screen

00:39:54 ◼   ► anymore? No this is the home screen. This is, this is a home screen. Yeah but you

00:39:59 ◼   ► don't, what I'm saying is you do not use it, right? You don't use the home screen. I

00:40:04 ◼   ► mean I need the little badges so I can see which apps are asking me how many.

00:40:09 ◼   ► Yeah so I can work out the 28 that's referring to apps in the folder which is

00:40:14 ◼   ► probably like to do and productivity apps.

00:40:16 ◼   ► Yeah, that's basically it's OmniFocus.

00:40:17 ◼   ► OmniFocus has 28 open items for today.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And then the next one over is that folder is reserved for messages.

00:40:23 ◼   ► And that's iMessage.

00:40:24 ◼   ► It's like there's seven iMessages in there.

00:40:26 ◼   ► And then what's the next folder?

00:40:27 ◼   ► The next one would be Slack if I had any open messages in Slack right now.

00:40:31 ◼   ► OK, so that's work stuff, work related stuff lives in that folder.

00:40:34 ◼   ► And then the fourth one is everything else.

00:40:36 ◼   ► Everything else just goes in there.

00:40:37 ◼   ► And what does the rocket ship do?

00:40:39 ◼   ► Oh, the rocket ship is just my manual re-implementation of Launch Center Pro.

00:40:43 ◼   ► I think. Yeah.

00:40:44 ◼   ► There's just a couple of little

00:40:46 ◼   ► things that I use that as a as like

00:40:48 ◼   ► a launcher for.

00:40:49 ◼   ► But honestly, I barely click

00:40:51 ◼   ► it.

00:40:51 ◼   ► But what happens when you tap that?

00:40:53 ◼   ► If I tap that, it gives me a couple

00:40:54 ◼   ► of options for frequently used

00:40:56 ◼   ► things.

00:40:56 ◼   ► But like, is it opening shortcuts?

00:40:58 ◼   ► Yeah, it opens shortcuts and it

00:41:00 ◼   ► pulls up a little menu of just a

00:41:01 ◼   ► couple of things.

00:41:02 ◼   ► So it's like a shortcut that

00:41:04 ◼   ► you've created, which is a which you

00:41:06 ◼   ► can do, like a shortcut which creates

00:41:08 ◼   ► a menu of other shortcuts to launch.

00:41:09 ◼   ► Yes, that's correct.

00:41:11 ◼   ► It's just for a couple of things

00:41:13 ◼   ► that I don't do frequently enough so that searching for them fails very often.

00:41:19 ◼   ► For example, it's like a template launcher.

00:41:21 ◼   ► So for templates for a new episode of Cortex, or for a new video, or for a travel checklist,

00:41:27 ◼   ► any of these things.

00:41:28 ◼   ► I don't do any of those regularly enough that the AI is going to guess what it is I'm trying

00:41:33 ◼   ► to do.

00:41:34 ◼   ► So I'll just use that to be like, "Launch a template."

00:41:35 ◼   ► They're not widget-worthy either.

00:41:37 ◼   ► Yeah, they're not really widget-worthy.

00:41:38 ◼   ► There's no point in having it on the home screen, I'm not going to use it that often.

00:41:42 ◼   ► But again, honestly, I don't really click that very much.

00:41:45 ◼   ► It's just sort of, it looks really dumb if you don't have anything in your dock.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Three icons is fine.

00:41:52 ◼   ► One icon is sort of okay.

00:41:54 ◼   ► But if you take them away and you just have this empty dock, it looks really stupid.

00:41:57 ◼   ► So that's partly why I have the rocket ship there.

00:42:00 ◼   ► So does one, though, really.

00:42:01 ◼   ► I know.

00:42:02 ◼   ► I don't love the one either.

00:42:04 ◼   ► But you know, I was trying to think about what would I put on either side of it.

00:42:07 ◼   ► And the truth is, like, I don't really have anything to put there right now.

00:42:10 ◼   ► So part of that is because some of the stuff that I used before, the little Timery widget

00:42:16 ◼   ► on the iPhone is really nice and has like taken over some of the use case that I used

00:42:22 ◼   ► to have for buttons on the home screen.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Yeah, because you had those to start and stop some timers, didn't you?

00:42:28 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I used to use some of that stuff for.

00:42:30 ◼   ► So the Timery widget is amazing.

00:42:32 ◼   ► I think, if I remember correctly, you were beta testing Timery this time last year.

00:42:37 ◼   ► I was.

00:42:38 ◼   ► and I hadn't tried it yet.

00:42:40 ◼   ► And Timery as an interface for toggle is a really amazing app and its widget is fantastic,

00:42:46 ◼   ► so I use that all the time.

00:42:48 ◼   ► The widget is just a great way to primarily interact with Timery for here are the frequent

00:42:53 ◼   ► timers that I want to tap or whatever.

00:42:55 ◼   ► That's my iPhone.

00:42:57 ◼   ► Nice and simple.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Straightforward.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Show me the one that will be your iPad then.

00:43:00 ◼   ► The iPad is, again, simple, straightforward.

00:43:04 ◼   ► Now I feel like it's not gonna be.

00:43:06 ◼   ► No it is!

00:43:07 ◼   ► It's just like, okay, right.

00:43:09 ◼   ► It's iPad hasn't changed in forever.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Like you, I've added the little widget on the side, which is really nice in iPad OS,

00:43:15 ◼   ► but I've never put icons like on the screen.

00:43:19 ◼   ► I prefer to just have icons in the dock.

00:43:20 ◼   ► I genuinely think there are two ways to run an iPad now.

00:43:24 ◼   ► And it's either my way or your way.

00:43:25 ◼   ► There's nothing in between.

00:43:27 ◼   ► You either go like, put everything you can on the home screen, right?

00:43:30 ◼   ► Just because why not have it there or put nothing?

00:43:32 ◼   ► Yeah, obviously, I prefer nothing.

00:43:34 ◼   ► I like the look of it better.

00:43:36 ◼   ► The iPad I'm doing the screenshot of is the one that I use the most as like my research

00:43:39 ◼   ► buddy iPad of like here I'm working on a project and you know I don't want a million

00:43:45 ◼   ► icons on the screen there because I'm not going to use a million icons on the screen

00:43:48 ◼   ► there.

00:43:49 ◼   ► It's like this is mainly stuff that I want to have for research buddy kind of tasks and

00:43:54 ◼   ► the dock is perfectly satisfactory for that and I do really like being able to have on

00:43:58 ◼   ► the home screen the OmniFocus widget open nice and wide so I can see a bunch of relevant

00:44:04 ◼   ► tasks usually related to whatever it is I'm working on.

00:44:07 ◼   ► It's a very nice addition to iPadOS to have that widget on the side there.

00:44:10 ◼   ► So that's the iPad home screen.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Okay, I have a few questions.

00:44:14 ◼   ► Okay.

00:44:15 ◼   ► There is, you've got your little rocket ship, but you have what looks like a credit card

00:44:18 ◼   ► and a price tag.

00:44:19 ◼   ► What do they do?

00:44:20 ◼   ► Oh, um, yes.

00:44:21 ◼   ► You're right.

00:44:22 ◼   ► No, you are right.

00:44:23 ◼   ► I'm not there.

00:44:24 ◼   ► It's funny because it's just a muscle memory thing.

00:44:30 ◼   ► It took me a second.

00:44:31 ◼   ► Those are two different shortcuts that are set up to enter tasks into OmniFocus very

00:44:38 ◼   ► quickly in a different way.

00:44:40 ◼   ► So the tag is set up so it launches a little shortcut that will very quickly get like,

00:44:45 ◼   ► if I have a question that I don't want to pursue now about a video that I'm working

00:44:49 ◼   ► on but I want to be able to quickly just file this into the project related to that video,

00:44:54 ◼   ► I can hit the little tag.

00:44:55 ◼   ► And the little credit card one is a more generic, "Oh, I want to throw something into OmniFocus."

00:45:01 ◼   ► let me hit this, type some information, press a few buttons and have it automatically go

00:45:05 ◼   ► exactly where it needs to go in OmniFocus.

00:45:07 ◼   ► So that's what those two are.

00:45:09 ◼   ► But it's almost like a muscle memory thing.

00:45:11 ◼   ► It took me a second to think, what is the difference between those two?

00:45:14 ◼   ► Even though I use them a lot, I just sort of know.

00:45:17 ◼   ► But yeah, both of those are except input to be sorted into OmniFocus buttons that I'm

00:45:21 ◼   ► pressing there.

00:45:22 ◼   ► And I see there's an icon for an app called Dark Noise.

00:45:26 ◼   ► Yes.

00:45:27 ◼   ► I assume you've been using for your noise requirements?

00:45:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I was going to have this also for my lightning round.

00:45:34 ◼   ► I see it's ended up being there in the frequently used one, but yeah.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Dark Noise is a white noise iOS app.

00:45:41 ◼   ► I think I would describe it as kind of like the carrot weather for white noise.

00:45:46 ◼   ► It's incredibly well implemented.

00:45:48 ◼   ► It's super iOS-y. It takes advantage of plugging into everything that iOS does.

00:45:54 ◼   ► It has lots of different noise options.

00:45:56 ◼   ► Yeah, there's lots of different noise options. It works with shortcuts so you can automate it if you want.

00:46:02 ◼   ► I have a couple little shortcuts on the iPad for... I'm going into writing mode now, and it's nice to be able to

00:46:08 ◼   ► have those work with the white noise background. Like, say, just start playing Thunder noises

00:46:13 ◼   ► as part of the getting everything set up.

00:46:16 ◼   ► There's a really killer feature that some apps are able to do, and I never quite understand if this is, like,

00:46:22 ◼   ► an official thing that Apple allows, or if it's a hacky sort of thing.

00:46:26 ◼   ► But dark noise allows you to mix the white noise with other audio that is playing on

00:46:33 ◼   ► the system at the same time.

00:46:34 ◼   ► I don't know what they're using, but it's possible.

00:46:36 ◼   ► You can have audio from games and listen to a podcast at the same time.

00:46:41 ◼   ► But that's clever that they've implemented the audio in that way.

00:46:44 ◼   ► Yeah, so some apps have allowed this to happen, but I like how dark noise is extremely explicit

00:46:50 ◼   ► about it, and then also allows you to adjust the mixed white noise volume relative to whatever

00:46:59 ◼   ► the other audio is.

00:47:00 ◼   ► So the basic effect for this is it allows me to do the thing on my iPad, which is I

00:47:05 ◼   ► want to have noise in the background, you know, it's raining or there's wind or whatever.

00:47:11 ◼   ► I'm on a train, there's lots of options.

00:47:14 ◼   ► But also be able to listen to a song on repeat at the same time.

00:47:19 ◼   ► So that is the real killer feature of Dark Noise.

00:47:21 ◼   ► That's good.

00:47:22 ◼   ► I've got to give that app very high marks for a new app of the year.

00:47:27 ◼   ► It's incredibly well made.

00:47:29 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it's a single developer who's made it.

00:47:33 ◼   ► It very much makes me think of Carrot Weather.

00:47:35 ◼   ► You are very good at what you're doing, you're providing a lot of options, so yeah, big thumbs

00:47:40 ◼   ► up to Dark Noise as a new app for this year.

00:47:44 ◼   ► The developer's name is Charlie.

00:47:45 ◼   ► They are a cortex.

00:47:46 ◼   ► Yes, well, I also looked at the custom icons, which I thought, "Oh, this person is definitely

00:47:52 ◼   ► a Relay FM listener."

00:47:54 ◼   ► Yeah, there are lots of Relay-themed app icons, which Charlie was very kind in asking if they

00:48:00 ◼   ► could use before they did them, which I thought was really cool.

00:48:03 ◼   ► That's how I found out about the app, because Charlie reached out and was like, "Hi, I'm

00:48:07 ◼   ► making this app.

00:48:08 ◼   ► I wanted to have these icons."

00:48:09 ◼   ► And I was like, "Ooh, this looks like a nice app.

00:48:10 ◼   ► I think Gray would like this.

00:48:12 ◼   ► Can you send me a beta for it?"

00:48:13 ◼   ► So I tried it out.

00:48:14 ◼   ► There's a few Cortex ones in there.

00:48:16 ◼   ► is a #mikewasright which is just very colorful, very colorful icon. My favorite, of course,

00:48:22 ◼   ► naturally.

00:48:23 ◼   ► Of course, of course. Yeah, so great app, really highly, if you like white noise, give

00:48:29 ◼   ► it a try. I think it's easy to say it's probably the best white noise app on the store right

00:48:34 ◼   ► now.

00:48:35 ◼   ► I would agree with you because it actually looks good.

00:48:37 ◼   ► Yes, some of them are ugly or I don't know, they try to be like these weird experiences.

00:48:43 ◼   ► They want to be more than they are, right?

00:48:45 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, and yeah, so that's why it's really good.

00:48:49 ◼   ► Two thumbs up.

00:48:50 ◼   ► The Siri Shortcut support is so good.

00:48:53 ◼   ► You can just choose everything.

00:48:55 ◼   ► And I love some of the sounds that they have in this app, right?

00:48:58 ◼   ► Where like, keyboard is one of them.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Snoring is one.

00:49:01 ◼   ► The sound of a plane, which you must love when you're on planes.

00:49:04 ◼   ► Because I know you like that, right?

00:49:06 ◼   ► I don't know why you give me a hard time about that, Myke.

00:49:08 ◼   ► It's perfectly sensible.

00:49:09 ◼   ► I'm not giving you a hard time.

00:49:10 ◼   ► I'm just asking.

00:49:11 ◼   ► I'm just asking.

00:49:12 ◼   ► Yes, I listen to plane noise when I'm on a plane.

00:49:14 ◼   ► Yes, that is the thing that I do that helps isolate the sound.

00:49:18 ◼   ► The first time you told me that I thought it was madness.

00:49:21 ◼   ► I have since...

00:49:22 ◼   ► I understand.

00:49:23 ◼   ► I get it.

00:49:24 ◼   ► I get it more now.

00:49:25 ◼   ► So you don't lose your sense of place but you also don't have to hear things you don't

00:49:28 ◼   ► want to hear.

00:49:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:30 ◼   ► What are you gonna...

00:49:31 ◼   ► You're gonna listen to train sounds on a plane?

00:49:32 ◼   ► No.

00:49:33 ◼   ► You're not gonna do that.

00:49:34 ◼   ► That's just confusing.

00:49:35 ◼   ► Thunder sounds are terrifying when I hear thunder when you're on a plane.

00:49:37 ◼   ► The worst place for thunder.

00:49:39 ◼   ► That is also true.

00:49:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:41 ◼   ► So that's why you're gonna listen to plane sounds on a plane.

00:49:42 ◼   ► That's what you're gonna do.

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00:51:42 ◼   ► I don't really have any more questions about your home screen.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Yeah, no we can we can dive more into the like state of the apps stuff now.

00:51:50 ◼   ► So let's go into our categories then let's talk about productivity applications. So I'm going to

00:51:54 ◼   ► assume that at both of our to-do systems have remained exactly the same. You're an omni-focus,

00:52:01 ◼   ► I'm a to-do-ist.

00:52:02 ◼   ► Yes, this is category time now for State of the Apps.

00:52:06 ◼   ► And yeah, I was, I was reviewing all of my various apps and some

00:52:13 ◼   ► years are years of upheaval.

00:52:15 ◼   ► Some years are years of stability.

00:52:18 ◼   ► And I think overall, this has been a relatively stable year for me.

00:52:25 ◼   ► For most things, which is a small mercy, but so yes, when it comes to the

00:52:29 ◼   ► productivity category. I'm still with OmniFocus, also on the theme of stability.

00:52:34 ◼   ► Before Myke can even ask me in a joking way, they have still not added

00:52:41 ◼   ► Time Zone Support. Stable with regards to that as well. Stable and will not add the feature.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Time Zone Support remains very stable. Time Zone Support remains exactly as it is.

00:52:51 ◼   ► Unchanged in five years. We've been talking about it for five years. We've

00:52:55 ◼   ► been talking about it for five years. I believe, if I remember correctly, the

00:52:59 ◼   ► bug is first lodged on the OmniFocus discussion boards,

00:53:03 ◼   ► probably close to 10 years old now at this point.

00:53:06 ◼   ► And this is in case you're not following along the idea of fix some floating time

00:53:09 ◼   ► zones. I don't even want to explain it anymore.

00:53:12 ◼   ► So the idea being if you, if you travel, depending on how you work,

00:53:16 ◼   ► you will have a decision as to whether like a task should occur at the time you

00:53:21 ◼   ► originally set it at no matter where you are in the world.

00:53:24 ◼   ► So if it's 10 AM Eastern time, even if you're on Pacific time,

00:53:28 ◼   ► You want that task to fire at 10 AM Eastern time, right?

00:53:31 ◼   ► Cause it was, that's like when that thing must be done or as me and gray tend to

00:53:35 ◼   ► both like for the way that we work, because we will shift things around when we

00:53:39 ◼   ► travel. If I have a task at 10 AM in London,

00:53:42 ◼   ► I want it to fire at 10 AM if I'm in San Francisco,

00:53:45 ◼   ► I don't want it to fire at 10 AM London time because I'm sleeping.

00:53:49 ◼   ► So many applications like my friend todoist

00:53:54 ◼   ► will allow you to choose when you set up a task, which do you want it to be.

00:53:59 ◼   ► OmniFocus does not do that.

00:54:01 ◼   ► OmniFocus will just trigger those tasks in the local time that it was set, right?

00:54:05 ◼   ► It doesn't change them.

00:54:06 ◼   ► Yes.

00:54:07 ◼   ► I don't have hope, but I also do have hope because I think it's fairly obvious if you

00:54:14 ◼   ► follow the OmniFocus blog, which I do, that they have been adding more and more features

00:54:19 ◼   ► which are all pointing in the same direction of, you know, collaboration and shared OmniFocus

00:54:26 ◼   ► tasks and there's no way that that can remain unresolved.

00:54:30 ◼   ► I mean, I say there's no way, but who knows?

00:54:33 ◼   ► There's no way it can remain unresolved.

00:54:35 ◼   ► In preparing for this episode, I listened to last year's State of the Apps.

00:54:39 ◼   ► You were saying the same things.

00:54:41 ◼   ► Okay, well, they haven't released multi-user support yet, so, you know, I'm sure.

00:54:47 ◼   ► But anyway, it doesn't matter.

00:54:49 ◼   ► I have an incredibly hacky workaround.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I'm not going to reiterate absolutely everything.

00:54:55 ◼   ► If you want to hear how I use OmniFocus and why I like it so much, I think do listen to

00:54:58 ◼   ► last year's episode.

00:54:59 ◼   ► I talk about it in a big section.

00:55:02 ◼   ► I've been sticking with it all year.

00:55:04 ◼   ► I don't think at any point in the year have I even played around with trying to switch

00:55:08 ◼   ► to a different app.

00:55:10 ◼   ► And overall, I'm very happy with my OmniFocus setup.

00:55:16 ◼   ► And I will still always say that like OmniFocus, better than any app, does the thing that I

00:55:20 ◼   ► care the most about, which is I only want to see tasks that I can work on right now.

00:55:28 ◼   ► And it's like OmniFocus nails that feature of don't show me that, you know, tonight I'm

00:55:34 ◼   ► going to brush my teeth.

00:55:36 ◼   ► Only have that item appear when it's actually the time to do it.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And I love OmniFocus for that.

00:55:41 ◼   ► And that's why I stick with it.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Also, as I referenced before, you can really work with it in shortcuts to save a lot of

00:55:49 ◼   ► categorization time.

00:55:51 ◼   ► And so I really like that.

00:55:53 ◼   ► Having set up a bunch of shortcuts to say I want to put something in OmniFocus and have

00:55:57 ◼   ► it automatically go wherever it needs to go without me even needing to open up the app

00:56:02 ◼   ► is also like a really nice, really big deal.

00:56:05 ◼   ► So yeah, I've stuck with OmniFocus and I really like it and I'm very happy with that setup.

00:56:12 ◼   ► Sounds like you are still with Todoist.

00:56:14 ◼   ► Yeah, my to-do systems remain unchanged.

00:56:16 ◼   ► You may remember that I spoke in the summer about thinking I would switch over to reminders.

00:56:21 ◼   ► I've just decided not to bother doing that because Todoist has been making some nice

00:56:26 ◼   ► changes to the app over the year.

00:56:29 ◼   ► They're still working on an upcoming feature, which I also mentioned last year, of being

00:56:34 ◼   ► able to look at your tasks in a Kanban format, but they are, at the moment, over the last

00:56:40 ◼   ► few months they have been having some updates to the application which is called their foundation

00:56:44 ◼   ► updates where they're like working on the basics of a lot of stuff but in that they've

00:56:49 ◼   ► made some really nice design changes to the app that I enjoy greatly but things are really

00:56:54 ◼   ► nicely color coded they've added much much much better support for nested tasks right

00:57:00 ◼   ► so you could have a task and a bunch of subtasks so I'm now using that feature because it's

00:57:05 ◼   ► It's way better implemented both visually and from an entry perspective.

00:57:11 ◼   ► You can even really easily have subtasks and then subtasks inside of a subtask.

00:57:19 ◼   ► I really like the way that they've implemented that and so I've been using that to great

00:57:22 ◼   ► effect recently which I'm really happy about.

00:57:24 ◼   ► I continue to be happy with Todoist.

00:57:26 ◼   ► It is the right application for my usage.

00:57:29 ◼   ► OmniFocus, I could have work the way that I want but it's a lot more application than

00:57:35 ◼   ► And I need.

00:57:36 ◼   ► Yeah, OmniFocus is a very big guns heavyweight solution to the task list problem.

00:57:42 ◼   ► I don't use defer dates in the stuff that you're using.

00:57:44 ◼   ► And I feel like if you're not using them, OmniFocus might be too much for you.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Yeah, for sure.

00:57:49 ◼   ► But a lot of the stuff around to-do apps, this is how they're designed and if that

00:57:52 ◼   ► works for you.

00:57:54 ◼   ► I am still using things for my checklists for when I post Cortex and stuff like that.

00:57:59 ◼   ► Still using things for that because I like to have that off siloed into its own little

00:58:02 ◼   ► place.

00:58:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:58:04 ◼   ► cortex-specific, which makes me happy and I enjoy that quite a lot.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Actually I realized I do have to put just a little asterisk on that of like having not

00:58:14 ◼   ► tried anything else.

00:58:15 ◼   ► So Apple did this big redesign of Reminders, which is why you were discussing like, "Ooh,

00:58:20 ◼   ► maybe I'll move to Reminders for iOS 13."

00:58:23 ◼   ► And I played around with that a bunch just because I wanted to see, you know, what's

00:58:27 ◼   ► up, what's the deal with Reminders?

00:58:29 ◼   ► How you doing?

00:58:30 ◼   ► What's going on?

00:58:31 ◼   ► And it's interesting.

00:58:32 ◼   ► It's so much better.

00:58:33 ◼   ► It is so much better, it does have the feel of like a really well polished beta of like,

00:58:41 ◼   ► there's parts of it which feel a little bit to me like, "It's not quite, it doesn't, you

00:58:44 ◼   ► know, it's like you're 80% of the way there."

00:58:46 ◼   ► But I do think it's a nice big improvement.

00:58:49 ◼   ► And I've actually ended up using Reminders.

00:58:52 ◼   ► It turns out Reminders is mostly a solution for me now to a different problem that I've

00:58:58 ◼   ► always had, which is, I know, like, I hate to even say this out loud because people are

00:59:02 ◼   ► This is going to be another one of these things where everybody has like the app they want to tell you about.

00:59:06 ◼   ► But I've never really been happy with any of the apps that are designed to just make a list of how much information does a list app show you?

00:59:17 ◼   ► Does it have collapsible or non-collapsible categories? How can you sort the lists? How quickly can you get something into it? How quickly can you just see stuff?

00:59:26 ◼   ► Can I ask, what are you listing? Can you give me an example?

00:59:29 ◼   ► Easy example, movies to watch, books to read.

00:59:32 ◼   ► Right, like that's a list.

00:59:34 ◼   ► You don't want those in OmniFocus.

00:59:35 ◼   ► So this is the thing, I could do it in OmniFocus, it's like yes, of course, for OmniFocus,

00:59:40 ◼   ► like it's a trivial thing.

00:59:41 ◼   ► They don't even think about that.

00:59:43 ◼   ► But I also don't want to use the app in that way.

00:59:48 ◼   ► Like I want to keep it, this stuff is actionable, and a list of movies I might watch, it's

00:59:53 ◼   ► like yeah, I mean technically that's actionable, but I just don't want to start cluttering

00:59:56 ◼   ► it up.

00:59:57 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not the same kind of thing.

00:59:58 ◼   ► And so I've just, I've never really been happy with all the various list apps.

01:00:02 ◼   ► And so Reminders just so happens to like present things in exactly the way that I want in terms

01:00:09 ◼   ► of making a list of it'll, I can easily scan the list.

01:00:14 ◼   ► You can add a little note.

01:00:16 ◼   ► And so that note is always visible because of its nice integration with iOS.

01:00:20 ◼   ► It's very easy to hit the share button and say like add a web page to a list.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And so I've ended up using Reminders just as my list app now.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Or like one of the other things that I do is just for Cortex, of like stuff to talk

01:00:34 ◼   ► about on Cortex is just makes it very easy to add to that bottom of the list.

01:00:38 ◼   ► I think that's what the app is for, for a lot of people, is like that exact thing, right?

01:00:45 ◼   ► Like even a to-do list, that is a to-do list.

01:00:49 ◼   ► We do not have to-do lists, like in OmniFocus and Todoist.

01:00:53 ◼   ► It's way more than that, right?

01:00:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's project management more.

01:00:57 ◼   ► - Because like a typical to-do list doesn't have like

01:00:59 ◼   ► times and dates set to it.

01:01:01 ◼   ► It's just like these are a bunch of things

01:01:03 ◼   ► I wanna get done. - Right, multiple dependencies

01:01:04 ◼   ► on other people. - Yeah.

01:01:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a whole different thing.

01:01:07 ◼   ► - And it is made really well for that.

01:01:09 ◼   ► Like that is what this, that's who this app is to

01:01:12 ◼   ► focus on in most people.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And you can make it do more.

01:01:15 ◼   ► Our friend Federico, he uses Reminders as his to-do list.

01:01:19 ◼   ► So he's OmniFocus now.

01:01:21 ◼   ► And I mean, he uses these tools as much as we do.

01:01:24 ◼   ► and he's found with various shortcuts and stuff,

01:01:26 ◼   ► like ways to make reminders work for him in that way.

01:01:30 ◼   ► And I look at it, I'm like, yeah, I could probably do this,

01:01:33 ◼   ► but I haven't really seen any feature that Reminders has

01:01:38 ◼   ► that would make me explicitly want to move.

01:01:42 ◼   ► The one feature it has, it doesn't work exactly how I want,

01:01:45 ◼   ► which is you can assign a person to a reminder,

01:01:50 ◼   ► and then the next time you're sending him an iMessage,

01:01:53 ◼   ► it can pop up in the iMessage window and be like,

01:01:55 ◼   ► hey, you wanted to talk to Gray about this.

01:01:58 ◼   ► But I want that in Slack, not in Messages.

01:02:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that's true.

01:02:04 ◼   ► - If they let third parties plug into this,

01:02:06 ◼   ► I would move to Reminders.

01:02:07 ◼   ► 'Cause that would be like,

01:02:08 ◼   ► that is something which is useful enough to me

01:02:11 ◼   ► that I would make the move for.

01:02:13 ◼   ► But like in Messages,

01:02:14 ◼   ► I don't have work conversations in Messages.

01:02:16 ◼   ► I have them in Slack.

01:02:17 ◼   ► - I agree.

01:02:18 ◼   ► That's a great idea,

01:02:20 ◼   ► but it needs to be more universal

01:02:21 ◼   ► to become a real killer feature.

01:02:23 ◼   ► So it was interesting.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Reminders has now found this place in my life as just a place to keep some simple lists

01:02:29 ◼   ► of some random stuff.

01:02:31 ◼   ► And I really quite like it for that.

01:02:33 ◼   ► And it's just like it's the correct information density and display.

01:02:38 ◼   ► And I do like that you can you can just have one level deep where you can have a little

01:02:42 ◼   ► expandable or collapsible section.

01:02:44 ◼   ► So I can look at Cortex and say, you know, write out a line that says state of the apps,

01:02:49 ◼   ► and then put a bunch of stuff underneath that.

01:02:51 ◼   ► if I want to like collapse all of that away and hide it and then show it later.

01:02:54 ◼   ► So it's it just happens to hit it hit this sweet spot really nicely of what I'm looking

01:02:59 ◼   ► for in a list app, which I was not expecting.

01:03:02 ◼   ► So that's that's a place that Reminders has found in my life.

01:03:05 ◼   ► When I have those kinds of lists, right, so like you said, like the movie list, the booklist,

01:03:09 ◼   ► they go in notes for me.

01:03:10 ◼   ► I make checklists in notes.

01:03:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I've tried that.

01:03:13 ◼   ► But like, I want a separate item for each thing.

01:03:17 ◼   ► I don't like the "here's a list" and these, it's a bunch of words all on one page.

01:03:24 ◼   ► I just like, I want separate items so I can easily delete them and get rid of them or

01:03:28 ◼   ► manipulate them or move them.

01:03:29 ◼   ► I don't want it as one unit.

01:03:31 ◼   ► It's very important to me that they're separate units.

01:03:33 ◼   ► Yeah, when I have to be editing text to remove them.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Yes.

01:03:38 ◼   ► Sure.

01:03:39 ◼   ► I get that.

01:03:40 ◼   ► That's a good point, I get that.

01:03:41 ◼   ► I do like in iOS 13 there is a feature which resorts checklists.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Right, yes.

01:03:46 ◼   ► So if you check it, it can go down to the bottom.

01:03:49 ◼   ► I think that's a really nice little quality of life feature for Notes.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Should we talk about time tracking?

01:03:55 ◼   ► Time tracking, yeah.

01:03:56 ◼   ► I think we're both very set on Timery as the front end for toggle, right?

01:04:02 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah.

01:04:05 ◼   ► Yeah, since I've had access to it, having it gone public, I use it completely as the

01:04:10 ◼   ► interface to toggle.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Another app with just fantastic shortcut support too.

01:04:15 ◼   ► That is the reason.

01:04:16 ◼   ► I took a lot of time off of time tracking in the previous year.

01:04:20 ◼   ► I just felt like this is not something I really wanted to do.

01:04:23 ◼   ► And I've been building back up my time tracking system over the last couple of months.

01:04:29 ◼   ► And the shortcut integration is fantastic.

01:04:33 ◼   ► So I'm just trying to build up all of these shortcuts that automatically do something

01:04:38 ◼   ► and also start a timer.

01:04:40 ◼   ► And it's just a million times easier than it used to be trying to put together URL schemes.

01:04:47 ◼   ► And Federico Vittucci did some amazing stuff with toggle and how to get it to work, but

01:04:52 ◼   ► Timer Remakes it just a million times easier to do.

01:04:55 ◼   ► It means I can build shortcuts on my own again without needing to try and work out how the

01:05:00 ◼   ► API works.

01:05:02 ◼   ► And I've been able to build this year some really shortcuts that work really well for

01:05:07 ◼   ► me.

01:05:08 ◼   ► which is just called recording timer.

01:05:10 ◼   ► And when I hit it, it sets my phone onto

01:05:13 ◼   ► Do Not Disturb for 90 minutes.

01:05:15 ◼   ► It looks at what is the most recent

01:05:18 ◼   ► or like upcoming or current calendar entry.

01:05:21 ◼   ► And then creates a timer

01:05:24 ◼   ► with the name of that show in the calendar as the tag.

01:05:28 ◼   ► I love it. I'm so happy with that.

01:05:30 ◼   ► And it works every single time.

01:05:32 ◼   ► Yeah, that's great.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Oh, while we're here, there's a little thing I'll mention

01:05:36 ◼   ► in terms of shortcuts because it's such a dumb little thing that I've made for myself,

01:05:41 ◼   ► but one of my little time tracking ones is something I call WorkWalk.

01:05:46 ◼   ► So if I'm working on a project and I feel like I just need a quick mental break, I started

01:05:52 ◼   ► a shortcut called WorkWalk, which uses Timery to begin a time tracker that says like, "You're

01:05:57 ◼   ► going for a walk now."

01:05:58 ◼   ► But it also uses an app called JustTimers.

01:06:04 ◼   ► of Do, like this is a new app in my system here, and Just Timers has great shortcut support

01:06:09 ◼   ► as well to do this same thing that Do does of "I want a timer that also nags me."

01:06:15 ◼   ► Oh great, what is this? Will you tell me about this? Come on, what is this application all

01:06:20 ◼   ► about?

01:06:21 ◼   ► It is very Do-like, but it's Do with very good shortcut support. We've mentioned Do,

01:06:26 ◼   ► D-U-E, many times over many years on the show, but one thing that it doesn't have is great

01:06:31 ◼   ► Siri shortcut support and just timers will do the same kind of thing.

01:06:36 ◼   ► It'll do like nagging reminders.

01:06:38 ◼   ► And so like, it's just the simplest shortcut in the world, but it's like,

01:06:42 ◼   ► I'm going for a work walk, start the timer to track that I'm going for a walk

01:06:47 ◼   ► and also begin a 22 minute timer that will harass me at the end.

01:06:53 ◼   ► Because the thing about a work walk is I don't want to get stuck in walking

01:06:58 ◼   ► around too long thinking about the thing.

01:07:00 ◼   ► It's like, this is a break.

01:07:02 ◼   ► Think about something and come back.

01:07:04 ◼   ► And so like when this timer goes off, you should return to where

01:07:08 ◼   ► you're working and get back to work.

01:07:10 ◼   ► This is not like you're just going to wander around for awhile.

01:07:12 ◼   ► So, um, I really like, it's so simple, but I really like this.

01:07:16 ◼   ► Just, just do two things at once.

01:07:18 ◼   ► And I don't have to think about either of them.

01:07:20 ◼   ► And, you know, I use that like once a day when I'm busy working.

01:07:24 ◼   ► And so it's, it's great.

01:07:24 ◼   ► It's really nice to have a couple of things that have shortcut support.

01:07:27 ◼   ► I need to look at this.

01:07:28 ◼   ► I never thought that there would be a contender for dew, so has it replaced dew for you?

01:07:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I would say at this point it's basically replaced dew, but because I don't use the

01:07:39 ◼   ► like to-do reminders part, like I use dew entirely in terms of timers.

01:07:45 ◼   ► What do you mean the to-do reminders part?

01:07:46 ◼   ► I always forget because it's like these two different things where... yeah there's like

01:07:51 ◼   ► reminders and there's timers in dew.

01:07:54 ◼   ► Oh, okay, because I use it more in the reminders.

01:07:57 ◼   ► So like, I have like a daily reminder to do the washing up, because I don't have a dishwasher

01:08:02 ◼   ► still.

01:08:03 ◼   ► And so it will remind me every day, but then give me the nagging reminder.

01:08:07 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:08 ◼   ► So, Just Timers, as the name implies, is Just Timers.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Okay, so this isn't for me.

01:08:14 ◼   ► Yeah, it doesn't have the reminders section.

01:08:16 ◼   ► There are two things that I use as reminders in Do, which is basically the stuff that like

01:08:22 ◼   ► harasses me to go to sleep. But other than that, I don't really... I'm mostly using

01:08:28 ◼   ► just timers now for the actual timers.

01:08:30 ◼   ► Okay, so it won't replace you. Nothing will replace you. Ever.

01:08:35 ◼   ► It's a real workhorse again.

01:08:38 ◼   ► Project management. Now this is where I've included Evernote. Because I think it feels

01:08:44 ◼   ► like that's the project management application we would use.

01:08:47 ◼   ► This is where I want to get the answer to what's going on with Evernote.

01:08:51 ◼   ► Before we get that answer, I'm naturally assuming that Evernote has remained consistent as a

01:08:56 ◼   ► research tool for you.

01:08:58 ◼   ► Yes.

01:08:59 ◼   ► Nothing's changing it.

01:09:00 ◼   ► Nothing has changed.

01:09:01 ◼   ► And I will give Evernote credit here, where it's a pain in the butt.

01:09:06 ◼   ► We said last year it felt a little bit like Evernote was trying to turn this battleship

01:09:11 ◼   ► around a little bit maybe, you know, less socks, more bug fixes.

01:09:18 ◼   ► And I would not say that they have turned the ship, but it feels like it is turning

01:09:25 ◼   ► ever so slowly in the right direction.

01:09:28 ◼   ► So there's still many things that I could complain about with Evernote, but I can say

01:09:32 ◼   ► that their releases over the last year, I've noticed less frustration with the app over

01:09:41 ◼   ► time.

01:09:42 ◼   ► So there's nothing to report to say, "Oh, there's amazing new features and I totally

01:09:46 ◼   ► love it, but I can say that I'm much less frustrated with some of the ways that Evernote

01:09:50 ◼   ► works.

01:09:51 ◼   ► And yes, I'm still 100% in on Evernote.

01:09:54 ◼   ► It has features that other apps, even Microsoft OneNote or Devant Think just simply don't

01:09:59 ◼   ► replicate for me.

01:10:00 ◼   ► So yeah, Evernote is very secure as the oldest iOS app that I still use on my devices.

01:10:10 ◼   ► So last year, the state of the apps, I came to the realization that for projects related

01:10:15 ◼   ► to Cortex brand and the theme system, I wanted to have a place where a few things were solved.

01:10:21 ◼   ► Where I could have some notes and some outlines and some documents that I were keeping around

01:10:25 ◼   ► ideas and thoughts and some admin stuff, you know, keeping track of some basic financial

01:10:30 ◼   ► things, but also a place to put inspiration and save PDFs of stuff and all that kind of

01:10:36 ◼   ► stuff, right?

01:10:37 ◼   ► Evernote is made for like a real kind of catch-all of all types of media right

01:10:43 ◼   ► right and that was like a perfect thing for it it could also share notebooks if

01:10:47 ◼   ► you have wanted to share them with people I get you know made the perfect

01:10:51 ◼   ► sense that's why I came to the shocking realization that I needed Evernote but

01:10:55 ◼   ► enough is enough I can't I can't use it anymore

01:10:59 ◼   ► why why Myke there is one reason and it feels petty but I've experienced this

01:11:05 ◼   ► this too much over the last year.

01:11:08 ◼   ► No petty complaint that's too small to stop a man from using an app.

01:11:11 ◼   ► So something I do quite frequently is to go in and I update a very simple list that I

01:11:18 ◼   ► just need to go in once every couple of times a month to add items onto this list.

01:11:23 ◼   ► It's just a text list, right?

01:11:25 ◼   ► I open the list and it refreshes.

01:11:28 ◼   ► It flashes to white and then comes back.

01:11:32 ◼   ► Why are you doing this?

01:11:33 ◼   ► Evernote is loading like a locally cached version and then in the process of checking to see if there's an update it blanks out for a

01:11:39 ◼   ► Second and then comes back. There are a couple of things that are happening here one

01:11:42 ◼   ► This is a text list right this text list should be saved in the app natively

01:11:48 ◼   ► You shouldn't need to do anything else - I run my app in dark mode. I do not expect to have my retinas

01:11:54 ◼   ► By this white screen and also you were getting in the way every time I open the app, right?

01:12:00 ◼   ► I open the note, I see the text that I want it to be.

01:12:03 ◼   ► As soon as I tap to enter the cursor, it flashes white

01:12:08 ◼   ► and then comes back and loads at the top

01:12:10 ◼   ► and then scrolls to the bottom.

01:12:11 ◼   ► I have experienced this too much.

01:12:13 ◼   ► So Gray, I have moved to an application

01:12:17 ◼   ► to which many QuaTexans will rejoice

01:12:20 ◼   ► when they hear the name.

01:12:22 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:12:23 ◼   ► - I have moved all of this information to Notion.

01:12:27 ◼   ► Oh, there are some real Notion fans out there.

01:12:31 ◼   ► The Notion fandom is too much for me.

01:12:33 ◼   ► But Notion...

01:12:36 ◼   ► What do you think of Notion?

01:12:38 ◼   ► It does everything I want, just as well as Evernote.

01:12:41 ◼   ► And the things that frustrate me, it doesn't do.

01:12:45 ◼   ► Right.

01:12:45 ◼   ► So I'll tell you, the import... unbelievable.

01:12:48 ◼   ► They have a native importer.

01:12:51 ◼   ► They give you $10 in credit.

01:12:53 ◼   ► It's like $5 or $10 in credit.

01:12:55 ◼   ► If you sign up for the plan or whatever, you can give all these companies money eventually, right?

01:13:01 ◼   ► But if you import from Evernote, they give you credit, which I think is kind of hilarious,

01:13:05 ◼   ► right? Because a lot of Notion's proposition, I think, is we are better than Evernote.

01:13:10 ◼   ► - That is a great idea to give you credit for imports like that. That's a really clever idea.

01:13:16 ◼   ► - But like, you know, because you can, I think it's like, it's free as an individual,

01:13:19 ◼   ► you pay for a team account or something like that. I think that's their business model.

01:13:23 ◼   ► but it does all of the stuff that I would want. Of course it presents things differently,

01:13:29 ◼   ► you know, because it's kind of like a really interesting mix of like a note-taking application

01:13:36 ◼   ► and like a personal wiki, like you can link things together, but it's also a collaboration tools

01:13:44 ◼   ► and like checklists and you know it is a very Evernote, you think you build tables in it really

01:13:51 ◼   ► easily but for what I need it to be which is a place where I can save stuff

01:13:56 ◼   ► it has a web clipper right it has a web clipper and you can do it on iOS and on

01:14:00 ◼   ► the Mac and it can very easily save articles save lists of things save PDFs

01:14:07 ◼   ► it does all of it it looks nice it feels more modern it doesn't have the hang-ups

01:14:12 ◼   ► that I have of Evernote like if when I go into adding items to this list it

01:14:18 ◼   ► It just loads.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Everything can be tagged.

01:14:23 ◼   ► You can assign things.

01:14:24 ◼   ► You can use emoji everywhere if you want to, but I'm not right now.

01:14:28 ◼   ► Because I've only been using Notion for a week at this point.

01:14:33 ◼   ► It is not perfect, but it is better at what I need right now than Evernote is.

01:14:40 ◼   ► And I didn't go straight from Evernote to Notion.

01:14:43 ◼   ► I stopped off at Basecamp for five minutes along the way.

01:14:46 ◼   ► Oh, Basecamp.

01:14:47 ◼   ► Wow.

01:14:48 ◼   ► of what I want and then move straight to Notion.

01:14:50 ◼   ► Wow, Basecamp.

01:14:51 ◼   ► I haven't heard about Basecamp since Web 2.0.

01:14:53 ◼   ► They're, you know, they're trundling along.

01:14:55 ◼   ► They did a cool thing recently.

01:14:56 ◼   ► They have like a free plan now for single users and they have a version 3.

01:15:01 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I'm not saying that they don't exist, but it's just, it's like, that's a name I

01:15:04 ◼   ► haven't heard in a long time is Basecamp.

01:15:07 ◼   ► But I thought, oh, Basecamp might work, but no, it's just, it's too much.

01:15:13 ◼   ► It's too focused on you have a big team.

01:15:16 ◼   ► that's not what I have. So yeah, I really think that I mean, I'm going to keep playing around

01:15:25 ◼   ► more with Notion because I actually think it has even more to offer to me. But like,

01:15:30 ◼   ► it is 100% a better tool for me for doing what I need than Evernote is.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it's interesting to hear you say that I played around with Notion. And like, I can just

01:15:42 ◼   ► Sometimes you know with a tool, like, "This is not for me."

01:15:45 ◼   ► And it's hard to pin down exactly why, but you just get that sense.

01:15:49 ◼   ► It's like, Todoist, even if I spent a million hours in it, it's like,

01:15:52 ◼   ► "This, the way this is designed, this is just isn't for me. It doesn't work with my brain."

01:15:57 ◼   ► But Notion is obviously really powerful for the people who use it.

01:16:01 ◼   ► YouTube colleague of mine, Thomas Frank, who is always showing me what he does in Notion,

01:16:06 ◼   ► and he has a couple of YouTube videos about it, like, he runs his whole channel off of Notion.

01:16:11 ◼   ► It is crazy how much he gets out of this.

01:16:16 ◼   ► When you search Thomas Frank on YouTube, the third answer is Notion.

01:16:19 ◼   ► Right, there you go.

01:16:21 ◼   ► I'm gonna say he may be top 0.01% of Notion power users.

01:16:29 ◼   ► It's very impressive what he does with it.

01:16:30 ◼   ► You go watch his videos and you'll be amazed.

01:16:37 ◼   ► So it is a very powerful tool and it is a little bit of like an everything all in one tool.

01:16:43 ◼   ► It's interesting to hear that that's where you've gone from Evernote.

01:16:47 ◼   ► Yeah and I want to dig into it a little bit more. I wondered if it could be,

01:16:51 ◼   ► like it could replace some of the stuff that I do in Notes but like we're gathering research for

01:16:56 ◼   ► shows but it doesn't really work in the way that I want with that but it is an interesting app.

01:17:01 ◼   ► It's one that I've kind of like thought to try out a bunch and then I was kind of turned off

01:17:05 ◼   ► buy the fandom. Just too much, you know? And so then, I was like, "Ah, no one's out there,

01:17:13 ◼   ► but whatever, whatever." And I was like, "No. I've had enough of it, though. I need to explore

01:17:18 ◼   ► what's out there." So I spent a day, try out Basecamp, tried out Notion, and Notion's where

01:17:23 ◼   ► I'm gonna stick for now.

01:17:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I think Notion has such an intense fandom because, again, the impression that I get

01:17:29 ◼   ► from what I've been shown about it is that it really rewards you for the more stuff that

01:17:34 ◼   ► you put into it. And so that's why you end up with really super users who like, this

01:17:39 ◼   ► is the absolute center of their life in terms of both the dashboard for actions and the

01:17:44 ◼   ► place where research is stored. And so yeah, I think it's that kind of app.

01:17:48 ◼   ► And I think that is like core to it is the idea of like, you can build your own Wiki,

01:17:53 ◼   ► you can link everything together in this application, which is a very interesting thing. So I want

01:17:57 ◼   ► to play around with it more.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Yeah, everything can link to everything else, which seeing a demonstration of it, like threw

01:18:03 ◼   ► me back to org mode and Emacs, which I used to use.

01:18:06 ◼   ► And, but like, once you get into this idea of everything is linkable to everything

01:18:11 ◼   ► else, like you can really create a whole world and where you can jump between

01:18:15 ◼   ► projects and actions and reference very quickly.

01:18:17 ◼   ► So yeah, I think if people are looking for productivity tool, it's definitely

01:18:21 ◼   ► something to check out and just see like, Oh, does this, does this feel like a tool

01:18:25 ◼   ► for you?

01:18:25 ◼   ► Because if you like it, you might be one of the people who really likes it.

01:18:30 ◼   ► Communication.

01:18:31 ◼   ► Slack and email.

01:18:32 ◼   ► I think of the two here, right?

01:18:34 ◼   ► Like that's where we're going.

01:18:36 ◼   ► - Yes, Slack and email.

01:18:37 ◼   ► This is how the world turns.

01:18:39 ◼   ► - So I guess one of the things that's changed

01:18:41 ◼   ► since last year is we now have a Slack.

01:18:44 ◼   ► Cortex brand has a Slack.

01:18:46 ◼   ► - We do have our own Slack.

01:18:47 ◼   ► - We're at that point in our company's life

01:18:49 ◼   ► where it needs its own Slack like all good companies do.

01:18:52 ◼   ► - Yes, of course.

01:18:53 ◼   ► How else could we talk to each other about the company?

01:18:56 ◼   ► We're not gonna use iMessage.

01:18:57 ◼   ► We're not gonna pollute our personal mode of communication

01:19:01 ◼   ► with work communication.

01:19:03 ◼   ► So we need another Slack.

01:19:04 ◼   ► - Yep. - There we go.

01:19:05 ◼   ► - My situation is mostly unchanged, right?

01:19:11 ◼   ► Slack for all work communication and Spark for all email.

01:19:15 ◼   ► And again, Spark has gotten better in some ways

01:19:20 ◼   ► as an email application,

01:19:22 ◼   ► but no email app will ever be good.

01:19:25 ◼   ► But the service underneath Spark,

01:19:27 ◼   ► the fact that I can share email messages

01:19:30 ◼   ► with people on our team.

01:19:31 ◼   ► I can share them directly with our sales manager.

01:19:34 ◼   ► Makes it a tool that I can't give up.

01:19:37 ◼   ► I love it, the way it works like that.

01:19:38 ◼   ► We can have conversations in line about emails.

01:19:41 ◼   ► I can delegate.

01:19:42 ◼   ► I can share them.

01:19:43 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

01:19:45 ◼   ► I'm very, very happy with that.

01:19:47 ◼   ► - So last year I was complaining about this problem

01:19:49 ◼   ► with Slack of feeling like I have a very hard time

01:19:52 ◼   ► keeping track of the conversations in Slack.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Like when you start getting lots of Slacks,

01:19:57 ◼   ► I just find something about both the interface and my desperate desire to not have this open

01:20:04 ◼   ► all the time and to only go and check sometimes.

01:20:06 ◼   ► It makes it very easy to lose stuff.

01:20:08 ◼   ► So my solution to this right now is, and that's been developed over the past year and has

01:20:13 ◼   ► worked pretty well, is Dropbox Paper.

01:20:17 ◼   ► So Dropbox Paper, it's just like Google Docs.

01:20:20 ◼   ► It's just a place where you can write stuff.

01:20:23 ◼   ► But I've ended up with Slack and with the people that I work with trying to be very

01:20:28 ◼   ► clear about Slack is not an information repository.

01:20:34 ◼   ► Slack is a communication tool.

01:20:36 ◼   ► So Slack is instant message.

01:20:38 ◼   ► And then Dropbox paper is where the projects, the like communal projects live.

01:20:47 ◼   ► So like, here is a video, here's all the things that need to be done about a video or, you

01:20:52 ◼   ► between my assistant and I, like, here is all the administrative stuff.

01:20:56 ◼   ► What does she need to do? What do I need to do?

01:21:00 ◼   ► And, like, is this project open or closed?

01:21:03 ◼   ► So I've tried to make it very clear, this distinction,

01:21:08 ◼   ► and that has helped me a lot with just trying not to lose stuff.

01:21:13 ◼   ► Of like, paper is what is happening, what is open, what is done,

01:21:20 ◼   ► And then Slack is talking about those projects, but it is not like, this is not

01:21:26 ◼   ► the place where a checklist should live.

01:21:29 ◼   ► And it's, that's worked pretty well.

01:21:32 ◼   ► Those edges aren't perfectly hard, obviously, because there's always a

01:21:36 ◼   ► little bit of bleed here and there.

01:21:38 ◼   ► But I've ended up really liking Dropbox paper simply because, you know, the

01:21:42 ◼   ► people I work with, most of them are shared on like my company Dropbox account.

01:21:46 ◼   ► and you can just @ message someone in a shared document and they will get a notification

01:21:53 ◼   ► through Dropbox that there's something waiting for them in this shared Dropbox paper document.

01:21:58 ◼   ► So just because of that little feature has made it really useful for me.

01:22:03 ◼   ► That is a really interesting system you built for yourself there instead of using Slack.

01:22:08 ◼   ► But I get why, because there's more permanence to the stuff that's going in those lists.

01:22:13 ◼   ► Yes, it's the permanence of it.

01:22:15 ◼   ► Slack just feels like this river, and that's fine, like a river is what you want for communication,

01:22:21 ◼   ► but for stuff that is assigned for me to do from my assistant, like I will see a little

01:22:27 ◼   ► red dot appear on the Dropbox icon on my Mac, which means like, "Oh, she's tagged me in

01:22:31 ◼   ► something in paper."

01:22:33 ◼   ► This is a to-do that I need to get to at some point, like something I need to personally

01:22:36 ◼   ► handle.

01:22:37 ◼   ► In theory, I really would like to use something like OmniFocus for that in the future, but

01:22:43 ◼   ► But obviously that is not an option right now.

01:22:46 ◼   ► And Dropbox Paper really does have this big advantage that, sort of like Notion, you can

01:22:52 ◼   ► throw anything in there.

01:22:54 ◼   ► You can throw in relevant screenshots, or here's a PDF of a document that you need to

01:23:00 ◼   ► sign, or whatever.

01:23:01 ◼   ► So it's free form-ness is a real advantage over something that's like a shared task list.

01:23:08 ◼   ► Do you have it tying into Slack in any way?

01:23:10 ◼   ► I don't.

01:23:11 ◼   ► I don't have it tying into Slack.

01:23:13 ◼   ► I know that you can, I've just never felt the need to do any of those integrations.

01:23:17 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know if you can do this, but it would seem like interesting that you could

01:23:20 ◼   ► maybe add something to a Dropbox paper document from inside of Slack would be kind of cool.

01:23:26 ◼   ► Right.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Okay.

01:23:28 ◼   ► So yeah, I know those integrations exist, like you can do that kind of stuff.

01:23:31 ◼   ► But I actually think that there's a benefit in the little bit of friction to going over

01:23:37 ◼   ► to Dropbox paper and then thinking, okay, how do I actually want to format this in a

01:23:41 ◼   ► sentence for the like future me to remember as opposed to just saying like, oh, what did

01:23:46 ◼   ► I happen to type in Slack? Oh, that's a great to do added to paper. Like I just, I think there is

01:23:52 ◼   ► a benefit in the separation a little bit, but I do know that there are integrations like that that

01:23:56 ◼   ► work, but yeah, so I'm going to highly recommend Dropbox paper for a useful free form area to keep

01:24:05 ◼   ► track of stuff that a group is working on. I've really liked it as an addendum to Slack,

01:24:11 ◼   ► that these two tools work together very well for me.

01:24:14 ◼   ► E-mail?

01:24:16 ◼   ► I'm still doing the same thing I was doing last year, which is how infrequently can I

01:24:20 ◼   ► possibly open e-mail, that's how often I'll open it. So yeah, I do e-mail as infrequently

01:24:27 ◼   ► as I possibly can, and I've moved almost everything that is of serious value into Slack in some

01:24:34 ◼   ► So email has become a bit of a strange space for me at this point.

01:24:38 ◼   ► I do want to try to...

01:24:41 ◼   ► I'll just say for now, we'll see what happens next year.

01:24:44 ◼   ► I do have some thoughts about trying to be more regular with email.

01:24:48 ◼   ► I think there is a way that that can be useful to me in the future.

01:24:52 ◼   ► But for now, I really haven't changed anything with the way I run email,

01:24:56 ◼   ► which is basically like as infrequently as possible.

01:24:58 ◼   ► What a world you live in, my friend.

01:25:00 ◼   ► I know, but this is where hour or two live is made diverge the farthest of almost anything.

01:25:07 ◼   ► I mean I could not do email but then I would be on this street very soon.

01:25:10 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly, that's what would happen to you.

01:25:13 ◼   ► That's not how it works, I mean I'm afraid.

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01:26:31 ◼   ► Should we talk about writing and research?

01:26:32 ◼   ► Yeah, what are you using as your primary writing tool, Myke?

01:26:36 ◼   ► Notes, probably.

01:26:37 ◼   ► Notes?

01:26:37 ◼   ► I mean, I've already spoken about Apple Notes as like the place where I keep my research items,

01:26:43 ◼   ► right? For stuff that eventually goes into Google Docs, which is where all my show...

01:26:46 ◼   ► I mean, that's honestly Google Docs is where the majority of my writing would go

01:26:50 ◼   ► because that's where I'm doing show prep. Right.

01:26:53 ◼   ► Oh, OK. So actually, here's a question.

01:26:55 ◼   ► Did you use Apple Notes to write your drafts

01:26:59 ◼   ► for the instructions for the theme system journal?

01:27:01 ◼   ► Right. Like that's a that's a oh, that's like a thing that you had to write out.

01:27:05 ◼   ► Where did you write that? I used Bear.

01:27:08 ◼   ► Oh, interesting. OK. For those.

01:27:10 ◼   ► Yeah, that all went into Bear. Bear is just like, you know.

01:27:16 ◼   ► It's fine. It's a nice app. It looks pretty good and it has pretty decent

01:27:23 ◼   ► Markdown support, right? Or at least you can export things in a nice Markdown way.

01:27:29 ◼   ► If I'm going to do some writing, then Bear is the app that I will use for that.

01:27:33 ◼   ► There are better applications for writing in Markdown than Bear, but it's just one that I have

01:27:39 ◼   ► and will use from time to time because I write long form things so infrequently,

01:27:44 ◼   ► but Bear does the job for me in those instances.

01:27:47 ◼   ► [Music]

01:27:47 ◼   ► [Music]

01:27:47 ◼   ► [Music]

01:27:47 ◼   ► [Music]

01:27:47 ◼   ► [Music]

01:27:47 ◼   ► [Music]

01:27:47 ◼   ► Hmm. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, because I'm just trying to think of...

01:27:50 ◼   ► It's a good question.

01:27:51 ◼   ► Yeah, of things that you've written that feels like a serious thing that you wrote,

01:27:54 ◼   ► and I was wondering what you used to use it.

01:27:56 ◼   ► Yeah, they are the most words that I have committed to something in the last year, right?

01:28:01 ◼   ► That's like outside of like a show outline, like this prose. Sorry,

01:28:05 ◼   ► it's the most prose that I've written.

01:28:06 ◼   ► Yes.

01:28:07 ◼   ► So you were using Scrivener...

01:28:09 ◼   ► Yes.

01:28:11 ◼   ► ...last year. Has Scrivener remained?

01:28:13 ◼   ► Okay, so now that we're a year later, I can talk about the context of some of the things that I was working on.

01:28:19 ◼   ► The Billup video that went out, the Christopher Billup race around Staten Island video,

01:28:24 ◼   ► and the American Indians video that just went up recently.

01:28:28 ◼   ► Like, I've had more projects that are very involved and over very long periods of time.

01:28:37 ◼   ► And this is part of why I had switched to Scrivener a year ago,

01:28:42 ◼   ► because Scrivener is just an amazing tool that allows you to do this thing of

01:28:47 ◼   ► sort of combining parts of your research into the writing process.

01:28:53 ◼   ► So, I don't know a really good way to put it, but it's like if Evernote is a filing cabinet,

01:29:00 ◼   ► Scrivener is a little bit more like, here's what's on your desktop that you're working with right

01:29:05 ◼   ► now. Here's a bunch of papers. Some of them are scripts that you're writing, but some of them are

01:29:11 ◼   ► information that's directly related to what you're immediately working on.

01:29:15 ◼   ► And so that is part of what was my frustration with switching from Ulysses to Scrivener was

01:29:21 ◼   ► trying to solve that problem.

01:29:23 ◼   ► So I do really like Scrivener, but I switched back to Ulysses a couple months ago.

01:29:31 ◼   ► And one of the reasons is I was able to ask the developer of Ulysses to add a particular

01:29:39 ◼   ► feature that I really wanted.

01:29:41 ◼   ► The details don't really matter, but for a long time on Ulysses, if you wanted to use

01:29:45 ◼   ► Dropbox Sync, which I do need to use as part of my workflow with my assistant, you could

01:29:51 ◼   ► only use a subset of the features of Ulysses, you couldn't use all of them.

01:29:56 ◼   ► So I had asked like, "Hey, can Dropbox Sync work for Ulysses's native format so I can

01:30:02 ◼   ► get access to all of the features in Dropbox?"

01:30:05 ◼   ► And that was very graciously added and has allowed me to move back to Ulysses.

01:30:09 ◼   ► Seems like a very big thing you had them do.

01:30:12 ◼   ► Look, with development, it's hard to know what the difficulty level of implementing

01:30:17 ◼   ► something is or isn't.

01:30:19 ◼   ► So I guess if other Ulysses users were happy that this update came out over the last year,

01:30:24 ◼   ► you can just thank Gray, I guess.

01:30:26 ◼   ► Well I do know that this is, having spoken to some other people, there's sometimes this

01:30:30 ◼   ► same thing of you're working on something.

01:30:33 ◼   ► Ulysses isn't designed to be worked by on a team, but sometimes you do want a team to

01:30:39 ◼   ► be able to work on something and that means you have to use Dropbox. You can't

01:30:42 ◼   ► use iCloud sync. And so people would run into this frustration of "oh I can't have

01:30:47 ◼   ► all of the features." How does Ulysses deal with conflicts? I think it hands it all

01:30:51 ◼   ► off to Dropbox. So you're hoping Dropbox takes care of it? Yeah you're hoping

01:30:55 ◼   ► Dropbox takes care of it. If you're using Ulysses between two people I think it's

01:31:00 ◼   ► the same thing like what Myke and I do with the Logic projects for this

01:31:04 ◼   ► podcast. You just make it very clear who's working on what when and don't

01:31:08 ◼   ► both of you work on it at the same time.

01:31:10 ◼   ► And if you're clearing your communication, you shouldn't have any problem.

01:31:14 ◼   ► Um, so, uh, like I've developed a system with my assistant where if she is working

01:31:21 ◼   ► on the script, it's because I have physically moved it into a different

01:31:26 ◼   ► folder within the Dropbox hierarchy.

01:31:28 ◼   ► And then when she's done, it gets moved into a folder that indicates to me that

01:31:33 ◼   ► like her work on it is done and it is complete and now it comes back to me.

01:31:37 ◼   ► So that's just like a way to be very clear about what is the state of this.

01:31:41 ◼   ► Like, have I passed it to you or have you passed it to me?

01:31:44 ◼   ► But so, yeah, I've switched back to Ulysses.

01:31:47 ◼   ► I like Ulysses a lot.

01:31:49 ◼   ► And the way I would describe it is,

01:31:52 ◼   ► now with access to all of Ulysses' features, I get...

01:31:57 ◼   ► In terms of what I use, I get 90% of the benefits of Scrivener

01:32:02 ◼   ► at like 10% of the complexity.

01:32:06 ◼   ► Because Scrivener is an application which, and I think this really goes for it,

01:32:10 ◼   ► has perhaps more settings than many apps on the face of the earth.

01:32:15 ◼   ► And there are times when you really want that power, and I used all of that power,

01:32:21 ◼   ► but I'd prefer to use the slightly simpler Ulysses setup.

01:32:25 ◼   ► Plus, if you're thinking about using Scrivener,

01:32:28 ◼   ► it doesn't handle being used on multiple machines very well.

01:32:34 ◼   ► It's really designed to be used on one computer.

01:32:38 ◼   ► So if you are writing a book and you're thinking of using Scrivener,

01:32:42 ◼   ► I do think a strong consideration in that decision is,

01:32:47 ◼   ► are you always going to be using this program on the same computer?

01:32:50 ◼   ► And if the answer to that is yes, then Scrivener is fine.

01:32:53 ◼   ► But if you know you're going to be trying to like sync stuff through Dropbox

01:32:57 ◼   ► and using it on different devices, that's a mark against Scrivener.

01:33:00 ◼   ► But what I will just say is why these two apps? Like what is the thing that I like so much about

01:33:07 ◼   ► both of these apps? Unlike a traditional writing app, like you open up pages or you open up

01:33:12 ◼   ► Microsoft Word and you're given just sheets of paper to start writing on, both of these apps are

01:33:19 ◼   ► much more abstract about the idea of like, what is a page? And so it's a lot more like, what are you

01:33:28 ◼   ► laughing at? What is a word? What is a sentence? Well, they each have different words for this

01:33:37 ◼   ► stuff but it's a lot more like you're writing on index cards. And some of those index cards

01:33:43 ◼   ► are big and some of those index cards are small, but you can move them around. And for

01:33:49 ◼   ► someone like me who is doing many, many, many drafts of a script, it's really useful to

01:33:56 ◼   ► be able to say, "These three paragraphs go together.

01:34:00 ◼   ► These three paragraphs belong on one index card because they're about this part of what

01:34:04 ◼   ► I'm talking about.

01:34:06 ◼   ► And then this paragraph goes on a separate index card, and then these next five, they

01:34:11 ◼   ► go together."

01:34:12 ◼   ► So you can mark off these blocks of text and then rearrange them arbitrarily as much as

01:34:17 ◼   ► you want.

01:34:18 ◼   ► It's a totally different way to think about writing, and it is a vital, vital feature

01:34:23 ◼   ► for me at this point.

01:34:25 ◼   ► the thing that I can now do with Ulysses, which wasn't possible before, is

01:34:29 ◼   ► also on those cards like in Scrivener,

01:34:33 ◼   ► attach additional information. So to be able to say these paragraphs are part of the script,

01:34:40 ◼   ► but I also want to be able, whenever I'm looking at these three paragraphs, to see this reference photograph.

01:34:45 ◼   ► I want to be able to have this reference PDF so I can just double-check this complicated thing that I'm talking about, or

01:34:53 ◼   ► or have a separate note that I have written to myself about what these paragraphs are

01:34:58 ◼   ► trying to achieve.

01:35:00 ◼   ► And so I can now do that in Ulysses, and it is fantastic and just so helpful on big complicated

01:35:09 ◼   ► projects.

01:35:11 ◼   ► Like when something has large scope over long periods of time, being able to have some,

01:35:18 ◼   ► pull out some parts of the Evernote research or make notes to future me is just vitally,

01:35:25 ◼   ► vitally important.

01:35:26 ◼   ► I'm saying this because I genuinely really like both apps.

01:35:29 ◼   ► I think they are both good.

01:35:31 ◼   ► I've just chosen to go back to Ulysses because I like the simplicity of it a little better,

01:35:37 ◼   ► but both of them are great if you're thinking about trying to write a complex project.

01:35:41 ◼   ► I think if I was going to choose between one of these applications, I would choose Ulysses

01:35:46 ◼   ► just because I like its design more.

01:35:48 ◼   ► Yeah, Ulysses is also more iOS-y.

01:35:50 ◼   ► You can like put in custom fonts and stuff like that, right?

01:35:53 ◼   ► Like there's a lot of interesting things you can do with Ulysses

01:35:56 ◼   ► to make it look the way you want.

01:35:58 ◼   ► Yeah, again, Scrivener has functionally infinite options

01:36:01 ◼   ► so you can get it to look the way that you want.

01:36:03 ◼   ► But yeah, if you're used to working on iOS in particular,

01:36:07 ◼   ► Ulysses feels very at home right out of the box.

01:36:09 ◼   ► The other thing which really for me leans in Ulysses' favor

01:36:13 ◼   ► is it is this pseudo-markdown editor

01:36:15 ◼   ► And I just, I really prefer writing in explicit markup rather than with styles.

01:36:21 ◼   ► And so that that's the other big difference between the two of them.

01:36:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:25 ◼   ► Cause I remember that being a sticking point for you as scrivener, right?

01:36:28 ◼   ► Like it wanted you to bold things rather than to,

01:36:30 ◼   ► now here's the thing.

01:36:31 ◼   ► Scrivener is great for that.

01:36:33 ◼   ► Like I got used to their, the styles and it's very interesting having functionally

01:36:40 ◼   ► infinite styles at your fingertips.

01:36:42 ◼   ► And so it allowed me to do like some very interesting things that I cannot

01:36:45 ◼   ► replicate in Ulysses, but if given the choice, I'm trading that additional infinite flexibility

01:36:52 ◼   ► for the limited subset of Markdown because I much prefer to write an explicit marking

01:36:58 ◼   ► of text the way Ulysses handles it.

01:37:00 ◼   ► So I don't want to make predictions for my future self, but I'll be pretty shocked if

01:37:06 ◼   ► something comes along and dethrones Ulysses in the, you know, conceivable future.

01:37:12 ◼   ► I think I'm probably here to stay for a really long time in the same way that I am with OmniFocus.

01:37:18 ◼   ► That's my bet.

01:37:19 ◼   ► I guess we'll check in 2020, right?

01:37:20 ◼   ► Right, yeah, we'll see.

01:37:22 ◼   ► Should we do a lightning round?

01:37:23 ◼   ► If anything is left, I only have a couple of pics that I wanted to talk about.

01:37:27 ◼   ► We've blown through all my lightning round already.

01:37:30 ◼   ► I think by doing the home screens, we sort of cover a bunch of the lightning round, but

01:37:34 ◼   ► I'm very happy to do some lightning round apps.

01:37:36 ◼   ► I have two.

01:37:37 ◼   ► Lightning round mic.

01:37:38 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

01:37:39 ◼   ► Lightning round.

01:37:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:41 ◼   ► to mention. The first one is VSCO. VSCO, the photo editing application, right? Made by

01:37:48 ◼   ► the company, very famous, like history is making Photoshop presets, that kind of stuff.

01:37:53 ◼   ► I use VSCO to edit all of the photos that I publish to Instagram. One of my personal

01:37:58 ◼   ► things that I have changed over the last year, I've been very happy with, is taking up

01:38:03 ◼   ► mobile photography as a hobby. I take lots of photos that I publish to Instagram and

01:38:08 ◼   ► to Instagram stories and I have great fun in doing that is something that I find

01:38:13 ◼   ► very relaxing and nice and I get to have all of these images saved you know with

01:38:20 ◼   ► Instagram anything you upload to Instagram stories it's saved in an

01:38:22 ◼   ► archive for you so I can go back and look at that stuff if I want to but I

01:38:26 ◼   ► say things as highlights or I publish things to my feed but I really have

01:38:29 ◼   ► enjoyed learning how to use tool at this tool and and now I want to try and one

01:38:36 ◼   ► I want to do next year is maybe like branch out into other tools

01:38:39 ◼   ► Maybe something like Lightroom and try and get my head around that. Mm-hmm, but it's not just using the tool but like

01:38:45 ◼   ► getting an understanding for

01:38:48 ◼   ► How to make something look a way that I want it to look in using those tools

01:38:54 ◼   ► Right because before it was just like well

01:38:56 ◼   ► I'm just gonna keep dragging these slides around until I find something I like but now I can look at an image and be like

01:39:01 ◼   ► I want to do this to it and this to it and I know how to do that

01:39:05 ◼   ► Right and friend of the show Tyler stormin. He was a great youtuber

01:39:09 ◼   ► he helped kind of like guide me through a lot of this and

01:39:12 ◼   ► Provided me with a lot of the basics that I needed if you are interested in this

01:39:16 ◼   ► I will put a link in the show notes to an episode of connected which is a show that I do where we had Tyler

01:39:21 ◼   ► On because I wanted Tyler to give me the foundations of how to use a tool like this go

01:39:26 ◼   ► so we spoke through this like creating for Instagram and stuff like that if it's something you're interested in and

01:39:33 ◼   ► that kind of gave me the push to then go through this over the last year.

01:39:38 ◼   ► And I'm...

01:39:39 ◼   ► VSCO is definitely the tool for me.

01:39:41 ◼   ► It's like really easy to use on the phone and it has great like preset filters and stuff

01:39:46 ◼   ► that you can use but then adjust and adapt to your heart's content.

01:39:50 ◼   ► And I've been very happy with what, especially combined with the new iPhone, I've been able

01:39:55 ◼   ► to produce.

01:39:56 ◼   ► So I really like that.

01:39:57 ◼   ► Okay, lightning round.

01:39:58 ◼   ► I'm gonna pick Night Owl, which is the tiniest app that hardly does anything.

01:40:05 ◼   ► It's for your Mac.

01:40:06 ◼   ► It just puts a little owl face on your menu bar at the top.

01:40:11 ◼   ► And if you right-click on it, it'll swap your machine from light mode to dark mode.

01:40:16 ◼   ► And it's great to have there, just because sometimes you want to switch between the two.

01:40:23 ◼   ► Most of the time I'm running my system in dark mode, but I feel like it lets me appreciate

01:40:27 ◼   ► the moments where light mode is genuinely better.

01:40:30 ◼   ► So I can just quickly click, swap everything over to light mode, and then click, swap everything

01:40:34 ◼   ► back.

01:40:35 ◼   ► It's the tiniest utility, but it's very, very helpful.

01:40:38 ◼   ► I would like to just pick an application that I must have picked in the past at some point,

01:40:42 ◼   ► but I don't know if I have and it deserves to be mentioned.

01:40:44 ◼   ► It's an app called Deliveries.

01:40:46 ◼   ► It's like an old school app, right?

01:40:49 ◼   ► Deliveries has been around forever.

01:40:50 ◼   ► It is just an app to track parcel deliveries.

01:40:53 ◼   ► Right.

01:40:54 ◼   ► has become something that I do more and more, especially as I track notebooks traveling

01:40:59 ◼   ► across the globe.

01:41:01 ◼   ► Right, yes.

01:41:02 ◼   ► I need to be able to keep my eye on that stuff and Deliveries is just a really great app.

01:41:07 ◼   ► It's designed so well on iOS, like you can just highlight a tracking number in an email,

01:41:12 ◼   ► press share and add it to Deliveries.

01:41:15 ◼   ► It's a really well made application, I love it a lot and I feel like it should get some

01:41:20 ◼   ► love every now and then because you know it's like one of these apps is like

01:41:23 ◼   ► surely I can only imagine his feature complete like I don't know what more

01:41:26 ◼   ► they could add to it but that means it is the perfect tool for this use it does

01:41:30 ◼   ► everything so I love deliveries okay if you if you ever track packages and don't

01:41:36 ◼   ► use this I thoroughly recommend it related to that if you want to track a

01:41:40 ◼   ► package which is yourself going across the world I'm going to recommend

01:41:45 ◼   ► flighty. Yes. As a flight tracker. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, it is, it's just like email

01:41:51 ◼   ► app, it's incredibly hard to find a good flight tracking app. I don't know why. This is the

01:41:58 ◼   ► good one. This, yeah, this right now is the best one. My understanding of its development

01:42:03 ◼   ► is the app began development because there was no good app for this anymore. It's a strange

01:42:09 ◼   ► ecosystem. I presume it has something to do with licensing the data for planes, or like

01:42:13 ◼   ► Who knows? But I'm gonna highly recommend it.

01:42:16 ◼   ► I'm also gonna send to you a little thing that I love that it does,

01:42:22 ◼   ► which is it'll track your flights over the course of a year

01:42:27 ◼   ► and show you some statistics on it.

01:42:30 ◼   ► And confirm for me that this year I had been flying way too much

01:42:36 ◼   ► and had been doing way too much travel.

01:42:39 ◼   ► And when I found this app, I remember as my summer of travel was coming to a close,

01:42:45 ◼   ► I saw that my number of times traveled around the world was approaching one.

01:42:50 ◼   ► And no joke, when I got back after the summer and I saw that my number had reached .9 times

01:43:00 ◼   ► around the world this year, I swore to myself that I was not going to let that number reach one.

01:43:08 ◼   ► And that legitimately helped me say no to some things that I might have done at this last part of the year.

01:43:14 ◼   ► I was like, "No, I am maxed out for travel. I refuse to have fully traveled once around the entire world.

01:43:21 ◼   ► Like, I will not do it. I'm gonna say no to a couple of little things because I just, like, I just...

01:43:26 ◼   ► I cannot travel anymore. I have traveled way too much."

01:43:30 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:43:31 ◼   ► My friend.

01:43:32 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:43:34 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:43:35 ◼   ► Are you gonna show me-

01:43:35 ◼   ► You wait right there.

01:43:36 ◼   ► Do you have New York records?

01:43:37 ◼   ► - You wait right there. - Do you have records

01:43:38 ◼   ► you wanna show me?

01:43:39 ◼   ► - Jeez, who do you think you are?

01:43:41 ◼   ► Oh, I traveled so much, I traveled so much.

01:43:43 ◼   ► Take a look at my statistics.

01:43:45 ◼   ► - Okay, I just wanna be clear.

01:43:46 ◼   ► Traveled much for me, right?

01:43:49 ◼   ► Okay, so you're hitting almost two times around the world.

01:43:53 ◼   ► - 1.8 times around the world, 45,240 miles traveled.

01:43:58 ◼   ► - Whoa, that's cool.

01:43:59 ◼   ► - There is a possibility, and I would need to check this,

01:44:02 ◼   ► that there might be a couple of flights in here

01:44:05 ◼   ► that I was not on but tracking.

01:44:09 ◼   ► But let's say that it is very close to this number

01:44:12 ◼   ► if it is not this number.

01:44:14 ◼   ► - I'm very happy to round you off

01:44:16 ◼   ► to two times around the world.

01:44:18 ◼   ► I will give you that.

01:44:19 ◼   ► That is perfectly fine.

01:44:20 ◼   ► - In the air for over 100 hours of the year.

01:44:22 ◼   ► - That's the brutal part, yeah.

01:44:24 ◼   ► It's how many hours have you been in the air?

01:44:26 ◼   ► - How many hours in a year?

01:44:29 ◼   ► Do I wanna do this calculation right now?

01:44:32 ◼   ► - There's not gonna be as much as you think it's gonna be.

01:44:34 ◼   ► There's a lot of hours in the year.

01:44:35 ◼   ► 8,760 hours.

01:44:38 ◼   ► While we're talking about traveling,

01:44:39 ◼   ► another YouTube colleague of mine, Wendover,

01:44:42 ◼   ► he does lots of videos on airplanes.

01:44:44 ◼   ► And he, I think it was just this morning or just yesterday,

01:44:49 ◼   ► like Thomas Frank is always pushing notion on me,

01:44:52 ◼   ► Wendover is always telling me about his flights

01:44:54 ◼   ► because I ask like a man who wants to know more

01:44:57 ◼   ► about like a gruesome accident,

01:44:59 ◼   ► because the amount he flies is unbelievable.

01:45:04 ◼   ► And I don't even want to try to say what the number was,

01:45:08 ◼   ► but he told me the percent of his life in the previous year

01:45:12 ◼   ► that he had spent on an airplane.

01:45:14 ◼   ► It was not like, oh, 0.1% of your life

01:45:16 ◼   ► you've spent on an airplane.

01:45:17 ◼   ► It was a serious number,

01:45:18 ◼   ► but he ended up just releasing a video

01:45:20 ◼   ► that tracks all of his flight over the course of the year,

01:45:24 ◼   ► and it will make your jaw drop on the floor

01:45:28 ◼   ► to watch that kind of thing.

01:45:29 ◼   ► So we are both total amateurs.

01:45:31 ◼   ► - You can't ask the guy who makes videos about planes,

01:45:36 ◼   ► about how much time he spent in the air.

01:45:38 ◼   ► It's like if I asked you,

01:45:40 ◼   ► "Well, how much time have you spent in Ulysses this year?"

01:45:44 ◼   ► I would be like, "Oh, no way, I did like 10 minutes."

01:45:49 ◼   ► It doesn't work.

01:45:50 ◼   ► But anyway, 1.1% of my year has been on a plane.

01:45:54 ◼   ► You told me to do the number, that's still wild.

01:45:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's too much.

01:45:57 ◼   ► - Again, I wanna check it.

01:45:58 ◼   ► Like there might be again, there might be like a couple of flights in there, but like

01:46:01 ◼   ► that's a that's got to be about it, whatever it is.

01:46:04 ◼   ► Oh man, I can't believe that number now I've seen it.

01:46:07 ◼   ► I don't feel bad about it because I like to travel, but it's still a huge, just huge.

01:46:13 ◼   ► I'm looking at our numbers here and I can't help notice though that we have actually done

01:46:17 ◼   ► the same number of flights.

01:46:19 ◼   ► It's just that you have done many more of the like London to the West Coast flights.

01:46:24 ◼   ► That's what the key difference is here.

01:46:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't travel inside of America as much as you do, right?

01:46:28 ◼   ► Like you have two long-haul, I have eight long-haul.

01:46:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I was annoyed by those two long-haul because like, wait, is, you know, London to New York doesn't count as long-haul? I guess not.

01:46:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I have that problem too. It's like, look, if I'm going to America, that's a frickin' long-haul flight, right?

01:46:44 ◼   ► It's a long-haul flight. I 100% agree with you there.

01:46:47 ◼   ► And yes, you were also right. I am vastly more traveling around in the interior,

01:46:51 ◼   ► Which also now, now that things are finally out, I can say is yes, that's partly for Indian reservation stuff.

01:46:56 ◼   ► There are many places that take a long time to drive to where there are no planes that you can go there.

01:47:00 ◼   ► So yes, that's also that's also part of the reason for this.

01:47:02 ◼   ► I'm so pleased you've published that first video so you can now acknowledge the fact that you've done that.

01:47:07 ◼   ► So we can now acknowledge why all these things have happened this year.

01:47:11 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I think over the past quite a while on Cortex,

01:47:15 ◼   ► I've had to make reference to, we've recorded shows sometimes under relatively adverse recording environments.

01:47:21 ◼   ► Yeah, because you were on reservations trying to find Wi-Fi, right?

01:47:25 ◼   ► This is like, here is the situation that we're in.

01:47:27 ◼   ► I don't intend to be mysterious, but like I just didn't want to talk about that until I released something.

01:47:31 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:47:32 ◼   ► And so yeah, that's part of what was going on there.

01:47:34 ◼   ► I don't want to know what my driving miles were over the course of the year,

01:47:38 ◼   ► but I just think I keep looking at these two things for our flights,

01:47:41 ◼   ► and I think it's fascinating that we both have 23 flights recorded,

01:47:44 ◼   ► but you basically traveled exactly twice as much as I have in terms of actual distance.

01:47:48 ◼   ► That is actually really fun that those numbers do match up. I like that a lot.

01:47:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:47:52 ◼   ► Oh, I'm going to mention another one, Calzones, which is the calendar/timezone application.

01:47:58 ◼   ► You may not see this, like, in all my widget screens underneath Fantastic Cal.

01:48:03 ◼   ► It's always Calzones. It lives in the widget there, so I know what time it is

01:48:07 ◼   ► in all the places that I need. But what makes this application superior to every other app like this

01:48:12 ◼   ► that I've used is that it's integration into my calendar. So like I can go into an event,

01:48:18 ◼   ► hit a drop down and see what time that event hits in all of the time zones that I want to

01:48:23 ◼   ► keep track of. That is a very, very useful application for me. Yeah, I love it as well.

01:48:28 ◼   ► It's on my widget screen. I don't use the calendar integration stuff a lot. What I wanted is the

01:48:32 ◼   ► ability to be able just to see very quickly on the widget screen, like what time is it

01:48:36 ◼   ► in a few places that I need to track. And then if I need to be able to expand out and do that

01:48:41 ◼   ► calculation of, "Okay, so when it's 9 a.m. in Salt Lake City, what time is it in London?"

01:48:47 ◼   ► Like that kind of thing.

01:48:48 ◼   ► So yeah, I really love it.

01:48:51 ◼   ► Really great app.

01:48:52 ◼   ► Thanks to Underscore for making it do exactly what we needed to do.

01:48:54 ◼   ► Yay!

01:48:55 ◼   ► My favorite kind of application.

01:48:56 ◼   ► The one that does what I want.

01:48:59 ◼   ► Yes, exactly.

01:49:00 ◼   ► I think I might be it for my lightning round.

01:49:01 ◼   ► Do you have anything else?

01:49:02 ◼   ► Oh, I've got StuffMic.

01:49:03 ◼   ► Oh, lightning for days over here.

01:49:04 ◼   ► Let me just do some things here.

01:49:07 ◼   ► I do want to mention, last year I had just started on Keyboard Maestro as a recommendation

01:49:13 ◼   ► from Rosemary Orchard who showed off the amazing things that it could do to me in person at

01:49:18 ◼   ► WWDC.

01:49:20 ◼   ► And I'm continually amazed by how much can be done with this app.

01:49:24 ◼   ► And its ability to allow me to automate some stuff that I just never really thought about

01:49:29 ◼   ► before is totally killer.

01:49:31 ◼   ► Give me an example.

01:49:32 ◼   ► I need to have my mind blown.

01:49:34 ◼   ► Here's an example.

01:49:36 ◼   ► This won't exactly work for you, but it's the idea of it.

01:49:39 ◼   ► So when I'm recording my audio for a video, I end up with these really long audio files

01:49:47 ◼   ► where I've talked a bunch and I have many takes of what I want to say.

01:49:51 ◼   ► In Logic, there's a way to strip out the silence between these takes.

01:49:57 ◼   ► So I pause for a couple of seconds and you can get these little pieces.

01:50:03 ◼   ► Now for me, I want to compress all of these little pieces together.

01:50:06 ◼   ► So there's a way in Keyboard Maestro I can just have Keyboard Maestro in Logic select

01:50:14 ◼   ► each section of audio and slam it into the previous audio section.

01:50:21 ◼   ► And so it will create like one continuous block of audio out of what is sometimes hundreds

01:50:27 ◼   ► of separate little clips of me speaking.

01:50:29 ◼   ► And then from there, I can go on and fine-tune how do I want things to sound.

01:50:33 ◼   ► The thing is, if there is anything that you're going to do in a program that's repetitive,

01:50:39 ◼   ► Keyboard Maestro can do it.

01:50:42 ◼   ► If you could do it in that program with keyboard shortcuts.

01:50:47 ◼   ► And even that's not true, because Keyboard Maestro will also do image recognition on

01:50:51 ◼   ► the screen, so there are ways that you can do stuff with the mouse as well.

01:50:54 ◼   ► But just like, if you're ever in a situation where you're on the computer and you're thinking,

01:50:58 ◼   ► "Ugh, I need to do this thing like 300 times."

01:51:01 ◼   ► And you can do it with keyboard shortcuts,

01:51:04 ◼   ► you can stupidly easily automate it with Keyboard Maestro.

01:51:08 ◼   ► Another example is,

01:51:10 ◼   ► I recently put up a 45-minute long video