00:00:14 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 250. Today's show is brought to you by Hello, KiwiCo, and Astropad Studio.
00:00:23 ◼ ► My name is Myke Hurley, and I have the joy of always and always and in always of being joined by Jason Snell.
00:00:35 ◼ ► Yeah, and so we figured that this would be the perfect time to start the Summer of Fun for this year.
00:00:47 ◼ ► "Why are they screaming three words at the top of their voice, and why is the music different for this week's episode?"
00:00:53 ◼ ► During the summer, we like to put on a selection of episodes that feature different and fun and eccentric topics on this show,
00:01:01 ◼ ► because from about now until September, it tends to be a little bit quieter in the technology space as we go through the summer,
00:01:10 ◼ ► So we like to mix things up a little bit, and today we're going to be starting the Summer of Fun on episode 250,
00:01:16 ◼ ► because it just felt right to do, and we're going to do an iPhone home screen draft later on in today's show.
00:01:26 ◼ ► And then next week, so there's some homework for you, we're going to be doing a Myke at the Movies for Kiki's Delivery Service,
00:01:31 ◼ ► which is a movie that we've been wanting to do since we watched My Neighbor Totoro a few months ago.
00:01:35 ◼ ► So that will be also next week's episode, and we have many, many wonderful, weird and fantastical topics
00:01:43 ◼ ► that will be ringing through the Summer of Fun, which tends to end with the iPhone draft.
00:01:49 ◼ ► So the draft for the iPhone keynote. So we've got a lot of wonderful episodes planned for this year.
00:02:02 ◼ ► Steve wants to know, "What actually is a draft? It seems like a sport metaphor, but it's not something that I'm that familiar with."
00:02:09 ◼ ► So Steve, the easiest way that I could describe it is if you've ever played a game at school on a playground or something,
00:02:23 ◼ ► and then they just take turns picking who's on their team, that's a draft. That's how drafts work.
00:02:27 ◼ ► And then it is most notable in at least American sports, this is how you end up getting players who are coming out of school
00:02:41 ◼ ► They do, the major sports do drafts where like you've got all your college football players,
00:02:45 ◼ ► and they are ready to be drafted into the NFL, and they don't have a free-for-all where they can sell their services to a highest bidder,
00:03:01 ◼ ► It limits their free market by instead making the teams take turns, and they usually start with the worst team first.
00:03:12 ◼ ► So anyway, we have repurposed this to be a mechanism that we can use to pick sort of anything in turn,
00:03:19 ◼ ► and part of the key is that if you take it, then it's gone, and the other person can't take it.
00:03:32 ◼ ► So there we go. That is kind of what a draft is and for our purposes what we use them for.
00:03:37 ◼ ► Now, Jason, I believe you've written a lot of notes in our document today about Twitterific 6 and kind of some of the business of selling apps.
00:03:47 ◼ ► So I would like to know from you what is going on with Twitterific, and what is it specifically that you wanted to talk about today?
00:03:53 ◼ ► Well, I mean, I wrote a little thing last week, and I could be excited about it and just say,
00:03:57 ◼ ► "Hey, a new version of Twitterific for iOS came out. I like Twitterific. I use it. It's my Twitter client of choice.
00:04:02 ◼ ► I use it on the Mac. I use it on iOS. It syncs across all of them, which is really nice.
00:04:11 ◼ ► These are the two kind of like primary, premium, not the Twitter apps that are out there.
00:04:22 ◼ ► So you can actually like use or customize. You can actually make a theme on the Mac version and put it in an iCloud folder,
00:04:29 ◼ ► and it syncs to the iOS versions, and you can use those themes there. It's pretty cool.
00:04:32 ◼ ► But I think what's most interesting, and it's kind of unfortunate, but I think it's also worth talking about just the challenge of business models in the App Store
00:04:42 ◼ ► and what people's expectations are and how hard it is for developers to figure out the right thing to do,
00:05:03 ◼ ► apparently because there's for some group of users who weren't seeing banner ads in Twitterific before they say they are seeing them now.
00:05:16 ◼ ► Now, the Icon Factory wrote a whole document that we can put in the show notes about the purchase policy of Twitterific 6.
00:05:22 ◼ ► There's a whole history of what they've charged for Twitterific and what the business model has been over time.
00:05:27 ◼ ► I think it's -- I think, you know, I'm trying to get a handle on the source of the user anger
00:05:35 ◼ ► because it seems to me, based on their document, that what Icon Factory basically has said is,
00:05:56 ◼ ► If you've recently done an in-app purchase, we will give you an extra six months of that in-app purchase in the new thing before we ask you for more money.
00:06:08 ◼ ► And basically, if you've given us an in-app purchase at all since 2014, so five years ago, more than five years ago,
00:06:17 ◼ ► you still won't see those banner ads. You will get a sort of a nag screen that comes up every now and then saying,
00:06:24 ◼ ► "We would like it if you would support the app," but they'll hide the banner ads for you.
00:06:28 ◼ ► And so it looks like they're being really generous here and that -- unless there's either a technical mistake
00:06:34 ◼ ► or there's something that they're not communicating clearly, it sounds to me like the only people who are really seeing ads
00:06:40 ◼ ► who weren't seeing them before are people who bought the app back in 20 -- like 2013, basically.
00:06:47 ◼ ► It came out the end of 2012 for $3. And those people got graced, basically, when they switched to the free with in-app purchase model.
00:07:02 ◼ ► And this is one of those things where it's like they are getting so much junk on Twitter about this for, I think,
00:07:14 ◼ ► because they've been so good to their customers. I think literally what they're getting is they're getting angry people
00:07:19 ◼ ► who they have been always -- Icon Factory has always been sort of like trying to do the right thing and say,
00:07:26 ◼ ► "We're going to give you no ads for longer because of that," and it's gone so long now that people just figure that they get no ads forever.
00:07:34 ◼ ► And what they did last week is they said, "Okay, we're doing a new version. We're going to update it over the old version,
00:07:39 ◼ ► and if you haven't paid us in the last five years, you're going to need to pay us again."
00:07:43 ◼ ► And this leads to this whole conversation about what's the right thing to do as an app developer.
00:07:49 ◼ ► Do you update or release a new version of the app? If they release a new version of the app, what happens to the old version of the app?
00:07:55 ◼ ► I will lay money down that if they kept the old version around and it broke in iOS 13, that people would complain about that.
00:08:06 ◼ ► And yet they should have no need or they should put no effort into making the old app continue to work
00:08:25 ◼ ► Also, so there's some of that. Some of it is the complexity of the in-app purchase system
00:08:31 ◼ ► because they have been trying to find a business model for this, and therefore you go to this site and you're like,
00:08:37 ◼ ► "Oh my God, we went from paid to free with these in-app purchases and we did a tip jar."
00:08:46 ◼ ► And then another layer on top of that is there are a lot of people who hate the idea of a subscription.
00:08:55 ◼ ► They also offer a purchase that's a one-time purchase that they called forever, which was a mistake,
00:09:05 ◼ ► I'll point out that version 5 lasted 7 years, but who knows how long version 6 will last.
00:09:14 ◼ ► I think it's $30. It's not cheap, but it's just you don't get nickeled and dimed over every month or every year.
00:09:21 ◼ ► And some people don't like that idea. It's like, "I don't want to pay $30. I also don't want a subscription."
00:09:26 ◼ ► And I think that there are some okay criticisms, criticisms I understand about the way that they phrase some of this stuff
00:09:37 ◼ ► But what really makes me sad is this seems to be a company that has fought really hard about how to do this.
00:09:48 ◼ ► And by the way, the vast majority, according to icon factory, of Twitter-ific users just use it for free with ads.
00:10:00 ◼ ► The existence of this purchase policy shows that they've consistently over the years tried to do the right thing
00:10:07 ◼ ► for people who've given them money and given them features forever in some cases or for years before,
00:10:15 ◼ ► even though that's not really what they paid for because they wanted to do the right thing.
00:10:19 ◼ ► And yet now they're getting torn apart by people who are like, "Oh, this is an outrage.
00:10:22 ◼ ► I can't believe I gave you money and now you're making me see ads unless I pay you again."
00:10:26 ◼ ► And one last thing on this point, which is the entitlement of people who think that paying three bucks in 2013
00:10:45 ◼ ► If you think Twitter-ific or Tweetbot is better, then those developers aren't part of Twitter.
00:10:53 ◼ ► And I am not seeing, unless there's a technical problem or I'm really misunderstanding this detailed document that Icon Factory put out,
00:11:00 ◼ ► I am not seeing where they have taken money from somebody and then turned around and said,
00:11:12 ◼ ► And the sad thing is that it may be that that generosity is the thing that sort of trained people that they would never be asked for money again.
00:11:20 ◼ ► But it's just, you know, this is just when you think maybe the App Store is starting to make sense and settle down,
00:11:31 ◼ ► And I mean the customer's attitude toward payment and the complexity of the entire model that's based on Apple's rules.
00:11:43 ◼ ► I think that there is a potential issue in assuming that the customer is aware of any of the stuff that's going on behind the scenes as well.
00:11:51 ◼ ► Right? Like, the economics of software development are so murky to customers as well as developers themselves.
00:11:59 ◼ ► Like, that they're, and I'm not saying that anyone, well, it's difficult to say who's pointing fingers who, but everybody, where,
00:12:13 ◼ ► I think it's very difficult as an average consumer to understand what your purchase is getting you.
00:12:21 ◼ ► And I think that this is part of the issue created by the App Store all those years ago.
00:12:28 ◼ ► And it's now trying to be fixed by subscriptions, but really the subscriptions should have come along and been a possibility for more developers a long time ago
00:12:37 ◼ ► because we're now in this, like, really difficult time where people struggle to understand what they get.
00:12:43 ◼ ► Now, I don't think that that is right for them people to start, like, hurling abuse because I think that's ridiculous.
00:12:53 ◼ ► Like, I understand that mentality, especially if you've been using it for so long you don't even remember when you paid for it.
00:12:58 ◼ ► And it gets worse. I have a friend who will remain nameless who is not a technical person, doesn't work in the technical field at all,
00:13:14 ◼ ► Like, it was really one of those things like, "Oh, I didn't even realize that I didn't pay for it. I thought I paid for it.
00:13:20 ◼ ► And now they're asking me for more money and it turns out I didn't pay for it and they're asking me for money."
00:13:26 ◼ ► And again, you can use it without paying them. You just get the ads and then you get to choose to turn it off.
00:13:37 ◼ ► Definitely. I just find it so difficult to be like, "It's this person's fault. It's this person's fault."
00:13:53 ◼ ► And I think I really hope that subscriptions continue to be a thing that works for people.
00:13:57 ◼ ► I really hope it works for the icon factory, which is terrific, or has been working, continues to work.
00:14:02 ◼ ► But, like, it's a real mess. And it seems to be only becoming increasingly more difficult for developers to build a sustainable business model.
00:14:20 ◼ ► At some point, they'll just stop developing their app. And that's certainly an option here.
00:14:25 ◼ ► I think what I feel bad for developers is that a lot of these decisions are made by Apple, but the user doesn't perceive any of them as being from Apple.
00:14:32 ◼ ► They perceive them as bad behavior on the part of the developers. It all gets blamed on the developer, which I understand from a consumer point of view.
00:14:39 ◼ ► It's like, I don't even know. Your app is the one asking me for these things. You made this decision.
00:14:44 ◼ ► But we know that there's a lot more complexity behind the scenes, and Apple gets shielded.
00:14:49 ◼ ► Like, very rarely will a user say, "Why, I'm being asked to subscribe to an app. I am outraged by the conditions put in this market by Apple's rules."
00:15:00 ◼ ► No, they say, "Why are you asking me for money, developer?" That's where it comes back to it, and it falls on them.
00:15:05 ◼ ► Yeah, the hope, I think, for a lot of people was that the subscription model would be a thing to help save this.
00:15:16 ◼ ► You don't want to subscribe to 150 different applications. Nobody wants to do that. We're all subscribing to so much stuff.
00:15:23 ◼ ► But I hope that, at least for some apps, at least the annual subscription for a smallish amount of money, like a few dollars,
00:15:30 ◼ ► would be a big help to a lot of developers, and I think wouldn't be too difficult for most customers.
00:15:36 ◼ ► But yeah, I think this was worth bringing up every now and then, especially because this one seems to have hit a real sore point for a lot of people.
00:15:50 ◼ ► But before we do, let me give our thanks to our first sponsor this week, and that is Hello.
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00:16:19 ◼ ► You probably only want to sleep on the large side, so you maybe don't want to sleep on the small side,
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00:17:47 ◼ ► This was a conversation we had a little while ago, and this one had been bouncing around in my head for a while
00:18:01 ◼ ► We're going to take turns picking one app each. Some of them are not really going to need much discussion,
00:18:06 ◼ ► but we'll see about that. And what I thought we'd do, because we want to create the perfect home screen,
00:18:10 ◼ ► we don't want to have duplicates. We're not going to pick the Twitter app Terrific and Tweetbot.
00:18:19 ◼ ► And I guess, who's going to go first? Jason, you know what? I'm going to let you go first.
00:18:27 ◼ ► I don't want to go first. I'm going to let you go first. You go first. It was your idea. I'm going to give it to you. You go first.
00:18:32 ◼ ► All right. So I'm going to go with a very simple one that I think everyone should have on their home screen,
00:18:36 ◼ ► because I can't imagine using my phone without it, and that is the Messages app. Seems like an easy one, right? Would you agree?
00:18:49 ◼ ► So this could be a wild design, because we're going to pick the things we want the most,
00:18:54 ◼ ► even though maybe they'll be more likely to go in the dock, but I don't also want to try and in audio form create a visual medium here.
00:19:05 ◼ ► which upgrade-ian Jason is going to reorganize their phone based on the upgrade iPhone home screen draft?
00:19:12 ◼ ► I'd imagine, well, that's a good question. I also imagine we'll get a sternly worded note from Alex Cox about the quality of our home screen when we're done.
00:19:21 ◼ ► Yeah. But I want to see, you can send tweets to us if you do this, I want to see how many phones can we destroy with our iPhone home screen draft.
00:19:35 ◼ ► All right. Ironically, top left on my home screen is Messages. So that is well done, well picked.
00:19:41 ◼ ► I am going to go with an app that has to be on your home screen, and also by doing this, I know I'm sniping you.
00:19:49 ◼ ► I'm going to pick Safari. You got to have Safari. You can do so much with Safari. It gives you the whole web on a phone.
00:19:55 ◼ ► Steve Jobs told me that was great. So I think you got to put Safari on there and not Chrome, which you do, but too late.
00:20:01 ◼ ► I was going to, you know what? I didn't even have Chrome in my list because I knew it would never work.
00:20:07 ◼ ► I had Safari in my list. I am a Chrome user on the iPhone because I am currently a Chrome user on the Mac.
00:20:13 ◼ ► Although I am getting ready to bow down to the god of iPadOS for Safari. Come September, I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to be moving away from Chrome back to Safari
00:20:26 ◼ ► because I'm so excited about the full desktop Safari on the iPadOS. So I can't imagine that Chrome will be in my future on iOS come the end of the year,
00:20:35 ◼ ► which is, it'll be a sad day for me, Jason, when I finally give up because there are just some things about the Chrome app now that I love so much over Safari.
00:20:44 ◼ ► Like, for example, the way that you open new tabs on the Chrome app is so nice. You just pull down and pull to the left and it just opens a new tab for you.
00:20:57 ◼ ► I love how you have taken my Safari pic and used it to extol the virtues of Chrome, but too bad. Come on, come on. We're not going to pick it. It's at least there.
00:21:07 ◼ ► It's at least there. All right, so I'm going to go with a controversial pic for the home screen here, Jason. Lots of people get on me about this, but I think there's a good reason. The camera app.
00:21:17 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah. I took it off for a while and I put it back on. It's on my home screen now.
00:21:21 ◼ ► Because the reason people always say, why have you got the camera on your home screens? Because you have the camera shortcut on the lock screen. Right.
00:21:28 ◼ ► And I understand that. But sometimes I want to get to the camera and my phone is open. But also the camera app allows you to get into your photos app really easily as well.
00:21:37 ◼ ► So it feels like a two for one for me because you only have to go press one more tap and you're in photos. Right.
00:21:41 ◼ ► You hit that little preview on the bottom left. So camera does double duty. I don't need to have the photos app on my home screen.
00:21:47 ◼ ► And I also have the camera app on my home screen for whenever I need it. So the upgrade drops says that cameras. The camera app is great.
00:21:55 ◼ ► Me and Jason both agree that is upgrade certified and it is pick number three. I am going to pick one of the apps that quite honestly, I use the most on my phone and my iPad.
00:22:06 ◼ ► And I know it's not necessarily a crowd pleaser, but I couldn't live without it. And that is Slack. I use Slack all the time to talk to people.
00:22:18 ◼ ► I can't live without it to communicate with all the people I collaborate with. I got to have it on my phone. So Slack.
00:22:25 ◼ ► Yeah, I had Slack on my list, obviously. I had it further down because I figured we're definitely going to pick it.
00:22:30 ◼ ► And it seems to be these days that Slack is not that popular. Like I remember when like everyone was just head over heels in love with Slack because of its ability to create these large groups of teams to be able to talk really easily together.
00:22:44 ◼ ► But I think people have turned on it because it has become everybody's workplace and has become so big over time that it moves slowly.
00:22:54 ◼ ► So, yeah, it's a real thing. But Slack is there. And so that rounds out our current top row messages, Safari, camera and Slack.
00:23:06 ◼ ► I have just decided, Myke, while we were talking that what we're going to do is we're going to pick twenty eight and then at the end we're going to pick from those twenty eight.
00:23:17 ◼ ► Only Jason Snell could come up with a draft of a draft because that's what we're doing. Right.
00:23:54 ◼ ► And Marco's effects, the smart speed and voice boost, they are something that I kind of live about now when I listen to my podcast.
00:24:09 ◼ ► Wow, there's so many so many apps to choose from here. All the great apps, you could say.
00:24:30 ◼ ► So Fantastical is my calendar app and I like its presentation better than the stock calendar app, at least on the iPhone.
00:24:44 ◼ ► And on the iPhone, it's great. And it has a place on my home screen and I want it there on this home screen.
00:25:00 ◼ ► It's super simple, but it does the job. Like, if I have a little note that I need to write down, it goes in there.
00:25:06 ◼ ► All of my links that I save for all of our shows, it all goes in there because the extension is built so well.
00:25:17 ◼ ► Apps like Bear, for example, which have some really wonderful features and really great markdown support.
00:25:47 ◼ ► Every time I do an incomparable and I'm taking notes of the movie I watch, that's all in Notes.
00:26:17 ◼ ► I have some documents in there too that I just password protect because then they're really easy to get to.
00:26:24 ◼ ► Where would apologies on Twitter be without people taking screenshots of things written in the Notes app?
00:26:44 ◼ ► Honestly, my phone is a Twitter and Slack machine more than anything else at this point.
00:26:55 ◼ ► I actually didn't have a Twitter app on my list because I have recently been using the official Twitter app.
00:27:08 ◼ ► When Twitter cut off a lot of the API stuff, it made things more difficult for some of the third-party apps in speed and stuff.
00:27:19 ◼ ► I'm not quitting Twitter, but I want to use it differently and the official Twitter app has helped me do that.
00:27:45 ◼ ► Not the final row, but the second row as it stands now is Overcast, Fantastic Hell, Notes, and Twitterific.
00:27:50 ◼ ► As you said, we will give a complete and full picture of what it will look like after the sub-draft, after the main draft is completed.
00:28:10 ◼ ► There is only the email app that you can stand or the email app that has the features you have to have.
00:28:31 ◼ ► It's something that's very important for my work, but a lot of the other features of the app could be better in many different ways.
00:28:50 ◼ ► I've been trying Gmail actually in its place on my phone, the Gmail app, since I do get my mail through Gmail.
00:28:55 ◼ ► Again, it's one of those things where for everything that I like about it, there's another thing that I dislike about it.
00:29:01 ◼ ► I can just pick my poison of which feature I dislike or like the most in any of them, but none of them fills me with enough satisfaction that I say, "Okay, I can stop now.
00:29:17 ◼ ► Everyone's going to send me their favorite, but I'll tell you right now, I've tried them all.
00:29:27 ◼ ► I also use an iCloud email address for a lot of personal stuff, so I can't just use Gmail-based applications of which there are many.
00:29:42 ◼ ► All right, well, I know what you said earlier in pick number three about how having a camera app on your phone also gives you quick access to photos, but you know what?
00:29:53 ◼ ► I just want to use the Photos app, and I use it all the time to see photos, to share photos, to edit photos, to write a book about photos.
00:30:11 ◼ ► It's very hard because a picture is worth a thousand words, so the number of words I have to write, it's enormous.
00:30:17 ◼ ► Well, really, I guess you only need to have 100 pictures and you have a massive book on your hands.
00:30:37 ◼ ► If you have kids, you know how great it is when you find something for your kids to do that is educational and fun at the same time.
00:30:49 ◼ ► Individually researching each creative project, finding ways for them to be educational and fun isn't practical,
00:30:54 ◼ ► but you still want your kids to be able to enjoy the creative stuff that they're doing, which is where KiwiCo comes in.
00:31:04 ◼ ► You sign up for KiwiCo's description and every month you receive a crate full of exciting projects.
00:31:09 ◼ ► They come with everything you need, so there's no last minute dashes to the craft store.
00:31:13 ◼ ► We're looking at hundreds of hands-on projects that are available with KiwiCo covering science, technology, engineering, art, and math.
00:31:25 ◼ ► They have crates for all ages and you can pause or cancel your subscription plan at any time.
00:31:30 ◼ ► Now, Jason, I believe that KiwiCo sent you a crate out and I just wanted to get your experience of it.
00:31:40 ◼ ► And I'm going to be honest, I've been saving it because this is the first week of summer vacation.
00:31:47 ◼ ► And as we were saying at the dinner table last night, we need to assign my son things to do this summer
00:31:59 ◼ ► So one of the things we're going to be doing is constructing a walking robot using the KiwiCo kit.
00:32:04 ◼ ► And that's going to take us probably not the entire summer, so we're going to have to come up with other things to do.
00:32:08 ◼ ► But I think it's a good idea to give him something, a little bit of a challenge and maybe a mechanical challenge
00:32:14 ◼ ► that he'll find interesting, but also is some variety because searching for variety over the summer is a big thing.
00:32:53 ◼ ► I am going to pick Calzones by _DavidSmith, which is, whilst technically has calendar functionality,
00:33:07 ◼ ► Just because Calzones is an app that's become so important to me as a way to be able to keep track of all of the wild time zones
00:33:17 ◼ ► of the many people I work with. Like right now, I am in a time zone that is plus two hours from my regular time zone.
00:33:24 ◼ ► So understanding when on earth I'm recording with Jason, I really need to be able to have an application that can do that.
00:33:30 ◼ ► And Calzones is wonderful. It has really great UI, being able for me to see at a glance the time zones of when all my events are,
00:33:41 ◼ ► It has a wonderful widget as well that I'm a big fan of. I absolutely love this application.
00:33:49 ◼ ► It has calendar functionality, but I'm going to say for category specifics, it is a time zone conversion application.
00:34:10 ◼ ► Uh huh, see you later clock. Although, maybe we could clock as an alarm app, we'll work that out later on.
00:34:15 ◼ ► Yeah, you just have to re-categorize it, but it can't be used as a time zone app now, because that's out.
00:34:24 ◼ ► Oh boy, um, I, uh, things are getting complicated now. I'm going to pick Shortcuts next.
00:34:37 ◼ ► And I, you know, you can get things from widgets and you can run things in the share sheet,
00:34:42 ◼ ► but sometimes I'm running Shortcuts or I'm editing Shortcuts right out in, just in app land.
00:34:54 ◼ ► And I love Shortcuts. I use it more on my iPad, I'll be honest, than on my iPhone, but I do use it on my iPhone.
00:34:59 ◼ ► And I need to have it handy, so I put Shortcuts, put the power of Shortcuts right on my home screen.
00:35:05 ◼ ► I am really happy that the Maps category has remained open to this point of the home screen draft,
00:35:11 ◼ ► so I can pick Google Maps, because I believe Google Maps to be superior over Apple Maps.
00:35:17 ◼ ► Especially outside of America, Google Maps really gets the job done, especially with all the point of interest information.
00:35:25 ◼ ► And then when you're in a point of interest, finding out, like, when is it open, when is it busy, you know,
00:35:30 ◼ ► and having all of that data available to you, as well as what I have found to be more reliable transit information,
00:35:40 ◼ ► Yeah, that's one that I let sit there, because I could have picked Apple Maps and I thought about it,
00:35:48 ◼ ► and I thought, I'm just going to hear from everybody complaining about Apple Maps and that Google Maps is better,
00:35:53 ◼ ► and I'm already going to hear from all the Tweetbot people, so why should I really hear from all the Google Maps people too?
00:36:00 ◼ ► Yeah, leave the Apple Maps people to me, right? I'll take the flag for Maps, you take the flag for Twitter clients.
00:36:20 ◼ ► And yes, I know that there are a lot of places where password lookup happens in browsers and things like that,
00:36:25 ◼ ► and yet you know what? I am opening 1Password all the time to look something up, to copy something out, to, you know,
00:36:32 ◼ ► it doesn't always work, the in-browser integration. I've got to make edits, I've got to type in a password on my daughter's computer,
00:36:38 ◼ ► she's like, "What's the password for this?" And so I want it at hand, and so I always have 1Password at hand.
00:36:44 ◼ ► It's not just passwords though, like, I just got a new credit card and I have my PIN number saved in there.
00:36:50 ◼ ► We got a new PIN number, I haven't changed the PIN number, and so I saved the PIN number in 1Password,
00:36:55 ◼ ► so then when I need to grab it or I need to remember it, I have it saved in there, I have all of my bank account information in there,
00:37:01 ◼ ► it's so much more than just passwords. So yeah, I'm the same, I agree, like, Safari Keychain is a great example,
00:37:07 ◼ ► like, Safari Keychain is so much better now, but I still want to be able to use 1Password,
00:37:13 ◼ ► and I love that they changed in iOS 12, right, which lets me use 1Password, like, you can use the third-party password managers
00:37:20 ◼ ► in the little quick look bar, so it only made 1Password even stronger for me, but it's more than just plain password management,
00:37:42 ◼ ► I love carrot weather. Like, I understand some people don't like the character that the app has, which is easy to turn off if it's not a thing that you want.
00:37:53 ◼ ► And I get it, right, because it's like, you know, maybe you don't want a cartoon character effectively in your weather application,
00:37:59 ◼ ► but it's there if I ever want to see it, but more often than not, I don't really see a lot of the stuff that's in there,
00:38:05 ◼ ► kind of like the character, but it's there, it's still there, I can get it for a joke if I want to.
00:38:15 ◼ ► The amount of development that goes into this app kind of astounds me, like all of the new features that the carrot team put into carrot weather.
00:38:23 ◼ ► I didn't really know so many features could be added to a weather application over time, but they keep making it more and more powerful.
00:38:35 ◼ ► Like, I can put all of the information that I want where I want it, depending on what is important to me, right?
00:38:42 ◼ ► Like, for me, I want to know feels like temperature, I want to know rainfall percentage, I want to know wind, and I want to know UV.
00:38:49 ◼ ► Like, they are the four things that I really want to have available to me, because depending on where I am or what I'm doing, they're the things that I care most about,
00:38:57 ◼ ► and I'm able to have all of that, like, where exactly where I need it in the application.
00:39:01 ◼ ► So, it also has an amazing Apple Watch app as well, like carrot weather is the bee's knees.
00:39:06 ◼ ► Yep, I agree completely, and I was going to pick it and I realised you would pick it, and I didn't need to worry about it.
00:39:15 ◼ ► Alright, with my choice, I am going to go with, sorry Spotify fans, I'm going with the music app.
00:39:23 ◼ ► I am an Apple Music user, I've got my old MP3 library loaded up in iCloud Music library,
00:39:29 ◼ ► and I've got a whole bunch of playlists and all sorts of other stuff that I have access to that I've built since I subscribed to Apple Music.
00:39:36 ◼ ► I use Apple Music on my phone all the time, and not on my iPad, because I don't listen to music on my iPad,
00:39:43 ◼ ► but I do use the music app on my phone when I'm travelling, when I want to listen to music in the car, all of those things.
00:39:49 ◼ ► Plus, I also will use my iPhone to control my AirPlay speakers, like my HomePods in the house.
00:40:04 ◼ ► Again, it's like notes, music is tied really well into the system, and considering I'm so heavy in the Apple ecosystem,
00:40:12 ◼ ► like the fact that I own a HomePod, you kind of need to be a music user at a certain point,
00:40:17 ◼ ► because if you really want to be able to take advantage of that device, Spotify is not going to cut it for you.
00:40:28 ◼ ► And also, as well, I'm not huge on the music discovery features of a music streaming service in general.
00:40:36 ◼ ► I like to find my music either myself or from friend recommendations, this is kind of how I am.
00:40:42 ◼ ► So, I know that Spotify is considered to be better with a lot of the algorithmic stuff, but it's less of a thing that I care about.
00:40:48 ◼ ► So, at that point, I'm just choosing which app I like most, and I'm not a big fan of the Spotify app.
00:41:03 ◼ ► They have the same catalogues available to them, so really you're just making very minor decisions at that point,
00:41:16 ◼ ► I love Instagram. It is my favorite social network. It is the one that I check the most.
00:41:39 ◼ ► I still use Twitter a lot. It's where I get my news. It's where I'm able to promote stuff.
00:41:44 ◼ ► But Instagram has become the place where I get to see what the people that I care about are doing,
00:42:02 ◼ ► So I'm happy about that because it was something that I actually wanted to do this year
00:42:10 ◼ ► to spend time if I'm going to be spending social network time in a place that makes me happier
00:42:55 ◼ ► I, you know, I have a family and sometimes you need to know where the heck the family is.
00:43:40 ◼ ► It is super convenient. And yes, it does mean that my mom knows where I am at all times.
00:44:02 ◼ ► I love it. That's my favorite time is when I land at the airport and then, like, see people coming in.
00:44:24 ◼ ► But it's a thing. And I love Find My Friends. I think that it's a super well-done application.
00:44:33 ◼ ► I haven't really spent much time looking into that one yet because I'm still not on the betas
00:44:37 ◼ ► because I'm traveling. I'm waiting for beta 2. I want to see what that's like, and I might put it on my iPad.
00:44:49 ◼ ► Like, I don't see why it wouldn't be, but I'm intrigued to see what other stuff is going to be in Find My.
00:44:57 ◼ ► I think it should have come up with a new name for it. I don't think that that's very elegant at all.
00:45:12 ◼ ► I need to get to files. And so I use the Files app. It's very, very boring, but that is a pick.
00:45:31 ◼ ► An app I never don't have on page one of my home screen ever, ever, ever is the most boring app you could possibly imagine.
00:45:49 ◼ ► But what I was going to say is you'll never know when you're going to need to connect to a Bluetooth device,
00:45:52 ◼ ► and you have to open Settings and tap on Bluetooth and then tap on the device because otherwise it, for some reason, just won't connect.
00:46:06 ◼ ► I do not begrudge that it took a long time for me to move Settings away from my home screen, but I needed the space, and it just got bumped off.
00:46:21 ◼ ► So now we're going to go -- I'm going to go with Peacock now by a friend of the show, James Thompson.
00:46:31 ◼ ► I deal a lot with needing to work out percentages of stuff, and just in general, I like to use calculation.
00:46:40 ◼ ► Again, I know that I can get to the Apple calculator from Control Center, but it's just not my favorite.
00:46:57 ◼ ► And I love that it has a hidden game and all the great AR stuff in there, which is not necessarily helpful for calculation, but makes me just love the app all the more.
00:47:25 ◼ ► I was just having this conversation with Stephen Hackett earlier today where he said I had a really great idea for something for liftoff, and I didn't write it down.
00:47:37 ◼ ► And I don't use it as my to-do list manager per se, but I do use it as my place to write down things in an ordered way.
00:47:52 ◼ ► Things that I thought of it, and I know that if I don't write it down right now, it will be lost, and I want it in a structured list.
00:48:12 ◼ ► As I said, maybe Reminders will be where all of my to-dos live in just a few months time.
00:50:15 ◼ ► If I did FaceTime more, I would either have the FaceTime or the phone app on my home screen.
00:51:08 ◼ ► And the choices that I have left are, shall we say, quirkier choices that not everybody
00:51:29 ◼ ► There are a lot of things you can do from Control Center, but Control Center is simple,
00:51:37 ◼ ► You have to go to settings, or for controlling devices in your home, you have to go to the
00:51:43 ◼ ► And so the home app is on my home screen, and I use it all the time to adjust the lighting
00:51:54 ◼ ► Other times, it is easier to do it to change the automation, so I change when the lights
00:52:38 ◼ ► I play all the time, especially when I'm on planes or I'm in lines or I'm like traveling.
00:52:43 ◼ ► It is a game that I can always pick up and I can always enjoy no matter how long I want
00:52:48 ◼ ► I have been playing consistently for the many, many, many, many, many years that it's been
00:53:01 ◼ ► It's a wonderful game and I'm happy to have it included on the iPhone upgrade home screen.
00:53:20 ◼ ► And as everybody knows from listening to this show every April, there is nothing Myke likes
00:53:26 ◼ ► more than hearing about the traditions and excitement of the sport of American baseball.
00:53:45 ◼ ► Very rarely does a keynote not pass when Major League Baseball's MLB at Bad App doesn't get
00:53:58 ◼ ► Sometimes they announce support for new Apple features that are impossible and they can't
00:54:01 ◼ ► actually do them like when they did that a demo last year showing how augmented reality
00:54:11 ◼ ► But I use it all the time to check the scores and listen to the radio and all sorts of things
00:54:29 ◼ ► the fact that this is a very good application, not just because it's where you get to your
00:54:49 ◼ ► order. So in case people at home want to rearrange their home screen, they can do that.
00:55:51 ◼ ► the summer of fun so you can live out your entire summer in this very fun way, you will
00:56:01 ◼ ► Cal notes, Twitter, epic photos, Calzones, shortcuts, Google maps, one password, carrot
00:56:08 ◼ ► weather, music, Instagram, find my friends, files, settings, peak, alc reminders, Timery
00:56:26 ◼ ► There was a part in the middle where it started to rhyme, which I was very excited about.
00:56:39 ◼ ► This is the first summer of fun topic for this year and a great way to start the summer
00:56:43 ◼ ► of fun if I do say so myself, but no episode of upgrade will be complete without some hashtag
00:56:56 ◼ ► Astro pad studio turns your iPad into a completely customizable graphics tablet so you can combine
00:57:05 ◼ ► The makers behind Astro pad understand that no two artists work alike, which is why they
00:57:10 ◼ ► have packed Astro pad of opportunities to customize every single aspect of your workflow
00:57:26 ◼ ► They guarantee low latency performance of a wifi or via USB so you can set up your workspace
00:57:40 ◼ ► So if you're ready to take your creative workflow to the next level, you can start a 30 day
00:57:45 ◼ ► free trial of Astro pad studio today by going to Astro pad.com right now to get started.
00:58:05 ◼ ► And Emital asks, how do you choose which apps to keep on your home screen on the iPad given
00:58:20 ◼ ► So the idea being that like if an app is on your home screen and it's not in your dock,
00:59:06 ◼ ► I just loaded up everything that I commonly use in multitasking got stuffed in the dock.
00:59:19 ◼ ► On the iPad, literally any app I can think of that I use in that context, I stuff in the dock.
00:59:26 ◼ ► And everything else, I'm usually using a keyboard so I can just use spotlight to find those apps
00:59:38 ◼ ► So for apps that are like utility apps that I use very frequently in split view, I have a folder for those.
00:59:43 ◼ ► And if I find myself using something frequently, like either searching for it by spotlight
01:00:15 ◼ ► Jason, do you still want, even after iOS 13, an iPad OS, I should say, the iPad laptop?
01:00:22 ◼ ► Yeah, I think it's less likely that given Apple's direction that it's going to do that.
01:00:27 ◼ ► I would actually say I think it's more likely that there will eventually be a Mac OS touchscreen laptop
01:00:44 ◼ ► And I have friends who've got kids going off to college and there's this question of like,
01:00:52 ◼ ► Maybe with iOS 13 and the new Safari desktop browsing features you could get away with it,
01:01:02 ◼ ► And there are a lot of PC convertibles, things that can be a tablet but can also be a laptop.
01:01:29 ◼ ► and that Apple actually builds a future iPad Pro with the ability to do something more than the smart keyboard.
01:01:37 ◼ ► But given the smart keyboard, given that Apple is saying sort of like, "Let the iPad be the iPad,"
01:01:47 ◼ ► I'm not super hopeful about any of those. I wouldn't say that any of those is particularly likely.
01:02:10 ◼ ► because it would require Apple to, you know, Apple does diverge from their approaches to their products,
01:02:17 ◼ ► and they do it in surprising ways sometimes. But right now they've been very consistent,
01:02:26 ◼ ► Like Catalyst, in some ways, because of the way that they've framed it about how you take a Mac or an iPad app
01:02:33 ◼ ► and make it a Mac app, I feel like in some ways I'm less enthusiastic about the idea of a touchscreen
01:02:54 ◼ ► I actually think as well like some of the stuff that they added to iPadOS makes me feel like I need a laptop form factor less,
01:03:02 ◼ ► especially with something like the bridge keyboard. I feel like I basically have what I want.
01:03:05 ◼ ► I mean, we said that before anyway, and now being able to use a mouse and trackpad and where that might go in the future,
01:03:11 ◼ ► I feel like I will be able to build what I want without Apple needing to do it so much.
01:03:18 ◼ ► But I agree with you that it does feel more likely than ever that Apple will make some kind of touchscreen product,
01:03:29 ◼ ► Stefan asks, "Do you think that the second-gen 12.9-inch iPad Pro is worth getting if it's a secondhand product or refurbished product?
01:03:49 ◼ ► But, you know, if the new 12.9 is too -- I mean, I'd look at the refurbished price of a new 12.9
01:04:05 ◼ ► Have you looked at the 11, which is, again, going to be more expensive, but it is a little bit bigger than the 10.5.
01:04:11 ◼ ► I feel like you could get a pretty good deal and you'd be happy with a second-gen 12.9-inch iPad Pro,
01:04:17 ◼ ► but I will say I feel like there is a line at those third generation models, the current iPad Pro models,
01:04:29 ◼ ► But I have this, I don't know, sense in looking at the specs that there will come a day when those models forward
01:04:41 ◼ ► And that's what gives me pause about giving a recommendation for that second-gen iPad Pro.
01:04:46 ◼ ► I think it'll be good for a while, but I worry that there will come a time when they will not be --
01:04:51 ◼ ► it'll be like, nope, those aren't covered in whatever thing that Apple introduces next.
01:05:02 ◼ ► Hall asks, "Is there an easy or quick way to switch my AirPods between an iPhone and a MacBook?
01:05:18 ◼ ► But I do know of an application that exists by a friend of the show, Guillermo Rambo, it's called AirBuddy,
01:05:31 ◼ ► but I know that this thing exists, so you can check it out if it's something that you would want.
01:05:45 ◼ ► So if people want to try a different alternative, there's also an app called Tooth Fairy that seems to do about the same thing.
01:05:53 ◼ ► And finally today, Todd asks, "Does iPad or did iPadOS enable all of the audio features that Jason and Myke and every podcaster have been asking for?"
01:06:04 ◼ ► So I wrote a piece last week on six colors that I encourage people to read about the iPadOS wish list meeting reality.
01:06:16 ◼ ► There are no really visible audio changes that seem like they will solve my issue, which is I'd like to run an app that records my microphone while I'm running another app that's doing voice over IP.
01:06:26 ◼ ► And ideally, I'd like that app to be able to record the system audio or the app audio as well as my audio, you know, audio hijack, basically.
01:06:38 ◼ ► Some older audio stuff, inter-app communication, which is like audio bus, seems to be going away and there's this new audio units thing that they want people to use.
01:06:46 ◼ ► It gives me a little bit of hope that maybe what's happening is Apple is sort of on the march to doing a more advanced audio system in iOS because iOS's audio system in many ways is still super rudimentary.
01:06:58 ◼ ► The fact that you can't do these things that the Mac can do and that you probably should.
01:07:07 ◼ ► In the meantime, what really enabled is that file access means we can use an external audio recorder and then just pop the card in and read the files off.
01:07:17 ◼ ► And so that will save me a lot of time and I will not have to carry around a separate box to do the file transfer.
01:07:32 ◼ ► Yeah, but there's some change though, as you said, some change to the way that audio is working is a positive sign.
01:07:39 ◼ ► So like some changes happening to some of the way that the APIs work there could be a good sign for something coming in the future.
01:07:48 ◼ ► All right, so that wraps up episode 250 of Upgrade and the introduction to the 2019 Summer of Fun.
01:07:54 ◼ ► If you would like to send out a question for a future episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade and it may be included on a future episode.
01:08:46 ◼ ► I'm sure we'll get, I was thinking about this, I'm sure we'll get to a thousand episodes.