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Cortex

3: Good for Brain Health

 

00:00:00   Oh man, that was the longest, boringest way you could possibly have described Launch Center Pro.

00:00:06   You've been very busy this week, haven't you?

00:00:09   Like, this feels like a week of grey productivity and like I've ever seen before.

00:00:14   Yes, I have been unusually busy this week.

00:00:17   I was very surprised this morning to see another episode of Hello Internet Popups.

00:00:21   It's like two episodes in a week. It's magical.

00:00:23   Yes, within a week there have been two episodes of Hello Internet.

00:00:27   Internet because we just put up our special Royal Society episode this morning.

00:00:33   Then I put up a video yesterday and I'm recording Cortex with you right now, which will go up

00:00:39   on Friday, and at some point this week I'm also recording another episode of Hello Internet,

00:00:44   so yes, it is an unusually busy week for me this week.

00:00:50   I'm going to take credit for that.

00:00:52   We started a show where you're looking at your productivity and now your productivity

00:00:56   has increased fourfold. You can take credit for that if you want but it would

00:01:02   be a total lie especially when I go back to just a normal week next week and then

00:01:06   It's fine I have no problem living a lie. If you're taking credit you also

00:01:11   have to take blame that's how this works. I'm fine with that I would definitely

00:01:16   take a blame with that. Okay. There was something that you've been doing because

00:01:19   obviously as part of your productivity blitz you were posting pictures of

00:01:26   your OmniFocus.

00:01:28   All day! Like it's funny if you go if you like look at the because some apps show like the recent media

00:01:35   and it's basically just a grid of

00:01:38   OmniFocus icons. People who follow me on Twitter know already that it's usually pretty obvious when I am

00:01:47   animating because I am on Twitter all day long when I'm doing the animations for a video because I

00:01:55   I find the animations just a very tedious process

00:02:01   and Twitter, while it is normally just nothing but a distraction

00:02:08   I think I work better with Twitter open because it's a bit of like a steam vent

00:02:13   of just, I can kind of pour a little bit of frustration out onto Twitter

00:02:20   So yes, whenever I'm very active on Twitter is usually when I'm animating.

00:02:25   And that day in particular, because I'd originally planned to post two things, I had this OmniFocus

00:02:33   badge that I was, I thought, "Ooh, it happens to start out at over 100, I'm going to post

00:02:38   this."

00:02:39   And I originally just said, "Oh, something like, 'Oh, I'm going to war with this number

00:02:41   today.'"

00:02:42   As I was trying to launch two projects on the same day.

00:02:47   And then as time went on I thought, oh, I just kept posting like milestones as the day

00:02:51   went on.

00:02:52   But yes, it was a little silly and I often feel like I need to apologize to the people

00:02:57   who follow me on Twitter.

00:02:58   It's like it was just ticking down as the day was going on.

00:03:02   It was funny, it was, you know, there were people I see were tweeting at you and like,

00:03:05   you know, I never expected today would be the day that we'd follow along with you as

00:03:09   you go through this rollercoaster of badge icons.

00:03:12   Yes, very exciting.

00:03:14   I wouldn't have expected you to be a badges man, like to have the little number on your app icon

00:03:19   That doesn't feel like it fits with your overall ethos of your home screen

00:03:23   balance. No, no it it does not and if you

00:03:29   looked at the screenshots from from the phone that we did last time there was no badge on OmniFocus

00:03:34   This is one of these things where I I do

00:03:38   constantly try to think about my system and try to make little changes and

00:03:43   It occurred to me, I don't know, about a week ago that I really do hate badges on the phone.

00:03:48   I have I have some severe thoughts about

00:03:51   badges and how people allow them on their phone, and I dislike them. I generally don't have badges for almost anything.

00:03:58   But I thought, huh, maybe I can use my intense

00:04:03   dislike of the badges as a kind of productivity fuel and

00:04:09   I spent I don't know it was it wasn't very long

00:04:12   but I spent maybe a half an hour or so rejiggering my OmniFocus a little bit to try and pull out a

00:04:19   selection of items that need to be done by the end of the day and to just have OmniFocus display a badge for

00:04:28   For those items. I was thinking back to when I used to be a teacher

00:04:33   I used to have a series of printed pieces of paper

00:04:37   one for each day of the week and on them were written the things that had to get done before I was allowed to

00:04:44   go home at the end of the workday.

00:04:47   Now of course there are always an infinite number of things that you can do on a workday, but it was helpful to have

00:04:52   just a list of the things that have to get done before I can go home. And so in OmniFocus

00:05:00   I was thinking, "Oh, maybe my current working life is quite different,

00:05:03   but maybe there's a little bit of this that I can I can recreate."

00:05:06   And so that's what I was attempting to do with the badges, is to make more visually obvious items that really have to get done on this day

00:05:16   before I can even remotely pretend like the work day is over.

00:05:20   So that's what I set up in OmniFocus, and that's what I was, uh, that's what I had been playing around with for the past week,

00:05:27   and I would say that initial results are promising.

00:05:31   Because I think for me and for most people, you have to balance the idea of anxiety and reward with the badges.

00:05:38   So I have some apps that I allow badges to be on, but it's very specific the way that I do that.

00:05:45   I allow messaging apps, for example, like Slack or iMessage and stuff like that.

00:05:50   If they're direct messages to me, I will let the badge be there so I know that they're there

00:05:54   because they tend to be more things that need more urgent attention so you know that they're there.

00:05:59   And OmniFocus, I have it only show a badge for overdue items.

00:06:03   So once something passes the time that I set for it, it pops up because

00:06:08   seeing badges can make me anxious because it's like

00:06:12   I know that there's stuff in there that needs to get done.

00:06:15   And it's like I'm not doing it, hence why the badge is there.

00:06:17   But then you also have the reward part of it, which you're going through,

00:06:21   which is I have these things here and I get to watch them go down.

00:06:25   And that is a good feeling.

00:06:26   But I think you kind of have to work out what side of the coin you land on.

00:06:35   You have to feel like this is the way that I want to go about this.

00:06:38   I want to either feel like I've got something that is trying to grab my attention or I have

00:06:42   something that is making me feel good because I'm ticking it off.

00:06:45   In general my philosophy with notifications and badges is sort of along those lines of

00:06:50   I just see so many people who have phones that just beep or have badges on them for all kinds of crap.

00:07:00   And I think you really need to look at those notifications and say, "Okay, a notification, in a perfect world,

00:07:07   it should be something about which I need to take action."

00:07:13   And the more interruptive the notification is, the more immediate the action should be.

00:07:21   And I see lots of people who just don't do this.

00:07:25   And the badges, I think, are a little bit low down on that notification hierarchy.

00:07:33   Because most of the time with apps that will show a badge, I don't also have them interrupt me and alert me to something.

00:07:41   but I can see the badges on the phone and I think,

00:07:44   okay, something is in this app that needs to be cleared.

00:07:49   But I've seen people use badges on apps

00:07:52   for things that I just think are crazy.

00:07:54   I've seen people do stuff like,

00:07:56   oh, I want my Read It Later app to just have a badge on it

00:08:00   of how many articles I have in this Read It Later app.

00:08:03   Like, what are you, are you crazy?

00:08:05   Why do you need to see 247 as a red badge on the phone?

00:08:10   on the top of your reading application.

00:08:13   Didn't you put those articles in there? Don't you know that they're in there?

00:08:17   And what about this is remotely urgent?

00:08:21   You can't possibly have 247 must-read items.

00:08:25   So I really try to limit badges and notifications to the bare minimum it can possibly be.

00:08:31   And always run it through this spectrum of,

00:08:34   "If the app is going to notify me about this thing,

00:08:37   One, is there an action that I need to take?

00:08:40   And two, is that action relatively immediate?

00:08:43   And if the answer to both of those questions is yes,

00:08:46   then I'm going to have some kind of notification.

00:08:49   For the moment, OmniFocus is really the only thing on my phone that has an always present red badge on it.

00:08:56   It's really the only one that gets that.

00:08:58   So that's why I think it's effective, at least in the moment, for making me want to grind through the items that are there.

00:09:06   because I want to get rid of that badge and then return to a nice clean iPhone or iPad screen.

00:09:11   It's interesting that you have allowed one app, you know, to break through that,

00:09:15   but I think that OmniFocus is probably the kind of app that would be allowed.

00:09:19   OmniFocus is really the dashboard for my whole life is the way I think about it.

00:09:24   And so if anything deserves to have a badge on it, OmniFocus is it.

00:09:29   And I haven't put the badge on for years because of my dislike of badges and my desire for a clean iPhone screen

00:09:36   But like I said before it occurred to me

00:09:38   Ooh, I could I could use my desire for the clean iPhone screen as a kind of a little bit of an additional push

00:09:44   and so to intensely

00:09:46   Uglify my iPhone screen or my iPad screen a tiny bit to get a little bit more work out of myself.

00:09:53   I have a little bit more follow-up. This is our first show having follow-up

00:09:58   Yeah, actually practically the entire show is gonna be followed up with some description

00:10:03   because we have now turned over the show to the people and the people have many questions, Gray.

00:10:08   Yeah, we have received many tweets, many comments, many screenshots from people who have listened to the first two episodes.

00:10:16   We're gonna get to that. But there was something that I wanted to give to our listeners.

00:10:21   I do many other podcasts, as you know, and some people may know.

00:10:26   One could even say you have a whole network of podcasts.

00:10:29   That would be correct!

00:10:31   One of them at the moment is a show called "Inquisitive" where I'm actually talking to people about their favorite albums

00:10:37   and out of pure serendipity this week's episode was Serenity Caldwell of iMore.

00:10:43   She picked "All Day" by Girl Talk, which we have spoken about and now many people are familiar with that album that maybe weren't before.

00:10:50   But if you want to hear me and her talk about that and listen to two people, kind of two

00:10:56   nerdy people trying to rap a little bit, because that definitely happens, I would suggest listening

00:11:01   to that episode.

00:11:02   Because it's fun to hear more about that album and it's really interesting to hear how so

00:11:06   many people use it as a way to focus their attention.

00:11:10   It's a very strange album for that, but it seems like so many people use it for that

00:11:15   reason.

00:11:16   Very interesting, so you should check that out.

00:11:18   One of the biggest questions one of the the questions that I saw the most on I think it was about episode one

00:11:25   There's people were asking why you had a personal assistant

00:11:28   So many people ask this it's really interesting this kind of stuff

00:11:32   There are things that you say during an episode and they're just like throwaway comments

00:11:36   But they seem to lock in with people and it is interesting that you have a personal assistant

00:11:40   Like people don't understand why or how it's set up. So we're actually going to address this in a later episode

00:11:46   We're gonna turn it into a bigger topic and talk about that kind of stuff. So you're just teasing the people now

00:11:51   Is that what you're doing? I just want people to know that I'm not ignoring their questions. Okay

00:11:55   It's very important that the people understand that our listeners understand that I listen to them

00:11:59   That is my that is my role here is like, you know

00:12:03   It's to take the suggestions from the audience and relay them to you

00:12:08   One of them is that and we will talk about that in a later episode, but we should talk about

00:12:12   home screens

00:12:14   Mm-hmm, because this is the one that I've seen the most

00:12:16   There are so many people that hate this show for this reason now because they have completely like it's like a love-hate relationship

00:12:22   Because they have completely like I did upended their phone and it's all over the place

00:12:27   I when I was in WWDC event was in San Francisco for Apple's WWDC event and

00:12:33   There were people that were actually going through the process at that point

00:12:38   They'd listen to the episode and they were showing me what they were doing and how their life was ruined because they didn't know where any

00:12:43   their apps were. Their life has been improved because I pointed out how

00:12:48   horrible most people's iPhone screens are. So they've improved their iPhone

00:12:53   screens so their life is better. They have a more aesthetically pleasing

00:12:56   environment in which to iPhone. There is a significant problem which

00:13:00   I'm still going through which is the fact that now everything is not where I

00:13:04   thought it was. That is a problem. There are always transition costs but these

00:13:09   transition costs are worth it. So I have further follow-up for my own phone. I

00:13:13   I've now changed my wallpaper gray.

00:13:16   I no longer have clown vomit.

00:13:17   I'm currently rocking the official Cortex wallpaper.

00:13:23   - Oh, we have an official wallpaper?

00:13:25   I did not know that. - We do.

00:13:26   Our designer put a wallpaper together for us,

00:13:28   which I am now using.

00:13:30   There is even a CGP gray version of the wallpaper,

00:13:34   which takes into account the way that you set up your phone.

00:13:37   - Oh, that's a good looking wallpaper.

00:13:39   I wanna see it on your phone.

00:13:41   - Okay.

00:13:42   I need to talk to you about this for a second.

00:13:44   Because, okay.

00:13:47   - Oh, we're not doing this again, are we?

00:13:49   - The official Cortex wallpaper for the listeners is,

00:13:53   it's like very dark graph paper.

00:13:56   And you know how graph paper has thicker lines

00:13:58   and thinner lines?

00:13:59   It's a very good looking wallpaper, I have to say.

00:14:02   So Myke has just sent me the picture of his iPhone screen.

00:14:08   Much improved.

00:14:09   It's a dark background, so the icons stand out.

00:14:12   You still have four icons on the dock,

00:14:14   which is unfortunate, but it seems like

00:14:16   you're just not going to fix this.

00:14:18   However, I don't know if you noticed this,

00:14:21   but you have misaligned the grid from the icons.

00:14:26   - Yeah, I'm trying to,

00:14:28   I've tried very hard to get this to work.

00:14:31   - I mean, this is, immediately,

00:14:33   this is the only thing I can see

00:14:34   when you send me this screenshot,

00:14:36   is that your wallpaper is shifted slightly to the left

00:14:39   so all of the icons are not centered, which is--

00:14:43   - I spent a very, very long time

00:14:44   (laughs)

00:14:46   trying to get this right.

00:14:47   - You may have spent a long time on it,

00:14:49   but you have not spent enough time on it.

00:14:51   I think you need to turn off perspective zoom

00:14:52   if you're going to use this wallpaper properly.

00:14:54   - I did, and I'm still struggling.

00:14:56   I'm gonna fix it, okay?

00:14:57   I'm gonna fix it whilst we're on the air right now.

00:14:59   Well, I'm gonna try anyway.

00:15:00   - No, you're not gonna fix it

00:15:01   while it's on the air right now

00:15:02   because you already said you spent a lot of time

00:15:05   trying to do this right and you obviously failed and so let's let's not sit here

00:15:09   through another fail. Like you can fix this later. Okay. But it's way better like

00:15:17   okay I know I'm giving you a hard time it's way better than than how you

00:15:20   started. So the difference between the regular edition and the CGP Grey edition

00:15:24   from from the words of our designer is your edition is a four icon grid at the

00:15:30   top and a three icon grid at the bottom. Oh that's a nice touch that's a very

00:15:36   nice touch with the transparency for the dock. Oh thank the designer for me. So

00:15:40   Frank does great work and he wanted to make sure that you had an addition that

00:15:43   you may be happy with to use at some point. I will once again go back to the

00:15:48   drawing board and attempt to fix the grievous error that I have made because

00:15:54   You know, that seems to be what I do now.

00:15:59   Many many people, Gray, wanted to know where your wallpaper came from.

00:16:03   I think this was actually the most requested thing.

00:16:08   People want to know where your wallpaper is from.

00:16:10   I don't remember where I found it originally.

00:16:13   People want to know, Gray.

00:16:14   You've got to tell the people.

00:16:15   What my wallpaper actually is, is there's a style of art which is called "low poly".

00:16:22   which is short for "low polygons"

00:16:24   a kind of...

00:16:26   it comes from the video game world basically, but it's a particular way of simplifying an image

00:16:31   so the...

00:16:33   I did a whole bunch of searches for "low poly artwork"

00:16:36   and eventually stumbled upon that one

00:16:38   I have the full document on my computer

00:16:42   but I don't know the original source of this

00:16:45   because I think this was the topic of one of the Hello Internet podcasts

00:16:48   podcast but I spent a very long time trying to search for and find just the

00:16:53   right iPhone background so I will see if I can track down the original artist so

00:16:57   we can put that link in and give them credit. I had a few people suggest

00:17:00   including Derek on Twitter a segment for this show which I really love the idea

00:17:06   of and would like to convince you about this. Every week you grade a listeners

00:17:14   home screen. No this is a terrible idea. No this is a great idea. No this is a

00:17:19   terrible idea because because iPhones don't have a lot of degrees in in which

00:17:27   they can be good or awful. There are like there are very few things that you have

00:17:32   to do right to make your iPhone screen acceptable. It's just that most people

00:17:35   never think about it. Most people just start casually adding apps and picking a

00:17:40   random wallpaper and and they just they end up with something that looks

00:17:43   horrible, not on purpose, but all of the horrible iPhones are horrible in similar ways.

00:17:50   And I don't think there is much room to expand on how a particular person's iPhone screen

00:17:57   is particularly awful. They're all just going to have the same thing. Clown vomit, backgrounds,

00:18:03   or like a baby photo as the background, and a bunch of just apps with badges all over

00:18:09   That's how iPhones are bad.

00:18:11   And the way to make iPhones look good is to limit the number of apps that you have on your phone

00:18:17   and to select a wallpaper that works.

00:18:19   A wallpaper has two jobs.

00:18:21   It should be aesthetically pleasing, and it should ideally at a minimum not be distracting,

00:18:29   but at best it should show off the icons even better,

00:18:34   which is why you generally want a dark background.

00:18:36   You don't want your baby's face in a bright sunlit area as the background of your phone.

00:18:42   It just looks awful.

00:18:44   That's all there is to say about iPhone setups.

00:18:47   There are people in the world that want to receive the criticism that I received.

00:18:51   I don't know why, but they do.

00:18:53   I don't know what to tell those people.

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00:21:10   and all of Relay FM. What does your iPad home screen look like? Because we looked

00:21:15   at your iPhone right? So what how does this differ? How do you set that up?

00:21:20   I'll send you a screenshot. I don't have a screenshot to send you back right now.

00:21:23   I actually just bought a new iPad and I'm in the process of trying to get it set up still, you know?

00:21:30   Like I don't know where everything goes yet. I haven't worked out the placement. I'm using the Cortex wallpaper

00:21:36   Mmm, so we know that that bit's good

00:21:38   But now I'm still in the process of trying to work out where everything goes. So I'm looking for your inspiration now

00:21:45   Okay, it's shockingly different from my iPhone as you will see when it when it comes through. Okay still three gray

00:21:52   What? Why? There are three icons in the dock because as I explained last time I

00:21:58   want the dock to be the same on all of the devices that I use.

00:22:02   Okay, okay. But this is very different.

00:22:06   The iPad actually I think is almost almost exactly the same as the iPhone. I

00:22:11   have a dark background it's actually the exact same background it's just a bigger

00:22:15   section of it. I have the same three icons in the dock, Notes, Launch and

00:22:19   OmniFocus and then I have many of the same apps in the same locations on my iPad.

00:22:26   It's a little bit different because my iPad is arranged much more as a work device so

00:22:29   I have some things on there like OmniOutliner and Numbers and Evernote that I don't have

00:22:36   immediately accessible on my phone but it's very similar actually my iPad setup.

00:22:40   There seems to be a lot less apps though, you have one folder here.

00:22:44   So there seems to be less than there is on your phone.

00:22:46   Unless there's like a thousand apps in that folder.

00:22:49   There are a ton of apps in that folder.

00:22:50   There are probably less apps on my iPad than on my iPhone, but there's just a ton of stuff

00:22:55   that's shoved in there in that folder.

00:22:58   But the only reason that one folder is there is because there are more icons that I want

00:23:02   on the iPad, but I still do want to have a one page setup, which I realized, ooh, I can

00:23:08   do if I have a centered folder and just shove everything in there.

00:23:11   So this is the way my iPad looks now.

00:23:14   I have to say, I really like the centered folder.

00:23:16   I think I'm going to be stealing that.

00:23:18   You're going to steal my centered folder?

00:23:19   Uh huh, that looks nice.

00:23:21   Well I mean like, so you're missing your health folder and your London folder and your other

00:23:25   folder, which are in your iPhone.

00:23:27   So I assume things like health and London probably aren't in there, right?

00:23:31   Because that's like stuff that is to be out and about with, which the iPad is I guess

00:23:36   not used as much in that regard as like tracking things and finding your way around.

00:23:40   The London folder from my iPhone is a bit of a cheat because I'm actually using that

00:23:44   as a like a maps transit local stuff folder plus rarely used apps that I use for travel

00:23:53   just in general. So it's really like a places folder is what that is. And then yes of course

00:23:58   the health app is because well the health app or the health folder is there because

00:24:04   the health app is only on the iPhone and there's a bunch of things that are related to health

00:24:07   that are only on the iPhone. So yeah the two different devices serve two different purposes

00:24:12   which is why their setups are slightly different.

00:24:14   But the iPhone is much more of a general purpose device

00:24:18   and the iPad is very clearly a work device.

00:24:22   And that's why anything that is different, it can boil down to that reason.

00:24:27   So I feel myself with my phone getting closer to the one page method.

00:24:32   Because I don't know where anything is anymore, so I'm searching more.

00:24:36   And if I'm searching more, it doesn't matter where things live.

00:24:40   That's exactly right. That's why you can have one page.

00:24:43   It simplifies in your mind what you do when you're looking for an app.

00:24:48   I can either see the app or I'm going to search for the app.

00:24:53   End of story. There are no other options. That's all you do.

00:24:56   That's the philosophy.

00:24:57   So I'm getting closer because I want that. I want it.

00:25:01   You know, I look at that one page and I'm like, "Oh, that looks good."

00:25:04   I'm going to keep my iPad to one page because, you know, that feels like a great thing to do.

00:25:09   I can keep it all on one page and because I plan like you to have less on my iPad than

00:25:13   I have on my phone because I'm going to try and keep this as a work device as well.

00:25:19   So I have some people were very perplexed with some of the decisions that you made about

00:25:24   your iPhone home screen.

00:25:26   For example, Sage on Twitter has asked, "How can you have no browser on your phone home

00:25:31   screen?

00:25:32   How do you look at the internet, Gray?"

00:25:34   I don't look at the internet on the phone.

00:25:35   I have disabled in restrictions the browser on my phone.

00:25:40   - Hang on a minute, right, here we go.

00:25:42   What?

00:25:43   - It's not even that the icon isn't there,

00:25:46   it's that there is no Safari on my phone.

00:25:48   - How do you follow links?

00:25:49   - You know what this is again?

00:25:51   This is how do you tweet?

00:25:54   This is all you're asking me again.

00:25:55   And the answer is that I don't.

00:25:58   - Oh my, I don't.

00:26:00   So let's say you're in London,

00:26:02   you're out and about in the street,

00:26:03   and you see something and you're like,

00:26:05   I need to look this up.

00:26:06   Do you never look things up?

00:26:08   - Okay.

00:26:11   Do we need to discuss iPhone philosophy here

00:26:17   for a moment, I guess?

00:26:18   - I think we're gonna have to, yes.

00:26:19   - Okay, I guess what I'm gonna try to do here

00:26:21   is answer a bunch of questions

00:26:23   and so we don't have to go through

00:26:24   why don't you have X on your phone?

00:26:26   - Yeah, 'cause I have a lot of that, so.

00:26:28   We may as well just wrap it all up now.

00:26:31   - So I'm gonna try to give an overview here.

00:26:35   of what's going on.

00:26:36   And my philosophy is that I am trying to reduce

00:26:42   distractions on the iPhone.

00:26:47   And distractions, I mean it in a very broad sense.

00:26:52   There are the obvious distractions,

00:26:54   like the worst thing you could possibly do.

00:26:56   Oh, I have Twitter on my phone,

00:26:57   and it notifies me every time someone favorites

00:27:00   a thing that I tweet, right?

00:27:02   Like that is just the worst possible scenario of

00:27:06   "I want this thing to vibrate every time someone has sent me a tiny bit of internet love."

00:27:11   It's like, ugh.

00:27:12   You're just begging for non-actionable distraction all day long.

00:27:17   That's the absolute worst version of that that can be.

00:27:21   But even if you have Twitter on your phone and you say

00:27:24   "Oh, I'm an enlightened person. I'm going to disable all notifications from Twitter

00:27:29   because I don't need that.

00:27:31   There's nothing actionable here when someone retweets a thing that I've said.

00:27:35   The problem is still that you can then self-generate a distraction.

00:27:43   And that self-generated distraction is, "Ooh, I want to go look at what's on Twitter. I want to go check."

00:27:49   The phone hasn't distracted you.

00:27:51   You have distracted yourself with the option that is available.

00:27:56   So that's why I don't want Twitter on my phone, is because I am aware that when I had Twitter

00:28:04   on my phone, Twitter became this default go-to activity when there was two minutes of spare

00:28:12   time at any moment in my life.

00:28:15   So it's like, "Oh, I'm standing online.

00:28:18   There's two people ahead of me to get to the self-checkout machines.

00:28:21   Well, I have 30 seconds.

00:28:23   I might as well open up Twitter and see what's going on.

00:28:26   And I don't like that kind of activity.

00:28:29   I don't think that kind of behavior is helpful.

00:28:32   And I also think it creates some bad habits in your brain.

00:28:36   It creates some bad reinforcement loops

00:28:39   of never allowing your brain to be bored at any moment.

00:28:44   I actually think that being bored

00:28:47   is like good for brain health.

00:28:50   And there are ways in which I try to encourage

00:28:52   that a little bit. And so not having Twitter as a kind of distraction on the phone, not

00:28:57   even having the option to look because it's just simply not installed, is one version

00:29:03   of this. And that applies for lots of apps. Now the browser seems kind of crazy to not

00:29:13   have on there.

00:29:14   >> Whilst I don't feel the same as you do, I understand the Twitter argument, right?

00:29:20   that is just you're just not going to bring that in there but the browser is

00:29:26   so it feels so important to the device like it was one of the three pillars

00:29:33   when Steve Jobs introduced it like the breakthrough internet communication

00:29:36   device and they had the browser and that was what they were talking about so

00:29:39   having an iPhone without a browser is a very a very interesting decision to make

00:29:46   Well, my iPhone is still an internet communicator. It just doesn't use the browser.

00:29:52   The browser is simply one window through which to view the internet.

00:29:56   But I can still look up restaurants and directions and other kinds of things that I might need while I'm wandering around the city.

00:30:04   And I don't need the browser to do that. Like, I can see when is the post office open without having to open up a browser.

00:30:10   How?

00:30:11   Well, you can search for it, for example, on Google Maps, or you can search for it on Yelp, and then it will list, "Oh, here's the menu for this restaurant," or "Here are the opening hours."

00:30:20   Turning off the browser was an interesting decision because I thought, "Ooh, this might not work out. This might not be a practical thing to do."

00:30:27   But having done it for a while, it's again a case of, "Oh, I can get by without this, and if there is any way that I can reduce options or potential distractions for myself, I am very happy to do that."

00:30:41   And so it turns out that I almost never need the browser on my phone.

00:30:46   And so since the browser is also another potential portal of distraction, like, "Oh, let me go to some website to check what's going on,"

00:30:54   I would rather not have that on my phone, which again is just in my pocket all the time available for distraction

00:31:01   So I disabled it and I'm totally fine without it

00:31:06   Now the funny thing here is that I of course, I do know the code to enable the browser

00:31:13   And every once in a while there are scenarios under which like you know what, I do need the browser on my phone right now

00:31:20   And so if I ever absolutely need to get it, I can re-enable it

00:31:24   And I do that on occasion, but 95% of the time the browser just isn't even installed on my phone.

00:31:31   And I want to take away the option for me to mindlessly just search for Safari, open up a browser, and just start looking around on the internet.

00:31:38   Do you have a browser on your iPad? I can't see it.

00:31:42   Yes, the browser is on my iPad, but it is shuffled away many, many pages away on that work folder.

00:31:50   folder because I can see what you're saying I hear a huge butt coming I'll

00:31:57   get to that in a minute but like if you would have said you didn't have it on

00:32:00   the iPad I would have just I wouldn't have been able to accept that because

00:32:04   that's just crazy um it's that's just so I mean I hear the things that you say to

00:32:10   me and it's like... I can hear the words that you're speaking. It makes sense in what you're

00:32:20   saying. I can hear what you're saying it's like okay that makes sense okay I

00:32:25   couldn't do that because that would just break so many things in the way that I

00:32:29   do stuff but because I do a lot of browsing on my phone and what I hear

00:32:33   when is that is you are and I knew this about you one of the reasons I wanted to

00:32:37   talk to you about this stuff is that you make very strict restrictions in your life to enable

00:32:42   you to do the work that you do. And clearly you know that if you have the ability to just

00:32:47   surf the internet on your phone all day, that's all you'll do.

00:32:50   That's actually not true. When I talk to people I have a very hard time conveying why I make

00:32:57   this decision. And it's actually not that, oh, if I did have the browser on there I would

00:33:02   surf all day because I had the browser on my iPhone for the vast majority of time that

00:33:07   I've had an iPhone.

00:33:09   I think I probably only turned off the browser in the last year or so.

00:33:15   So it wasn't as though, "Oh, I have some kind of problem with the browser that I am trying

00:33:21   to remove."

00:33:23   But that's always the conclusion that people draw.

00:33:27   This much more comes out of a whole field of cognitive science, which has demonstrated

00:33:33   that if you have options, even if you don't exercise those options, it is a drag on your

00:33:42   brain.

00:33:45   I have found this to be very interesting, that under circumstances where I can limit

00:33:50   options, even if they are not options that I would exercise, it feels clearer.

00:33:57   It feels cleaner.

00:33:59   And so the functions of my phone are very clear in my mind of what am I going to do

00:34:06   on this device.

00:34:08   As opposed to something like the browser which turns it into a much more expansive device.

00:34:16   You know what?

00:34:17   I need to do on the internet, I can take out my iPad and do it on the internet if I need to, or I can do it from my desktop computer at home.

00:34:25   But I don't need to do whatever that is the instant that it pops into my head, anywhere I am, wherever I have my phone.

00:34:32   It's not like, "Oh, I would just be browsing all day long if I had the browser on my phone."

00:34:36   Because I have the browser on my computer, I have the browser on my iPad.

00:34:39   If that was the problem, I'd have a really big problem.

00:34:43   It's much more about limiting options

00:34:47   to places where those options are just necessary.

00:34:51   So it's necessary to have the browser on my iPad

00:34:56   because it's a necessary part of my workflow on my iPad.

00:34:59   I couldn't do half of the research I do

00:35:01   without a web browser.

00:35:03   But on my iPhone, I don't do that kind of research work

00:35:08   on my iPhone and the other things that a browser

00:35:12   would enable me to get access to, I have other ways of getting on the phone so I don't really

00:35:16   need it there. So I might as well get rid of it if I don't really need it. Does that

00:35:20   make sense? Do you believe me?

00:35:22   Again, I can understand what you're saying. And I can see how this makes sense for you.

00:35:31   I just don't think it would make sense for me. But I hear the words that you say and

00:35:38   They make sense in my brain.

00:35:40   But that is me detaching myself from that.

00:35:45   I'm not applying my own ways of working to that.

00:35:48   Because I think for me,

00:35:50   it would make it harder for me to do my work.

00:35:52   But I hear the way that you work

00:35:56   and I can see how it makes it actually better for you.

00:36:00   And it improves your life in that way.

00:36:01   - So doing this changes the nature of my phone in some ways

00:36:05   because it, not having the browser

00:36:07   which could be absolutely anything, then it affects my conscious decisions about the apps

00:36:13   that are on my phone.

00:36:15   And so when I remove the browser, then I'm much more likely to do something like, "Oh,

00:36:21   read the articles that are in my Instapaper queue," if I'm sitting down for a moment and

00:36:27   I'm taking like a little break.

00:36:29   So it is also directing myself towards activities that I would rather do.

00:36:36   I would rather read an article that I have purposefully saved in Instapaper than browse

00:36:41   the internet if I'm taking a 10 minute break.

00:36:45   I think that's a better behavior to do.

00:36:48   It's not a big deal, but I think places where you can push yourself a little bit one way

00:36:53   or the other, it's helpful to do that.

00:36:56   So do you, I'm going to assume that you also do not look at Reddit on your phone?

00:37:01   I can't look at Reddit because I don't have a browser and if I don't have Twitter installed

00:37:06   on my phone, I certainly don't have something like Alien Blue installed on my phone.

00:37:10   Okay.

00:37:11   So there is no Reddit on my phone.

00:37:13   I will, to be clear, I want to make a little bit of an exception to that, which is usually

00:37:19   the 24 hours after I have put up a video, most of the time I will temporarily install

00:37:28   Twitter and Alien Blue on my phone because I want to keep an eye on how is the video

00:37:32   going.

00:37:33   It's like War Room.

00:37:34   So this, I actually want that, that is something I want to talk about on the next episode which

00:37:38   is not only the time leading up but I know that you go, as I've listened to your stuff

00:37:44   on the internet for a long time, I know that you go into like a different mode once you

00:37:49   post and I'm interested to hear what that is.

00:37:53   We can talk about that next time but the thing that it does relate to today is this is the

00:37:56   the other reason why I very much like to have the extra rows on the bottom of my phone and

00:38:01   on the bottom of my iPad, because it allows the temporary addition of apps that are that

00:38:07   they don't get to live there permanently. And even then, I find it helpful that if I

00:38:13   put Twitter and Alien Blue on my phone the 24 hours after a video, well, now the phone

00:38:18   is all asymmetrical. There's two apps just hanging off of the bottom and I don't like

00:38:22   that at all. And it's a reminder that you don't really want these things on your phone.

00:38:25   just here temporarily while you want to keep on top of a situation, but you're going to

00:38:29   delete these as soon as that situation is over and then get back to the pleasing state

00:38:33   of your phone. This is a temporary addition. And on occasion when I'm traveling or something,

00:38:38   also having that bottom row for travel-related apps is handy, so you don't have to rearrange

00:38:45   your entire iPhone screen. That is one of the main benefits of the space on the bottom.

00:38:51   Alien Blue is one of the most confusing apps I've ever used.

00:38:55   Along with the rest of Reddit, which I'm trying to get to grips with, now that we

00:39:00   post this, you know, you post a show on Reddit, I've been there and I've been trying to interact.

00:39:05   I find all of Reddit confusing. I find Alien Blue extremely confusing.

00:39:09   The way the UI works in the application is like a mystery to me.

00:39:13   Yeah, their last UI change was not for the better.

00:39:17   Like when you press buttons and then there's like this

00:39:20   diagonally scrolling list of settings. It's like, I don't even understand you.

00:39:25   It's not a good decision, Alienblue. That was not a good decision.

00:39:28   Talking about Reddit, we have received questions on Reddit as well as on the

00:39:32   #askgray hashtag for Twitter. One of those came from Konrad, and Konrad

00:39:37   asks a question again that many people have asked, which is, "Gray, why don't you

00:39:42   jailbreak your phone?" Now before you say... the reason that many people say this is

00:39:47   it will they they believe would fix some of the complaints and issues that you

00:39:52   have like for example it would allow you to install apps that or extensions that

00:39:58   allow you to change the color of your phone there's one called f flux which

00:40:02   you probably use on your Mac I reckon yeah I use flux on my Mac yep which

00:40:07   allows you to change like the temperature of the screen basically like

00:40:11   the color temperature it allows you to make it nice and warmer at night so it's

00:40:14   on your eyes it's not so harsh you could have system-wide dark mode you could put

00:40:19   blank icons you can move your screen around you could hide the text beneath

00:40:22   the icons all of the things that you complained about in episode one but

00:40:25   Conrad says you must have a good reason why you do not jailbreak what is it I

00:40:33   appreciate that he's giving me the benefit of the doubt there for having a

00:40:37   good reason people know how you think gray the usual case on the internet is

00:40:42   people just yell at you for being stupid for not doing things the way they do it

00:40:46   as opposed to thinking "oh maybe they have a reason" so thank you for presuming

00:40:50   that I have a reason. There are a few reasons but I would say that the primary

00:40:59   one is that the way jailbreaking works is that it's a security exploit.

00:41:06   Apple doesn't want jailbroken phones and the very fact that you can

00:41:12   and jailbreak phones is not something Apple lets you do on purpose.

00:41:17   You have to crack through the security of the phone in order to accomplish that.

00:41:21   And so you have put the phone in a weaker security state than it otherwise would be.

00:41:30   Because now you're also installing jailbroken apps.

00:41:33   And I don't want to have an argument about how much less secure it is.

00:41:39   because people say, "Oh, it's only a tiny bit less secure."

00:41:43   I am not willing to make that trade-off

00:41:46   with something like my Apple devices for,

00:41:51   I know that I can fix a lot of the little nitpicky things

00:41:54   that bother me with jailbreaking.

00:41:55   I am very aware of that.

00:41:57   People tell me about it all the time on Twitter.

00:41:59   But I'm not going to make the trade-off

00:42:02   of any decrease in security

00:42:05   to fix what are basically nitpicking things that bother me.

00:42:09   That is really why primarily I don't jailbreak the phone.

00:42:13   - That was the reason that I assumed,

00:42:15   it's the reason I don't do it.

00:42:17   I don't wanna open myself to any vulnerabilities.

00:42:22   It's just not something that I wanna do.

00:42:24   Because these systems and the apps and stuff,

00:42:28   they're coming from people that I don't know,

00:42:31   I don't know if I can trust them.

00:42:33   But like with Apple stuff, it doesn't matter

00:42:35   if I feel like I can trust app developers

00:42:37   because they have to go through Apple's system,

00:42:39   which I do trust.

00:42:40   - Well, with trust, this is why I don't wanna argue

00:42:42   about how much more insecure it is.

00:42:44   Because with the current state,

00:42:46   I have to trust Apple and Apple's system.

00:42:49   But if I'm jailbreaking it, okay,

00:42:50   I already have to trust Apple and Apple's system,

00:42:53   but now I have to trust the person

00:42:54   who's written the jailbreaking code,

00:42:56   and I have to trust the individuals

00:42:58   who are also writing the software

00:42:59   that I'm installing on my phone.

00:43:01   And even if the probability of a security

00:43:06   exploit of some sort is only raised by 0.005%

00:43:11   over the course of a year, I'm not willing to make that

00:43:14   that trade-off to hide the words underneath my app icons

00:43:18   and that's partly because my phone and the whole iOS ecosystem

00:43:23   are so connected with lots of things that are hugely important to me

00:43:27   and that's why it's like I'm not going to do this, it's not going to happen

00:43:32   so you are a man in the public eye

00:43:35   By being that, you raise the probability of somebody trying to target you.

00:43:40   You don't want to open yourself up to stuff like that, I guess.

00:43:44   Let's just say that yes, as a person who makes videos

00:43:49   and things that are seen by millions of people,

00:43:52   I'm not going to do anything to decrease the security of my system.

00:43:56   Brendan on Twitter would like to know what case you use on your iPhone.

00:44:00   I do not have a case case on my iPhone.

00:44:04   I use a skin on my iPhone.

00:44:07   So this was, uh...

00:44:09   This I originally saw recommended by MKBHD on YouTube,

00:44:14   which was a thing that I thought I would never like, but it turns out I really do like.

00:44:18   Which is just, uh...

00:44:20   It's almost like a piece of grippy plastic that's maybe, you know,

00:44:25   a quarter of a millimeter thick that attaches to the back of your phone.

00:44:30   and it doesn't really serve to protect your phone except from very minor scratches.

00:44:35   The primary thing it does is it just makes the phone a little bit grippier.

00:44:39   So this is, again, this is from dbrand and I have a black one on the back of my phone

00:44:44   and I highly, highly recommend it because I really don't like every single case

00:44:50   I have ever seen or used on an iPhone.

00:44:52   They're all just, they're all just awful.

00:44:55   So I, this is what I use instead.

00:44:57   And you're not worried about what happens if you drop it?

00:44:59   because no additional protection is added to the phone by just sticking some grippy plastic on the back

00:45:05   Yeah, I mean if I drop it I drop it. This is what AppleCare protection is for.

00:45:10   You have AppleCare, right? Okay, that makes sense then.

00:45:12   So I'm not I'm not very worried about dropping it and

00:45:15   really that the

00:45:18   the chance of dropping it is greatly decreased with the additional grippiness of it because I

00:45:23   Mean I've complained about it before I'm not a huge fan of the iPhone 6 design generation

00:45:29   And one of the things is making all the the corners rounded and the back just perfectly smooth

00:45:34   Has seemed to have made it just way more likely that I was going to drop the phone

00:45:39   And so this this little this little case has decreased that a great deal. So I don't really worry about dropping the phone

00:45:45   Chris was interested and I don't know why I didn't consider this

00:45:50   But considering you have a fleet of iPads which we have established from a previous episode

00:45:56   Fleet is just a provocative word there.

00:45:59   Remind the listeners how many iPads you have in current use, Gray.

00:46:02   I don't have time to count them right now.

00:46:04   I mean, like, we know at least there is one in each bag and one in the office, right?

00:46:09   So they are in use, like, because you mentioned you have

00:46:12   the iPad for the white noise machine and that kind of thing.

00:46:15   We don't need to do this again, Myke.

00:46:17   Oh, no, I really want to.

00:46:18   I like to just remind people how many iPads you have that are in use.

00:46:23   So let's say that there are three that are used frequently.

00:46:27   Yeah, it is fair to say that there are three in frequent use. That's fair.

00:46:32   How do you keep them in sync? Because obviously, a change in app placement would drive you crazy

00:46:39   if something was different, if it had moved. The data that is in the devices,

00:46:44   you need to be everywhere so you can just put down one iPad and walk to the next room and pick up

00:46:48   your next iPad. Yeah, that's how that works.

00:46:53   You have enough. I don't know like I don't know maybe you have like the bathroom iPad the one behind the door

00:46:59   You know that kind of thing they're just like hanging around you trip over one sometimes

00:47:02   Right how do you make sure that all of those devices stay in sync like if you if you download one?

00:47:09   Do you have to get them all out and download it to the other like a little app or something?

00:47:12   How does that work for you?

00:47:14   Well one of the ways it works is that it frequently doesn't

00:47:19   That stuff is just not synchronized.

00:47:24   And things that drive me crazy are apps

00:47:29   that feel like they should synchronize but don't.

00:47:34   I'm going to call out two that in particular drive me crazy with this.

00:47:39   I'm looking at you, Launch Center Pro, and I'm looking at you, Workflows.

00:47:44   Workflows is the worst for this. I know they are building a sync process

00:47:48   because Launch Center Pro, we're going to talk about Launch Center Pro in a bit, don't worry, many people have asked about that as well.

00:47:52   They have a system of like taking the current thing, uploading it

00:47:56   to Dropbox as a backup, and then you can download it somewhere else. It doesn't happen automatically

00:48:00   but you can do it, but currently Workflow has no system

00:48:04   of syncing. Workflows, they have just

00:48:08   left you in the woods without any tools to fend for yourself.

00:48:12   Good luck. Good luck with all your actions there

00:48:15   And if they could turn off making me go through that tutorial when I put it on a new device

00:48:19   That would be really great guys

00:48:21   You know what a skip button the skip button would go a long way to me using your app more. I did that like yesterday

00:48:27   I was like really do I have to make this GIF action again?

00:48:30   How many times have you done that?

00:48:33   Yeah, I've done that a lot of times. I've done that a lot of times. Thanks workflow guys

00:48:37   You make an amazing app that I still can't believe Apple allows in the store

00:48:42   But boy does the point is that hurt for people for the listeners who are unaware workflows is it's very impressive

00:48:48   But it is basically a iOS

00:48:51   Automation app it allows you to like automator on the Mac build little build little workflows of oh when I press this button

00:48:59   I want these six actions to happen

00:49:01   It's very very handy

00:49:02   But I can honestly say that I use it much less than I otherwise would because of the pain and the buttonness of trying to

00:49:08   to keep things synchronized and yet at least with

00:49:11   at least with Launch Center Pro there's a there's a way to kind of manually

00:49:16   synchronize every time you make a change but yes apps that don't build in

00:49:21   synchronization are they have to be really good for me to want to stick with

00:49:25   them because synchronization is is very important to me. Pain in the butt-ness is

00:49:31   my new favorite phrase. Oh yeah? Yeah I love that I've never heard that before.

00:49:36   I'm glad you like that but there are other apps where I honestly just can't

00:49:41   believe it even works. I must be the edgiest of edge cases of anybody who

00:49:48   uses OmniFocus. The number of places and devices that I have OmniFocus installed

00:49:54   on various computers, it amazes me that I haven't had some kind of catastrophic

00:49:59   synchronization disaster yet with OmniFocus because it's just installed

00:50:04   everywhere. It's on the computers, it's on my iPhone, it's on the iPads.

00:50:09   Their system is very good, so I'm always impressed that OmniFocus is able to keep everything together

00:50:15   because I certainly run into enough apps that just don't

00:50:20   or that really fall down with synchronization problems

00:50:25   Like, "Oh, by synchronize, did you mean we want to triplicate everything that you have in this system?"

00:50:30   "Sure, we're gonna go right ahead. We're gonna make sure there's never any data loss."

00:50:33   It's like, "Oh, great, great. Thanks a lot, guys."

00:50:35   The short answer is oftentimes it doesn't work.

00:50:37   There's nothing I can do about it.

00:50:39   - This episode of Cortex is also brought to you by Igloo,

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00:51:36   These days everybody is mobile, everything is mobile and your work should be too.

00:51:41   But with our mobile lives sometimes we have documents all over the place.

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00:51:50   This can cause a couple of problems.

00:51:52   Sometimes people don't get access to the files that they need or they're using wrong versions

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00:52:37   restrictions. So go sign up right now igloo software.com/cortex. Thank you so much to igloo

00:52:42   for supporting this show and helping us out here at relay FM. Talking about OmniFocus,

00:52:49   They were a sponsor of last week's episode and you know, we know that you use them and I use them and we love them

00:52:54   And maybe and i'm sure as this is this series continues we will continue to talk about omni focus in different ways

00:53:01   But something incredible happens and I don't know if you've seen this so on the reddit, uh, barely anonymous

00:53:08   Found and also with the oh, yes. Yes. I saw this with the help of a giggling pancreas

00:53:15   This is great reddit names, by the way, amazing

00:53:18   found a post in the OmniGroup forum from CGP Grey saying, "I'm considering switching to

00:53:27   OmniFocus, but there is one question I have difficulty finding an answer to. How to make

00:53:31   repeating checklists. My situation is that I make videos for YouTube and currently have

00:53:35   a checklist of about 50 actions needed for each one, and I'm usually working on 3-5 videos

00:53:41   at a time. Is there any way when I decide to make a new video that I can create as a

00:53:45   new project in OmniFocus with all 50 actions already in the list. This was in 2012. Mr.

00:53:51   CGP Grey asked this question. And then there is a big thread here which will be in the

00:53:56   show notes this week with you going through and talking to people about this. Now we obviously

00:54:01   now know that you have the ability to do this and we're going to talk about that next week.

00:54:05   But this was so magical to me to find this, of CGP Grey finding his way in the productivity

00:54:12   world. I was so happy, so so happy to see this.

00:54:16   I remember when I was considering switching to OmniFocus. It was a big deal. I was using

00:54:21   Remember the Milk before OmniFocus for a lot of things. And I really liked that program.

00:54:27   But it did not... I ran into the issue, and this is the thing I have discussed before,

00:54:31   but I ran into this problem of... Do you know what... Does it say what month that was published?

00:54:37   This was published on... I assume this is the 5th of April.

00:54:41   Hmm, okay interesting. So that would have been right around the time that I was moving to do YouTube full-time then

00:54:51   if I have my mental timeline correct.

00:54:54   And that was when I was becoming aware of I need to use a system that has a much better notion of projects as an object.

00:55:06   And I don't know what "Remember the Milk" is like now, because I haven't used it in years,

00:55:11   but at the time "Remember the Milk" didn't have a, like a inbuilt notion of a project,

00:55:16   it just had actions, it was just a list of things.

00:55:20   And I was aware that this was starting to fall down for me now that I had these YouTube videos,

00:55:25   which I needed projects as a thing.

00:55:28   And so that's one of the reasons I was originally looking at OmniFocus,

00:55:31   and then yes, trying to figure out, oh, how can I do repeated lists,

00:55:35   there were very easy ways in Remember the Milk to do that and I couldn't figure out

00:55:38   how to do it in OmniFocus. But yeah, it's a big deal when you decide, "Oh, I'm really

00:55:42   going to switch applications." And I remember doing that. It's a big moment. It's a piece

00:55:48   of history. It is! It really is! It really is a piece of history. Patrick asked, "Now

00:55:53   that you have retired the Fitbit..." Now I'm assuming that he's making this assumption

00:55:57   because you used the Apple Watch. You don't use the Fitbit anymore? You've switched? He's

00:56:02   He's probably saying that because I mentioned on Hello Internet that I ditched the Fitbit.

00:56:06   That was a thing that I wasn't using anymore.

00:56:09   So now that you've gotten rid of that, what is your waking up routine?

00:56:12   Because, you know, the Fitbit was a way that could tap you awake in its own beautiful little

00:56:17   way.

00:56:18   So how do you deal with that now?

00:56:20   Yeah, this is a problem that I have not adequately solved at the moment.

00:56:26   I'm going to go on a side tangent here.

00:56:28   I'm going to hope for a moment that someone who's very high up in the design of the Apple

00:56:34   Watch is listening to this podcast right now.

00:56:36   We're talking to you, Craig.

00:56:38   Yeah.

00:56:39   Johnny, I want to make sure that you hear me because I have a very particular thought

00:56:44   about the iWatch.

00:56:45   Uh oh.

00:56:46   You said it wrong, Gray.

00:56:48   Oh, I will.

00:56:50   God d*** it.

00:56:52   This is staying in.

00:56:55   My iWatch running OS X.

00:56:57   Is that right?

00:56:58   - Oh no.

00:56:59   - Is that perfect for everybody?

00:57:00   This is going to be our little Apple diversion for a moment.

00:57:03   But Apple is always obsessed with making things thinner,

00:57:08   keeping the battery life the same

00:57:09   and keeping things thinner.

00:57:11   This is Apple's MO.

00:57:12   I look at the Apple Watch,

00:57:15   I feel like we're at a real crossroads here

00:57:18   and I want to see what happens with the next version

00:57:20   because more than any other device,

00:57:25   I think if they go for thinner without improving the battery life,

00:57:30   I don't think that's a good sign.

00:57:32   Because if I was in charge of the Apple Watch hardware design,

00:57:37   this would be my goal to the team.

00:57:40   I would say, here's what we want.

00:57:42   We want the watch to be able to 100% of the time guaranteed

00:57:49   last a full 24 hours so that a person can wear it

00:57:54   while they are sleeping,

00:57:56   and that it should be able to charge in 30 minutes or less

00:58:01   in the morning while the person is getting ready.

00:58:05   So the goal is to change the user behavior

00:58:07   with charging the watch.

00:58:09   That instead you wake up,

00:58:10   you put the watch on the charger,

00:58:12   you do your morning routine,

00:58:13   and then you grab it when you're on your way to work.

00:58:15   That that's when it should charge,

00:58:17   it should charge quickly in that window.

00:58:19   Because I think the sleep tracking

00:58:22   is a huge, huge health feature for the watch.

00:58:27   But it's something that we'll know

00:58:28   they're not even thinking about

00:58:30   and they're not even trying to approach

00:58:32   if they just constantly push for the watch

00:58:35   to be thinner and lighter and not improve the battery life.

00:58:39   So what I want is I want my Apple Watch

00:58:42   to be able to track my sleep

00:58:45   and be able to do the thing that I used to have Fitbit do,

00:58:48   which is to silently wake me

00:58:50   but not disturb my wife in the morning.

00:58:53   That's what I want out of Apple Watch.

00:58:55   I don't want a thinner Apple Watch.

00:58:57   I don't want a lighter Apple Watch.

00:58:59   I want an Apple Watch that I can wear overnight

00:59:02   and that can charge quickly in the morning.

00:59:03   This is what I want.

00:59:04   - So right now, what's waking you up?

00:59:09   Like, do you have an alarm, which is waking up everybody?

00:59:12   - I am using an app called Sleep Cycle.

00:59:15   And Sleep Cycle is

00:59:19   Its purpose is to be a sleep tracking app for your iPhone.

00:59:25   And so I have a long lightning cable that I can plug my iPhone into.

00:59:31   And so I'm supposed to put the iPhone underneath the top sheet of the bed

00:59:34   and let it run sleep cycle all night.

00:59:37   And it tries to track how awake it thinks I am by motion and by the microphone, I think.

00:59:43   And so it's trying to gauge how awake I am.

00:59:47   and then I give it a window in which it can try to wake me in the morning

00:59:51   and it doesn't... it's not an alarm for

00:59:54   6.30 in the morning, it's an alarm range which says

00:59:58   "Oh, between 6.30 and 7, the phone is going to vibrate

01:00:03   to try to pick the time when it's best to wake

01:00:06   me up." That's what I'm currently using. But it is suboptimal for a variety of

01:00:11   reasons. One is which

01:00:12   Even though it does sort of fine, I don't think it's great if you have two people in the bed

01:00:17   because it can't be as accurate as a watch could be for tracking sleep.

01:00:21   And secondly, the iPhone 6 Plus motor is loud.

01:00:26   It is not a secret when your iPhone 6 Plus is vibrating.

01:00:30   And so it can definitely disturb my wife in the morning even though it's not making any noise.

01:00:35   The motor itself is just loud enough and the vibration is strong enough

01:00:39   that it can wake up both of us instead of just me.

01:00:43   So the current charge time of the Apple Watch

01:00:47   is 1.5 hours to 80%, 2.5 hours to 100%

01:00:51   So I guess really what you would love to see is

01:00:55   30 minutes to 80% for example.

01:00:59   This is like a physics thing with batteries that people are not often aware of, is the fact that it

01:01:03   charges faster when it's emptier.

01:01:07   I can see this can be achievable if they can increase very slightly the rate of charge and

01:01:14   they can also increase the battery capacity by simply not making the watch smaller and instead taking advantage of the

01:01:22   much slower, but still

01:01:25   increase in battery technology over time. Like you can increase battery capacity, and if you can increase the charge rate,

01:01:31   I can imagine that they could get a watch that would have enough battery capacity and could charge to 80% in 30 minutes

01:01:37   Because then you could wear it overnight it could track your sleep

01:01:40   It could wake you up in the morning, then you go take a shower and it's charging right that that's that is

01:01:45   That is what I would want out of the Apple watch and I think the sleep tracking feature is is a big enough health thing

01:01:51   That it's important for Apple to to go for because once they start tracking a whole bunch of data

01:01:58   you can then start making comparisons on the iPhone about

01:02:01   What affects your sleep?

01:02:03   How does your activity during the day affect your sleep?

01:02:05   And I think sleep is a enough of an issue for enough people

01:02:08   That it could be a really great selling feature of we're going to try to have the Apple watch help you with your sleep

01:02:14   I think that that could be a really big deal

01:02:16   Let's talk about launch center Pro. This was something I didn't expect the amount of people

01:02:22   To question this as they did but many many people want to know about

01:02:28   Why use it? What it is? What's in there?

01:02:31   You know how I would describe it? It's a button that you can press

01:02:34   that brings up basically a second home screen

01:02:38   that you can fill with customizable buttons to do things.

01:02:41   People wanted to know basically if I was cheating by having my iPhone

01:02:44   look so clean because there's actually a huge mess that's hidden under

01:02:48   Launch Center Pro of like a second screen of applications that are launched.

01:02:52   And I do have a few applications

01:02:56   that I launched from Launch Center Pro,

01:02:59   I have jury-rigged Launch Center Pro

01:03:04   to be a custom time tracking app for myself.

01:03:09   So when I open up Launch Center Pro,

01:03:15   I have a bunch of icons that represent

01:03:18   the various kinds of work that I do.

01:03:21   - Can you show me this?

01:03:22   Can I see this?

01:03:23   - I will show this to you,

01:03:24   but I don't actually want this to go in the regular show.

01:03:26   - So you don't want this image here to go into the show notes?

01:03:30   - I don't for a variety of reasons

01:03:32   I don't want to get into right now.

01:03:33   - Okay.

01:03:34   (laughs)

01:03:35   - But you can see it, so you can see,

01:03:37   even though I know that it sounds like I'm a crazy person

01:03:39   because I don't want this image to go in there.

01:03:41   - 'Cause it doesn't say anything, but.

01:03:43   - Yeah, I know, but it's,

01:03:45   there's a way in which this is sort of a trade secret, but.

01:03:48   - Okay.

01:03:49   (laughs)

01:03:50   - You have to take my word on that.

01:03:51   - I'm going to have to, I think.

01:03:53   Oh no, he uses an envelope icon!

01:03:57   Yeah, you can leave this discussion in the show if you want.

01:04:01   I don't want the actual image of the icons, which means

01:04:05   nothing to almost anybody to go into the show.

01:04:09   But so anyway, when I open up Launch Center Pro, I have a

01:04:13   basically about six icons that represent different

01:04:17   kinds of work that I do. And when I press those

01:04:21   buttons, I have set it up so that Launch Center Pro, through Dropbox, automatically adds a

01:04:28   row to a spreadsheet that's on my computer that basically logs the time that I have spent

01:04:33   on these various activities.

01:04:35   Wow.

01:04:36   So this is 99.9% of my Launch Center Pro use.

01:04:42   I use it for a couple of other things, but the reason that it is on my dock is because

01:04:46   it is a customized-to-me time tracker.

01:04:49   what I use Launch Center Pro for. So do you trigger it to begin and trigger it to

01:04:54   end? No, no okay so this is well this is a little bit of my my workflow but I

01:04:59   mentioned on the earlier episode that I use do and the timers all day long and

01:05:04   so what is happening with me is that I work in blocks of 40 minutes and I think

01:05:12   of that as a unit of time in my head. So I set on do a timer for 40 minutes and

01:05:19   and I'm working on a particular area of work.

01:05:23   I don't like to mix different areas.

01:05:24   So if I'm working on YouTube stuff,

01:05:26   I'm just going to work on YouTube stuff for 40 minutes.

01:05:29   When the timer goes off, I do two things.

01:05:33   I will reset the timer if I want to do another unit.

01:05:36   And I also then quickly just open Launch Center Pro

01:05:40   and mark that yes, I have completed one unit of time's worth of work on this activity.

01:05:46   So you log this once it's completed, not when it's beginning?

01:05:50   That's exactly right.

01:05:51   Right, now I understand. Yeah, okay.

01:05:53   Because of course what can happen is occasionally something comes up and a unit of work doesn't actually get completed

01:05:59   and I'm really, really strict about this, that if I don't feel like, "Oh, I actually did a full unit's worth of work," I do not log that time.

01:06:07   So my assumption of this is those spreadsheets become charts

01:06:14   and that allow you to see how your time is spent

01:06:18   so you're able to work out if you spent your time correctly.

01:06:22   Yeah, basically this feeds into a spreadsheet

01:06:26   that allows me to see one, how much time I'm working on various projects of mine.

01:06:31   And secondly, this is a thing that I think is really, really important

01:06:36   for people who are self-employed, this spreadsheet also then calculates my hourly rate overall,

01:06:45   and my hourly rate for particular kinds of work. Basically, how much do I earn per hour

01:06:51   on different tasks?

01:06:53   This is something that I want us to come back to later.

01:06:55   Okay.

01:06:56   Simply because I'm like, "Hmm, I should probably have something like this."

01:07:02   Well, there are many, many people who are self-employed that I try to convince to do a system like this, because it is really useful.

01:07:10   If you want to have a bigger conversation about this later, I think that is a long conversation.

01:07:16   But that is the purpose that Launch Center Pro serves for me.

01:07:20   It tracks my time, and then that time gets fed into another system that is part of my overall decision-making algorithm system.

01:07:28   See, this was not what I expected for your Launch Center Pro use.

01:07:32   Yeah? What did you think I did?

01:07:34   I assumed that you probably used it like many people do, to launch apps and to have little custom things that fire off little workflows and stuff like that.

01:07:42   Yeah, there's nothing else on here that's really of note, and I hardly ever use the other things that are on there anyway.

01:07:47   So yeah, this is basically all I use it for.

01:07:49   So what do you use Launch Center Pro for?

01:07:51   I have a similar kind of idea to you in that I have a bunch of actions in here

01:07:56   that get used like 0.01% of the time. 99% of my usage of Launch Center Pro is a

01:08:03   launcher for different Google Docs. So what I have in here is I have a

01:08:08   button that I press called Google Drive which then opens another view which has

01:08:13   a bunch of icons. I have all of the icons for our shows so it can take me into the

01:08:17   document that I keep for each of our shows like to do our outline and our

01:08:20   rundown so I can go into those quite quickly. I have a button that takes me to

01:08:24   our calendar, our sponsorship calendar that we hold, and our tracking

01:08:28   spreadsheet or relay so I know like where the money is and that kind of

01:08:31   stuff. And then I can also have a button to just open Google Drive. And that's

01:08:35   because the Google Drive apps on iOS are a nightmare. To look at a

01:08:42   Google Drive document like a Docs thing, like a Word document they

01:08:47   basically. You have to have two apps installed. You have to have the Google Drive app and

01:08:52   then the Google Docs app. So you can have one, but then if you want to get to your file

01:08:56   structure you have to have the Drive app. It's a nightmare. So you have to have the

01:09:00   Drive app to get to the file structure and then a Docs app to actually open the file.

01:09:04   Right. You are, I mean, I hate the Google Drive apps as well, which is why I basically

01:09:08   don't use them and why I didn't even want to use them for this show. But you are using

01:09:12   Launch Center Pro as a way to make Google Docs more quickly accessible to you because

01:09:18   you can link to the exact page and have it open up.

01:09:22   So what happens is I use Launch Center Pro, I open the... I click on the icon for the

01:09:27   document, then two apps open, right? So it goes to Google Drive.

01:09:30   Yeah, Safari, then Safari kicks you over to Google Docs or whatever.

01:09:34   So it's, you know, it's an annoying way but it helps me use those applications because

01:09:39   I use Google Drive for so much stuff, trying to use their apps is a nightmare and Launch

01:09:44   Center Pro enables me to get to those documents really quickly.

01:09:49   That's what I use it for.

01:09:51   It's interesting that we both don't use it for its core thing, but we have something

01:09:55   that we do with it that makes it super useful to us.

01:09:59   Launch Center Pro ostensibly is just to have a place to quickly launch apps, but I think

01:10:05   if you're nerdy enough to know that Launch Center Pro is a thing that you want to use,

01:10:10   you probably are also the same kind of person who's going to figure out some way to customize it to you.

01:10:16   I would bet that not very many people actually just use it as an additional app launcher.

01:10:22   I bet most people who end up sticking with it do so because they have found a thing that's like

01:10:27   "Oh yes, this allows me to do X."

01:10:30   Because it's nerds using this. It's not normal people using this.

01:10:34   Breadman86 on Reddit would like to know why we use Overcast.

01:10:40   We both use Overcast to listen to podcasts.

01:10:45   She said that they've heard us, I've heard you talk about it a bunch of times, it's on

01:10:48   my home screen as well.

01:10:51   What do you find the appeal for Overcast to be over other applications to listen to podcasts

01:10:55   on iOS?

01:10:57   The killer feature for me in Overcast is the smart speed, where when you're listening to

01:11:01   a podcast overcast will automatically cut out a bunch of the gaps when nobody is speaking.

01:11:09   It's not making the podcast faster, it's not playing it back 50% faster, it's just cutting

01:11:14   out the places where no one was talking.

01:11:20   It's very good because it doesn't change the pitch of the speakers and it just makes the

01:11:26   podcast go along a little bit faster.

01:11:28   So I can see in the stats that basically I get through podcasts 10 to 20 percent faster with smart speed on

01:11:34   without having any of the negative side effects that you would in different apps for just simply

01:11:40   cranking up the speed by 10 or 20 percent. That's the primary reason why I use it. The main disadvantage of

01:11:47   Overcast is that now when I listen to audiobooks on Audible the pauses in the audiobooks feel like they take a thousand years

01:11:56   I feel like I want to be able to shove all of my audiobooks into

01:12:00   Overcast because I now have a very low tolerance for

01:12:04   pauses in spoken material

01:12:07   Hence for some reason audiobook narrators have way longer pauses than any normal person would when they're reading something out loud

01:12:14   So that that's why I use overcast primarily. That is a hundred percent my reason as well. I love smart speed

01:12:20   I think it's fantastic

01:12:21   I like the way that the app looks and works and stuff like that, but smart speed is my jam

01:12:26   That's what I love it for because I don't like listening to shows at faster speeds because it sounds weird

01:12:31   And smart speed can sometimes make some things sound weird like music, right?

01:12:36   There's music and shows sometimes it speeds up the music a little bit

01:12:39   but the the I love smart speed for the fact that it helps

01:12:44   Me get through my podcast faster without distorting them

01:12:49   That's what I love it for and that's why I use it as well

01:12:51   This episode of cortex is also brought to you by field notes

01:12:56   Field notes are fantastic notebooks that I love and use every single day. I love to be able to write things down

01:13:02   I write down lists of stuff that I need to do. I write down ideas

01:13:06   I write down notes when we record these shows and I write them all down in field notes notebooks

01:13:11   I have been a subscriber and huge fan of theirs for years

01:13:14   I am a very happy color subscriber. Now a color subscriber of Field Notes notebooks means that you will receive every year

01:13:21   Their four limited editions sent directly to you. Now Field Notes limited editions are fantastic

01:13:26   they take a lot of care and a lot of love to create really inventive and

01:13:30   Interestingly designed notebooks that just have so much character to them

01:13:35   They just make you want to use them every day because they're really fun. They're really awesome

01:13:38   They're really beautifully designed Field Notes notebooks are the perfect size to pop in your bag your car

01:13:44   are there for you. They are nice and small, durable and wear really greatly.

01:13:56   Field Notes most recent edition for the summer is called the Workshop Companion Edition.

01:14:00   It features a set of six books and a custom sleeve of a set of stickers. Each book is

01:14:05   themed to a common project to be done around the house, like electrical work, plumbing,

01:14:10   painting, gardening, automotive and woodworking. If you are a Field Notes colours subscriber

01:14:14   You'll also receive a workshop reminder magnet as well. You can find out more about the workshop edition over at field notes brand.com/workshop

01:14:23   You can buy them individually if you want

01:14:25   But I really think that you should be signing up for a colors description

01:14:28   Which means that you're gonna get these great notebooks delivered directly to you

01:14:31   four times a year and if you do buy a year-long colors description starting with the workshop companion and use the code relay at

01:14:39   check out you will get yourself three carpenter pencils and a three pack of pitch black memo

01:14:43   books as well for free. But you want to hurry because when these things sell out they're gone

01:14:47   they don't bring them back they're limited edition so don't delay go and check them out right now.

01:14:52   Field notes I'm not writing it down to remember it later I'm writing it down to remember it now.

01:14:57   So one other question that I've had a bunch of people ask and I think I'm struggling to

01:15:03   understand the reason why. So Skovin1997 on Reddit asked who edits this podcast?

01:15:09   Many people were like very confused about one that this show even exists in

01:15:15   the first place because they're interested about you know the fact that

01:15:19   you've found the time for it which I really appreciate but many people were

01:15:23   asking if you who gets the final edit? Now this feels like something in the

01:15:28   canon that I am missing. I think people are mostly just asking because I often

01:15:32   it is very well known that I am the person who does the final edit and really all of the editing on on hello internet and

01:15:39   Hello internet editing takes up a lot of time

01:15:44   I spend a lot of time editing that show so I think that and people are aware of that

01:15:48   I think that's why they're asking but our current arrangement is

01:15:53   one of the only reasons that I could even agree to do this podcast with you was that

01:16:00   You are taking on the vast, vast majority of the work of this.

01:16:05   The agreement was that I can show up and I can talk, but you are handling all of the ad stuff,

01:16:12   you're handling all of all of the infrastructure requirements, you're handling the uploading, you're handling

01:16:18   essentially all of the editing, and I am not taking that on because

01:16:24   if I had to do that half of it, I simply couldn't agree to to do another podcast.

01:16:30   There's no way, there's no way it would, it would work.

01:16:33   But what we do have right now is the agreement that I, I will get to listen to it before it goes live,

01:16:39   and on the last two shows I have made some minor edits, but I really don't want to edit it very much at all.

01:16:46   Ideally, I shouldn't be editing at all, but I do want to listen to it before it goes, goes live.

01:16:52   So I guess I have in theory like final editorial say that if I want to cut something,

01:16:57   You'll cut it, but you are doing 95% of the work.

01:17:02   I am just showing up and talking to you

01:17:06   for a little while on the afternoons.

01:17:08   - I wanted to round out today's show

01:17:10   with a little discussion about some current event things.

01:17:15   So this is maybe something that I will bring in

01:17:16   every now and then.

01:17:17   I wanted to talk about some stuff that's happening

01:17:19   right now in technology that I think will impact

01:17:22   the way that you work, and I'm interested to see today

01:17:25   how you feel about it.

01:17:25   So we are recording this episode on the 17th of June, 2015.

01:17:30   And last week, Apple, which is the company

01:17:35   that you hold many products for

01:17:37   and you are well within their ecosystem,

01:17:38   as we had discussed, to the upset of many,

01:17:40   they had their worldwide developers conference

01:17:42   where they unveiled iOS 9,

01:17:44   so the latest updates to the iOS operating system.

01:17:47   One of those came many advancements for the iPad,

01:17:50   like multitasking, where you'll be able

01:17:53   to have split screen applications

01:17:55   and they've added new effects of the keyboard

01:17:58   in that you can move the cursor around and stuff like that.

01:18:02   Have you taken a look at this?

01:18:04   Have you had the inclination

01:18:07   to want to play around with it yourself?

01:18:08   And do you think that this kind of setup

01:18:11   is going to affect your work in a positive or negative way?

01:18:15   - Well, once again, anyone who follows me on Twitter

01:18:17   had to suffer through my live tweeting of the WWDC 2015.

01:18:22   And so I definitely have a keen interest in watching those, because again, the iPad is

01:18:29   my primary computer in many ways.

01:18:32   And so yes, I want to very much see any changes that they are going to make.

01:18:37   And this one I was particularly pleased to see the way that they are improving iOS 9.

01:18:45   And the main one that will affect me is the multitasking.

01:18:50   to be able to have two apps on the screen side by side.

01:18:54   That I am extremely interested in trying out

01:18:58   and seeing how that works because

01:19:02   right now I'm

01:19:06   I tend to do a kind of funny thing with my scripts where the scripts are

01:19:10   a single text document but I'm very often mixing

01:19:14   research that I've done with the script

01:19:18   mainly because since I'm always working on the iPad, I want to be able to see it all in one place.

01:19:22   And so I will paste

01:19:24   pieces of research into my script and kind of bracket it off so I know like "You didn't write this, this is from somewhere else!"

01:19:30   And keep rearranging those and put pieces of the script below it, and then as time goes on

01:19:37   I end up deleting the research out because I don't need it anymore, because it's not relevant or whatever.

01:19:43   And that has partly developed because on

01:19:46   iOS there is this limitation of I can only see one screen and I want to be able to see the research and the script

01:19:52   at the same time

01:19:53   and so the idea of being able to have

01:19:56   my notes on one side of the screen and the script on the other is like mind-blowing like wow

01:20:04   This is going to radically change the way that I work. So I am I am extremely interested in trying this out

01:20:11   I've signed up to be part of the public beta program

01:20:14   so hopefully that will come out pretty soon and as soon as it does I will I will put on my iPad air and

01:20:20   Give it a try. Yeah, because there is gonna be a public beta in July. Do you think you'll dive in then? Yeah

01:20:27   Yeah, I'll dive in on the the first public beta

01:20:29   I'm not crazy enough to put it on my iPad right now when it's the developer beta

01:20:34   That's a little it's a little too soon

01:20:36   and if there's some kind of problem or a crash that loses data like it's it's costly enough for me that I don't want to

01:20:42   Have a problem on my main working machine

01:20:44   But I will I will be willing to try out and see what the state of the public beta is when it comes out in

01:20:50   July so I am I am anticipating that

01:20:52   I'm very much looking forward to that. I bought this iPad here to do that with oh, yeah

01:20:58   Yeah, and I have it installed here. You have iOS 9 installed right now. Mm-hmm. How is it stable? Yes

01:21:05   I have run into no problems, but do not take my word for this.

01:21:09   So you're saying that I can trust you, I can trust your advice that iOS 9 is perfectly stable

01:21:14   and it will cause no problems. That's what I'm hearing.

01:21:17   What I'll say is, I installed iOS 9 onto a completely fresh iPad

01:21:22   and I am using apps like OmniFocus and I am using apps like

01:21:27   Fantastical and Workflow and none of them are having any problems right now.

01:21:32   But I cannot guarantee that that will be the case for everybody.

01:21:36   You are guaranteeing that it's perfectly fine.

01:21:40   You know what, yes, okay, let's go with this.

01:21:43   You get the mic guarantee and you can decide what that means to you.

01:21:47   The rumors right now is that it's going to be a larger iPad.

01:21:50   A big iPad.

01:21:52   Maybe like a 12 inch iPad.

01:21:53   Is that something you want?

01:21:55   Oh yeah, yeah, of course.

01:21:56   Give me the bit.

01:21:57   I actually, when I saw the rumors they were saying something like it's estimated by screen

01:22:01   It's like a 12.9 inch iPad screen and immediately took out a ruler and measured it on my actual iPad

01:22:07   How big is 12.9 inches?

01:22:09   Like yes, I would very much like this iPad the iPad Pro as it were to have something that's much bigger

01:22:15   Because again for my for when I'm working with my iPad

01:22:21   I'm using it very often differently

01:22:25   Like I'm not sitting on the couch where having a big thing might be a little bit awkward to hold very often

01:22:30   It's it's on a table on a stand and so a bigger screen is yes, hugely appreciated in that scenario

01:22:37   And so yes, I would be one of the first people to sign up for the bigger iPad

01:22:42   I really I really hope that that is the case. I'm also

01:22:44   I'm also holding out for the rumor that there may be an official Apple stylus that would go along with this iPad

01:22:54   I would be very interested in that if it was the case because I have tried for years to find

01:23:00   and acceptable iPad stylus.

01:23:03   And at least the current state of things is that

01:23:06   they're all degrees of tolerable,

01:23:11   but there are no iPad styluses on the market now that I could say are

01:23:16   good. It's all about what terrible flaws can you tolerate and what

01:23:20   trade-offs are you willing to make.

01:23:21   So that's why I've used an iPad stylus for

01:23:25   years but in the... I'm not exactly sure quite when it was. Maybe it was when I did

01:23:30   my big pocket reshuffle, but at some point I thought, you know what, I'm just giving

01:23:34   up on these iPad styluses for the moment. So I don't currently use one, and I would

01:23:40   be very hopeful if Apple can make one that really acts much more like a pen. I could

01:23:47   see a lot of uses for that.

01:23:48   I'm going to add fuel to that fire for you. So there is advancements to the Notes app,

01:23:54   which I'm sure will make you very happy because you've used the Notes app.

01:23:58   I don't care about that.

01:23:59   of the advancements are drawing tools. Now drawing tools really suggest a

01:24:07   drawing implement. For example, one of the tools that is in here is a

01:24:11   ruler, which you can use with one hand and draw with the other to make lines.

01:24:15   And I have heard from a verifiable source that Apple have gone to great

01:24:21   lengths in the Notes app to increase the precision and reduce the latency?

01:24:28   Yeah, the latency is the real killer. Again, for the listeners.

01:24:33   Latency basically means that on your iPad, if you open up any drawing app on your iPad now

01:24:38   and you put your finger on the screen, you can move your finger fast enough that the drawing app

01:24:43   can't keep up. And that is the real killer problem for lots of

01:24:48   of iPad styluses and for doing any kind of precision work. Like if you want to

01:24:52   try to write like you would write cursive on a piece of paper on an iPad

01:24:58   you'll lose your mind because of the latency. I mean it's only it's very

01:25:02   slight but it's enough that it's a real problem so it's really a latency

01:25:06   issue with trying to get an iPad stylus that works like a pen. So the new Notes

01:25:12   app it does feel better and my understanding is there's a lot of work

01:25:15   going on in that department. So maybe you will get what you want, Gray.

01:25:19   I think that all the stars are aligning for a bigger iPad, about 12 inches, which

01:25:25   apparently will be able to have two full-size apps side-by-side on it, which

01:25:30   is why they're going for that length. And it also seems like that there will be a

01:25:34   stylus. So I think that, you know, the Graypad is being developed. So somebody

01:25:42   is listening to you, Gray. I hope Apple dedicates themselves very much to making

01:25:47   what I want. Overnight Apple watches, iPad pros, good

01:25:52   style eye. This would be great. The last thing I'll ask about the

01:25:56   iPad today. Do you ever envision a world in the future where you could make your

01:26:02   videos on an iPad? Do you think that that could ever happen? Like this could be like

01:26:07   in ten years time for example, but do you think that this device could one day

01:26:11   become the device where you could do your editing and stuff on it?

01:26:14   Or do you think that a keyboard and a mouse and the Wacom that you use will always be

01:26:19   the preferred input method for this kind of stuff?

01:26:22   I mean, to answer your question,

01:26:25   if someone took away my Mac and the only tool I could use was an iPad,

01:26:33   I could make videos exclusively on the iPad today.

01:26:39   The cost would be, I mean, probably quadrupling the amount of time in the animation phase.

01:26:48   At least quadrupling, probably.

01:26:50   Because the touchscreen is just a slower interface with that.

01:26:55   So when I'm animating, when I'm doing the drawings, I'm using a program called Inkscape for the moment to do all those drawings.

01:27:03   And I'm, like, I know all the keyboard shortcuts in Inkscape. I'm very fast about it.

01:27:08   And so I have one hand on the keyboard and I'm using my Wacom tablet with the other hand

01:27:12   And so I can very very quickly do everything that I want to do

01:27:16   It's almost like as fast as I can think about it like, okay

01:27:18   I want to change this color to be 50% opacity or I need to make this stroke line a little bit thicker

01:27:24   I can do that super fast and

01:27:26   It's almost impossible to imagine a touch interface that can replicate that speed

01:27:34   I

01:27:37   I don't imagine that that's the that that will ever be the case, but one of the reasons why I am interested in the stylus

01:27:43   Is there are many

01:27:45   There are many situations where I don't have my Mac with me, but I do want to either sketch out some animations

01:27:50   Or sometimes I'm just in the mood to do animations

01:27:54   and so I'm constantly thinking about is there a way that I can do more of this work on the iPad and

01:27:59   That's partly why an iPad pro interests me and especially an iPad pro with a stylus

01:28:06   Without a stylus, animating on the iPad is just never going to be practical.

01:28:12   It just doesn't work with the position of your hands and the tools that are available.

01:28:15   But if we can have an actual pen input, I can imagine

01:28:19   offloading some of the animation work, some of the very early animation work to the iPad, which is something I would like to do.

01:28:28   But...

01:28:30   Even if we're thinking about an iPad

01:28:33   10 years in the future it if that iPad is anything like an iPad today, you know a

01:28:39   rectangular touch interface surface, it's it's hard to imagine it being faster than a

01:28:45   Keyboard unless they are doing a full haptic simulation of a clicky keyboard

01:28:52   You know if that's the state of the technology well, then yes, maybe I could but now we're talking about something

01:28:58   which is unrecognizable as an iPad.

01:29:00   You never know. Let's see what happens in October.

01:29:03   And then we can move forward from there.

01:29:05   I don't think they'll be replicating with haptic technology keyboards just yet.

01:29:09   But someday, someday they'll do.

01:29:11   That Force Touch stuff, I mean I don't, I think that this, it's very early.

01:29:15   People are saying we're going to see that kind of thing.

01:29:17   I think that that's years away, but the stuff that Apple is doing with Force Touch

01:29:21   I think is the beginning of that.

01:29:23   Oh, oh yeah, the haptic stuff is very impressive.

01:29:25   I've seen a few demos with a few other pieces of technology of haptics being able to simulate something like the feel of a button

01:29:33   And it's very impressive. Currently we're at the stage of concerns about energy consumption and space and device

01:29:40   But if you are unconstrained by those, you can do some pretty impressive stuff with haptics

01:29:45   And yes, I do think that the watch is the very very beginning of that stuff

01:29:49   And it will progress to further places

01:29:52   but for the foreseeable future it's still pretty hard to imagine something

01:29:59   that can beat a Mac and a keyboard in terms of just speed and efficiency. It's

01:30:05   the same thing with the podcast. In theory I could edit the podcast and do

01:30:09   everything that I need to do on the iPad, but it's just going to take way longer. I

01:30:15   mean, you know, again with Hello Internet it takes so long to edit that and if I

01:30:19   was doing it on the iPad it would take so much longer but it's it's possible

01:30:24   now it's possible to do but it's just not optimal.

01:30:28   So people will have heard in this episode lots and lots of feedback and I hope that it spurs on people to

01:30:35   presenting more because I think what it's shown is part of the show and I

01:30:39   think a lot of this show into the future will be built around people asking

01:30:44   questions and things like that because I think it's really interesting. So next

01:30:47   week you know as I said we're going to talk about the what it looks like from

01:30:51   the moment Grey decides he's gonna put a video up and how those like 24 to 48

01:30:56   hours look like but I will also want to do a bit more Ask Grey and there's you

01:31:01   know people I think the best way for me to see this stuff is for people to tweet

01:31:05   with their questions and their thoughts because if they use the hashtag #askgrey

01:31:09   it all gets collected into a document for me it's very easy but I do look in

01:31:13   the reddit and I have a lot of the stuff you have heard today come from reddit

01:31:15   questions and things like that so you can ask your questions and give your

01:31:19   feedback in the Reddit so you can go into the post I'm still trying to get

01:31:23   the vernacular correct gray it's like into the post that you'll make on Reddit

01:31:27   which will be for this episode is that the right thing to say they can leave a

01:31:30   comment on thread one day I'll get it I promise I will get it one day so they

01:31:36   can do that and people will see it there I've been there I've been trying to

01:31:39   understand what to do one day we will talk about read it more in depth on this

01:31:43   show once I actually can navigate the website and all the apps that are

01:31:47   associated with the website. But you can also find us both on Twitter, Gray is @CGPGray

01:31:53   on Twitter and I am @IMYKE. You can find the show notes for this week's

01:31:57   episode over at relay.fm/cortex/3. Thanks to our sponsors for helping us

01:32:03   out this week and we'll be back next time. Mr. Gray, goodbye.

01:32:07   Goodbye Myke.

01:32:10   [ Silence ]