Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:12 ◼   ► From Real AFM, this is Upgrade, Episode 421.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Sourcegraph, Fitbod, DoorDash, and Doppler.

00:00:21 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Hi Jason Snow.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Hi Myke Hurley, it's very exciting.

00:00:26 ◼   ► It's the summer of fun.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Summer of fun!

00:00:28 ◼   ► Summer of fun!

00:00:29 ◼   ► - Oh, I realize I haven't said that in a couple of weeks.

00:00:32 ◼   ► - We got a special episode for you.

00:00:34 ◼   ► You know, you're here now and then you're gonna go away

00:00:38 ◼   ► and then you're gonna come back.

00:00:39 ◼   ► And in between, we'll have a special episode.

00:00:42 ◼   ► - All of this episode was recorded in advance

00:00:45 ◼   ► in various stages of advance, which is fun.

00:00:48 ◼   ► - Indeed.

00:00:50 ◼   ► - So we have some guests later on,

00:00:51 ◼   ► which we'll talk about in a minute.

00:00:52 ◼   ► This was recorded after we recorded episode 420.

00:00:56 ◼   ► - We did.

00:00:57 ◼   ► Then we put the thing in from further back in time

00:01:00 ◼   ► and brought it forward and that's how time works.

00:01:02 ◼   ► So anyway, 4.21, here we are.

00:01:04 ◼   ► - I have a #snowtalk question for you.

00:01:07 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:01:08 ◼   ► - Comes from Savva who wants to know, Jason,

00:01:10 ◼   ► what's your tea set up when you're not at home?

00:01:13 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:01:14 ◼   ► Well, I mean, unless you take the robot with you,

00:01:17 ◼   ► is it just tea bags? - I don't take the robot

00:01:18 ◼   ► when I stay at home.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - Something more elaborate, what happens?

00:01:21 ◼   ► - So we do pack tea bags just in case

00:01:25 ◼   ► there's no tea that we like,

00:01:26 ◼   ► 'cause that happens.

00:01:28 ◼   ► We were just traveling and day one,

00:01:31 ◼   ► there were two English breakfast tea bags left

00:01:33 ◼   ► at the hotel breakfast and so we used those.

00:01:36 ◼   ► And then we came back the next day and guess what?

00:01:38 ◼   ► There were none 'cause we apparently finished that off.

00:01:41 ◼   ► So then I used the English breakfast tea bags

00:01:43 ◼   ► that we brought.

00:01:44 ◼   ► So we bring some tea with us.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Usually in scenarios where we can't,

00:01:50 ◼   ► we don't have a kettle or something like that,

00:01:53 ◼   ► we will bring tea bags just in case.

00:01:55 ◼   ► for that very reason, like they've got hot water,

00:01:59 ◼   ► but not the tea that we like.

00:02:02 ◼   ► If we've got access to a kettle,

00:02:04 ◼   ► I have a little pot that holds,

00:02:09 ◼   ► it's like metal, I got it on Amazon.

00:02:12 ◼   ► It holds actually the same amount of water as the T-robot.

00:02:17 ◼   ► And it's like a thermos and it's got a tea strainer in it.

00:02:20 ◼   ► So I can actually, if I have a kettle,

00:02:23 ◼   ► I can pour the hot water in over the leaves and then remove the leaves and I've got a

00:02:30 ◼   ► thermos dispenser thing with two, with four cups of tea in it, which is perfect.

00:02:37 ◼   ► So I bought that.

00:02:38 ◼   ► It's a good fit and I will take that when I travel if I'm going to be somewhere where

00:02:41 ◼   ► I can make tea with like boiling water.

00:02:43 ◼   ► But if we're just going to Oregon and we're staying in one of these motels that's got

00:02:46 ◼   ► a hotel breakfast, we just bring the tea bags and deal with it.

00:02:51 ◼   ► Making water for tea in hotel rooms is terrible because it used to be that there was a coffee maker,

00:03:00 ◼   ► but the water you get out of the coffee maker just tastes like coffee already, because they use it to make coffee.

00:03:07 ◼   ► And now it's all like pods, all like coffee pod things, which you can't-

00:03:14 ◼   ► - The Nespresso nonsense.

00:03:15 ◼   ► - Even more, you can't get the, just get me the hot water out of it.

00:03:21 ◼   ► So in the end, you know, in situations like that,

00:03:24 ◼   ► we will either go down and use the hot water from the hotel

00:03:27 ◼   ► or we stay on the street we stay on when we go to Oregon

00:03:30 ◼   ► is next to a Starbucks.

00:03:33 ◼   ► You just go over there and they actually have black tea

00:03:36 ◼   ► for us to drink.

00:03:37 ◼   ► So those are our choices.

00:03:38 ◼   ► - The typical answer is just find a Starbucks or whatever.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Right, 'cause you can get those basically everywhere.

00:03:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, and bring the emergency teabags

00:03:47 ◼   ► in case the place that you're staying doesn't have

00:03:50 ◼   ► any tea that you want to drink. But like I said, if I have access to a kettle, if it's

00:03:53 ◼   ► an Airbnb or something like that, I will bring the little pot and it works great.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I will say as a coffee drinker, I do envy tea drinkers.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Why? Because it's easier, I think, to get a possible

00:04:12 ◼   ► version of what you're looking for. Oh, that's probably true. I view it from the

00:04:17 ◼   ► the other perspective, which is in America especially,

00:04:20 ◼   ► it's a coffee culture, and so everybody knows

00:04:22 ◼   ► how to make coffee.

00:04:23 ◼   ► We were out to breakfast the other day,

00:04:26 ◼   ► and well yeah, we'll get to it,

00:04:28 ◼   ► but we were out to breakfast the other day

00:04:29 ◼   ► at a place that served hot tea,

00:04:31 ◼   ► and they were like, even though they serve it,

00:04:33 ◼   ► they were confused about, they brought it in a little thing

00:04:37 ◼   ► with the leaves in it, which was really nice,

00:04:39 ◼   ► but they didn't have a strainer,

00:04:41 ◼   ► so you're like pouring the leaves out?

00:04:43 ◼   ► - That's pretty bad.

00:04:44 ◼   ► - We had to get them, and that just happens a lot,

00:04:46 ◼   ► where people don't know, or they bring it

00:04:48 ◼   ► and they expect it to just sit forever in the hot water,

00:04:52 ◼   ► which is like, well, no, you can't do that.

00:04:53 ◼   ► It gets all bitter and bad, but they don't know

00:04:55 ◼   ► because they only know about really how to do coffee.

00:04:57 ◼   ► Now to your point though, I appreciate the fact that

00:04:59 ◼   ► if you like good coffee, it can be harder to come by

00:05:03 ◼   ► and harder to make for yourself and all of those things.

00:05:05 ◼   ► I get that.

00:05:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I will say that bad coffee is everywhere

00:05:12 ◼   ► and really bad.

00:05:16 ◼   ► That's what I hear.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:05:18 ◼   ► Don't like it.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Get a McDonald's coffee?

00:05:22 ◼   ► Especially in—you know what, actually?

00:05:24 ◼   ► McDonald's coffee for, like, high street coffee?

00:05:29 ◼   ► Pretty decent.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:05:31 ◼   ► I have heard that from other people, that McDonald's seems to have realized that they

00:05:36 ◼   ► would not be able to sell food to people if they couldn't have decent coffee in their

00:05:41 ◼   ► stores.

00:05:43 ◼   ► So I think they do a pretty decent job.

00:05:45 ◼   ► - Interesting. - I think.

00:05:46 ◼   ► There are chains in the UK.

00:05:50 ◼   ► In my opinion, the worst is Costa Coffee.

00:05:55 ◼   ► I don't care if you like Costa Coffee.

00:05:57 ◼   ► I think Costa Coffee's terrible.

00:05:59 ◼   ► I prefer a McDonald's coffee to a Costa Coffee

00:06:01 ◼   ► any day of the week. - Interesting.

00:06:02 ◼   ► All right, how about Starbucks?

00:06:04 ◼   ► - That's my choice.

00:06:05 ◼   ► - All right.

00:06:06 ◼   ► - If I have to go, if I need a chain coffee,

00:06:11 ◼   ► that's the one that I'm gonna go for,

00:06:12 ◼   ► 'cause I know that there is some level of reliability

00:06:16 ◼   ► out of it.

00:06:17 ◼   ► I always recommend the blonde roast at Starbucks

00:06:19 ◼   ► because it's not really, really, really dark,

00:06:23 ◼   ► which Starbucks is very dark roasted coffee.

00:06:26 ◼   ► I mean, obviously I would always prefer

00:06:29 ◼   ► the small coffee shop, the independent coffee shop,

00:06:31 ◼   ► but you can't always get them.

00:06:32 ◼   ► They're not always available.

00:06:33 ◼   ► - Right, well, there's something,

00:06:35 ◼   ► that's the thing about chains that's great

00:06:37 ◼   ► is that there's usually a consistency there.

00:06:39 ◼   ► And if you find something you like consistently at a chain,

00:06:42 ◼   ► It may not be great, but it's consistent and you at least know what you're going to get.

00:06:46 ◼   ► There's something to that.

00:06:49 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question of your own to help us open an episode of the

00:06:52 ◼   ► show, you can just send in a question over Twitter with the hashtag Snowtalk, or you

00:06:56 ◼   ► can use question mark Snowtalk in the Relay FM members Discord.

00:07:01 ◼   ► You can get access to this Discord if you're a Relay FM member.

00:07:03 ◼   ► You can go to getupgradeplus.com and you can become a Relay FM member and also get access

00:07:09 ◼   ► to Upgrade Plus, which is longer, ad-free versions of the show,

00:07:14 ◼   ► every, each and every single week, which is amazing.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Even on episodes where we record them in advance,

00:07:20 ◼   ► you still get extra content.

00:07:21 ◼   ► - Amazing. - Because we care about you.

00:07:23 ◼   ► - We care. - We want you to have

00:07:24 ◼   ► that extra content that we promised you.

00:07:25 ◼   ► So I said that there was something coming up today.

00:07:27 ◼   ► So on this episode today, Jason,

00:07:30 ◼   ► you're gonna be joined by Rosemary Orchard,

00:07:32 ◼   ► Federico Vittucci, and Matthew Castanelli

00:07:34 ◼   ► to talk about what?

00:07:36 ◼   ► - Automation. - Could you imagine it?

00:07:37 ◼   ► - I've assembled the automation, Apple automation,

00:07:40 ◼   ► in specific automation all stars.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Yes, automation all stars, automation Avengers,

00:07:46 ◼   ► if you like, that's fine.

00:07:48 ◼   ► To talk about the present and future state

00:07:53 ◼   ► of automation shortcuts and otherwise on Apple's platforms.

00:07:56 ◼   ► So I've brought in Rosemary Orchard

00:08:00 ◼   ► from the Automators podcast and Federico

00:08:02 ◼   ► from all the things Federico does that are related to--

00:08:04 ◼   ► - From Federico.

00:08:06 ◼   ► from Federico's business, Max Stories, et cetera,

00:08:09 ◼   ► connected Max Stories universe.

00:08:10 ◼   ► And Matthew Casanelli, who used to work on shortcuts

00:08:13 ◼   ► and now does shortcuts stuff at his website,

00:08:16 ◼   ► which is just matthewcasanelli.com, very clever.

00:08:19 ◼   ► And he is his own brand.

00:08:22 ◼   ► But they're never usually talking about automation together,

00:08:26 ◼   ► so I got them together.

00:08:28 ◼   ► - So you got that to look forward to.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Jason mentioned automators, relay.fm/automators.

00:08:33 ◼   ► That's a place where you can go to get Rosemary

00:08:36 ◼   ► and David Sparks show all about automation here at Relay FM.

00:08:40 ◼   ► Jason, I noticed you posting something

00:08:44 ◼   ► about the iOS 16 audio scrubber.

00:08:49 ◼   ► - Right, did that a few weeks ago, yep, the scrubber.

00:08:51 ◼   ► - You seem to like it.

00:08:53 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:08:54 ◼   ► - And I'm not sure.

00:08:57 ◼   ► - In the beta, what they've done is they've taken

00:09:00 ◼   ► the little dot away that indicates

00:09:03 ◼   ► where you are in terms of volume

00:09:05 ◼   ► or in terms of location in a track

00:09:07 ◼   ► and replaced it with a contrast.

00:09:11 ◼   ► It's like a gray, a light gray and a dark gray or something.

00:09:14 ◼   ► There's a contrast between them that shows the progress.

00:09:16 ◼   ► But more than that, the dot is gone,

00:09:19 ◼   ► which means the touch target of like where to drag is gone.

00:09:22 ◼   ► And that's good because you can actually touch anywhere

00:09:24 ◼   ► and then drag left or right to move the progress

00:09:27 ◼   ► or volume up or down.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And I think it's a less,

00:09:32 ◼   ► less precision being required is a good thing.

00:09:36 ◼   ► I've heard counterarguments that maybe

00:09:39 ◼   ► they could leave the dot or some other more,

00:09:43 ◼   ► more noticeable indicator of status

00:09:46 ◼   ► while making the whole area swipeable

00:09:49 ◼   ► and that would be a compromise.

00:09:51 ◼   ► The thing that I like about it is that I like

00:09:53 ◼   ► that the whole area is swipeable

00:09:55 ◼   ► so you don't have to feel like you have to hit

00:09:57 ◼   ► the little tiny target or you miss.

00:09:59 ◼   ► and then nothing happens.

00:10:01 ◼   ► And also I like the fact that when you hit it,

00:10:04 ◼   ► it expands, it gets bigger.

00:10:06 ◼   ► So it's more visible as you're swiping.

00:10:08 ◼   ► I think that's actually a nice effect.

00:10:10 ◼   ► - I think I'm just gonna get used to it.

00:10:12 ◼   ► 'Cause I think when I immediately saw it,

00:10:16 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, you can't do it anymore.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Like you can't scrub anymore."

00:10:20 ◼   ► That was my immediate reaction.

00:10:22 ◼   ► I don't know why I thought that was the case,

00:10:25 ◼   ► but that's just how it looked.

00:10:26 ◼   ► because the bar looks the same, really.

00:10:29 ◼   ► It's just the dots gone. - No control.

00:10:31 ◼   ► No control.

00:10:33 ◼   ► - This feels very iOS 7 to me.

00:10:35 ◼   ► - It is, and that's why I think that I saw people

00:10:40 ◼   ► pushing back against it, and I initially thought,

00:10:42 ◼   ► oh no, what have they done?

00:10:44 ◼   ► And then I used it and I thought,

00:10:45 ◼   ► oh no, this is better, I actually like this better.

00:10:48 ◼   ► I can see there's an argument that the keeping it

00:10:51 ◼   ► in the bar and having it be two shades of gray

00:10:56 ◼   ► is perhaps a little too subtle if you're trying to get a quick read on where you are in a

00:11:00 ◼   ► song or what the volume level is. I get that. I'm not sure the little dots are the right

00:11:05 ◼   ► approach. I don't know, because the little dots are, they are, a little skeuomorphic.

00:11:11 ◼   ► I'm not sure the little dots are the right thing to do, but I can see the argument that

00:11:17 ◼   ► there ought to be something a little more visible about where you are in the spectrum

00:11:22 ◼   ► from far left to far right.

00:11:24 ◼   ► And I think that's a fair point,

00:11:27 ◼   ► but I really love the behavior.

00:11:29 ◼   ► I love not having to hit that little tiny touch target

00:11:32 ◼   ► 'cause I think it was unreasonable.

00:11:34 ◼   ► And I cannot tell you how many times I tried

00:11:36 ◼   ► to grab the volume slider and slide it up and missed

00:11:39 ◼   ► and did a whole gesture that did nothing

00:11:41 ◼   ► because I didn't get it exactly pixel perfect

00:11:44 ◼   ► on that little teeny tiny dot.

00:11:46 ◼   ► And that's stupid, right?

00:11:47 ◼   ► Like you've got that whole bar there,

00:11:48 ◼   ► view it as a little scrubber bar

00:11:52 ◼   ► that you can touch anywhere to adjust it either direction.

00:11:56 ◼   ► That interaction is better,

00:11:58 ◼   ► but the visual that one, that you can touch it,

00:12:01 ◼   ► and that two, like at a glance, where are you?

00:12:04 ◼   ► I can see the arguments.

00:12:05 ◼   ► I definitely, I think the contrast got better in later betas.

00:12:08 ◼   ► In early betas, I actually looked at it and I couldn't,

00:12:11 ◼   ► I thought it was just a gray bar.

00:12:13 ◼   ► Like I didn't even realize there were two contrasting bars

00:12:18 ◼   ► because, and I think they've amped up the contrast,

00:12:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:12:22 ◼   ► - Later betas it looks better, yeah.

00:12:24 ◼   ► - Here's the thing, I've kind of,

00:12:27 ◼   ► after I read your article, I liked it more

00:12:29 ◼   ► because I realized you could do the thing

00:12:30 ◼   ► where you could start the scrub from anywhere.

00:12:32 ◼   ► - Right.

00:12:33 ◼   ► - I would never assume that that's something

00:12:34 ◼   ► you'd be able to do though.

00:12:37 ◼   ► I would always just assume,

00:12:38 ◼   ► unless until I was told by you,

00:12:40 ◼   ► I would just assume I have to get my finger

00:12:42 ◼   ► to try and be like basically where the middle is,

00:12:45 ◼   ► like where it used to be, you know?

00:12:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, so how do you communicate that if you're Apple?

00:12:50 ◼   ► That's a question.

00:12:53 ◼   ► - You can't.

00:12:54 ◼   ► And then what will happen is,

00:12:56 ◼   ► some point in nine months from now, someone will tweet,

00:13:00 ◼   ► "I can't believe that nobody knew you can do this."

00:13:05 ◼   ► And then everyone goes wild.

00:13:06 ◼   ► - It'll be a TikTok video.

00:13:08 ◼   ► And it'll be like, "Oh my God, look at my finger.

00:13:10 ◼   ► It goes back and forth, and oh, oh."

00:13:12 ◼   ► And that'll be like a bazillion people will watch it

00:13:15 ◼   ► and reveal that that was a feature that was there.

00:13:18 ◼   ► and Jason will say like, "I wrote about it in July."

00:13:21 ◼   ► And they'll say, "Go away, old man."

00:13:24 ◼   ► - Old man, no one reads your blog,

00:13:25 ◼   ► turn it into a TikTok.

00:13:26 ◼   ► And then there'll be a bunch of other articles written about

00:13:29 ◼   ► has Apple's discoverability issues gone too far

00:13:32 ◼   ► with software and like, why can't Apple make a tips app?

00:13:35 ◼   ► But they do and no one wants to use it.

00:13:37 ◼   ► And then we go around and around and around.

00:13:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, why isn't this more skeuomorphic?

00:13:41 ◼   ► I want the volume slider to be made of like a wood grain.

00:13:45 ◼   ► Sure.

00:13:47 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Sourcegraph.

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00:15:41 ◼   ► Okay, it's time for the summer of automation with my special guests. Let me introduce them

00:15:48 ◼   ► to you now from MacStories and the Connected Podcast and so much more. Federico Viticci.

00:15:54 ◼   ► Hi Federico. Hello Jason, thank you for having me. How are you? I'm doing great, thank you

00:15:59 ◼   ► for being back on Upgrade. I think maybe the last time you were here you predicted, successfully

00:16:03 ◼   ► predicted the downstream podcast, so thank you. Yes I did. For doing that. You got the

00:16:08 ◼   ► name a little bit wrong, but close enough. I'll give you full points. Close enough. No,

00:16:11 ◼   ► thank you, thank you. You were sort of the inspiration. I've been thinking, you got in

00:16:14 ◼   ► my head, I was like, oh that would be a good podcast, maybe we should do that sometime.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Do these points count for the connected quiz? Consult Myke, I guess. Ask him if they count.

00:16:23 ◼   ► It's like turning in a coupon or something. I got this coupon that Jason wrote that says

00:16:27 ◼   ► a hundred points. I got a coupon from Jason. Does it count? And he'll discount it to one

00:16:32 ◼   ► point or something like that. Rosemary Orchard is also here from Automators and iOS today

00:16:36 ◼   ► and rosemaryorchard.com and so many other things. Rosemary, welcome.

00:16:40 ◼   ► Hi, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I mean, especially with all of you awesome

00:16:45 ◼   ► people.

00:16:46 ◼   ► It's where we're doing cross. Like I wanted people from all over who don't always talk

00:16:52 ◼   ► every week about automation to talk together to get together. And that's also why I invited

00:16:58 ◼   ► Matthew Casanelli of the perfectly named MatthewCasanelli.com.

00:17:03 ◼   ► Hello, how are you?

00:17:05 ◼   ► - Hello, thank you for having me on.

00:17:06 ◼   ► I'm super excited.

00:17:07 ◼   ► This is gonna be a great conversation.

00:17:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

00:17:10 ◼   ► A few years ago, there was that Masters of Automation event

00:17:13 ◼   ► in Santa Clara that Paul Kent put together

00:17:16 ◼   ► and Sal Segoian was there.

00:17:17 ◼   ► I believe the Shortcuts team was present but silent

00:17:25 ◼   ► 'cause they had been absorbed.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Were you at that, Matthew?

00:17:28 ◼   ► - I was not.

00:17:29 ◼   ► I think I knew that they were there though.

00:17:30 ◼   ► - They were there.

00:17:31 ◼   ► It was funny too,

00:17:32 ◼   ► 'cause we're all talking about Apple automation

00:17:34 ◼   ► and they're like, do, do, do, do, do, do,

00:17:35 ◼   ► 'cause they hadn't been announced.

00:17:37 ◼   ► There was nothing.

00:17:38 ◼   ► It was, they were in sort of stealth absorbed

00:17:41 ◼   ► into Apple mode.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And we did an upgrade episode way back when about that.

00:17:45 ◼   ► And I thought this would be a fun way to revisit automation

00:17:47 ◼   ► and also not bore Myke.

00:17:50 ◼   ► So Myke can take a step back.

00:17:53 ◼   ► I mean, not excite Myke too much with automation talk.

00:17:56 ◼   ► I know he gets a lot of it from Federico too.

00:17:58 ◼   ► I wanted to start with the personal.

00:18:02 ◼   ► I wanted to start by asking all of you sort of like what,

00:18:05 ◼   ► we talk about user automation

00:18:07 ◼   ► and creating like computers are dumb.

00:18:09 ◼   ► And so you create tasks that computers are good at

00:18:14 ◼   ► and that humans shouldn't have to worry about.

00:18:16 ◼   ► And that's like the core of what doing user automation

00:18:19 ◼   ► is all about.

00:18:20 ◼   ► And we all write and talk about automation professionally,

00:18:25 ◼   ► but I'm curious about your own personal use,

00:18:29 ◼   ► the stuff that you are really using the most these days

00:18:33 ◼   ► in your lives to automate your lives.

00:18:37 ◼   ► Rosemary, what about, let's start with you.

00:18:39 ◼   ► What are you automating with these days?

00:18:42 ◼   ► - I mean, my house.

00:18:44 ◼   ► That's one of them.

00:18:45 ◼   ► And the shortcuts app, of course, is another,

00:18:48 ◼   ► but it really depends on what the problem is

00:18:50 ◼   ► that I'm looking to solve.

00:18:51 ◼   ► Is it that I'm struggling to wake up in the mornings,

00:18:53 ◼   ► in which case automated curtains and blinds are a useful solution, or is it that I need

00:18:58 ◼   ► to be able to add a consistent list of things I need to do to prepare for going into the

00:19:02 ◼   ► office for a day to my TALs list, in which case shortcuts is, or actually combined with

00:19:09 ◼   ► drafts in that case, are going to be my automation weapon of choice.

00:19:13 ◼   ► Is it a weapon?

00:19:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:19:15 ◼   ► It can be.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Tool seems a little bit minimizing the effect that automation can have, because it really

00:19:20 ◼   ► can have a huge effect on everything in your day and actually help construct your day,

00:19:26 ◼   ► I find. But yeah, I've been doing a lot specifically home automation related, but of course all

00:19:31 ◼   ► of the personal automations and shortcuts are constantly, especially thanks to the betas,

00:19:35 ◼   ► going through some kind of evolution.

00:19:38 ◼   ► What about you, Matthew?

00:19:40 ◼   ► I've been automating like every inch of my life. And so that's been a little bit of an

00:19:46 ◼   ► an undertaking and way, way too much, I think.

00:19:50 ◼   ► 'Cause I've kind of been going for,

00:19:52 ◼   ► I still am trying to like teach people

00:19:53 ◼   ► about all of the possible capabilities

00:19:56 ◼   ► and I got so into it myself that I feel like

00:19:59 ◼   ► I started to recognize I needed to share more with people.

00:20:03 ◼   ► And so I have been focusing a lot more on my actual workflow

00:20:06 ◼   ► and publishing articles and doing live streams

00:20:10 ◼   ► and kind of stacking all those things within a week

00:20:13 ◼   ► because that's one of the big things is

00:20:15 ◼   ► It's multimedia and it's a lot of context switching.

00:20:18 ◼   ► And so shortcuts is really good for setting you up

00:20:22 ◼   ► for the right context when you need it

00:20:23 ◼   ► and then hiding things when you don't need it.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Or I guess that's part of iOS now too,

00:20:27 ◼   ► but I'm doing tons with focus modes and widgets

00:20:31 ◼   ► and then also like stream deck on the Mac

00:20:33 ◼   ► to kind of replicate that experience there.

00:20:36 ◼   ► - Wow, focus modes.

00:20:37 ◼   ► I am only, I still am just sort of like,

00:20:39 ◼   ► I have one focus, I have a focus mode

00:20:41 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:20:42 ◼   ► that I use sometimes when I'm writing

00:20:45 ◼   ► and sometimes I forget, or what I do is I'm writing

00:20:47 ◼   ► and then somebody bugs me and I think,

00:20:49 ◼   ► oh right, this should be focus mode so they don't bother me.

00:20:52 ◼   ► - All right, team, we have a mission.

00:20:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have just have not gotten down that path as much.

00:20:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, the way they did it in iOS 14 was kind of weird,

00:20:59 ◼   ► so I think it's probably better this year.

00:21:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, probably so.

00:21:03 ◼   ► Federico, I know you've talked about Obsidian a lot,

00:21:06 ◼   ► but is that your big automation right now,

00:21:10 ◼   ► or are there other things that you're doing

00:21:11 ◼   ► that are key to what you do?

00:21:13 ◼   ► Well, yeah, so I really go back and forth on this because I've been through the various stages of life where I try to automate everything, right?

00:21:21 ◼   ► And you try to automate your house and you listen to music and when you work out.

00:21:26 ◼   ► And then over time, I kind of realized two things that if you at least personally, when I try to automate everything and anything, it's easy to lose control.

00:21:38 ◼   ► And it's easy to forget, like, things start happening and then you realize, oh, I didn't

00:21:43 ◼   ► realize I set up this automation months ago. And so and also, I should mention that, you

00:21:48 ◼   ► know, sometimes, especially when you live with someone else, your partner doesn't necessarily

00:21:53 ◼   ► appreciate all the crazy automations you've set up. Right. So you've got to be especially

00:21:57 ◼   ► mindful of what you're setting up in the house and if the other person or other people agree

00:22:02 ◼   ► with what you're doing. So I've been through that. I've been through that stage as well.

00:22:06 ◼   ► But I think lately what I realized is that yes, there's I would say 50% of the automations

00:22:13 ◼   ► that I use on the Mac and now also on the iPad I want to say, in some shape or form

00:22:19 ◼   ► integrate with Obsidian.

00:22:21 ◼   ► But the other types of automations I think are most useful on the iPhone.

00:22:26 ◼   ► And these are automations that are used for, they are work related but also for personal

00:22:31 ◼   ► use.

00:22:32 ◼   ► I really like it when they just happen reliably and consistently without any input.

00:22:40 ◼   ► So to give you an example, something that I do all the time is when I copy a link to

00:22:45 ◼   ► a tweet from the official Twitter app, the Twitter app appends all those ugly tracking

00:22:51 ◼   ► parameters to the tweet.

00:22:53 ◼   ► And I don't really want to have those things in my URL when I send it to somebody else.

00:22:58 ◼   ► So a simple automation that I have is whenever I close Twitter, that's a trigger that you

00:23:04 ◼   ► can use, it cleans up the link for me.

00:23:07 ◼   ► I don't have to think about it.

00:23:09 ◼   ► I don't have to do anything else.

00:23:10 ◼   ► I set it up months ago.

00:23:12 ◼   ► It uses a regular expression to take care of the unnecessary part of the link I don't

00:23:16 ◼   ► want, and it cleans up the link for me and it pastes it back into the clipboard.

00:23:21 ◼   ► And that's the kind of automation that I find myself relying on most these days.

00:23:25 ◼   ► There's the Obsidian commands for sure, but there's also the stuff on the iPhone that

00:23:28 ◼   ► it just happens, but I'm very judicious about it, I guess. I have maybe five of these. I

00:23:35 ◼   ► don't want to overdo it. It's a lesson that I've learned, I think, over the past couple

00:23:39 ◼   ► of years.

00:23:40 ◼   ► Is it basically doing, like, it's looking when you leave Twitter, it looks at the clipboard

00:23:46 ◼   ► and says, "Is there a Twitter link on the clipboard?" And if so, I rewrite it and put

00:23:50 ◼   ► it back on the clipboard. So when you exit Twitter, that clipboard gets cleaned up to

00:23:54 ◼   ► something nice.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Exactly, and only if it's a link to a tweet, not a link to a profile, for example, or not

00:24:01 ◼   ► a link to an image. So it looks at the type of link and it cleans it up and it copies

00:24:07 ◼   ► it back so that by the moment I'm opening iMessage or Discord, the link has already

00:24:12 ◼   ► been cleaned up.

00:24:14 ◼   ► That makes perfect sense. I really like that sort of thing. And there is a lot to be said

00:24:18 ◼   ► about reliable automations, right? I'm sure all of us at some point have created something

00:24:22 ◼   ► to demo something to somebody else and then forgotten about it. And then gone, "Wait,

00:24:27 ◼   ► why is my phone doing this weird thing?" I had a really weird issue with an alarm going

00:24:30 ◼   ► off at like 6.25 PM every day for a week until I realized it was one that I'd set up to demo

00:24:36 ◼   ► I think was on iOS today. It's like, "Oh, right. I really need to start disabling those

00:24:41 ◼   ► like the second I finish the show."

00:24:43 ◼   ► I have a lot of unnamed… I mean, I know this is just sort of more for people like

00:24:48 ◼   ► us than for regular people, but like my shortcuts file window is littered with badly named or

00:24:57 ◼   ► not named shortcuts that are like, let's try this or here's a sample. And then it just

00:25:02 ◼   ► stays there forever. And I, and every once in a while I think, what are these things?

00:25:07 ◼   ► And the answer is they're all garbage. And I just have left them there.

00:25:10 ◼   ► I create those in a folder. So I have a specific folder for demo, which I always go to before

00:25:16 ◼   ► I start creating like random examples like that because then I know I can just nuke everything

00:25:20 ◼   ► in that folder and it's gone because otherwise especially now because this is something the

00:25:24 ◼   ► shortcuts team have done to try and improve things right there they're giving things like

00:25:27 ◼   ► a name from like a variable or the first auto action step but that means that it's no longer

00:25:33 ◼   ► really easy to find all of your untitled shortcuts it's just automatically with like a search

00:25:40 ◼   ► in the app which is it's both a great thing and also a bit of a shame I think for the

00:25:44 ◼   ► the vast majority of users, this is a win. And possibly, you know, us here on the podcast

00:25:50 ◼   ► are the outliers going, this is potentially a bit of a problem because I can no longer

00:25:54 ◼   ► find the unnamed shortcuts in my library.

00:25:56 ◼   ► I had a shortcut that used the iOS 16 action to search shortcuts. And I searched for the

00:26:02 ◼   ► word new shortcuts so that I could find the ones that I hadn't finished yet. It's too

00:26:07 ◼   ► much for your shortcuts.

00:26:08 ◼   ► This is what Federico was talking about, about getting too deep down in.

00:26:12 ◼   ► - I mean, you say that, but also it is a very easy way

00:26:16 ◼   ► to find those ones specifically,

00:26:18 ◼   ► and especially combined with the new delete shortcut action.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Like I'm using that to clean up my demo folder now,

00:26:23 ◼   ► which is great, but you know, it's surprising actually

00:26:26 ◼   ► how far very short action shortcuts can get you.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Like Jason, my immediate instinct to you

00:26:31 ◼   ► saying you don't use focus modes

00:26:32 ◼   ► is you press the stream that button

00:26:34 ◼   ► when you start recording.

00:26:35 ◼   ► Why don't you tie focus mode into that,

00:26:38 ◼   ► triggered via a shortcut, and you can have it

00:26:40 ◼   ► auto turn off after two hours or whatever it is.

00:26:43 ◼   ► Or you could have the turn off tied into the other side

00:26:47 ◼   ► of the button that stops your recording

00:26:50 ◼   ► so that it turns off your focus mode.

00:26:52 ◼   ► - You're absolutely right.

00:26:52 ◼   ► - Because I find that a lot of the benefits

00:26:55 ◼   ► from automations are actually small building blocks

00:26:58 ◼   ► that then you stick together so that you have a bigger thing

00:27:00 ◼   ► so for example, Federico's tweet,

00:27:03 ◼   ► that ends up building part of a bigger workflow for him,

00:27:05 ◼   ► I'm guessing in some cases, but not in every case,

00:27:08 ◼   ► But it's a very useful building block, which you can reuse as you need to.

00:27:13 ◼   ► And I think that's where automation can really become a much bigger and easier thing for people to understand when they realize,

00:27:23 ◼   ► "Actually, I've got lots of little Lego bricks together, and I can stick them together, and I've got a little wall, and then you've got a house, and then you've got a castle.

00:27:29 ◼   ► And before you know it, you've got a moat and a trebuchet, and there's no chance of invaders, even if that's not what you're aiming for.

00:27:35 ◼   ► But hey, your curtains open and close automatically."

00:27:38 ◼   ► It's funny that you mentioned that

00:27:39 ◼   ► 'cause that's actually one of my favorite automations

00:27:41 ◼   ► right now and it's a very simple home app automation.

00:27:44 ◼   ► But I did get some blinds for my office

00:27:49 ◼   ► after being in it for seven years.

00:27:50 ◼   ► And in the summer, just basically I would run outside

00:27:54 ◼   ► and I had a thing that I would throw over the roof

00:27:55 ◼   ► that would block the sun from shining right in my face

00:27:58 ◼   ► in the afternoon.

00:27:59 ◼   ► And I finally got some blinds that are,

00:28:02 ◼   ► they're the smart blinds, they're Lutron Casita smart blinds.

00:28:08 ◼   ► And the automation is great because it's keyed on sunset.

00:28:11 ◼   ► And I was able to figure out how many hours

00:28:13 ◼   ► or minutes before sunset does the sun shine in my face.

00:28:17 ◼   ► And now they go down at that time

00:28:20 ◼   ► and it's just as the sun is starting to hit my desk

00:28:23 ◼   ► and they go back up right before sunset

00:28:26 ◼   ► after the, but after the sun is already

00:28:28 ◼   ► kind of behind the house next to mine.

00:28:32 ◼   ► And I love that one. - Nice.

00:28:33 ◼   ► - But most of my active automations are

00:28:37 ◼   ► I've been doing a lot of Stream Deck stuff

00:28:39 ◼   ► and I know before we started recording,

00:28:41 ◼   ► I mentioned that my favorites are the basically press

00:28:45 ◼   ► to start recording kind of thing,

00:28:46 ◼   ► because I like the tactile nature of that

00:28:50 ◼   ► and not having to open AudioHijack

00:28:52 ◼   ► and get the right thing out and press the button

00:28:54 ◼   ► and having the ability to just press this one button

00:28:56 ◼   ► and now that AudioHijack has JavaScript scripting

00:29:00 ◼   ► inside of it, having it be able to fire off

00:29:03 ◼   ► the exact right thing.

00:29:05 ◼   ► And then at the end, when I press that button,

00:29:08 ◼   ► and it changes because I'm using Keyboard Maestro

00:29:10 ◼   ► as an intermediary, it is changing the content

00:29:14 ◼   ► of the button, really wish that there were other ways

00:29:16 ◼   ► of doing that, really wish that Stream Deck,

00:29:19 ◼   ► well, I mean, really wish Stream Deck was better.

00:29:22 ◼   ► It's the Stream Deck app was better.

00:29:23 ◼   ► - I mean, it does have that toggle, right?

00:29:25 ◼   ► It's got that, I can't remember what it's called now

00:29:27 ◼   ► in Stream Deck terms, but that doesn't--

00:29:29 ◼   ► - Two-way switch or something like that.

00:29:31 ◼   ► And it does, I mean, the challenge there is that

00:29:34 ◼   ► It's not very smart.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Whereas my automation is actually getting a response back

00:29:41 ◼   ► and evaluating it and deciding whether it's truly on or off

00:29:44 ◼   ► and changing based on that.

00:29:45 ◼   ► Whereas the Stream Deck thing, if it gets out of sync,

00:29:48 ◼   ► it's just stays out of sync on its toggle.

00:29:51 ◼   ► I also have some multi-switch toggles.

00:29:53 ◼   ► So for upgrade, I go through the state

00:29:56 ◼   ► where I press the button and it opens the Zoom chat

00:29:59 ◼   ► and the show doc, and then I press it again

00:30:03 ◼   ► and it starts my recording and I press it a third time

00:30:06 ◼   ► and it stops the recording and moves the recording

00:30:09 ◼   ► into Dropbox for mic.

00:30:10 ◼   ► So it's a three stage thing and I changed what's

00:30:13 ◼   ► on the button for all three stages.

00:30:16 ◼   ► And recently I upgrade,

00:30:18 ◼   ► I think we mentioned this on upgrade,

00:30:20 ◼   ► recently there was an episode where the first 10 minutes

00:30:22 ◼   ► of my audio is from Zoom because I forgot

00:30:24 ◼   ► to start recording.

00:30:25 ◼   ► And that led to an automation, which is something

00:30:29 ◼   ► that Rosemary, I think you mentioned about that,

00:30:30 ◼   ► kind of like you start to build.

00:30:32 ◼   ► where I ended up with a new step in my process

00:30:37 ◼   ► when I pressed that button the first time

00:30:39 ◼   ► to just connect to the Zoom.

00:30:40 ◼   ► It starts a, almost like a throwaway disposable recording

00:30:45 ◼   ► of my microphone.

00:30:46 ◼   ► And then when I press it again

00:30:48 ◼   ► to start the actual recording,

00:30:50 ◼   ► Audio Hijack actually has this built

00:30:51 ◼   ► into its automation library.

00:30:54 ◼   ► If it's less than 15 or 20 minutes of audio,

00:30:56 ◼   ► it just throws it away.

00:30:58 ◼   ► And because I've done the right thing,

00:31:00 ◼   ► But what it does mean is that if I don't press that button,

00:31:04 ◼   ► I have a recording anyway, that I can send to Myke.

00:31:07 ◼   ► And that's just, at that moment where I thought,

00:31:11 ◼   ► okay, this needs to be better.

00:31:12 ◼   ► This automation needs to improve

00:31:14 ◼   ► because it's not serving this failing of mine,

00:31:17 ◼   ► which is I didn't press it a second time.

00:31:19 ◼   ► So how do I fix that?

00:31:20 ◼   ► And that led to another step.

00:31:23 ◼   ► - Is there any reason you wouldn't just use

00:31:25 ◼   ► like multiple buttons instead of the same one?

00:31:28 ◼   ► 'Cause that's kind of my, I don't know,

00:31:29 ◼   ► this might be too much Stream Deck technique,

00:31:31 ◼   ► but like I have pages and I just use multiple pages

00:31:35 ◼   ► and have one step for each part of the process.

00:31:38 ◼   ► - I'm trying to be as minimal as possible.

00:31:40 ◼   ► So I do have multiple profiles in Stream Deck,

00:31:43 ◼   ► but I don't like the idea of having multiple pages

00:31:46 ◼   ► and having to do a lot of Stream Deck work.

00:31:48 ◼   ► I kind of want to keep it to, in this case,

00:31:49 ◼   ► the five by three grid of my little Stream Deck here.

00:31:52 ◼   ► And I kind of, I would rather, you know,

00:31:55 ◼   ► I have an upgrade button, so it should know.

00:31:57 ◼   ► And the incomparable button is the same way

00:31:59 ◼   ► where it goes through three states and it changes based on that. That's basically my

00:32:03 ◼   ► preference. I think because I started out with a Stream Deck Mini, my focus has always

00:32:08 ◼   ► been like multi-use buttons.

00:32:11 ◼   ► Well, it's whatever you feel comfortable with, right? Because the best automations are the

00:32:15 ◼   ► ones that actually work for you and it doesn't matter if it works really well for me or for

00:32:19 ◼   ► Matthew or for any of the people listening, it's got to work for you, the person who's

00:32:23 ◼   ► actually using it, which is one of the reasons why I think, you know, some people do struggle

00:32:28 ◼   ► with things because they're looking at how somebody else is doing something and maybe

00:32:32 ◼   ► they don't have that piece of hardware or they don't, you know, they're not sure that

00:32:36 ◼   ► whether or not NFC tags are going to be the right thing for them and things like that.

00:32:40 ◼   ► And you get very stuck into the, well, this is how, you know, other people do it. So being

00:32:44 ◼   ► able to reshape it to fit whatever your actual needs are. And also as Federico mentioned,

00:32:50 ◼   ► you know, the needs and the wants of the other people in your house, which may not be blinds

00:32:54 ◼   ► It's opening and closing automatically all the time.

00:32:56 ◼   ► And lights turning on and off to let you know

00:32:59 ◼   ► that it's time to go do this thing.

00:33:01 ◼   ► Flashing the lights in the whole house

00:33:02 ◼   ► when you're not the only person living in your house

00:33:04 ◼   ► is probably gonna-- - It's not good.

00:33:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, at the very least, not necessarily

00:33:07 ◼   ► make you everybody's best friend.

00:33:09 ◼   ► So you've gotta figure out what works.

00:33:11 ◼   ► And that certainly sounds like it would work for me.

00:33:13 ◼   ► Though my concern would always be the

00:33:15 ◼   ► it's got out of sync situation,

00:33:17 ◼   ► which you alluded to with the two-state button.

00:33:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's nothing worse than an automation

00:33:22 ◼   ► that doesn't know whether it's open or closed or on or off.

00:33:25 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:33:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:33:27 ◼   ► I mean, that's where Key Vault Maestro's really good

00:33:28 ◼   ► with the Stream Deck because it can just say,

00:33:30 ◼   ► "Hey, you're in this state now,"

00:33:32 ◼   ► 'cause it can maybe poll,

00:33:34 ◼   ► maybe poll or do your hijack to see whether or not

00:33:36 ◼   ► it's recording or something like that.

00:33:38 ◼   ► - That's actually, I mean, it's a complicated,

00:33:40 ◼   ► so after the break, I wanna talk about

00:33:43 ◼   ► where we are with Apple, Apple automation

00:33:45 ◼   ► and where it's strong,

00:33:46 ◼   ► and then we'll talk about where it's weak.

00:33:48 ◼   ► I would say that one of the things that I love

00:33:50 ◼   ► about my current state of automation is that I've got all this stuff working together.

00:33:55 ◼   ► I wrote a Six Colors piece a while ago about how you can integrate a command line script

00:34:00 ◼   ► and a shortcut and a keyboard maestro thing and a stream deck thing and they all just

00:34:05 ◼   ► kind of work. On the other hand, it is kind of ridiculous that I have to go through sometimes

00:34:12 ◼   ► three or four different tools in order to get what I want. And so it strikes me that

00:34:17 ◼   ► sometimes I would, you know, I want the tools to be a little bit better so I don't have

00:34:21 ◼   ► to do it. It's nice that I can, right? But I have those moments where I think, like,

00:34:26 ◼   ► Stream Deck Buttons is a great example where like, I've got to use Keyboard Maestro if

00:34:29 ◼   ► I want to set the exact image on a Stream Deck Button because Keyboard Maestro doesn't.

00:34:35 ◼   ► And I'm glad that it does, but I have things that are entirely handled in shortcuts except

00:34:40 ◼   ► for the keyboard maestro image part that has to be in.

00:34:45 ◼   ► So I ended up having a keyboard maestro macro

00:34:48 ◼   ► that runs a shortcut and sets an image.

00:34:51 ◼   ► And I don't love that, but that's where we are right now.

00:34:55 ◼   ► I wanted to mention before we take our first break

00:34:59 ◼   ► that the other automations that I'm using a lot are,

00:35:04 ◼   ► and this goes to like, everybody's gonna have to build

00:35:06 ◼   ► their own for their own jobs, but it's my favorite stuff,

00:35:08 ◼   ► which is I find a menial or boring task

00:35:12 ◼   ► that should be automated.

00:35:13 ◼   ► And so like I built, inspired by Federico actually,

00:35:16 ◼   ► and one of Federico's shortcuts involving Safari,

00:35:19 ◼   ► I built a shortcut that lets me select the text

00:35:22 ◼   ► from my Mac world column that I write every week.

00:35:24 ◼   ► And I run the shortcut and it converts it to markdown

00:35:28 ◼   ► and it gets the link of the URL

00:35:30 ◼   ► and it opens up WordPress and puts in,

00:35:34 ◼   ► using the WordPress API,

00:35:35 ◼   ► It puts in that as a post to link to it from six colors.

00:35:40 ◼   ► And I don't have to clean it up because it cleans it up.

00:35:42 ◼   ► I don't have to paste in the link

00:35:44 ◼   ► 'cause it puts in the link and the headline

00:35:46 ◼   ► and the story text and checks the box

00:35:48 ◼   ► that says what kind of thing it is,

00:35:50 ◼   ► which is an offsite link.

00:35:52 ◼   ► And I love stuff like that where sure I could do it,

00:35:54 ◼   ► but first off they post that thing in the morning.

00:35:56 ◼   ► So I'm invariably writing that thing like from bed

00:35:59 ◼   ► when I'm drinking my tea.

00:36:01 ◼   ► I would rather not think about it

00:36:03 ◼   ► and not have to precision paste things in various places

00:36:08 ◼   ► when the shortcut can handle it for me.

00:36:10 ◼   ► Or when I post the Six Colors podcast, it's the same thing.

00:36:13 ◼   ► It's an automator finder service,

00:36:18 ◼   ► but basically I right click on the MP3 of the podcast

00:36:22 ◼   ► and say, this is the Six Colors podcast,

00:36:24 ◼   ► and it uploads it, opens Mars edit,

00:36:27 ◼   ► puts the URL of the MP3,

00:36:29 ◼   ► puts the title of the podcast in the title field,

00:36:31 ◼   ► checks the box that says this is a podcast.

00:36:34 ◼   ► And it's just, I love that stuff where it's just, you know,

00:36:37 ◼   ► not that I couldn't do those five steps,

00:36:39 ◼   ► but I'd rather do one step.

00:36:41 ◼   ► That'd be easier.

00:36:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:36:43 ◼   ► - I need that exact workflow right now

00:36:45 ◼   ► 'cause I'm doing that exact thing manually

00:36:47 ◼   ► every time I publish my article.

00:36:49 ◼   ► And that's a good example of the exact kind of thing

00:36:52 ◼   ► that I would automate and takes me 10 to 15 minutes

00:36:55 ◼   ► and instead could take me one minute

00:36:57 ◼   ► and I can move on and immediately keep going,

00:36:59 ◼   ► which is very powerful.

00:37:01 ◼   ► I think that's the prize when we talk about automation,

00:37:03 ◼   ► it's stuff like that, which is,

00:37:05 ◼   ► it's not the overwhelming,

00:37:06 ◼   ► oh God, Jason's got a stream deck

00:37:07 ◼   ► and he's got all those buttons

00:37:08 ◼   ► and what are they gonna do?

00:37:09 ◼   ► And Rosemary's entire house is completely automated.

00:37:12 ◼   ► It's more like, do you have a really awful, boring,

00:37:16 ◼   ► you're totally capable of doing it,

00:37:17 ◼   ► but it's literally like an eight step process

00:37:19 ◼   ► you have to do five times a day.

00:37:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:37:22 ◼   ► - You could probably automate that.

00:37:23 ◼   ► And your life will be--

00:37:24 ◼   ► - Even if you automate two steps, right?

00:37:26 ◼   ► - Your life will be better. - Just start by doing two.

00:37:29 ◼   ► I have like thousands of shortcuts

00:37:31 ◼   ► and the average of them has eight steps in it.

00:37:34 ◼   ► And that's exactly why I just kept going

00:37:35 ◼   ► and kept solving new problems.

00:37:37 ◼   ► And then it's like, oh God, I need,

00:37:39 ◼   ► I can't believe we barely still even have folders, so.

00:37:43 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:37:44 ◼   ► All right, let's take a break.

00:37:46 ◼   ► And then when we come back,

00:37:47 ◼   ► we are going to talk about where we are now

00:37:51 ◼   ► with Apple's automation story.

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00:40:09 ◼   ► All right, I'm back for the summer of automation.

00:40:11 ◼   ► I wanted to ask our esteemed panel of automation experts

00:40:16 ◼   ► who have not, they're not phoning it in,

00:40:18 ◼   ► they didn't automate this.

00:40:20 ◼   ► They're actually here.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Let's start with the positives here.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Where do you think Apple and its platform automation,

00:40:28 ◼   ► and you can include apps that are on the platform as well,

00:40:30 ◼   ► where are they strong right now?

00:40:33 ◼   ► And then we'll follow that up by,

00:40:36 ◼   ► after we're done with this praise part,

00:40:38 ◼   ► where they fail.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Federico, let's start with you.

00:40:41 ◼   ► Where do you think Apple's automation story

00:40:43 ◼   ► is actually doing pretty well right now?

00:40:45 ◼   ► - Well, I think they're doing pretty well

00:40:46 ◼   ► on the iPhone and iPad,

00:40:47 ◼   ► where the story of the shortcuts app

00:40:51 ◼   ► seems to be more complete than on macOS.

00:40:54 ◼   ► And I think they're doing a good job there

00:40:56 ◼   ► in terms of giving users multiple options, right?

00:40:59 ◼   ► So you have the personal automations

00:41:02 ◼   ► that you can only set up on the iPhone and iPad,

00:41:04 ◼   ► and you have the home integration,

00:41:06 ◼   ► You have the share sheet, you have Siri,

00:41:09 ◼   ► you have spotlight integration.

00:41:12 ◼   ► And I think, as I mentioned before,

00:41:15 ◼   ► setting up these personal automations on the iPhone

00:41:17 ◼   ► and iPad, and especially on the iPhone

00:41:19 ◼   ► because it's always with you, can

00:41:20 ◼   ► be so valuable in terms of saving time,

00:41:24 ◼   ► cutting down steps from processes

00:41:25 ◼   ► that you find yourself doing manually every single day.

00:41:28 ◼   ► I also think they're doing a pretty good job

00:41:32 ◼   ► in terms of catching up.

00:41:34 ◼   ► And I think if you look at this year's release of iOS 16

00:41:37 ◼   ► and iPadOS 16, what is new in shortcuts,

00:41:40 ◼   ► you will see a lot of catching up

00:41:41 ◼   ► in terms of bringing actions for apps

00:41:45 ◼   ► that had very minimal, if at all, maybe,

00:41:50 ◼   ► integration with shortcuts before.

00:41:52 ◼   ► And so you have these new Safari actions, for example,

00:41:54 ◼   ► that just got added in the latest iOS 16 beta.

00:41:57 ◼   ► You have voice memos actions, you have clock actions,

00:42:01 ◼   ► you have better mail integration.

00:42:03 ◼   ► So it's good to see that they are paying attention

00:42:06 ◼   ► to apps that were sort of integrated with workflow,

00:42:11 ◼   ► really, back in the day, that got brought over to shortcuts,

00:42:15 ◼   ► but the shortcuts app wasn't really taking advantage

00:42:18 ◼   ► of them.

00:42:19 ◼   ► And so with iOS 16, they are catching up

00:42:21 ◼   ► and allowing users to create more integrations than ever.

00:42:25 ◼   ► And from a design perspective,

00:42:29 ◼   ► the shortcuts editor itself,

00:42:30 ◼   ► I think we've seen, you know, it's been a long path

00:42:35 ◼   ► in terms, it's been a long journey

00:42:38 ◼   ► in terms of getting to this state of the shortcuts editor.

00:42:43 ◼   ► Obviously, you know, we've been through two, three redesigns

00:42:47 ◼   ► in the past four to five years for shortcuts.

00:42:50 ◼   ► And last year, obviously, they redesigned the whole thing

00:42:54 ◼   ► and they rebuilt the whole thing with SwiftUI.

00:42:57 ◼   ► And that caused a variety of problems,

00:43:00 ◼   ► especially on Mac OS.

00:43:02 ◼   ► But I think now, the design of the shortcuts editor--

00:43:06 ◼   ► again, on iPhone and iPad, I haven't really

00:43:08 ◼   ► played around with Ventura yet, so I can comment on that.

00:43:11 ◼   ► But I think at this point, I really

00:43:14 ◼   ► like what they're doing in terms of doing things

00:43:17 ◼   ► like choosing variables.

00:43:18 ◼   ► Drag and drop is more reliable, picking properties

00:43:22 ◼   ► from an individual variable or magic variable.

00:43:25 ◼   ► So I think the story is also pretty strong there.

00:43:28 ◼   ► But I would say overall, by far on iPhone and iPad,

00:43:32 ◼   ► you have still the strongest shortcuts story and presence,

00:43:37 ◼   ► if only because on macOS,

00:43:39 ◼   ► you're still missing those key integrations,

00:43:41 ◼   ► like the personal automations

00:43:45 ◼   ► and the integration with the share sheet,

00:43:47 ◼   ► which is maybe happening now,

00:43:49 ◼   ► but it's still kind of a half-baked.

00:43:52 ◼   ► - Rosemary, what about you?

00:43:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I have to say, I agree with Federico,

00:43:56 ◼   ► and it does feel a little bit like it's been playing catch up,

00:44:00 ◼   ► but I do feel like they're definitely watching what people are doing

00:44:03 ◼   ► and then responding to that with adding new features.

00:44:07 ◼   ► So a really great example of this is, you know,

00:44:10 ◼   ► a lot of people were trying to do things like switch their backgrounds automatically,

00:44:14 ◼   ► like the home screen backgrounds, the images there automatically,

00:44:19 ◼   ► and their watch faces based on focus modes

00:44:21 ◼   ► or other things that they were doing in the last version of iOS.

00:44:24 ◼   ► And that's actually now baked into the focus modes in iOS 16,

00:44:29 ◼   ► setting your watch face and changing your background.

00:44:32 ◼   ► And I have to say, I think like they're not,

00:44:34 ◼   ► they're not taking away from shortcuts.

00:44:36 ◼   ► You can still do, you know, you can still set your wallpaper,

00:44:38 ◼   ► you can still set up watch face in shortcuts,

00:44:40 ◼   ► but they found a better place to put that,

00:44:43 ◼   ► that surfaces that for users in a much easier way

00:44:46 ◼   ► than adding shortcuts actions, which, you know,

00:44:49 ◼   ► even somebody who's a little bit technical,

00:44:51 ◼   ► who's not encountered it before,

00:44:53 ◼   ► trying to choose your watch face is tricky because you just don't have a picture. Like

00:44:58 ◼   ► in watch faces, you know, you've got two different modular complication ones and you don't know

00:45:05 ◼   ► which one's which. You have to go look in the watch app and assume that the order is

00:45:08 ◼   ► the same, which it is, as a side note for anybody who's listening for that. But you

00:45:13 ◼   ► know, they've taken what people are doing and they've just made it easier for them.

00:45:18 ◼   ► which I feel is great, and I'm really glad that they're doing that.

00:45:24 ◼   ► And similarly, it seems that they've listened to developers, they've made it easier for

00:45:28 ◼   ► them to add shortcuts actions and surface those for users.

00:45:32 ◼   ► So inside of the Shortcuts app, in the section at the bottom, so on the iPhone, you would

00:45:39 ◼   ► tap to go to the Shortcuts menu area and on the iPad and the Mac, it should just be at

00:45:43 ◼   ► the bottom.

00:45:44 ◼   ► They've got app shortcuts right there.

00:45:46 ◼   ► I feel like this again is them responding to users and developers and just bringing

00:45:51 ◼   ► it all together.

00:45:53 ◼   ► And it certainly feels like they are doing a good job with pulling that all in.

00:45:59 ◼   ► And as Federico said, we've got new actions in various apps.

00:46:02 ◼   ► They're directly integrating with focus modes with the whole set your filter on mailboxes

00:46:08 ◼   ► and set your tab group in Safari.

00:46:10 ◼   ► Yes, tab groups get some love.

00:46:12 ◼   ► That's good to hear.

00:46:14 ◼   ► I feel like by adding to this and taking it,

00:46:17 ◼   ► so I have a podcasting focus mode,

00:46:20 ◼   ► but then I can customize further within that with shortcuts.

00:46:24 ◼   ► And so if I want to have a separate one for Automators

00:46:27 ◼   ► versus iOS today versus nested folders, I can do that,

00:46:30 ◼   ► but I can also just leave it as podcasting

00:46:32 ◼   ► or I can try and handle it all inside of

00:46:34 ◼   ► the focus modes themselves and split it up into three,

00:46:38 ◼   ► but it gives me more flexibility and choice,

00:46:41 ◼   ► which as a power user, I greatly appreciate,

00:46:44 ◼   ► but I also think, you know, is good for your average user

00:46:49 ◼   ► in that they've got quite a bit that they can do.

00:46:51 ◼   ► And when they want more,

00:46:52 ◼   ► there's a safe place that they can go

00:46:54 ◼   ► to find out how to do this without running into something

00:46:56 ◼   ► that says jailbreak your device now,

00:46:59 ◼   ► which I feel like is just not a good option

00:47:01 ◼   ► for let's face it, the vast majority of users.

00:47:04 ◼   ► - Matthew, what do you think about

00:47:06 ◼   ► where Apple's automation is working right now?

00:47:09 ◼   ► - Totally.

00:47:10 ◼   ► I agree with all those points.

00:47:11 ◼   ► integrations are a lot better.

00:47:16 ◼   ► And I love that they've been listening to our needs as the power users,

00:47:19 ◼   ► because that stuff definitely affects us a lot.

00:47:23 ◼   ► I think I'm still just super psyched on the app shortcuts and the capabilities that they're adding to that.

00:47:27 ◼   ► I've been following Alex Hay, who makes Toolbox Pro, and he's been diving really deep into just what you can do,

00:47:32 ◼   ► and the kind of capabilities that actions can have now that they couldn't really.

00:47:39 ◼   ► And I don't think I totally realized they couldn't have that before.

00:47:44 ◼   ► I think that the story of how powerful actions are hasn't matched what even shortcuts itself could do.

00:47:48 ◼   ► And it's confusing, or even Apple's other apps weren't adopting that same level of capability.

00:47:56 ◼   ► And so now I think we're starting to see that with the actions that they're developing, and we're going to see that from developers too.

00:48:05 ◼   ► So it should be a lot better.

00:48:10 ◼   ► Like, why can't this be automated?

00:48:12 ◼   ► It can now.

00:48:14 ◼   ► I guess it's still going to take time to roll out there.

00:48:15 ◼   ► And I think for me, still just the whole scripting interface,

00:48:19 ◼   ► even though it's still confusing for new users,

00:48:23 ◼   ► I still can't really do much in something like Zapier

00:48:26 ◼   ► or if this, then that beyond a couple of steps.

00:48:31 ◼   ► And I have some ungodly shortcuts

00:48:32 ◼   ► that do all this kind of scripting capabilities.

00:48:37 ◼   ► And that's still something that's only ever been approachable to me.

00:48:39 ◼   ► I've never learned how to code and probably never will, but I am a full on developer because of shortcuts.

00:48:43 ◼   ► And so that still is really understated about how much potential there is.

00:48:49 ◼   ► I mean, even just the way we were talking about before, we all use shortcuts kind of differently.

00:48:55 ◼   ► And there's like 50 ways to run one single shortcut.

00:48:58 ◼   ► So there's so much out there.

00:49:00 ◼   ► And I think getting the entire industry up to speed

00:49:05 ◼   ► with what shortcuts can even do is still a huge thing

00:49:08 ◼   ► because it's still constantly in development.

00:49:11 ◼   ► I mean, we can talk about the next part too,

00:49:13 ◼   ► but they kind of focused on the Mac.

00:49:16 ◼   ► And then now they're like, "Here's the Siri story,"

00:49:19 ◼   ► and didn't talk about the Mac this year,

00:49:20 ◼   ► which is kind of confusing.

00:49:22 ◼   ► - You mentioned shortcuts being, and I agree,

00:49:26 ◼   ► underrated a little bit.

00:49:28 ◼   ► Anybody who lived through the launch of Automator,

00:49:31 ◼   ► which had such promise, and you know,

00:49:34 ◼   ► Sal came up on stage, who you all know,

00:49:37 ◼   ► and demoed Automator and was like,

00:49:39 ◼   ► "Oh, I get it, I get it."

00:49:41 ◼   ► And for whatever reason,

00:49:43 ◼   ► Automator really didn't get a chance to flourish.

00:49:46 ◼   ► I think it was a little too complicated

00:49:47 ◼   ► and it didn't have any, you know,

00:49:50 ◼   ► it didn't have enough capabilities, you know,

00:49:53 ◼   ► and block by block for it to become

00:49:55 ◼   ► what it was supposed to be.

00:49:59 ◼   ► And when I first saw Workflow, I thought,

00:50:01 ◼   ► "Oh, oh yeah, this is what Automator was supposed to be

00:50:04 ◼   ► and never made it there."

00:50:05 ◼   ► And to Apple's credit, they bought it,

00:50:08 ◼   ► they integrated it, they advanced it.

00:50:10 ◼   ► And it is, I mean, for all of the criticisms

00:50:13 ◼   ► that we will often, and I think justifiably levy at Apple

00:50:16 ◼   ► and at the shortcuts app for the issues

00:50:20 ◼   ► that we all have with it.

00:50:22 ◼   ► I think it is worth taking a moment to praise the fact that it gives you access to that

00:50:31 ◼   ► level of power, but fulfills a lot of that Automator promise, which is you build a block

00:50:38 ◼   ► by block and it's visual and you don't need to write lines of code and it could be easier,

00:50:45 ◼   ► sure.

00:50:46 ◼   ► You know, are there things about it that are head-scratching?

00:50:47 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:50:48 ◼   ► But like, having lived through Automator and the promise and the basically failure of Automator

00:50:55 ◼   ► as a thing, I think the number one thing on my list is about Apple's automation today

00:51:00 ◼   ► is that they have the vision to grab workflow and turn it into next generation Automator,

00:51:09 ◼   ► but one that succeeded rather than failed like Automator did.

00:51:13 ◼   ► It's my number one praise for what Apple's doing now,

00:51:17 ◼   ► is that ShortCats is good.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Is it great?

00:51:20 ◼   ► I mean, maybe, but it does have limitations, huge,

00:51:23 ◼   ► but it is so strong in so many ways,

00:51:27 ◼   ► and I think has so much more potential yet to be realized.

00:51:31 ◼   ► - Totally.

00:51:32 ◼   ► I think I'm in the realm where the only reason

00:51:35 ◼   ► I'm not doing more with it is because of those limitations,

00:51:40 ◼   ► and I'm waiting for those shackles to be removed so I can do even more.

00:51:45 ◼   ► Because it's just the fact that I still have a single file list of 3000 shortcuts

00:51:50 ◼   ► in the main menu that can't scale the interface is the problem.

00:51:55 ◼   ► Not anything that shortcuts can actually do.

00:51:59 ◼   ► And so I think so much of it is growing pains and I'm just waiting for those to get

00:52:02 ◼   ► resolved so that other people can join us because we're all doing this.

00:52:06 ◼   ► and I think everybody else kind of looks at it and is like,

00:52:10 ◼   ► "That seems cool, but it hasn't gotten there yet."

00:52:12 ◼   ► And we're living in this future of drag-and-drop programming

00:52:17 ◼   ► that Apple still hasn't even--

00:52:20 ◼   ► seems like they don't even tell their audience about it.

00:52:22 ◼   ► And so I'm like, "Hello, let's do this.

00:52:24 ◼   ► This is so cool."

00:52:25 ◼   ► And I love doing shows like this because it really is so powerful.

00:52:31 ◼   ► And it still hasn't even gotten started yet.

00:52:34 ◼   ► So I'm just stoked on that.

00:52:37 ◼   ► - I have one more thing that I'll say positively

00:52:39 ◼   ► before we go a little negative,

00:52:40 ◼   ► or at least constructive criticism,

00:52:42 ◼   ► which is, as somebody who's been using the Mac

00:52:46 ◼   ► since the '90s, I actually,

00:52:49 ◼   ► I did not expect the Mac's automation story

00:52:52 ◼   ► to be as good right now as it is.

00:52:55 ◼   ► I thought the transfer, first off,

00:52:58 ◼   ► I didn't expect shortcuts to actually come when it did.

00:53:01 ◼   ► I mean, I wrote articles like several of us did

00:53:05 ◼   ► demanding that it happened, but then it happened.

00:53:08 ◼   ► And it's usable.

00:53:09 ◼   ► That's the thing that really, I mean, from last summer,

00:53:11 ◼   ► even early on last year, it was usable.

00:53:15 ◼   ► And the fact that today,

00:53:17 ◼   ► as we're on the precipice of going to Ventura,

00:53:21 ◼   ► I have many Mac automations that are based in shortcuts.

00:53:25 ◼   ► And I really didn't think that would happen that quickly.

00:53:29 ◼   ► I really thought we would be in a painful transitional

00:53:33 ◼   ► period where the shortcuts didn't quite do the job

00:53:36 ◼   ► and the old stuff was falling apart

00:53:38 ◼   ► and that you wouldn't be able to do

00:53:41 ◼   ► what you needed to do on the Mac.

00:53:42 ◼   ► And that hasn't been the case.

00:53:44 ◼   ► There are still cases where I don't reach for shortcuts

00:53:46 ◼   ► first on the Mac for various reasons.

00:53:48 ◼   ► But an increasing number of those are me reaching

00:53:53 ◼   ► for an old system out of habit

00:53:55 ◼   ► and not because shortcuts can't do the job.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Sometimes it's because shortcuts can't do the job,

00:53:59 ◼   ► but a lot of times it's not.

00:54:01 ◼   ► And so I would put that in a win column for Apple

00:54:03 ◼   ► is that it may be going slower than people would like,

00:54:06 ◼   ► and it is kind of complete.

00:54:07 ◼   ► But I have to say, I didn't expect shortcuts

00:54:12 ◼   ► to be as functional on the Mac as it is,

00:54:14 ◼   ► or that Mac automation would be as sort of not broken

00:54:19 ◼   ► during this transition.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Maybe I'm too much of a pessimist,

00:54:22 ◼   ► but like I thought it would be a lot worse,

00:54:23 ◼   ► and actually it's fine.

00:54:25 ◼   ► It actually is pretty good.

00:54:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I would add to that,

00:54:29 ◼   ► that maybe one thing that Apple did really well,

00:54:33 ◼   ► because I was also surprised by how solid

00:54:36 ◼   ► the automation story is on macOS,

00:54:38 ◼   ► but they have enabled people like me

00:54:40 ◼   ► who have been using Workflow and then Shortcuts

00:54:42 ◼   ► on the iPhone and iPad for years,

00:54:43 ◼   ► and then decided, you know,

00:54:45 ◼   ► I actually wanna check out macOS again,

00:54:47 ◼   ► and I wanna play with this M1 Macs,

00:54:49 ◼   ► but they've made it possible,

00:54:51 ◼   ► they've created this path for people like me

00:54:54 ◼   ► to just so seamlessly take all of their shortcuts

00:54:58 ◼   ► and make sure they would continue working on the Mac, right?

00:55:01 ◼   ► And so they've made it easier for someone like me

00:55:03 ◼   ► who used an iPad for seven years and then decided,

00:55:06 ◼   ► "You know, I wanna try and work on a Mac for a few months

00:55:09 ◼   ► "and see what it's like."

00:55:10 ◼   ► And when I did, all my shortcuts were there

00:55:13 ◼   ► and they were just mostly working.

00:55:15 ◼   ► And I mean, the problems were problems at a technical level

00:55:19 ◼   ► with, you know, SwiftUI and how the shortcuts app itself

00:55:23 ◼   ► was made under the hood,

00:55:26 ◼   ► but the core of the automation technologies were all there.

00:55:30 ◼   ► And I think that's pretty remarkable

00:55:32 ◼   ► that that's been possible in just a single release,

00:55:36 ◼   ► if you think about it.

00:55:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've been using the Mac

00:55:39 ◼   ► for like less than nine months probably,

00:55:41 ◼   ► and it's like the same, or not Mac with shortcuts, I mean,

00:55:44 ◼   ► and I think every single one of my shortcuts

00:55:47 ◼   ► works on the Mac now,

00:55:47 ◼   ► except for unless it uses something specifically for iOS.

00:55:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it was fairly easy to get those things.

00:55:53 ◼   ► I'm sure we all did it where you end up with the,

00:55:55 ◼   ► if this is a Mac, do this, if this is an iPad, do this.

00:55:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally.

00:55:59 ◼   ► - But you can, it was so easy.

00:56:01 ◼   ► Like I had some that ran out of the box

00:56:03 ◼   ► and others where I added one additional step to say,

00:56:06 ◼   ► no, no, do it this way on the Mac.

00:56:08 ◼   ► And then it just worked.

00:56:09 ◼   ► Like all the other logic remained,

00:56:11 ◼   ► all the other shortcuts elements from iOS remained

00:56:13 ◼   ► and worked fine on the Mac.

00:56:14 ◼   ► It was just that last, you know, thing in Safari

00:56:17 ◼   ► or whatever that had to be slightly tweaked.

00:56:19 ◼   ► and pretty good for a first release.

00:56:21 ◼   ► All right, let's turn it a little bit,

00:56:23 ◼   ► not necessarily negative, but constructive.

00:56:25 ◼   ► Where is Apple's automation story lacking right now?

00:56:28 ◼   ► And they need to, what would a teacher say?

00:56:32 ◼   ► They need to apply themselves a little bit more.

00:56:35 ◼   ► Federico, let's start with you again.

00:56:37 ◼   ► - Well, okay, so if I had to play devil's advocate here,

00:56:42 ◼   ► I would say that the weakest point

00:56:46 ◼   ► of Apple's automation story is the risk

00:56:50 ◼   ► of an identity crisis, maybe,

00:56:53 ◼   ► where the shortcuts app might end up being too difficult

00:56:58 ◼   ► for new users and not advanced enough for power users.

00:57:03 ◼   ► So that I think is the single most important weak point

00:57:07 ◼   ► where I think Apple should pay close attention here

00:57:10 ◼   ► because you could argue,

00:57:12 ◼   ► and I think Matthew actually wrote about this last week,

00:57:16 ◼   ► You risk of sort of making it too difficult for new users

00:57:20 ◼   ► to get started with shortcuts

00:57:22 ◼   ► and to understand the power of shortcuts

00:57:24 ◼   ► and what it can do.

00:57:25 ◼   ► But at the same time, you also,

00:57:27 ◼   ► if you only devote your attention

00:57:30 ◼   ► to that part of the user base,

00:57:32 ◼   ► you also risk of upsetting power users

00:57:34 ◼   ► who are waiting for, I don't know,

00:57:36 ◼   ► more control over conditional blocks,

00:57:40 ◼   ► like more control over these advanced scripting actions

00:57:44 ◼   ► or things like keyboard shortcuts,

00:57:45 ◼   ► Like you need to take care of both sides of the equation here.

00:57:53 ◼   ► And I think in iOS 16, and I mentioned this because, you know, if I had to point

00:57:58 ◼   ► out the negatives, I would say in iOS 16, I see a lot of taking care of the new users

00:58:06 ◼   ► and maybe very little of taking care of the advanced users, because as Rosemary

00:58:12 ◼   ► mentioned a few minutes ago, you have those new app shortcuts

00:58:15 ◼   ► that make it super easy to get started

00:58:17 ◼   ► and to discover these shortcuts that developers

00:58:20 ◼   ► can bundle into their apps.

00:58:22 ◼   ► And they are ready right there in the shortcuts app,

00:58:25 ◼   ► waiting for you, no need to set them up.

00:58:27 ◼   ► That's great.

00:58:28 ◼   ► And that's something that you're doing to introduce people

00:58:32 ◼   ► to shortcuts.

00:58:33 ◼   ► And I love it.

00:58:34 ◼   ► But maybe I would have liked to see something, anything,

00:58:38 ◼   ► something for power users as well.

00:58:41 ◼   ► So maybe that's the single weak point that I want to point out here.

00:58:46 ◼   ► And then, you know, there's specific stuff like, yeah, for example, Mac OS still doesn't

00:58:51 ◼   ► have personal automations.

00:58:53 ◼   ► That's something that really surprised me and I don't understand why.

00:58:56 ◼   ► Or if I can mention two more, why is it that on the Mac I can set up shortcuts with hotkeys

00:59:05 ◼   ► and I cannot do the same on my iPad Pro despite the iPad Pro having first class keyboard

00:59:11 ◼   ► support now. You know, there's so many of these inconsistencies, like, you know, shortcuts

00:59:16 ◼   ► on the Mac has quick actions in Finder. Now, we also have quick actions in files for iPhone

00:59:23 ◼   ► and iPad in 16, except for shortcuts. So like, if I had to sum it up here, I would say consistency.

00:59:30 ◼   ► Consistency can still be a weak point because you still, as much as things have improved,

00:59:35 ◼   ► I mean, we just discussed this a few minutes ago, you still don't have that feature parity

00:59:40 ◼   ► between platforms.

00:59:41 ◼   ► Rosemary, what do you think?

00:59:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with Federico and it feels to me like the Shortcuts team

00:59:47 ◼   ► needs internal support within Apple so that when something appears in the Files app, then

00:59:53 ◼   ► somebody from the Files team, possibly the same person that did this in Finder on MacOS,

00:59:59 ◼   ► would then work with the Shortcuts team to bring those quick actions in.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Because I don't, I mean, I suspect it's part of the problem from that perspective is the

01:00:08 ◼   ► fact that they do keep things a secret until pretty late in the day just to avoid leaks

01:00:12 ◼   ► and also you know because if they drop something you know they don't want everybody to know

01:00:18 ◼   ► necessarily what got dropped or versus made it in and things like that.

01:00:22 ◼   ► So Apple are doing a better job at WWDC of saying and these features are coming this

01:00:27 ◼   ► year rather than in September and then it appears in March or whatever which I think

01:00:33 ◼   ► is good.

01:00:34 ◼   ► don't load all the pressure onto people to have it absolutely perfect for September or

01:00:38 ◼   ► October when the Mac beta ships.

01:00:41 ◼   ► But I feel like there needs to be some more internal support from various things because

01:00:44 ◼   ► I know, you know, like if you're an app developer when you write an app you have to write your

01:00:50 ◼   ► own shortcut support, you know, and I'm pretty certain it's the same within Apple.

01:00:55 ◼   ► So the mail has to write its own shortcuts, actions and support and maybe somebody from

01:01:02 ◼   ► the shortcuts team collaborates with them on that, I don't know and I'm not going to

01:01:05 ◼   ► pretend to know, but it feels like there needs to be somebody who can pull those people together

01:01:11 ◼   ► and say, "Hey, mail, you need to step up our messages? What's going on here? We need the

01:01:17 ◼   ► ability to get your most recent message. Why isn't there a shortcuts action for that?"

01:01:22 ◼   ► Because maybe it depends on what APIs and so on are available to them internally to

01:01:28 ◼   ► fetching call data, but the shortcuts team can't possibly do everything. And I feel like

01:01:33 ◼   ► they're getting an awful lot heaped upon them, which just makes things really difficult.

01:01:39 ◼   ► And I have to say, I do feel like perhaps whoever is testing shortcuts maybe needs,

01:01:45 ◼   ► or maybe they just need more testers, because I can't paste a shortcut action on macOS.

01:01:51 ◼   ► You just can't. You can copy an action, you can duplicate an action, and on iOS you can

01:01:56 ◼   ► paste an action, I have yet to be able to in over a year,

01:02:01 ◼   ► paste an action on macOS.

01:02:03 ◼   ► And it's things like that which give people

01:02:06 ◼   ► a really bad impression of an otherwise

01:02:09 ◼   ► absolutely amazing application.

01:02:11 ◼   ► I had an issue, fortunately it's now resolved

01:02:14 ◼   ► in the latest beta, but in the last beta on iOS,

01:02:17 ◼   ► I would start searching for something

01:02:19 ◼   ► and the search wouldn't update.

01:02:22 ◼   ► But I would, something would appear,

01:02:24 ◼   ► So I'd start scrolling down the list and then I'd realize that these are not my search results.

01:02:29 ◼   ► And I'd have to scroll back up and tap into the search bar again, at which point it would then start doing the search.

01:02:35 ◼   ► Um, and it's, you know, this is a beta.

01:02:39 ◼   ► I should expect it in a beta and, you know, kudos to the Shortcuts team for killing that problem in, in the latest, in the latest edition.

01:02:45 ◼   ► But it does feel like we end up with issues that end up persisting for a long time.

01:02:50 ◼   ► the touch targets for dragging and dropping actions being off is something that I genuinely

01:02:56 ◼   ► really struggle with.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Like you have to like, when you're dragging something, your mouse or finger could be an

01:03:03 ◼   ► inch or two above or below the action you're actually trying to move.

01:03:07 ◼   ► It's like being in the London Underground, mind the gap, you gotta find the place where

01:03:10 ◼   ► the gap is, not where your finger is, and then let go.

01:03:14 ◼   ► And then the gap suddenly, sometimes doesn't appear, and then you have to try and like

01:03:17 ◼   ► scroll up or down as well and things like that. It just makes it very difficult for

01:03:24 ◼   ► anybody, power user or new user, and it doesn't give a great impression. Now you could argue

01:03:29 ◼   ► with the dragging and the dropping that most new users are just going to tap an action

01:03:33 ◼   ► to add it, but then you look at the suggested actions in a shortcut to add and it suggests

01:03:38 ◼   ► adding an if. Okay, cool. And then I try and add something below the if and it doesn't

01:03:44 ◼   ► go into the if, which I mean, fair enough, you know, does it go in the if or the otherwise,

01:03:49 ◼   ► you know, the computer can't tell. So then I try and pick it up to drag it and I pick

01:03:52 ◼   ► it up and oh, this time it's actually worked. But that's because it was the last action

01:03:56 ◼   ► in the shortcut. If I try and pick up an earlier action, then it just kind of, well, yep. Especially,

01:04:02 ◼   ► yeah, yeah. When you, when your shortcuts start scrolling off the bottom of the screen,

01:04:06 ◼   ► I think that's when it happens. I'm like, I try to like build replication steps to send

01:04:11 ◼   ► those in because I know that actually knowing how somebody has broken something is really

01:04:17 ◼   ► important when you're trying to solve the bug as a developer.

01:04:20 ◼   ► But I feel like the Shortcuts team needs a bit more support for things like this because

01:04:26 ◼   ► it is very difficult to do everything by yourself and nobody should be an island.

01:04:32 ◼   ► And if they got support from other teams for developing other great actions.

01:04:38 ◼   ► So Maps, for example, got multi-stop as a feature.

01:04:41 ◼   ► So I immediately look in shortcuts for add stop to root.

01:04:44 ◼   ► No, that's not something that's there.

01:04:46 ◼   ► And that's not the shortcuts team that has to add that.

01:04:49 ◼   ► That's the Maps team, but the Maps team haven't done that.

01:04:51 ◼   ► Is that because that's not been prioritized?

01:04:53 ◼   ► - That goes back to Federico's larger point,

01:04:55 ◼   ► which I think is a great overall point,

01:04:57 ◼   ► which is it doesn't yet seem as if there's a cultural buy-in,

01:05:02 ◼   ► if you wanna say it that way,

01:05:06 ◼   ► for at Apple for shortcuts actions.

01:05:09 ◼   ► That if you are making an app at Apple

01:05:12 ◼   ► and you're adding new features,

01:05:13 ◼   ► one of the items on the checklist

01:05:15 ◼   ► needs to be shortcuts support.

01:05:16 ◼   ► And I get why it might not be there

01:05:18 ◼   ► in a beta at the beginning,

01:05:20 ◼   ► but it does feel like you should never ship a new feature

01:05:24 ◼   ► without asking yourself the question,

01:05:26 ◼   ► what are the shortcut actions that go with this feature?

01:05:28 ◼   ► And some apps do a better job than others,

01:05:31 ◼   ► but like that should just be back in the day,

01:05:33 ◼   ► again, I'm sorry, in my day,

01:05:36 ◼   ► There was a time when there was scrutiny placed

01:05:38 ◼   ► to Apple script support in Apple apps,

01:05:40 ◼   ► and then it went away,

01:05:41 ◼   ► and then they lost all of that,

01:05:44 ◼   ► kind of the muscle memory of that.

01:05:46 ◼   ► But I think they need to build that back in culturally

01:05:48 ◼   ► because yeah, exactly.

01:05:49 ◼   ► If Maps is gonna add this feature,

01:05:50 ◼   ► one of the questions they need to ask themselves is,

01:05:52 ◼   ► how do you get to this feature in shortcuts?

01:05:54 ◼   ► And sometimes it feels like they just don't ask the question.

01:05:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:05:58 ◼   ► And I feel like, you know,

01:05:59 ◼   ► it would just be great to have more support everywhere

01:06:01 ◼   ► because I'd love to see some shortcut support in CarPlay.

01:06:04 ◼   ► you know, give me a button that I can tap in CarPlay that, okay, I can only interact

01:06:10 ◼   ► with, with my voice.

01:06:10 ◼   ► Fine.

01:06:11 ◼   ► That's an entirely reasonable limitation.

01:06:13 ◼   ► I, it shouldn't be popping up, you know, too many things, um, or whatever, but.

01:06:17 ◼   ► Give me a button in CarPlay that I can press that starts my preferred

01:06:21 ◼   ► playlist and pre like, and sets maps to direct me to a specific location with

01:06:26 ◼   ► these three way points along the way that I've planned out at home.

01:06:30 ◼   ► And I've set this up and maybe it's a route that I do regularly.

01:06:32 ◼   ► Maybe it's not.

01:06:33 ◼   ► maybe I'm doing it as a one-time thing, it doesn't matter.

01:06:35 ◼   ► But it would be really cool to see things like that.

01:06:37 ◼   ► But I feel like the Shortcuts team is not small,

01:06:41 ◼   ► but I feel like they're being stretched,

01:06:42 ◼   ► especially now they're on multiple platforms.

01:06:44 ◼   ► And it would be really great if they got some more support

01:06:46 ◼   ► so that they could continue doing the great things

01:06:48 ◼   ► that they're doing and fix some of the problems

01:06:51 ◼   ► that they've got like paste.

01:06:52 ◼   ► - Get them some help.

01:06:53 ◼   ► Get them some help, Rosemary says, get them some help.

01:06:55 ◼   ► Matt, what do you think about,

01:06:56 ◼   ► what are the tops of your to-do list for Apple

01:07:00 ◼   ► with automation?

01:07:02 ◼   ► - Yes, I noticed the way you phrased that,

01:07:04 ◼   ► the top of the to-do list, not the entire thing.

01:07:06 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, we would be here for hours like this.

01:07:08 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:07:09 ◼   ► - It's a podcast, we could theoretically go

01:07:10 ◼   ► in an infinite amount of time, but probably we shouldn't.

01:07:12 ◼   ► - I definitely think the new user thing is something that

01:07:16 ◼   ► I think they maybe still have room for

01:07:19 ◼   ► just in terms of they haven't,

01:07:21 ◼   ► I think it's clear that Shortcuts as a whole

01:07:23 ◼   ► hasn't like fully launched in some way

01:07:26 ◼   ► where they haven't mentioned it in the keynotes enough

01:07:29 ◼   ► to be the user feature.

01:07:31 ◼   ► And I think now we're kind of at the place where it's the like

01:07:35 ◼   ► integration from being workflow is settled.

01:07:39 ◼   ► And so just in case people don't know, like I literally worked at workflow.

01:07:42 ◼   ► So I've seen some of the inside, too, that I can't talk about.

01:07:46 ◼   ► But I do think the integration, even just like having these new app

01:07:50 ◼   ► shortcuts, capabilities and the APIs now Apple's own teams can use those, too.

01:07:56 ◼   ► So that's kind of been something that's always like,

01:07:58 ◼   ► How do Apple's teams build actions the same way that developers do in many ways?

01:08:03 ◼   ► And they have to have that functionality in the APIs to be able to go to that depth.

01:08:08 ◼   ► And I do think the integration with the other teams is the same thing.

01:08:14 ◼   ► Being able to build those actions does require the mail team to do it, not the shortcuts team.

01:08:17 ◼   ► Because otherwise the shortcuts team is building half of iOS at that point.

01:08:24 ◼   ► But I think the other side where shortcuts is part of the OS does mean that everybody

01:08:28 ◼   ► every part of the OS needs to have shortcut support also.

01:08:33 ◼   ► And that same needs to go back and forth.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And I see this all the time.

01:08:39 ◼   ► People are so confused.

01:08:42 ◼   ► They're like, "Why can't I just change this setting?

01:08:43 ◼   ► Why can't I change the accessibility settings still?"

01:08:45 ◼   ► That's the other thing.

01:08:48 ◼   ► People have wanted these things for the last three years.

01:08:50 ◼   ► Everyday users have been asking for it.

01:08:53 ◼   ► I think weirdly, I don't necessarily ask for it as much

01:08:53 ◼   ► because I assume that they're doing these things and then sometimes it doesn't happen.

01:08:58 ◼   ► And so I think there is this realm where the four of us or people who listen to Relay have this thing of,

01:09:02 ◼   ► this is where shortcuts could be or should be.

01:09:09 ◼   ► And I don't know if people inside of Apple have that same opinion or even know what we're thinking sometimes

01:09:12 ◼   ► because we are just the people who are using it to the full extent and they're the people working on it.

01:09:20 ◼   ► or even like I did workflow support for a while.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And so just knowing how many parts of the app this integrates or the OS this integrates with does make it extremely complicated.

01:09:29 ◼   ► And so I think that feedback process and the bugs and everything definitely needs to get resolved sometime soon because there is just that it's like if we don't report these issues, I don't think they're going to get fixed.

01:09:37 ◼   ► And that is something that has been true in my experience and I don't want to be true.

01:09:50 ◼   ► and I would love for Apple to proactively fix those things,

01:09:54 ◼   ► but it is sort of weirdly on like the power users right now

01:09:58 ◼   ► to report that those things are broken.

01:09:59 ◼   ► Otherwise, there is some part of like,

01:10:02 ◼   ► how would they ever know?

01:10:03 ◼   ► Because we're, I have 3000 shortcuts

01:10:06 ◼   ► and I'm running like 10, all this data through it

01:10:09 ◼   ► and they're never just in that situation.

01:10:11 ◼   ► - And I could see, so this is a little bit of a tangent,

01:10:14 ◼   ► but I think it's a good one, which is look,

01:10:16 ◼   ► all of us are in the top 1% of shortcuts users, right?

01:10:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:10:20 ◼   ► All of us.

01:10:21 ◼   ► And there is an argument to be made

01:10:25 ◼   ► that Apple shouldn't be catering

01:10:28 ◼   ► to the top 1% of shortcuts users, right?

01:10:31 ◼   ► It's like, but what about the regular users?

01:10:32 ◼   ► But I think the truth is, especially for something this new

01:10:35 ◼   ► with this much potential,

01:10:36 ◼   ► we are exploring what's possible with shortcuts.

01:10:40 ◼   ► And as a result, as Matt said,

01:10:43 ◼   ► we're also falling into the holes

01:10:45 ◼   ► that nobody else knows are there.

01:10:48 ◼   ► And so it's useful for us to be explorers

01:10:51 ◼   ► and to try this stuff out and to push things to the limit,

01:10:54 ◼   ► because in theory, I feel like regular users will benefit

01:10:58 ◼   ► from what we discover.

01:10:59 ◼   ► We're the ones that are out there on the frontier,

01:11:02 ◼   ► but when we come back and say,

01:11:04 ◼   ► "Oh, you know you ought to do this."

01:11:06 ◼   ► It's not, you ought to cater to me

01:11:07 ◼   ► and make this thing that nobody else is going to want.

01:11:10 ◼   ► It really is more like I found it first,

01:11:13 ◼   ► but in two years, some regular user is gonna find it.

01:11:17 ◼   ► and you need to fix it by then, right?

01:11:20 ◼   ► We may be a little ahead of the curve,

01:11:22 ◼   ► but they're coming, they're right behind us.

01:11:24 ◼   ► - The question is though, when they arrive,

01:11:26 ◼   ► are they still gonna run into this?

01:11:27 ◼   ► Like, that's what doesn't make sense to me, is--

01:11:30 ◼   ► - Will they arrive? - I know that they will

01:11:31 ◼   ► run into this, and this will stop them in their tracks.

01:11:34 ◼   ► - Right, so that's part of our role, I feel like,

01:11:37 ◼   ► as explorers, is not necessarily to advocate

01:11:40 ◼   ► for esoteric features that are only of interest to us,

01:11:42 ◼   ► but more like that we go down this path

01:11:45 ◼   ► and we discover things and say,

01:11:46 ◼   ► "Oh, I wonder if you could do this."

01:11:48 ◼   ► And then you discover there's a roadblock or there's a bug

01:11:51 ◼   ► and that we can raise the flag and say,

01:11:55 ◼   ► "This is actually important,"

01:11:56 ◼   ► and hope that it gets handled eventually.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Like folders is a great example, right?

01:12:00 ◼   ► Which is most people aren't gonna have a thousand shortcuts.

01:12:03 ◼   ► But folders is still important.

01:12:04 ◼   ► Like folders, organizational structures need to exist

01:12:08 ◼   ► and they finally did them in a way.

01:12:12 ◼   ► And I'm glad that they did,

01:12:14 ◼   ► But it wasn't just to solve the problem

01:12:16 ◼   ► of the person with a thousand shortcuts.

01:12:18 ◼   ► It was for anybody just to have,

01:12:20 ◼   ► I love, I have folders with four shortcuts in them,

01:12:23 ◼   ► but I love it because it narrows it down.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Like, let me look at those shortcuts

01:12:27 ◼   ► and I don't need to have a thousand to use that feature.

01:12:31 ◼   ► One other thing I wanted to mention about this stuff is,

01:12:35 ◼   ► we talked about editor bugs and minding the gap

01:12:39 ◼   ► and all of that.

01:12:40 ◼   ► And I don't know, 'cause I'm gonna ask next about the future

01:12:43 ◼   ► And I know that kind of is similar to where it's failing now,

01:12:46 ◼   ► but I just wanna throw in as an example

01:12:48 ◼   ► of us exploring the edges here,

01:12:51 ◼   ► that one of the weaknesses I see,

01:12:53 ◼   ► I mean, I think their Mac integration is inconsistent.

01:12:55 ◼   ► It really goes back to what Federico said,

01:12:57 ◼   ► which is consistency across platforms

01:12:59 ◼   ► and also consistency within platforms

01:13:01 ◼   ► where there are things you can do on the Mac with shortcuts

01:13:03 ◼   ► and things you can't,

01:13:04 ◼   ► and places you can run shortcuts and places you can't.

01:13:07 ◼   ► And the share menu is so key to shortcuts on iOS

01:13:11 ◼   ► and is kind of a fake thing

01:13:13 ◼   ► that doesn't really work on the Mac

01:13:15 ◼   ► that they made to look like iOS,

01:13:16 ◼   ► but it doesn't do the things iOS does.

01:13:18 ◼   ► And it's like, they've got to fix all that stuff.

01:13:21 ◼   ► But the other thing I wanted to mention is

01:13:23 ◼   ► in the editor itself, in the shortcuts app itself,

01:13:26 ◼   ► sorry to get programery on you, but like, okay,

01:13:29 ◼   ► I want subroutines.

01:13:31 ◼   ► I think it's terrible. - Yeah, run shortcut

01:13:34 ◼   ► doesn't cut it anymore.

01:13:35 ◼   ► - Well, this is the thing is I don't,

01:13:37 ◼   ► and a wise, like a wise figure inside Apple would say,

01:13:40 ◼   ► "But do you really want subroutines?"

01:13:42 ◼   ► And the answer is no, you're right, wise figure

01:13:45 ◼   ► I just made up, I don't want subroutines.

01:13:47 ◼   ► It's like, maybe you wanna run a shortcut.

01:13:49 ◼   ► It's like, yes, I know you can run a shortcut

01:13:53 ◼   ► from within a shortcut and that acts like a subroutine.

01:13:56 ◼   ► So if you don't give me subroutines,

01:13:59 ◼   ► you need to give me like a bundle.

01:14:01 ◼   ► You need to let me bundle up shortcuts.

01:14:03 ◼   ► So I can send to, I can build a shortcut

01:14:06 ◼   ► that does some amazing things, but requires,

01:14:08 ◼   ► Like I had a friend who just sent me

01:14:10 ◼   ► his little shortcut package that he worked on.

01:14:13 ◼   ► And it's brilliant, but he had to send me a read me file

01:14:18 ◼   ► that included five iCloud links

01:14:21 ◼   ► to download five separate shortcuts

01:14:23 ◼   ► to run in order for it to all work.

01:14:26 ◼   ► And it's like, that's the worst.

01:14:28 ◼   ► It's the worst.

01:14:28 ◼   ► So, you know, that's at the top of my list actually

01:14:32 ◼   ► is I just, I think that these things are so powerful

01:14:35 ◼   ► and yet you can build,

01:14:37 ◼   ► here's my problem is I can build something

01:14:39 ◼   ► really sophisticated, but I can't share it with anybody

01:14:42 ◼   ► because it's way too complicated to give it to anyone else.

01:14:44 ◼   ► And that's not, in the long run, that's not good enough.

01:14:47 ◼   ► I need to be able to share something complex

01:14:49 ◼   ► and have it work.

01:14:50 ◼   ► And that either means a subroutine has to be embedded

01:14:53 ◼   ► in a shortcut, or I need to be able to collect

01:14:55 ◼   ► multiple shortcuts together and package them in some way

01:14:59 ◼   ► so that I can share them with one link.

01:15:01 ◼   ► - I think that's like the same kind of thing

01:15:02 ◼   ► with the power user needs for that.

01:15:05 ◼   ► It's like, we're trying to do these things specifically

01:15:07 ◼   ► to help new users too.

01:15:08 ◼   ► And so there are like, who else is gonna do that if not us?

01:15:12 ◼   ► Because Apple doesn't have like a content marketing arm

01:15:16 ◼   ► or something to like share shortcuts ideas.

01:15:18 ◼   ► And I mean, maybe they should also,

01:15:21 ◼   ► that's another area of like,

01:15:22 ◼   ► it should be in the app store

01:15:23 ◼   ► and have stories about shortcuts.

01:15:25 ◼   ► - We should say they made some effort.

01:15:27 ◼   ► I know Federico had his profile there.

01:15:29 ◼   ► They were talking to me about it.

01:15:33 ◼   ► Although they said, we really want them all to be things

01:15:35 ◼   ► that use apps that are in the App Store.

01:15:37 ◼   ► And I was like, "Mm, well, I don't have as many of those."

01:15:42 ◼   ► - See, that's even like a weird limitation sometimes.

01:15:47 ◼   ► That's sort of one of the reasons

01:15:48 ◼   ► I didn't want to do this at Apple,

01:15:50 ◼   ► is I can tell people how to use shortcuts

01:15:53 ◼   ► the way that we use shortcuts

01:15:55 ◼   ► and not like the Siri-approved way or something like that.

01:15:58 ◼   ► - I mean, the question of why should Apple listen

01:16:02 ◼   ► to the top 1% of users or to power users,

01:16:05 ◼   ► I think is an interesting one,

01:16:07 ◼   ► because if you just look at the numbers,

01:16:09 ◼   ► it doesn't make sense, right?

01:16:09 ◼   ► It's not logical to listen to 1% of your user base.

01:16:12 ◼   ► It makes much more sense to listen to 99% of people

01:16:15 ◼   ► and do what they want.

01:16:16 ◼   ► And that logically makes sense,

01:16:17 ◼   ► but not to get political over here,

01:16:19 ◼   ► but it's kind of similar to the question of

01:16:21 ◼   ► why should the government fund NASA, if you think about it?

01:16:24 ◼   ► Like, why should they do it?

01:16:26 ◼   ► And that's because, and I mean, sure,

01:16:28 ◼   ► I'm here for the space analogy with Jason, obviously,

01:16:31 ◼   ► But the idea is you are investing in pushing the limits,

01:16:36 ◼   ► and in pushing the limits and in discovering new frontiers,

01:16:39 ◼   ► you are gonna, first of all,

01:16:41 ◼   ► you're gonna discover something,

01:16:43 ◼   ► but also you're gonna develop a system,

01:16:45 ◼   ► you're gonna develop a structure to make sure

01:16:47 ◼   ► that better tools are possible in the future.

01:16:50 ◼   ► And that's the idea.

01:16:52 ◼   ► Listening to power users, not just to make me and Rosemary

01:16:57 ◼   ► and Matthew and Jason all happy,

01:16:58 ◼   ► and we're gonna dance together and clap our hands.

01:17:00 ◼   ► Thank you, Apple.

01:17:01 ◼   ► It's not because of that.

01:17:03 ◼   ► It's to make sure that you can build the structure

01:17:07 ◼   ► to make sure that your app can scale in the future.

01:17:12 ◼   ► And in the process, you may also listen to power users

01:17:15 ◼   ► and discover, hey, power users are asking for this thing.

01:17:18 ◼   ► We're gonna do it in a slightly different way,

01:17:20 ◼   ► but we now understand the problem.

01:17:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:24 ◼   ► I think this is really the thing of,

01:17:26 ◼   ► they need to solve the problems

01:17:28 ◼   ► that people are actually having,

01:17:29 ◼   ► not give us the solutions that we're asking for.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Because that's the difference, isn't it?

01:17:36 ◼   ► I say, "Hey, I need you to give me Y, but actually my problem is X."

01:17:41 ◼   ► There's a whole phenomenon called the XY problem where actually you need people to explain

01:17:45 ◼   ► their real problem with you so that you can solve it with all of the data that you have,

01:17:49 ◼   ► which is obviously more than we have.

01:17:52 ◼   ► But I feel like they are definitely tripping up in certain places.

01:17:56 ◼   ► of the areas I really love them to listen to us and I'm sure many other people in is

01:18:01 ◼   ► they don't fail gracefully right now. If you've got a shortcut, if I share a shortcut with

01:18:07 ◼   ► any of you that contains an OmniFocus action and you do not have OmniFocus installed, you

01:18:11 ◼   ► will get an unknown shortcut action in your shortcut. You have no way of knowing what

01:18:16 ◼   ► that action is, what app that action is from, or what it's supposed to do. You're just missing

01:18:22 ◼   ► a whole chunk of data.

01:18:24 ◼   ► Okay, so I wanna share this with somebody

01:18:26 ◼   ► who's using things.

01:18:27 ◼   ► And they now have to either ask me for a screenshot

01:18:31 ◼   ► or download things to, download OmniFocus

01:18:35 ◼   ► to actually see what that action is and how it works.

01:18:39 ◼   ► - You'd think there'd be an App Store opportunity here

01:18:41 ◼   ► for cross-marketing.

01:18:42 ◼   ► - Well, I kind of feel like this is where app clips

01:18:45 ◼   ► could really actually integrate with shortcuts

01:18:48 ◼   ► where if every shortcut action could be kind of

01:18:52 ◼   ► not bundled as an app clip because obviously it's not actually going to do anything.

01:18:56 ◼   ► But the thing is, is they know what data it's taking and they know what data it's

01:18:59 ◼   ► returning and they know what the name of it is.

01:19:01 ◼   ► It feels like maybe they could extract that information, but right now there's

01:19:05 ◼   ► just no way for me to know what that action is supposed to be.

01:19:08 ◼   ► Um, and if it's an app that is offloaded itself from my iPhone or my iPad, I

01:19:14 ◼   ► kind of have the same problem.

01:19:16 ◼   ► I'm just lucky enough that the app icon is still there.

01:19:19 ◼   ► So I can then redownload the app

01:19:21 ◼   ► that's offloaded itself spontaneously from my phone,

01:19:23 ◼   ► despite the fact that the offload action

01:19:25 ◼   ► was definitely turned off,

01:19:26 ◼   ► but it's now disappeared in a recent beta,

01:19:27 ◼   ► which is really a bug that I need to file

01:19:29 ◼   ► because I was looking for that this morning

01:19:31 ◼   ► and I was like, I can't turn off offloading apps.

01:19:34 ◼   ► This is a problem.

01:19:35 ◼   ► - For the record, this problem, by the way,

01:19:38 ◼   ► was an AppleScript problem too.

01:19:39 ◼   ► If you had an AppleScript script

01:19:41 ◼   ► that didn't have one of the apps installed,

01:19:43 ◼   ► it would give you Apple event jargon instead of the logic,

01:19:46 ◼   ► and you're like, what?

01:19:47 ◼   ► - Yep, yep, yep.

01:19:49 ◼   ► - And so it's, I was gonna say that I think

01:19:51 ◼   ► a lot of shortcuts fail very gracefully

01:19:52 ◼   ► in the sense that they just are silent

01:19:54 ◼   ► and you don't know if they ran or not.

01:19:57 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, but I kind of feel like

01:19:58 ◼   ► that's part of the problem.

01:20:00 ◼   ► And like, I can't add a reveal file in Finder action

01:20:04 ◼   ► on my phone, even though I know that I'm gonna be using

01:20:07 ◼   ► this action on my Mac.

01:20:08 ◼   ► I know that this is not, that I don't have Finder

01:20:11 ◼   ► on my phone, but actually it'd be really cool

01:20:13 ◼   ► if the action worked in files, please.

01:20:15 ◼   ► But it would, you know, it would be smart for them

01:20:18 ◼   ► to not lock things out and to let me choose

01:20:22 ◼   ► to put a vibrate action in a shortcut

01:20:25 ◼   ► and write it on my Mac and just ignore it

01:20:27 ◼   ► if I'm on a Mac. - Yeah, that too.

01:20:28 ◼   ► - Because I don't, or on an iPad.

01:20:30 ◼   ► But let us fail gracefully more easily

01:20:34 ◼   ► because right now it is very frustrating

01:20:37 ◼   ► when you're looking at a shortcut and you go,

01:20:39 ◼   ► "I have no idea what actions this is using.

01:20:42 ◼   ► "I can see six actions and there's an if statement in here

01:20:45 ◼   ► "and that's the only one of them I can read."

01:20:46 ◼   ► - Well, especially new users assume they're the problem,

01:20:51 ◼   ► and that's what makes me genuinely sad a lot of times

01:20:54 ◼   ► when I see people learning about shortcuts,

01:20:56 ◼   ► because they're like, "Oh, I just can't figure this out."

01:20:59 ◼   ► And I'm like, "No, it's totally shortcuts."

01:21:01 ◼   ► It's not this, for coming from Apple,

01:21:04 ◼   ► people expect it to just work and be very obvious,

01:21:07 ◼   ► and shortcuts has some level of that,

01:21:10 ◼   ► but there is just basic hand-holding.

01:21:13 ◼   ► Like I wrote in my story that Federico mentioned,

01:21:15 ◼   ► like the action description for set playback destination is like it sets the

01:21:18 ◼   ► destination of the playback.

01:21:20 ◼   ► And I'm like, okay, like what?

01:21:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:23 ◼   ► Just getting a little bit further.

01:21:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:26 ◼   ► And like this is all stuff that I, I really cared about and wanted, would

01:21:31 ◼   ► probably have done if I was there at Apple being like, let's do this kind of thing.

01:21:34 ◼   ► So that's why it does like, I just want that.

01:21:38 ◼   ► And the new user who eventually becomes the power user, like kind of, I, I do

01:21:44 ◼   ► think of just my story. I didn't know any of this stuff, and I read Mac stories from

01:21:49 ◼   ► Federico. I did get to sit next to the team, which I think made a huge difference, but

01:21:55 ◼   ► nobody else has that experience. Going from zero to 100, and what does it look like for

01:22:01 ◼   ► someone who's at zero? Also, what does it look like for someone who's at 100? All of

01:22:06 ◼   ► those need to be accounted for, because otherwise, what are we going towards if you get to the

01:22:12 ◼   ► point where I am and it starts working worse because you are so into the app. That doesn't

01:22:18 ◼   ► make sense to me either.

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01:23:35 ◼   ► Let's move on and talk about for our last segment, the future.

01:23:40 ◼   ► Peering into the future, use your crystal ball.

01:23:42 ◼   ► I'm not actually asking for predictions, I'm asking for a wishlist more than anything else.

01:23:47 ◼   ► We know what's in the betas, so we basically know what we're gonna get this fall.

01:23:53 ◼   ► What then?

01:23:55 ◼   ► What's on your list for the places in automation that Apple needs to go next?

01:24:01 ◼   ► Federico?

01:24:02 ◼   ► Federico?

01:24:03 ◼   ► So if this is a wish list and not a set of predictions, I would say that the one thing

01:24:12 ◼   ► I want is more integration with iPadOS multitasking.

01:24:16 ◼   ► I think that's a big gap in the shortcuts functionality at the moment.

01:24:24 ◼   ► There's no integration with iPadOS.

01:24:26 ◼   ► Well there's extremely minimal integration with iPadOS multitasking at the moment, meaning

01:24:31 ◼   ► you can only split the screen between two apps.

01:24:34 ◼   ► There's no integration with Stage Manager whatsoever.

01:24:37 ◼   ► That's the new multitasking mode from this year,

01:24:40 ◼   ► and Shortcuts doesn't have any actions for Stage Manager.

01:24:43 ◼   ► But really, there's no integration with multi-window

01:24:47 ◼   ► on iPad at the moment.

01:24:49 ◼   ► One of the things that I've always wanted to do

01:24:53 ◼   ► for the past three years -- not always,

01:24:55 ◼   ► but for the past three years --

01:24:56 ◼   ► I've wanted to use Shortcuts

01:24:59 ◼   ► to put together these workspaces for me.

01:25:02 ◼   ► And by workspaces, I mean take a specific window

01:25:05 ◼   ► from a specific app and let me assemble a workspace for me

01:25:09 ◼   ► in an automatic way.

01:25:11 ◼   ► That's still not possible because Shortcuts

01:25:12 ◼   ► doesn't have any knowledge of multiple windows

01:25:15 ◼   ► from the same app on iPadOS.

01:25:18 ◼   ► Like, it just doesn't have that integration

01:25:20 ◼   ► hooked in at the moment.

01:25:22 ◼   ► So in the future, I would love to see better integration

01:25:25 ◼   ► with multitasking and multi-window on iPadOS.

01:25:27 ◼   ► And the same goes for keyboard shortcuts,

01:25:30 ◼   ► like to have a proper story when it comes to running

01:25:33 ◼   ► shortcuts from the keyboard on the iPad,

01:25:36 ◼   ► just like you can on the Mac.

01:25:38 ◼   ► And I guess bigger picture, what I would love to see is,

01:25:43 ◼   ► as I mentioned, the consistency, right,

01:25:45 ◼   ► and the modernization of some of the older integrations.

01:25:49 ◼   ► And I do think that for the next few years,

01:25:51 ◼   ► we're gonna get that, because if 16 is of any indication,

01:25:55 ◼   ► I think Apple is gonna continue down that path.

01:25:57 ◼   ► I think we're going to get, eventually, new Apple Music actions, multitasking actions,

01:26:03 ◼   ► new photos actions.

01:26:04 ◼   ► There's a ton of new functionality in Photos that is completely absent from the Find Photos

01:26:10 ◼   ► action in Shortcuts.

01:26:12 ◼   ► So I do think that kind of feature parity and that integration with the system-level

01:26:16 ◼   ► apps is going to continue.

01:26:18 ◼   ► And then, I would say longer term, maybe even next year, not necessarily many years from

01:26:26 ◼   ► I want to understand what the story will be regarding shortcuts and AR or VR,

01:26:34 ◼   ► whatever it is they're going to do in the future.

01:26:37 ◼   ► Because I do think there is incredible potential for running shortcuts via your voice,

01:26:44 ◼   ► and that we've been able to do forever, right, using Siri.

01:26:48 ◼   ► But in doing that in combination with seeing visual feedback from the shortcut

01:26:54 ◼   ► shortcut or choosing between options.

01:26:57 ◼   ► Like the combination of a voice first activation method,

01:27:02 ◼   ► but with the visual feedback provided by a headset or maybe

01:27:06 ◼   ► down the road glasses, that is really fascinating to me.

01:27:09 ◼   ► Because that type of device is exactly the type of device

01:27:12 ◼   ► where you don't want to click around a lot.

01:27:15 ◼   ► You don't want to interact with a classic interface

01:27:18 ◼   ► for several seconds or minutes.

01:27:22 ◼   ► having a pre-built shortcut to do something for you is ideal.

01:27:26 ◼   ► So, I mean, we have shortcuts on the Apple Watch.

01:27:30 ◼   ► Why not do it on a headset or glasses too?

01:27:33 ◼   ► So that is a prediction/wishlist,

01:27:38 ◼   ► but if Apple is going down this path,

01:27:40 ◼   ► and I mean, obviously it seems like they are,

01:27:43 ◼   ► I hope that shortcuts will play a role in that,

01:27:46 ◼   ► because having Siri and shortcuts and visual feedback

01:27:51 ◼   ► all in one device, that's really compelling to me.

01:27:54 ◼   ► - Rosemary, what do you think?

01:27:56 ◼   ► What's your wish list?

01:27:58 ◼   ► - All right, so everything Federico just said,

01:28:01 ◼   ► I'm just gonna steal all of that, just reinsert.

01:28:04 ◼   ► And then, I mean, I have a number,

01:28:07 ◼   ► it's kind of more of a odds and groups list.

01:28:10 ◼   ► I already mentioned earlier that I'd really love

01:28:12 ◼   ► for the Shortcuts team to have more support

01:28:13 ◼   ► and I'd really like there to be a person at Apple

01:28:17 ◼   ► whose job is automation in all the things.

01:28:20 ◼   ► so that they get somebody, you know, they get all of the different teams in there. So

01:28:25 ◼   ► whoever was implementing stage manager also had to have support from somebody and that

01:28:31 ◼   ► would have been put together so that then there would be the stage manager support for

01:28:35 ◼   ► shortcuts for Federico and everybody else who's loving it. I'm still, you know, kind

01:28:40 ◼   ► of on the fence about stage manager. I'm sure I'll get around to actually liking it in a

01:28:43 ◼   ► couple of months, but that would be the first one. But I think also a better way to showcase

01:28:49 ◼   ► shortcuts and everything it could, it can do and it does would be really good for everybody

01:28:55 ◼   ► everywhere, because it works for the shortcuts team because it will then promote their things

01:29:00 ◼   ► inside of Apple. It works for the new users because they get to download great shortcuts

01:29:04 ◼   ► from a shortcuts gallery and it works for its power users because it gives us somewhere

01:29:08 ◼   ► to share things and I kind of envision this as sort of an app store like process where,

01:29:14 ◼   ► you know, people can submit and it goes through a few process and then it would appear in

01:29:17 ◼   ► the Shortcuts Gallery because the Shortcuts Gallery is really a massively mixed bag quality

01:29:24 ◼   ► wise.

01:29:25 ◼   ► Some things are great and then I just looked at one of the examples they've got there earlier.

01:29:29 ◼   ► Email schedule to yourself.

01:29:31 ◼   ► This is using set variable and you know what it does is it gets your calendar events and

01:29:36 ◼   ► it repeats each one and it gets the title from the calendar event and it sets the variable

01:29:41 ◼   ► title to the title from the calendar event and so on and so forth with a whole bunch

01:29:47 ◼   ► of different information and then it says, "Hey, if the count of the locations is greater

01:29:52 ◼   ► than one, then add that information," and so on and so forth.

01:29:55 ◼   ► And there's just a nicer way to do that that is not so long-winded for a user so that they

01:30:04 ◼   ► actually can just sort of see it and quickly understand what it means instead of, "What

01:30:07 ◼   ► is set variable, get variable, and add to variable and all of these things?"

01:30:12 ◼   ► No, like that's complicated.

01:30:14 ◼   ► So I think that that would be really nice for them to do because it would showcase app

01:30:18 ◼   ► developers, it would showcase shortcuts and just all the right things.

01:30:22 ◼   ► And I think another way to help expand upon this for people would also be adding more

01:30:28 ◼   ► smart folders.

01:30:29 ◼   ► We already have folders for all of the shortcuts that are on your Apple Watch and there used

01:30:34 ◼   ► to be and there is no longer a folder for your sleep shortcuts where all of the shortcuts

01:30:39 ◼   ► that were enabled in your sleep focus would show up which if you don't have a schedule

01:30:44 ◼   ► set for sleep then you can't turn that toggle on it just doesn't appear at all inside of

01:30:51 ◼   ► your shortcut settings which can be a bit confusing but it would be really nice if I

01:30:55 ◼   ► could see all the shortcuts that have got that enabled and I've just gone looking again

01:30:59 ◼   ► I definitely can't see things like that and so you know I feel like improving smart folders

01:31:05 ◼   ► and the existence of them give me a smart folder for all of my shortcuts containing

01:31:10 ◼   ► actions from OmniFocus things, drafts, etc. so that then I can share them with that developer

01:31:17 ◼   ► and then they can showcase shortcuts more.

01:31:19 ◼   ► And also for us power users, give us some things that we want like collapsing and expanding

01:31:25 ◼   ► actions and action groups.

01:31:27 ◼   ► Allow me to add a comment to every single action just by sort of annotating it that

01:31:32 ◼   ► that can then appear above that action

01:31:36 ◼   ► so that when I move the action, it moves with it.

01:31:38 ◼   ► And allow me to fold an if action in words,

01:31:43 ◼   ► just like you can fold,

01:31:44 ◼   ► if you've got the file list view in Finder,

01:31:46 ◼   ► like you can fold a folder open and closed

01:31:49 ◼   ► and you can see the files in it or not in it.

01:31:50 ◼   ► Let me fold if and repeat actions and so on and so forth

01:31:53 ◼   ► and name my repeats and things like that.

01:31:56 ◼   ► I feel like that's the sort of thing

01:31:58 ◼   ► I would really love to focus on

01:32:00 ◼   ► because it feels like some of these would definitely serve power users more to start with.

01:32:05 ◼   ► But I think that that will then end up feeding all of the other users,

01:32:09 ◼   ► because my concern is they're focusing a lot on the new users,

01:32:15 ◼   ► and it's not that they're going to lose the power users,

01:32:18 ◼   ► but I feel like those new users are going to very quickly hit roadblocks,

01:32:23 ◼   ► and those are roadblocks that will not have been fixed.

01:32:26 ◼   ► And I know that it's really difficult to split your focus

01:32:29 ◼   ► and your attention and there are a limited number of people

01:32:32 ◼   ► with a limited number of hours in a day or a week

01:32:34 ◼   ► or a month or a year.

01:32:36 ◼   ► And so, you know, it would be good for them

01:32:39 ◼   ► to get more support for that.

01:32:40 ◼   ► But it is one of those things where folding actions

01:32:43 ◼   ► seems so silly, but then you look at a whole bunch

01:32:45 ◼   ► of shortcuts in the Shortcuts Gallery and think,

01:32:47 ◼   ► wow, these could really benefit from letting me just fold

01:32:50 ◼   ► this if action because I just wanna skip past it

01:32:53 ◼   ► and things like that.

01:32:54 ◼   ► So hopefully we'll get to see some of that.

01:32:57 ◼   ► - I hope so.

01:32:58 ◼   ► I love, let's make all these dreams come true.

01:32:59 ◼   ► Matt, what's on your wishlist?

01:33:02 ◼   ► - I think I have a very high level one

01:33:04 ◼   ► that I just wanna see is I want shortcuts

01:33:08 ◼   ► to have a segment in a keynote.

01:33:09 ◼   ► I want Apple to say, you should use shortcuts.

01:33:13 ◼   ► Like, I think they should tell,

01:33:15 ◼   ► like especially because of the whole

01:33:18 ◼   ► aesthetic home screen trend and people using shortcuts

01:33:21 ◼   ► to customize their phone to have the app icons that they want.

01:33:26 ◼   ► This is no longer an unknown entity, and I do suspect that they're waiting until it is better so that they don't

01:33:30 ◼   ► tell people and they all come in and then it doesn't work the way they expect it.

01:33:38 ◼   ► So I do think that's kind of that weird middle ground that we're in.

01:33:41 ◼   ► But I do think that that has to happen in order for a shortcut for it to just be like, "Okay, now it's time to use shortcuts

01:33:46 ◼   ► for just the average person." Because I think it'll be at the right place.

01:33:51 ◼   ► right time when it'll work for them but until then I don't think people are

01:33:56 ◼   ► gonna be like okay this is the future of programming or whatever like that

01:34:00 ◼   ► because there is that whole story that just isn't told yet and when it they put

01:34:07 ◼   ► their weight behind it that's gonna be a lot more powerful there's gonna be a lot

01:34:10 ◼   ► more adoption and users just won't be like I don't know it doesn't it's not

01:34:15 ◼   ► really clear what they're doing with this it'll be like okay they just told

01:34:18 ◼   ► us what they're doing at this sort of thing.

01:34:20 ◼   ► I feel like Steve Jobs had a better handle as a showman, you know, because he was a master

01:34:27 ◼   ► at it.

01:34:28 ◼   ► I think he had a better handle on the power of aspirational items in a keynote that maybe

01:34:35 ◼   ► modern Apple is so disciplined and on message that they've lost it a little bit.

01:34:40 ◼   ► And I'm reminded of a WWDC I went to a very long time ago now, and there was this dude

01:34:47 ◼   ► with a beard, who was doing a demo

01:34:50 ◼   ► using Apple's automation technology

01:34:52 ◼   ► about how he had gotten classified ads set up

01:34:57 ◼   ► for like a newspaper out of their database

01:35:00 ◼   ► into QuarkXPress by running an Apple script.

01:35:02 ◼   ► And it was the most amazing demo I had ever seen.

01:35:06 ◼   ► And I thought to myself, and I think probably

01:35:08 ◼   ► the dozens of people in the room with me also

01:35:09 ◼   ► were thinking this like, oh my God,

01:35:11 ◼   ► I didn't know you could do this with a computer.

01:35:13 ◼   ► I need to do this, I need to do this.

01:35:14 ◼   ► And it was like, was I gonna build an Apple script

01:35:16 ◼   ► that looks in a database and then builds a layout

01:35:19 ◼   ► in QuarkXPress.

01:35:20 ◼   ► No, but it started me down a path.

01:35:22 ◼   ► It was aspirational.

01:35:23 ◼   ► That was Salsigoyen by the way,

01:35:24 ◼   ► and then he got hired by Apple.

01:35:26 ◼   ► He got hired by Apple in part

01:35:29 ◼   ► because he gave these amazing demos.

01:35:30 ◼   ► And to this day,

01:35:31 ◼   ► Sal's best thing that he does is inspire you to try stuff

01:35:36 ◼   ► by saying, "Did you see this thing that I made?"

01:35:39 ◼   ► So when Matt said, "I wanna see shortcuts in a keynote."

01:35:45 ◼   ► I mean, we've seen it as like, here is shortcuts.

01:35:47 ◼   ► And then we saw, here is shortcuts on the Mac.

01:35:49 ◼   ► But like, I would love to see

01:35:50 ◼   ► that aesthetic home screen thing.

01:35:52 ◼   ► I would love to see a moment in a keynote

01:35:55 ◼   ► where somebody said, look what you can do.

01:35:58 ◼   ► We put together shortcuts and focus modes

01:36:01 ◼   ► and personalized lock screens and all those things.

01:36:04 ◼   ► And look, you tap this, what happened to your phone?

01:36:07 ◼   ► You tap this, oh my God,

01:36:08 ◼   ► this other amazing thing happened to your phone.

01:36:10 ◼   ► How does it work?

01:36:11 ◼   ► Well, we use the power of our technology back here

01:36:13 ◼   ► and you can learn more about it if you like,

01:36:15 ◼   ► but isn't it amazing, right?

01:36:16 ◼   ► It's just that aspirational aspect.

01:36:18 ◼   ► They don't need to explain every step,

01:36:20 ◼   ► but they can blow you away with something and make you go,

01:36:23 ◼   ► oh, I wanna learn how to do that too.

01:36:25 ◼   ► And that's what I would like to see.

01:36:27 ◼   ► I'm gonna ride on your coattails there, Matt, and say,

01:36:30 ◼   ► yes, wouldn't it be nice if there was an aspirational bit

01:36:33 ◼   ► of shortcuts in a keynote at some point?

01:36:35 ◼   ► - Because that's, I mean, can you imagine

01:36:37 ◼   ► just like Steve Jobs introducing something like shortcuts?

01:36:40 ◼   ► It's like, oh, now all of the power of technology

01:36:42 ◼   ► is just in these little buttons and you just have to drag.

01:36:45 ◼   ► It's like so cool.

01:36:47 ◼   ► - He would be like, am I out in the wilderness?

01:36:49 ◼   ► Boom.

01:36:50 ◼   ► And he would touch a thing and say, boom.

01:36:52 ◼   ► And it would, his phone would totally change.

01:36:54 ◼   ► And he'd be like, huh, right.

01:36:55 ◼   ► And then, right.

01:36:57 ◼   ► I can picture it, right.

01:36:58 ◼   ► And that's exactly it.

01:37:00 ◼   ► It's the, it doesn't have to explain it all.

01:37:02 ◼   ► It doesn't have to be like,

01:37:03 ◼   ► oh, well we've added this feature and it's very important.

01:37:05 ◼   ► It's sort of like, look what you can do

01:37:06 ◼   ► with the stuff we made.

01:37:07 ◼   ► And I, and Shortcuts has that power right in it.

01:37:12 ◼   ► And you're right, maybe not quite yet is the time,

01:37:15 ◼   ► but wouldn't it be nice if we got to the time

01:37:17 ◼   ► where they could say, "You use shortcuts to do this."

01:37:20 ◼   ► Not, "Let me explain shortcuts to you,"

01:37:22 ◼   ► but like, "Just look what you can do with our devices."

01:37:24 ◼   ► - Totally, because I want them to be excited

01:37:26 ◼   ► 'cause they use it too, is another part of it.

01:37:28 ◼   ► 'Cause I think that is something that,

01:37:30 ◼   ► I think people inside of Apple do seem excited about it.

01:37:34 ◼   ► And I think I just wanna see that expanded out

01:37:38 ◼   ► to the users too, because it seems like people

01:37:41 ◼   ► sort of don't believe in it for some reason and probably because they opened it and couldn't

01:37:46 ◼   ► figure it out. But once that is gone and other people are doing what we're all doing, I'm

01:37:52 ◼   ► so excited for that time because even just like I've done so much but there's no way

01:37:57 ◼   ► I can solve everybody else's problems and everybody has these unique situations and

01:38:02 ◼   ► they all have the capability to do it too. Like that's what gets me is just that it once

01:38:08 ◼   ► you get past that learning curve, if Apple can lower that huge jump that you have to

01:38:13 ◼   ► get into, then everybody can code. Like, this is learning to code, but you don't have to

01:38:18 ◼   ► learn how to code. And I think that's so cool.

01:38:23 ◼   ► Anything else on your list, Matthew? I cut you off there with my enthusiasm for your

01:38:27 ◼   ► keynote.

01:38:29 ◼   ► I think some of the galleries that, like, honestly, the one that Rosemary mentioned

01:38:33 ◼   ► and is probably was made before we added magic variables

01:38:37 ◼   ► to the app.

01:38:38 ◼   ► And then it like, that was my job at a certain time

01:38:41 ◼   ► was making the gallery and I can see stuff in there

01:38:44 ◼   ► that I made and I haven't worked there

01:38:45 ◼   ► in like four or five years.

01:38:47 ◼   ► So I am a little like, some of that I just don't,

01:38:51 ◼   ► I don't know, it is kind of just confusing

01:38:53 ◼   ► because it's one of those things that's sort of like,

01:38:56 ◼   ► if the person who would have done that

01:38:58 ◼   ► didn't work there anymore, they're just not doing that.

01:39:00 ◼   ► And I don't want that to be the case for shortcuts.

01:39:02 ◼   ► I think it deserves more.

01:39:05 ◼   ► - And I'm gonna throw in one last wishlist item.

01:39:09 ◼   ► And I know this is gonna be esoteric,

01:39:10 ◼   ► but Rose mentioned CarPlay.

01:39:13 ◼   ► I'm gonna mention the Apple Watch and say,

01:39:17 ◼   ► I use my Apple Watch, I have a cellular Apple Watch,

01:39:21 ◼   ► and I go without my phone a lot.

01:39:24 ◼   ► If I'm walking the dog or running or whatever,

01:39:27 ◼   ► I'm using my Apple Watch on cellular without a phone.

01:39:32 ◼   ► And I know it's a weird little thing,

01:39:34 ◼   ► but like I wish shortcuts was more capable

01:39:36 ◼   ► on the Apple Watch.

01:39:37 ◼   ► I'm not gonna write the shortcuts on the Apple Watch,

01:39:40 ◼   ► but there is an invisible gap between,

01:39:45 ◼   ► will this run if my phone's not around?

01:39:48 ◼   ► And some of them will, and some of them won't.

01:39:52 ◼   ► And I wish more of them would run,

01:39:54 ◼   ► and I wish it was also clearer,

01:39:57 ◼   ► especially when you say put this on my Apple Watch,

01:39:59 ◼   ► I wish it was much clearer about whether it can run

01:40:02 ◼   ► independently or whether it has to talk to your phone

01:40:06 ◼   ► in order to get what is done.

01:40:08 ◼   ► Because there is something, not just the UI,

01:40:10 ◼   ► but the Siri interface, being able to say

01:40:13 ◼   ► into your Apple Watch, do this thing.

01:40:16 ◼   ► I use it for like, what's the temperature now, right?

01:40:18 ◼   ► Like it's 'cause it's me, it's weather automation.

01:40:20 ◼   ► But I love it.

01:40:22 ◼   ► And yet there are other tasks that it just will spin

01:40:27 ◼   ► on forever or, and then finally come back and say,

01:40:30 ◼   ► "Essentially, I can't find your iPhone."

01:40:32 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, why do you need my iPhone?"

01:40:34 ◼   ► And the answer is, "Well, there's a trap somewhere

01:40:36 ◼   ► in that shortcut that requires an action

01:40:39 ◼   ► that must talk to my iPhone and I don't have my iPhone.

01:40:43 ◼   ► So I'd like it to be better."

01:40:44 ◼   ► And that goes back to the number one point,

01:40:46 ◼   ► which is consistency across platforms.

01:40:48 ◼   ► And like, when your platforms aren't consistent,

01:40:51 ◼   ► either try to make them more consistent

01:40:53 ◼   ► or communicate why they're not consistent.

01:40:56 ◼   ► I do wonder if that could be resolved with this sort of app clippy type idea that I mentioned,

01:41:01 ◼   ► you know, because if you've got the app for that action on your Apple Watch, if it can

01:41:08 ◼   ► have those shortcuts actions and support for that built in, now obviously, you know, your

01:41:12 ◼   ► Apple Watch is pretty slimmed down, but you know, it would be really cool if at the very

01:41:16 ◼   ► least you would get some kind of marking that would say, "Hey, this isn't going to work,"

01:41:20 ◼   ► you know, like when your HomePod's like, "I'm sorry, I can't do that."

01:41:24 ◼   ► And you don't know if it's that it can't do it because it didn't understand or if it ran

01:41:27 ◼   ► in some kind of limitation, you know, maybe just don't respond on the HomePod with this

01:41:32 ◼   ► action.

01:41:33 ◼   ► You already have that whole competition.

01:41:34 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:41:35 ◼   ► Of devices.

01:41:36 ◼   ► HomePod is a whole other story where I feel like that like ruins the potential for like

01:41:40 ◼   ► half my shortcuts because it'll just capture the Siri part and then say it can't do it.

01:41:45 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, tell the computer that can do it to run it, please.

01:41:48 ◼   ► Are there other devices in this house?